Michigan Just Got Reminded How Hard it is to Win Football Games WIthout Cheating

 

I guess it's not so easy when you don't have spies on the other team's sideline.  @CoachJim4UM @UMichFootball

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Steph Curry and the Ugliness of a Long Distance Shooter

...Turning to news from the Olympic games, in heroic fashion, Stephen Curry hit five 3-pointers in the final eight minutes of play to secure a win in the gold medal basketball game against France. 

Curry, as he often does during his NBA play, then proceeded to skip down the court, pop his jersey and scream at the crowd, all while posing, taunting, and otherwise embodying the stereotype of the "ugly American."

If that wasn’t enough, Steph also treated everyone to his signature (and rather corny) two-hands-on-the-side-of-his-face "Nite-Nite" gesture which was backed up post-game when he donned a t-shirt reading "Nuit Nuit" ("Nite-Nite" in French) and celebrated with cigars and champagne.

All of this underscores the sad truth about Steph Curry:  the fact that since he entered the NBA in 2009, he's gone from being the elite-shooting skinny underdog that everyone was rooting for, to an obnoxious, unsportsmanlike, cocky little showboat who enjoys embarrassing his opponents... 

#whatajerk

Why St. Elmo's Fire Still Matters

In discussing Andrew McCarthy's new documentary about the Brat Pack with a good friend, he began rather aggressively maligning the movie Saint Elmo’s Fire. Over a span of ten minutes, he ranted about how boring the plot was, how Mare Winningham was miscast, (rather randomly) why McCarthy's character in the film is such a "turd", and just how bad a movie St. Elmo's was to begin with when it was first released thirty-nine years ago.

Okay, I admit it; St. Elmo's Fire is not a great film. It wasn’t back in 1985 and it’s not today. But that’s not really the point. Few claim that Saint Elmo's is a masterpiece of filmmaking. In truth, it's not even above average or, by many measures, even particularly entertaining, But it’s by no means a "bad" film either. On the surface, St. Elmo's is a very average drama with no real highs or lows, featuring competent but not exceptional acting and a thin story that falls well short of captivating. 

However, what St. Elmo's Fire is beneath the surface is an exploration of some very common themes -- friendship, coming of age, secret crushes, finding your place in this world, etc. Certainly all of these themes had been explored on film previously, so St. Elmo's broke no new ground in that way. But what the film undeniably does is offer perspectives on these themes through the unique lens of the 1980's -- ultimately presenting keen new examinations of 80's youth by reflecting their psychology, pressures, problems, and world view.

Because Saint Elmo’s Fire applies a unique, extraordinarily contemporary 80's filter, it stands out as one of the most emblematic movies of that decade. Think about it -- when you consider the most representative movies of the 1980's, you don’t think of Oscar winners like Platoon, Terms of Endearment, Amadeus or Rain Man. You think of ones that captured the zeitgeist of the time, whether that means films with Cold War overtones (Rocky IV, Top Gun, No Way Out, Rambo), 80's excess (Less Than Zero, Wall Street), a frivolous, fun-loving vibe (Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Footloose, Police Academy), a distinct but somewhat undefinable 80's aesthetic (Flashdance, Lost Boys, Fatal Attraction, American Gigolo, Risky Business) or a focus on youth culture (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Valley Girl, The Breakfast Club -- and its sister movie released the same year, Saint Elmo's Fire.) 

Indeed, if you examine the characters and plot of St. Elmo's Fire, you clearly see the social conventions, attitudes, mores and struggles common among 80's youth:

• Billy Hixx (Rob Lowe) is a portrait of hedonism and apathy as he's dragged unwillingly into adulthood.
• Coke sniffing, party girl Jules (Demi Moore) -- with her hot pink, neon apartment decor featuring a floor to ceiling mural of Billy Idol -- is a study in 80's glam and overindulgence. 
• Alec Newberry (Judd Nelson) shamelessly pursues promotion in the political world and perfectly captures the Gordon Gekko-esque materialism and aspirations toward upward mobility of 80's yuppies.
• Kevin (Andrew McCarthy) is Alec's antithesis -- cynical, introspective and dismissive of conventional thinking.
• Kirbo (Emilio Estevez) is fancifully pursuing things he only thinks he wants (a law degree and Dale Biberman.)
• And finally, Leslie and Wendy (Ally Sheedy and Mare Winningham) both wonder how they became stuck in lives they never chose -- Leslie as a trophy girlfriend caught in boyfriend Alec's wake and fearing she'll never carve out her own identity, and conflicted Wendy yearning to choose her own path and break away from the life her parents want for her.

In its demonstration and exploration of all of this, St. Elmo's Fire does it with the aforementioned unique 80's aesthetic. In this way, St. Elmo's Fire is a movie that speaks for its generation.

And that’s why it’s important -- not because it’s a great movie, but because it’s a snapshot of 80's young adulthood. So for me and so many other Gen X-ers, St. Elmo's Fire is an important film that still speaks to us today... because it spoke for us back then.

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Streaming Wars: Episode 6

 

In this latest episode of my ongoing audio blog on the Streaming Wars I examine:

• Dealing with churn
• A shift toward programmed content on streaming channels 
• Streamers' plans to push into sports, gaming and betting
• The upfronts: WBD shines, NBCUniversal underwhelms
• Netflix's rationale for no longer reporting subscriber numbers

Listen to this episode on YouTube.

