Blood, Sweat, and Cookies — Olympic Women’s Hockey

Posted on February 20, 2010 at 10:18 pm

My friend Bob Elisberg recommends a great documentary about the women’s Olympic hockey team — and the great thing is that you can watch it online.
Bob wrote in the Huffington Post:

it’s the comradeship of the women, pushing, encouraging each other that gets them all through. That’s the theme of the documentary, it turns out. The bonding that occurs between these women athletes, many of whom won’t make the team, yet who build lifelong friendships, and take away lessons that they say will hold them and push them through the rest of their life.

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Documentary Sports

List: Winter Sports

Posted on February 10, 2010 at 3:49 pm

In honor of the Olympics, take a look at these classics about winter sports competitions:

The Cutting Edge A spoiled figure skater (named Kate as in “Taming of the Shrew”) and a working class hockey player team up in this romantic comedy on skates starring Moira Kelly and D.B. Sweeney. This was the first screenplay by “Michael Clayton’s” Tony Gilroy.

Miracle Sportscaster Al Michaels unforgettably called out “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” as the 1980 US Olympic hockey team beat the Russians. They then went on to win the gold medal. And so the team, the last group of amateurs sent by the US to play ice hockey, has been known ever after as the “Miracle on Ice.” Kurt Russell plays coach Herb Brooks and this movie shows us that the real story is better than a miracle because it is about a team that succeeded through heart and hard work and commitment. If it is a miracle, it is in the “God helps those who help themselves” category. Be sure to watch the documentary, “Do You Believe in Miracles?” as well.

Ice Castles A young figure skater on the brink of becoming a champion loses her sight in an accident and has to start all over. Melissa Manchester sings the hit theme song, “Through the Eyes of Love.” The remake, starring Taylor Firth, will be out on DVD this week.

Cool Runnings One of the biggest long shots in history was the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 winter Olympics. Yes, Jamaica is a tropical country and no, Jamaica does not have any snow. But a fast start is important in bobsledding and it does have sprinters. The actual footage of the real team’s crash is featured in the film. And while a lot of it is fictional, the grace and panache of the team is based on the real story. And they will be back for the 2010 games.

Downhill Racer Robert Redford plays an arrogant skiier who clashes with his coach (Gene Hackman) in this film, which captures the focus of the athletes and the exhilaration of the sport, filmed on location in the Alps.

Sonja Henie: Queen Of The Ice and It’s a Pleasure Real-life gold medalist Sonja Henie went on to become the highest-paid performer (we won’t say “actress”) in Hollywood for her very successful series of skating films. No one paid any attention to the plots even then, but the skating scenes hold up well and the documentary about her life as an athlete and performer is worth seeing.

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The First Olympics

Posted on February 8, 2010 at 8:00 am

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	All Ages
MPAA Rating:	NR
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Tension, some injuries
Diversity Issues:	Recognition of the prejudices of its era
Date Released to Theaters:	1986
Date Released to DVD:	July 21, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B001A4YNPI

As we prepare for the London games, I highly recommend:

The First Olympics: Athens 1896, one of my very favorite sports movies ever, is a made-for-TV miniseries about the first modern-day Olympics. We take the Olympics as a given now, but there were 1500 years between the time of the ancient games and the establishment of the modern Olympics with countries from all over the world putting aside their political differences for athletic competition in the spirit of good sportsmanship and teamwork. Showing the origins of everything from the starting position for sprinters to the impulsive selection of the Star Spangled Banner as the U.S. national anthem, the story is filled with drama, wit, and unforgettable characters, sumptuously filmed and beautifully performed by a sensational cast that includes then-unknown David Caruso of “CSI,” one-time Bond Girl Honor Blackman, David Ogden Stiers, Angela Lansbury, and Louis Jourdan. It was a Writer’s Guild and Casting Society award winner when it was first released. It is a great introduction to the games, a thrilling and inspiring story, and outstanding family entertainment.

Whip It

Posted on January 26, 2010 at 8:00 am

Drew Barrymore has devoted more time than most people to growing up and has done it more publicly than most people, too. At age 34, she has been acting for nearly three decades. Here she makes her directing debut with a coming of age story that may be conventional in structure but has some unexpected warmth and wisdom.

Ellen Page of “Juno” plays Bliss, a small-town girl whose undefined sense of displacement and dissatisfaction never got more specific than feeling inauthentic in the beauty pageants her mother insists on or working as a waitress at a barbecue place called the Oink Joint. She feels fully herself only with her best friend Pash (the bountifully freckled Alia Shawkat), until she gets a flier for a roller derby. She convinces Pash to go with her. The roller derby girls are full-on smash and bash and brash and completely unabashed in a way that makes Bliss feel fully alive. Even though her “last pair of roller skates had Barbies on them” and she is tiny and not especially athletic — not to mention that her parents would never approve — she decides to try out.

