Images from the deep - inspiring footage from a marine scientist

I usually blog about land-based sports but will make an exception as an opportunity to show some of the brilliant underwater video work being done by a US colleague Annie Crawley.
She's not an athlete, though her frequent scuba trips would probably qualify her as such, but the footage she brings back from every journey is always stunning and ocean-lovers from surfers and scuba-divers to fishermen couldn't help but be inspired by the images.
I met Annie at a science conference in North Carolina in January 2010 and watched a few of her amazing presentations on her ocean-based education programs. We chatted about her passion for the ocean and, as someone based in London and away from my beloved Pacific Ocean for two years, it revived my inspiration to want to get back in the water.
Her most recent voyage was to the Galapagos Islands. No need to say any more, just watch the video!

Do sports fans at live games really need more stimulation?

There are times in a serious sports watcher's life when they question whether three hours spent yelling at players and umpires on a rain-soaked pitch has really been worth it.

Or for soccer supporters who sit through a string of nil-all or one-all draws, drained of the satisfaction gained from a pivotal victory, who might wish they had an option of something else to watch than the boring spectacle in front of them.

It was only some time before a professional sports league decided fans needed more excitement and, rather than the baseball tradition of just running more colourful and annoying images on even-larger stadium screens, the time must have come for ticketholders to have their own personal entertainment units along with their overpriced hotdogs and lukewarm beer.

These FanVision gadgets, discussed in this post in the New York Times, allow American football viewers to stream footage from the game in front of them as well as several live games from other stadiums.

Teams will sell their own branded units to fans and it's expected that iPhone-draining apps are also on their way from teams such as the New York Giants and the Major League Baseball stable.

While there are positives for fans way up in the nosebleed section who want to know which of the ants on the field scored or people returning from bathroom or bar queues to catch up on missed play, this looks to be further increasing a sense of detachment from the game.

For a paid-up club member, attending and actually watching every game of a team's season either pays off in end-of-season finals success or the hope that their following season will bring long-awaited reward.

For players on the field then to look up into the stands and see supporters staring at tiny video screens, must bring with it some kind of disillusionment with their own achievements. Yes, this may have already happened with the flood of iPhones and similar devices but there should be a limit to how much of fans' attention the NFL, MLB or other leagues want taken away from the onfield action.

No doubt marketing heads in the big leagues have claimed FanVision and other tools are a way of 'owning the space' and taking a slice of the cash to be generated by live-action video content.

What they continue to forget is the reason fans sometimes go back to the lower-paid minor league and country junior competitions: to escape the overstimulated environments and enjoy the simplicity of a game between two teams where the only instant replay is in a viewer's memory bank.

"I. Don't. Want. Your. Life" and other screen sports gems

In a recent discussion with friends about the new British basketball feature film Freestyle, which I plan to review as soon as I can manage the two hours off from normal life, we got onto the dicey subject of the best and worst sports films of recent memory.

Obviously, the movie referred to in the title had an early mention. Varsity Blues falls, in my view, into the bad sports movie camp, despite some lovable characters (not including James Van Der Beek doing an appalling Southern accent) and a halfway decent depiction of a head coach bent on winning the title at all costs.

Where it fell down was in the actual game scenes. Obviously you don't expect super-realism - this is not a Dan Marino or Timmy Tebow documentary - but the overused and now very lame cliches of the last five seconds of a game that take up four minutes of screen time (and the annoying use of the Foo Fighters' My Hero set to pictures of Van Der Beek and co trotting on field for their final push) are vital flaws.

Any Given Sunday, Friday Night Lights and any other football movie with a day in its title did a better job of the game scenes. Some would say even Jerry Maguire did better on game action but those people are idiots.

Varsity Blues


On the basketball front, there have been too many bad films to list here. I say bad as in the films that lost out when it came to the actors' believability, through both acting and gameplaying ability. I've never rated Kevin Bacon as an actor and he lost major points with his scarcely comprehendible role as a jaded college basketball coach in The Air Up There.

A more streetball-focused film, Above the Rim, had some very tight game scenes but was let down by appalling acting. And I won't even go into the major dent in Michael Jordan's reputation gained by doing Space Jam.

The film that non-players and court stars all can relate to and enjoy in the same way was White Men Can't Jump. Woody and Wesley handled those parts exceptionally and the director and cinematographer showcased both stars' strengths: Wesley with the physical game action, Woody with comedic moments and the actually believable three-point shootout. It's a very well-shot and edited movie that can make you believe the actor really did hit that tray or made the game-clinching dunk without the obvious mashing together of various takes.

And - the key ingredient in my opinion - a good sport film will make you want to get off the couch and go out to play the sport you've just watched. WMCJ did that over and over again for me, in the days when highlight reels from NBA games weren't just filled with huge dunks and the achievements on screen looked, well, achievable to the average baller.

White Men Can't Jump

Winter Games are over, it's time for a breakdown

I have to give a shout out to Five Tool Tool for his interesting and admittedly biased coverage of the Winter Olympics, especially the ice hockey that had many Canadians praising the Own the Podium program that was so hated by other countries.

Though it's obviously diferent for a bobsled rider and a hockey jock: one has to adapt to a technically difficult track at short notice, the other has to put skates and helmet on, go out on a random patch of ice and hurt somebody.

Anyway, here's the FTT's humorous recap of the greatest Winter Games we could have expected in a global recession:
http://fivetooltool.blogspot.com/2010/02/top-12-lessons-learned-so-far-from.html