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Return of the Streaming Wars! (Episode 4)

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1984's Breakin' Brought Urban & Inner City Art Forms to the Big Screen

I have a tremendous memory when it comes to things pop culture related (hence the name of this blog.) So even though it was 40 years ago (to the day in fact) I still remember what was playing at Loews Wayne Sixplex (the flagship theater located near the Willowbrook Mall in the suburbs of Wayne, NJ) on the first Friday in May of 1984. Firestarter and the Mel Gibson/Anthony Hopkins version of The Bounty alternated showings in one of the big houses; Weekend Pass and My Tutor (the latter on a re-release); Footloose; Moscow on the Hudson; and opening in the other big house was a curious new movie with an unknown cast of black and Latino rappers and street dancers called Breakin’. At the time, breakdancing, b-boys and hip-hop culture was a part of black, inner city culture exclusively. Walls, however, were about to come down and Breakin’ would be the battering ram.

The origin of breakdancing

In New York City throughout the 1970’s, DJ Kool Herc, one of the architects of hip-hop, developed deejay techniques that would serve as the paradigm for many of the most important records of the first generation of that musical genre. One of Herc’s techniques involved isolating the most percussive and/or infectious part of the record, also known as the "break". Armed with two turntables and two copies of the record, Herc would let the break beat play on one turntable then “crossfade” to the second turntable where he had the same break beat already cued up. He then repeated this technique over and over, effectively extending these funky drum solos and bass grooves for as long as he wanted. Hearing the prolonged breaks inspired dancers to show off their moves and this ritual was soon dubbed “break dancing.” Herc’s innovation would go on to inspire the early recording technique of “sampling”, which began when artists and producers -- in efforts to simulate Herc’s innovation -- would copy and loop portions of a record to serve as the foundational bed of a new recording.  

A pop culture phenomenon

Just about ten years after Herc pretty much invented breakdancing, it and other forms of urban artistic expression finally began entering the American pop culture zeitgeist more broadly. To this point, breakdancing was largely underground and undocumented, gaining perhaps its greatest national attention via the cult film Wild Style and the Los Angeles based dance group The Lockers, who had showcased their talents on shows like Soul Train and Saturday Night Live. Three of the group’s founding members were Fred Berry who, as “Rerun” on the ABC show What’s Happening, would sometimes show off his “pop-locks” and other street dancing moves; choreographer/singer Toni Basil, later known for her hit single “Mickey”, and future star of Breakin’ Shabba-Doo Quinones. But Wild Style and The Lockers were not widely known. What breakdancing needed was a main stream showcase. 

It would take pretty much the first third of the 1980’s but interest in breakdancing and other urban artistry would continue growing. Jean Michel-Basquiat was by this time well known in Manhattan art circles for his raw, graffiti-style paintings; breakdancing was featured in the hit 1983 hit Flashdance and in music videos by Chaka Khan, Billy Joel and others. Run-DMC’s first album, released in March of 1984 would become the first gold-selling rap album and the group would join forces with Whodini, the Fat Boys and others in what would be rap's first successful live concert tour. The small cultural circles in which these novel types of creative expression were found would soon widen.

Breakin’s legacy

Breakin’ earned almost $40 million on a budget of just $1.2 million. The film’s profitability caused studios and film producers to view the breakdancing “fad” (as it was judged in many of their eyes) as a something worth investing in. A sequel was rushed into production and, in almost unprecedented fashion, that follow-up would arrive less than six months later. More significantly, Breakin' helped expose white America to new art forms – ones that, like jazz and blues, had their origins and for a long time were only appreciated in minority communities. Breakdancing, pop-locking, graffiti art, MC-ing, deejaying and rap music would finally open bourgeois eyes – along with movie producers’ wallets.

Breakin’ was followed by several similar releases including Beat Street, Krush Groove, Body Rock and Rappin’. Two years after Breakin’, 1986, was another breakthrough year for rap music, as the Beastie Boys debut License to Ill and Run-DMC’s take on Aerosmith’s "Walk This Way" officially legitimized rap for white kids. Soon after, Hollywood began “discovering” talented black writers and directors like Spike Lee and John Singleton and allowing them to tell stories that shined spotlights on black life and the urban experience. This resulted in a type of Afro-centric New Wave – a revival in Hollywood’s interest in films featuring black protagonists and perspectives not seen since the heyday of “blaxploitation” in the 1970’s. This wave reached a high water mark in the early nineties. Boyz n the Hood, Menace II Society, Juice and New Jack City told harrowing tales of gang life and communities besieged by drugs and violence. Above the Rim, Hollywood Shuffle, Poetic Justice and Jason’s Lyric explored themes of love, art, betrayal and emotional abuse through the eyes of filmmakers painting portraits of the minority experience. 

All of the aforementioned films are better scripted, produced and acted than Breakin’ and all are of higher quality overall. But many of these movies would not have been so easily green lit had the appetites of studio execs not been whetted by the box office receipts of Breakin’, which demonstrated once and for all that the urban experience, creative sensibility and culture had a place in contemporary film. 

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Breakin’ New Ground