Even in movieland, girl squab Ellen Page seems like someone you skate over. But they do the Harry Potter thing and give her the one attribute that makes it possible for her to compete with women three times her size and five times her weight class. She is very fast. And that is how she is taken on by the “Hurl Scouts,” including Maggie Mayhem (Saturday Night Live’s Kristin Wiig), Bloody Holly (stuntwoman Zoe Bell), Rosa Sparks (rapper Eve), and Smashley Simpson (director Barrymore). Their Girl Scout-inspired uniforms and cheerfully bad attitude make her feel at home. Bliss becomes Babe Ruthless and she is on the team. And before long, she has a fan, a handsome young musician (Landon Pigg), who likes her very much.

Do you think that Bliss is about to embark on a journey far more fraught with peril than the roller rink? Well, then, you’ve seen a movie before. Yes, there will be complications and painful disappointments involving her friend, her parents, the musician, and the friend.

What is best about this is the way Barrymore gently sells the niceness of it all. It turns out that roller girls just wanna have fun and that the sisterhood of the traveling skates is one big happy family. Barrymore has spoken frankly of her essentially parent-less childhood and here, as she often does in movies, she conveys a young girl’s feelings of isolation and the longing for motherly guidance. Bliss finds that guidance from an unexpected place in one of the movie’s most affecting scenes. The overt message about girl empowerment may focus on hip checks and punches, but what lingers are the lessons that nothing is more powerful than forgiveness, that loyalty to others enhances your ability to define your own space, and that at every level within and outside the film sistas are doing it for themselves.

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Based on a book Family Issues Sports

Ice Princess

Posted on January 25, 2010 at 8:19 am

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	G
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Some tense scenes
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters, strong women
Date Released to Theaters:	2005

Getting ready for the Winter Olympics? Here’s a good place to start.
When I tell you that this is the story of a brainy but shy girl who dreams of being a champion figure skater and that she meets up with a demanding anything-to-win coach and a cute guy who drives the Zamboni machine, you may think that there won’t be any surprises. But there are, and they’re all nice ones.

First is the characters, who rise above the level of the usual bland interchangeable stick figures for movies of this kind. Michelle Trachtenberg brings a nice shy spirit to Casey, the aspiring scientist/skater, and she has able support from the always-engaging Joan Cusack as her mother and the nicely flinty Kim Cattrall as the coach. Second is that this is not a classic “makeover movie.” Casey gets a bit of a touch-up with some eye-liner and an outfit with some sequins but she is no Cinderella who is transformed with a wand. She studies hard, takes a part-time job to play for her expenses, and spends hours practicing. And the boy who likes her admires her intelligence and dedication, before the eye-liner and sparkles. But the nicest surprise is that after a spate of “mean girl” movies, this one gives us a character who competes with Casey but is honest, loyal, and supportive.

This is a story of a girl with a dream, but it is also the story of two mothers with dreams for their daughters, both based on dreams of their own that did not come true.

Casey’s mother wants her daughter to become a brilliant scholar. She also wants Casey to dress in sensible (dowdy and middle-aged) clothes. She does not like the “twinkie little outfits” that figure skaters wear and admits that “no matter how old the rest of us get, we will still always hate the prom queen.”

Tina (Cattrall) was once a figure skating champion who made a mistake that cost her a chance at an Olympic gold medal. She wants her daughter Gen (Hayden Panettiere) to get the gold medal she could not have. She thinks she knows what it takes to survive in competitive skating. “When the CIA wants to learn new dirty tricks, they study figure skaters and their moms.”

When Gen tells her that she wants more than skating in her life, she does not listen. Casey thinks she cannot tell her mother that she does not want the career her mother has set her heart on. Both mothers have to learn that their daughters are entitled to their own dreams. The daughters have to learn that, too.

The story had an assist from “The Princess Diaries” author Meg Cabot, which may be why it feels like it should be called “Ice Princess Diaries.” (Maybe someday they will find a way to include a father in one of these movies, as Cabot does in her books.*) But the formula is nicely played out, with sincerity and sweetness enough to inspire the young viewers to come up with some dreams of their own.

Parents should know that the movie has some tense confrontations, some mild language (“that pretty much blew”) and a few kisses. There is a skating costume that appears to show more chest than some in the audience will think appropriate for a teenager and a brief shot of a painful-looking wound.

Families who see this movie should talk about the most important advice that Casey gets from Gen. Why does Casey decide to trust Tina? How does Casey decide what is most important to her? What does she learn from her mother and what does she learn from Tina?

Families who see this movie should talk about the mothering styles of Joan and Tina. How are they alike, how are they different, and what do they have in common with your family?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy The Princess Diaries, like this film, based on a book by Meg Cabot. Older viewers will enjoy some other ice skating movies like The Cutting Edge, Ice Castles and the movies starring real-life Olympic gold medalist Sonja Henie. This story has a lot in common with the classic children’s book, Skating Shoes, part of the “Shoes” series by Noel Streatfeild, well worth reading aloud at bedtime. Families will also enjoy seeing Trachtenberg in Harriet the Spy, Cusack in School of Rock, and Panettiere in Remember the Titans and in Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, as the voice of an ant princess named Dot.

*Many thanks to the Meg Cabot fans who wrote in to tell me that there is a loving father in the Princess Diaries books.