OT - basketball movies
 

With summer coming up soon, I thought it might be fun to share our thoughts about our favorite basketball movies. Mine is "Tall Story". Made in 1960, it stars Anthony Perkins and (yum yum) a young Jane Fonda. Perkins plays a star college basketball player. The Russian national team is coming to play an exhibition and some gamblers approach him about throwing the game. Fonda plays a co-ed who came to college looking for a husband. She chooses Perkins. Once he realizes he also wants to marry her, he has to decide whether or not to take the money and throw the game. The star Russian player is played by Gary Lockwood, of all people.

BTW - there's a scene in which Perkins is being shown a trailer he's thinking of buying for himself and Fonda, and the guy showing it is demonstrating how both he and his wife can fit in the small shower stall. He says, "Sometimes we even turn on the water."

The only thing missing from the movie is Tim Donaghy.

The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh.

Loved the TV show, "The White Shadow" while it lasted.

Are You Kidding?
 

Movies = Space Jam. C'mon MJ and cartoons?! What could be better?

TV = Globetrotters and Robots episode on Gilligan's Island!

Bwahahahaha! :p

Seriously, truth be told, I still like Hoosiers.

When I was a kid I enjoyed Amazing Grace and Chuck. It has the benefit of actually featuring a really good basketball player.

Wow, great off topic thread.
The Good
Hoosiers is the best if only b/c I have a personal tie in and grew up in Indiana!!!
FastBreak with Gabe Kaplan is a forgotten classic. Plus it had Bernard King!
Amazing Grace and Chuck interesting, but couldn't get passed Alex English in a Celtic Uniform
One On One - Chicks dug Bobby Benson. Guys thought "I can take this guy" And watching him hopped up on speed was hilarious. And who can forget the classic "All the way with a red hot poker!"
Hoop Dreams - My Alma Mater gets a cameo appearance!
White Men Can't Jump - Well, b/c we cant!
The Air Up There - Cheezy, but I liked it. Sort of a precursor for the wave of international players
Forget Paris - My mother in law reads everysign on the road much like Crystal's father inlaw
Finding Forrester - Sean Connery hoops fan? Gotta love it
Semi Pro - Loved the nut huggers
He Got Game - Denzel, Milla Jovovich, Jim Brown, Travis Best, Rick Foxx. What a cast
Playing For Knight - Who didn;lt love watching Arvin get laid out every week by Coach nite

The Bad
Space Jam - Cartoons? Really? Sort of playing into the NBA stereotype dont u think?
Eddie - LIke we already don't think Whoopi thinks she knows it all!
Like Mike - Not as bad as Like Mike 2 - Street Ball
Air Bud - And its follow up movies. (and I am a DOG lover!)
Celtic Pride

Plus there are a ton of good documentaries out there. But I will now get off my Movie Review Box

That's easy. Coach Carter.

As for Air Bud, don't tell me you didn't consider the proper free throw administration to a golden retriever.

The Absent-Minded Professor !!! :)

More bad:
Teen Wolf
High School Musical (almost made me stop previewing movies for my kids.)

Frankly, it's almost impossible for me to watch a show or movie with basketball as a significant sub plot. It's apparent the writers and producers and directors spent less time on a basketball court than I spent acting in high school.

Wouldn't Need My Own Trailer, I'd Share With The Female Star ...
 

Really good point. By the way, I'm available to be a consultant. My fee would only be 1% of the movie's gross.

Be careful when you ask
 

Rumor is the next movie stars Betty White who takes over her husband's small college men's team after he has a nervous breakdown.

Don't forget Semi-Tough was probably the best football movie ever - along with Knute Rockne All-American.

Hoosiers
 

Easy answer for me...

Hoosiers, the home of Hickory is where I played 7th grade basketball.

Hoosier by birth, Boilermaker by blood!

"Glory Road" and "Hoosiers" are up at the top for me.

One movie I bet you guys have never seen (I have it on DVD) is "The Basketball Fix". Made in 1951, it stars John Ireland and a young Marshall Thompson.

The synopsis reads - "A college basketball star collaborates with organized crime and becomes involved in 'point shaving'. A sportswriter tries to get him back on the right track." Thompson is the player who gets asked to point shave and Ireland plays the sportswriter.

Tim Donaghy plays the bookie. HAHA - just kidding.

As always, the basketball scenes from that era look really strange in the context of today's game. Plus - it's in black and white.

And some basketball movies are really really gross, :D.

MTD, Sr.

I think this is a scene from one of those.

http://www.nba.com/media/blazers/gross_article_3.jpg

And in Hoosier's news, Dennis Hopper died this morning.

Surprised none of you mentioned The Absent Minded Professor.

And Hopper was a terrific actor, too. BTW - not to make fun of him, but Gary Coleman died yesterday. I only mention it because he's about the last guy you'd expect to see in a basketball movie. I did think he was a good comedic actor and show business is lessened with his passing. Not joking here. :(

What the hell is wrong with freedom?
 

Gapper - no one did mention it, unless you count Nevada as someone.....then, it was mentioned! ;)

He didn't distinguish which one....the 1961 version was much better.;)

Agreed! Absolutely!!

