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Olympics at the Movies


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10 hours ago, Sir Rols said:

LOL - I mentioned that just earlier in the 2016 lists thread.

Nice to see this old thread resurrected. Time to add Eddie The Eagle?

Eddie_the_Eagle_poster.png

 

I did rent the film a few weeks ago.  I found it enjoyable and the actor playing Eddie very entertaining yet human.  (I saw SILENCE this pm.  It's like THE MISSION without the waterfalls -- only the splashing of the sea on rocks this time.  Very serious but thoughtful film.  LONG.  2.5 hours.)  

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13 hours ago, baron-pierreIV said:

I did rent the film a few weeks ago.  I found it enjoyable and the actor playing Eddie very entertaining yet human.  (I saw SILENCE this pm.  It's like THE MISSION without the waterfalls -- only the splashing of the sea on rocks this time.  Very serious but thoughtful film.  LONG.  2.5 hours.)  

I watched it on a plane last year - yeah, an enjoyable enough, nice title movie.Between the Jamaicans and Eddie, Calgarry sure gets its fair share of screen treatment. Be interesting to see Lillehammer get it when I, Tonya comes out.

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On 1/18/2017 at 4:57 PM, baron-pierreIV said:

I did rent the film a few weeks ago.  I found it enjoyable and the actor playing Eddie very entertaining yet human.  (I saw SILENCE this pm.  It's like THE MISSION without the waterfalls -- only the splashing of the sea on rocks this time.  Very serious but thoughtful film.  LONG.  2.5 hours.)  

Looks like 'Silence' is a big bomb for Scorsese - straight to DVD over here.  I am interested in the story of the martyrs but I've heard it is a hard slog to get through.

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7 hours ago, thatsnotmypuppy said:

Looks like 'Silence' is a big bomb for Scorsese - straight to DVD over here.  I am interested in the story of the martyrs but I've heard it is a hard slog to get through.

It's a hard sell.  And at the heart of the film is "faith v. imposition of a foreign set of beliefs on an alien land."  Not a waste of time, but I wouldn't set aside another 2.5 hours to see it again.  Filmmakers did a great job of passing parts of Taiwan off as ancient, feudal Japan.  

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I must recommend "Race". While it does a fantastic job of telling Jesse Owens story at the 1936 Games, I also found Jeremy Irons' portrayal of Avery Brundage in the film to be fascinating as well.

Here are several rare Olympic films I have not seen mentioned here yet:

The Golden Moment: An Olympic Love Story - 4 hour NBC miniseries
 David Keith stars as American athlete Wayne Robinson, whose main goal in life is to win the Olympic Decathlon. His dream is compromised when he falls in love with Soviet athlete Anya Andreyev (Stephanie Zimbalist), sparking an international cause celebre. First shown in two parts on May 25 and 26, 1980.  Here are two clips on youtube:

Miracle on Ice 1981 TV movie
Underpublicized and underappreciated, the US ice hockey team heads for the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York. Driven in a manner than can be described as merciless by coach Herb Brooks (Karl Malden), the team has learned how to swallow months of defeat and disappointment and press on to success. The result: A stunning victory over the high-profile Russian and Finnish hockey teams. Actual scenes from the Olympic finals are seamlessly blended with recreations of the event in this made-for-TV movie. Miracle on Ice costars Andrew Stevens as team captain Mike Eruzione.  Ironically, Karl Malden recited the Olympic Prayer at the Opening Ceremony of the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley.  Here is the trailer on youtube:

King of the Olympics 1988 TV miniseries biopic of Avery Brundage
The two-part King of the Olympics was released during the 1988 Summer Olympic games. David Selby stars as Avery Brundage, the 19th century sports enthusiast who headed the Olympic games from 1952-1972. King of the Olympics finds Brundage running up against obstacle after obstacle -- and wooing and winning several young ladies along the way.

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  • 1 year later...

I don’t know Why some frown on the practice, but I love thread necromancy - there’s a lot of old gems that lay around the archives that deserve an airing now or then, or deserve to be kept up to date.

Anyway, a comment on a Calgary thread reminded me of this. And I have in just the past few months watched a couple of recent, generally well-regarded, films that fit the theme. So here goes getting this zombie animated again:

”Unbroken”

Angelina Jolie’s directing debut. Pretty good (though gruelling at times), but a big feature at the beginning was a sequence set in the Berlin 36 games. Quite well done - the stadium in the opening ceremony segment looked well done. But it’s also seemed a littl lifeless to me ands didn’t give me a “feel” for those games.

”I, Tonya”

I started a thread about this soon after I saw it (and really loved the movie). Anyway, as noted, we got Albertvilkle AND Lillehammer in it. I thought these sequences were pretty well done, if not exact replications in use of “looks” etc. Still, bloody enjoyable fil;m. I recommend it.

and

”Foxcatcher”

Saw this just last week - basically the story of billionaire John Dupont’s spiral into Olympic wrestling coaching and then into madness. It was well made - a very “worthy” movie - but oh so ponderous and a bit of a torment to sit through. Anyway, worthy for inclusion here o its recreation of wrestling at the Seoul 88 gams - and very well done it was too. It really did I look like how I remembered Seoul was kitted out. A lot of not very enjoyable stuff to endure, though, just to get to that.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 3/17/2018 at 11:03 PM, Sir Rols said:

”I, Tonya”

I started a thread about this soon after I saw it (and really loved the movie). Anyway, as noted, we got Albertvilkle AND Lillehammer in it. I thought these sequences were pretty well done, if not exact replications in use of “looks” etc. Still, bloody enjoyable fil;m. I recommend it.

 

It is funny for me because I was physically at both events (the female figure skating short and free of Albertville AND the free of Lillehammer). I remember also I was sitting in Albertville in a corner, just behind the parents of Nancy Kerrigan. Mrs Kerrigan had very bad eyesight so she could not see her daughter skating directly on the ice. They (I assume it was CBS) had therefore put together a  TV monitor just for her, and she had her face 5 inches from it, so that she could see her daughter skating. I found that very moving and sad at the time. I remember both events very vividly.

Regarding the movie I noted they were not allowed to use the Olympic symbols and Albertville and Lillehammer emblems so they tweaked the rings and the logos somewhat. And of course the Olympic arenas (the Ice palaces in Albertville and Hamar) did not look exactly like that (higher roof, crowd on four sides) especially the lighting. The lighting in official competition is very bright. This looks like a lighting for the exhibitions at the end of the Games. It seems indeed to me that both Games were shot in the same arena.

Also the music Tonya skated on (Jurassic Park) during the free has been changed probably for copyrights reasons as well.

It would be interesting to retrieve the fake Albertville and Lillehammer logos, just out of curiousity.

Edited by hektor
clarification
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  • 9 months later...

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