|
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. This is the only book that gives a true picture of the character of John Wooden and the influence of his assistant, Jerry Norman, whose contributions Wooden ignored and tried to bury. Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. The players tell their stories in their own words. Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information. Also available on Kindle. |
|
88 Minutes. R. The tension never lets up in the International Space Station between a 6-person crew of three Russians and three Americans when war breaks out on earth between the two countries and each is instructed to take control of the I.S.S. The special effects are amazing as the performers float through the I.S.S. throughout the film. Here’s how it was done per director Gabriela Cowperthwaite (from a script by Nick Shafir): We put the actors in harnesses and used tethers to float them. Early on, we tried a system of see saws that was much more comfortable for the cast, but when I saw the tests, it didn’t appear real enough. The harnesses and tethers looked great, though. Unfortunately, they were extremely uncomfortable to wear. It was hard on their bodies, they would sometimes go numb in their legs, and every time someone had to go to the bathroom, it took about 45 minutes to get them out of the harness and back into it again. And of course it took us a year or more to digitally remove every tether from every single frame of every scene in post. Looking back on it now, I see why people don’t do zero-gravity in movies very often! Except for that, this is a throwback to the days when a movie presents a possible scenario, telling the story with no wasted motion in a crisp 88 minutes with no superheroes or car crashes. What violence occurs is necessary to the plot and believable. It also exhibits the claustrophobia of being confined in such a small space. And the shots of the earth in what appears to be total conflagration appear outside their windows, it exacerbates the feeling of being trapped. Their habitat is totally realistic, not some futuristic scenario like the spaceships in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 (1968) and the more recent Passengers (2016), a movie I really liked, that created very comfortable abodes for space travel, tis shows the space station to be crowded and with tight spaces in which to maneuver. This is, simply, a terrific movie with a good script, fine acting, and a believable concept about people being unexpectedly placed in a froward, contentious situation.
|
|
|