Love and Basketball

Basketball Fix was cinematic brilliance
 

Seen it! I think it was in the cheapo DVD bin at Wal-Mart. It is tremendous, the Reefer Madness of sports films

http://www.imdb.com/rg/action-box-ti...1008/tt0043320

Has several elements essential to good basketball films

--Gangsters with wide-brimmed hats who hang out in bars where even the rummies wear suits

--Someone in the first three names in the credits works for a newspaper

--Someone in the last three names in the credits is a naive, trusting, really annoying younger brother

--two-hand set shots aimed at plywood-box backboards

--the lane is narrower than the free throw circle

--the girl's life runs a full circle from being more important than gamblers, to being less important than gamblers to being more important than gamblers

--arrests are made during a crucial tournament game. In this film, I believe the officials used the proper IAABO mechanic to indicate player disqualified due to being hauled off to the pokey (violation signal, then hands upright, eight fingers in front of face to simulate jail cell)

And that's why it was called the "key". There was a 6-foot wide lane and a 12-foot circle. It looked like the key-hole on an old door.

A skeleton key was used in those old doors. *sits back and waits for comments*

Glory Road
Hoosiers
Coach Carter
White Men Can't Jump

TV: The White Shadow

Hoosiers is always going to get top billing for me, but Fastbreak is right up there. I was disappointed with Glory Road. Great story, but I didn't think the movie was well done. I was extremely annoyed with how they made the game scenes look like today's game.

YES another Fast Break fan!! The scene in the station wagon where Kaplan and the players have a large bag of "smoking foliage" when a cop appears behind them and they eat it. Very funny!!
(Ok that was my Chris Farley "Remember that one time in Terminator you said "Ill be back"? That was awesome...!!!)

There was a MS basketball scene in the movie "The Temp" starring Timothy Hutton. It was filmed here in Portland in 1993. I only mention it because my brother-in-law Jim was one of the referees in the scene. He was a PE teacher at the school where it was filmed and they talked him into appearing in the scene. Unfortunately, he didn't receive screen credit.

In retrospect, I wish he would have referred them to me, especially since Lara Flynn Boyle was in the movie. Oh yeah, there probably were some hot moms there, too.

The Basketball Diaries is showing on TV here in Portland tonight on the local Fox channel. Anybody out there have any info on the two guys who played the referees in the movie - Nick Gaetani and Lawrence Barth?

Good: agree with what's been posted so far

Bad: Blue Chips. Just awful.

"The Basketball Diaries". Depressing as hell, but I thought it was Leonardo DiCaprio's best performance ever. A bit off topic, but is he the new John Travolta in that his movies (and performances) are either really, really good, or really, really bad?

That's a pretty low bar.

Great book.

"Inside Moves" David Morse works as a bartender, ends up playing for GS Warriors. Barry Levinson directed.
"Fast Break" I have it on VHS somewhere.
"Drive, He Said" Jack Nicholson and Karen Black, if only b/c it features Mac Court in its original form.
"One On One"

Alma Mater? Marquette?

I know people say that, but why do you think that?

Best uniform and shoes EVER!

Lots of reasons (though it's been a while since I saw it). Quick cuts and cinematography (i.e., lousy editing and shaky-cam), one-liners, rotten angles on plays they show in the game but, most of all, a really superficial treatment of what could have been an interesting story on recruiting violations and/or temptation by a once-successful coach to commit those kind of violations. In other words, they took a great idea for a story and turned it into a music video (complete with Shaq!).

I did like the part where Nolte was visiting recruits and a posse of John Thompson Sr., Jim Boeheim, etc. kept rolling in late. Funny, if unrealistic.

Agree on all your observations.

I guess the reason I liked the movie was the final scene. It appealed to the coach (former coach?) in me.

"Y'know, I'll tell you something else. Y'know, someplace, someplace in America right now, there's some 10 year old kid. He's out there on that playground, and he's playin', he's dribbling between his legs, he's goin' left, he's goin' right, he's already above the rim, he's stuffin' it home. You know what's gonna happen to this kid? Five minutes from now, he's gonna be surrounded by agents, corporate sponsors and coaches. Y'know, people like me. Just drooling over this kid because he holds our future employment in his hands. I mean, that's what we've made this game. That's what we've done.

Y'know, the best coaching job I ever did, that wasn't tonight. It was last season. Y'know, when we were 14 and 15 and we had a losing season. But ****amnit, those kids, they gave me their HEARTS! They gave me everything they had! They played up to the MAXIMUM of their ability! They gave it EVERYTHING! And y'know, it wasn't good enough! It wasn't good enough for me, it wasn't good enough for you, it wasn't good enough for anybody! That's pathetic. I mean, that's really pathetic."

No, a smaller school and a little further south. Plus Marquette got a lot more then a cameo, and I was never a big fan of Kevin Oneil. What scares me is that you have watched the movie enough to have memorized Nolte's last monologue. I usually save that for good movies like Fletch, Caddyshack, So I married an Axe Murderer... you know the classics!

Deep Throat? :eek:

The original, remake or sequel?:confused:

The upcoming Lindsay Lohan version. It's more of a re-envisioning.

I heard they're making a sequel with Ellen DeGeneres. Not sure which part she's playing, though. :rolleyes:

well the votes are in and the winner is....

AIR BUD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h36YoC6Qrp4

What was the name of the movie that was talked about on this forum about a year ago that was a documentary about officiating. A number of people were saying that it was an awesome movie. I wanted to buy it but couldn't find it.

"Forget Padgett"?
"Jurassic Referee I II or III"?
"Billy MACison"?
"Snaqs on a Plane"?
"The Fish that Saved Nevada?"
"The BAINS we were"?