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Out of print for more than 30 years, now available for the first time as an eBook, this is the controversial story of John Wooden's first 25 years and first 8 NCAA Championships as UCLA Head Basketball Coach. Notre Dame Coach Digger Phelps said, "I used this book as an inspiration for the biggest win of my career when we ended UCLA's all-time 88-game winning streak in 1974." Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. Click the Book to read the players telling their stories in their own words. This is the book that UCLA Athletic Director J.D. Morgan tried to ban. Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information. |
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Public Enemies (5/10) by Tony Medley Run time 133 minutes John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) robs banks. Melvin Purvis (Chritian Bale) is out to get him. Dillinger falls in love with Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard). As a documentary, this is pretty faithful to the facts. Unfortunately, as entertainment it falls short. Director Michael Mann has substituted machine guns for dialogue. He must have expended a million bullets shooting this film. The movie lurches from one shootout to another. And, like the corny westerns of old, bullets fly all over the place, but rarely hit anything. Those shooting in this film don’t even make a pretense of aiming. They just fire off magazine after magazine. And they are loud. (In fact, Dillinger shot and killed only one man during his crime spree.) The tragedy of this
film is that Mann has made a conscious effort to be true to history. In
that, he has done a fine job. Infamous as Dillinger became, it’s hard to
believe that his public career lasted but 13 months. Imprisoned when
just a young man, he was paroled in May of 1933. He was dead by July of
1934. Mann tells the story of those 13 months so faithfully that he used
exact locations when he could. Dillinger’s spectacular jailbreak was
shot where it occurred, at the lockup at But it’s not storytelling. It seems as if Mann just assumes that the audience will have enough knowledge of Dillinger’s history that he doesn’t have to explain anything, like the opening scene of the movie, a jailbreak orchestrated by Dillinger to get his former cellmates out of the slammer. I often wonder why a
big star like Bale is cast in (and accepts) a one-dimensional role like
this one of Melvin Purvis. Bale’s performance adds little to the film,
even though the advertising makes one think that it’s two stars going up
against one another. It’s nothing like Peter O’Toole vs. Richard Burton
in “Becket” (1964) or Clark Gable facing off with Spencer Tracy in “ Cotillard, on the other hand, sparkles as
Dillinger’s girlfriend. In addition to Cotillard and Depp, who is almost
a dead ringer for the charismatic Dillinger, Billy Crudup gives a
terrific interpretation of J. Edgar Hoover. He plays him straight up
with no negative implications, as he probably was at the start of his
career. Dillinger was the first to be called “Public Enemy No. 1” by
There are so many characters, like Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham), but none of them are introduced or fleshed out in any manner that would allow you to figure out who they are or remember them. Most of them die, but when they die you wonder, who was that? Despite Mann’s
devotion to accuracy, there is at least one glaring factual gaffe. The
day Dillinger is killed, he walks into the “Dillinger Squad” of a
This would be a pretty good documentary. As entertainment, it comes up short.
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