"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

Two winter Olympic golds for Australia!!

There will much written in the next few days about the significance of Australia winning two gold medals at the Winter Olympics, including the most recent effort by young freestyle skier Lydia Lassila.
It's a medal in an event that should make Australians extremely proud and is set to send shockwaves through the sport (a big claim I know but hey, it's already making headline news in San Diego, of all places).
I interviewed Lydia back when she had a different surname and was trailing in public profile behind Alisa Camplin, Jacqui Cooper and Kirstie Marshall (details on them and other freestyle Australian Winter Olympians here).
Camplin was the golden girl of the time and Lydia the young up-and-comer, so it's fantastic to see her taking the top spot in the sport.  
I read a few of the Facebook status updates that flickered through on the Vancouver 2010 website and, aside from the excitement, was struck by comments by a few Aussies along the lines of, 'Australia doesn't even have snow and we won a medal'. Um, obviously these people have never been to southern New South Wales, Victoria or Tasmania if they're under the impression there is no snow in Oz.
I understand the more basic meaning of the statement, that Australia does not have the same levels of snow, mountains of high altitude or length of season experienced in other countries. But it's sadly an often-held misunderstanding that our country has no snow at all.
Newsflash: the whole of Australia is not desert. Google 'Australia percent desert' and you see a whole range of figures, various websites claiming from 33% to 70% of the country is desert/semi-arid (though I trust Yahoo Answers and Wikianswers even less than I believe in UFOs).
But the rest of Australia experiences varying climates, so it makes sense than in the colder southeast, where the mountains can top 2200 metres, a good season can generate a 1-2m snowbase and often quality powder to go with it.
And while the crowds are sometimes ridiculous and lift ticket prices exorbitant, I wish more Europeans and Americans would be able to visit us during a good season, help give the Aussie snowsports industry a lift and prove that when we win a gold medal in the Winter Games, it's not always due to a last-minute pile-up, Steven Bradbury fashion.   

Returning from the bench, where only science nerds dwell

It's an odd thing, planning to head back to my old industry of sport after nearly two years in health and medical public relations. 

Many of my UK and US contacts are in health and science and I've had the occasional display of surprise when I say I want to return to sports PR. For science communicators, sports writing and promotion is often a foreign and unknown quantity, something that was made plain by this comment from a fellow science writer yesterday:

I had to Google the term 'double teaming' as I wasn't sure what it meant.

The comment related to a headline about two cancer-beating proteins, which when combined with a special drug, have been shown to effectively knock out cancer cells in the lab (if you want to know more, here some detail on the process).

So the company freelance writer's headline suggestion of 'Double-teaming cancer' as a basketball reference made complete sense to me and none to anyone else. And I just hope the commenter had Safe Search on when she googled that term.

One of the areas I’m relishing in working on is the reason I started this blog and my own Twitter account: the chance to combine sports writing, opinion, health news and social media.

On a corporate level this will be an interesting shift: after working in the aforementioned science field and handling SM for a small company, I have a better understanding of what types of stories scientists want to read about. And while I still regularly read sports news pages and blogs, talking solely to that audience will be a welcome challenge.

On the social media aspect, here's a link to a promotional video showing what my former employer in Australia has been up to while I'm away.

When I left Monash Sport two years ago, they were cautious of the uses, audience and effects of social media but have obviously grasped the basics after setting up Facebook groups, Youtube and Metacafe channels and an underfollowed Twitter account. 
It’s a healthy cultural shift and one that their members are obviously enjoying.