On a Clear Day (2005)
Director: Gaby Dellal
Starring: Peter Mullan, Brenda Blethyn
Baker Street, 98 minutes

On A Clear Day is the kind of movie to watch after a long day. I caught it on HBO at the tailend of a 10-day road trip that included stops in Bettendorf, Iowa, Chicago, New York City and Uncasville, Connecticut. All I needed was some early morning white noise while shuffling production notes and prepping for a day of International Fight League interviews. What I got was an absorbing 98 minutes.

Director Gaby Dellal’s feature debut invokes the pitch line: The Full Monty meets The Swimmer. Now THAT would be a movie for the ages: Burt Lancaster swims the Sheffield canal system on his way to the unemployment office while Robert Carlyle and Co., teach a Yorkshire vacationing chapter of the Junior Women’s League the Arsenal offside trap. (The scene where Horse demonstrates the Gunners mastery of soccer synchronicity is must see viewing for all coaches of ‘the Beautiful Game.”)

On A Clear Day borrows many of the conventions of the classic exotic dancing caper: male mid-life crisis sparked by unemployment, secrets between spouses, father-son relationships, and a cure-all audacious quest. The quest in this case: swimming the English Channel.

In 1875, Captain Matthew Webb made aquatic history when he swam the narrow body of water separating Britain from mainland Europe. A dozen decades later Frank Redmond (Peter Mullan) is an unlikely candidate to follow in Webb’s wake. After spending a lifetime in the Glasgow shipyards Frank’s job washed away on the changing tide of capitalism. His future is bleak. His past wasn’t much better.

Like his character in Trainspotting, (Swanney, the heroin supplier), Mullan creates a three-dimensional character out of the flotsam and jetsam of a deeply depressing situation. He keeps Frank’s fading hope afloat even while his demons try to submerge it.

While Frank stays focused on the black line running along the bottom of the pool, everyone else stays focused on Frank. Stereotypes lurk within all the supporting characters, they all live with their own various degrees of British emotional repression, (to paraphrase Basil Fawlty: ‘don’t mention the panic attack”), but whimsy and grace emerge.

Brenda Blethyn emerged on the Hollywood radar with her Academy Award nominated turn in ‘Secrets and Lies.” As befits a Mike Leigh troupe member, Blethyn revels in realism. Here she plays Frank’s wife, Joan. All you need to know about Blethyn’s attention to detail is that she takes her bus driver’s test wearing a ‘decent frock.”

And in a lot of ways, On A Clear Day is a decent frock of a movie. Not on the cutting edge of fashion, but, on occasion, eye catching nonetheless. It surprised me. Perhaps not on the level of Ian Thorpe’s startled glance at the 2004 Athens Olympics when I inadvertently gained access to the warm up pool while trying to find the media observer seats on the first night of the Games, but certainly unexpected. And if you do keep your hand off the remote control for the entirety, (the White Cliffs of Dover, car ferries and Thunderbird 2 all appear in this movie by the way, so don’t be too hasty with the clicking digit), you’ll discover the importance of every pebble washed up on the shore.
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Mark Young, Baggiesboy to some, is a veteran writer and producer in sports television who has covered the last four Olympics with NBC, the last two World Cups, and written for two essential No Masian programs, “Ringside” and “Reel Classics” on ESPN Classic.
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This post is part of our ongoing partnership with The Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival which runs from April 25 to May 6 right here in NYC.

4/27
Champions League Highlights
ESPN2, 2 p.m.
Missed the first leg of the semis then? Here’s just the thing to get you up to speed.

Colorado vs. Michigan, 1994
ESPN Classic, 4 p.m.
As far as college football goes, you say “Hail Mary” and you instantly start thinking about Doug Flutie. Unless, of course, you went to Colorado or Michigan, in which case you think Kordell Stewart. You could watch this whole game, or save yourself the time and just watch the crappy home-made video below.

Riddick Bowe v. Andrew Golota II
ESPN Classic, 8 p.m.
Always a lark to watch a good cock-punching.

PGA Championship Highlights
Golf Channel, 8 p.m.
A half-hour show on Byron Nelson winning the 1945 PGA. I tell you, with the freakin Byron Nelson tournament going right now, it’s all Byron all the time on the Golf Channel these days.

WWE Smackdown
CW, 8 p.m.
Two days before their Last Man Standing match at Backlash, The Undertaker teams up with Batista to take on Mr. Kennedy & Finlay in a No DQ match.

UFC Ultimate Fight Night Friday
Spike, 10 p.m.
A pretty solid card showcasing Josh Koscheck vs. Pete Spratt, Chris Leben vs. Patrick Cote and Nathan Marquardt vs. Ivan Salaverry.

60 Minutes on Classic
ESPN Classic, 10 p.m.
A half-hour show comprising two classic segments from 60 Minutes – this one has an interview with a boxing ring doctor and a 2004 interview that Dan Rather did with the Klitschko brothers (“Wladimir, you clinch more than a muskrat squeezing the spit-juice out of an elderberry vine…”).

The Hustler
TCM, 10 p.m.
When I’m goin’, I mean, when I’m REALLY goin’ I feel like a… like a jockey must feel. He’s sittin’ on his horse, he’s got all that speed and that power underneath him… he’s comin’ into the stretch, the pressure’s on ‘im, and he KNOWS… just feels… when to let it go and how much. Cause he’s got everything workin’ for ‘im: timing, touch. It’s a great feeling, boy, it’s a real great feeling when you’re right and you KNOW you’re right.

4/28
Emile Griffith v. Benny Paret I
ESPN Classic, 7 a.m.
The first of this tragic trilogy, and the best fight without a doubt. Griffith wins on a stoppage in the 13th. If you haven’t seen Ring of Fire by all means do so, and it’ll tell you the whole story.

The Penn Relays
ESPN2, 1 p.m.
A Philadelphia and a national tradition dating back to 1895. The deuce has two hours of coverage.

Ringside
ESPN Classic, 8 p.m.
Ringside looks at the early bouts of Ali, including probably the toughest fight the Champ had before Frazier – the Doug Jones bout from 1963, when lithe Cassius was barely but a cruiserweight.

Acelino Freitas v. Juan Diaz
HBO, 10 p.m.
I’m looking forward to this fight – we’ll see if Diaz, the “Baby Bull”, is the genuine article, and we’ll see if Popo Freitas has anything left. The two fighters have one loss between them, Popo’s 2004 loss to Chico Corrales in an ugly 10th-round TKO, certainly not a loss to be ashamed of.

Saturday Night Live
NBC, 11:35
A repeat of the Peyton Manning-hosted SNL from a few months ago. The bastard was a lot funnier than I expected.

4/29
Classic Battle Lines
ESPN Classic, 7 a.m.
Watch this show about Mac beating Borg at Wimbledon in ’81 and then go to the No Mas store and buy yourself a shirt to celebrate. You know you want it.

Field of Dreams
HBO2, 11:45 a.m.
Be careful if you’re all insanely hungover late Sunday morning and you’re clicking around the channels aimlessly, because Field of Dreams is on HBO2 and the next thing you know you’ll be having epiphanies and weeping like an infant and calling your dad through your tears and your girlfriend will be all like, “you’re such a fucking schmuck.”

WWE Backlash
PPV, 8 p.m.
Let the Road to Wrestlemania 24 begin. In a Fatal Four Way match, WWE Champ, John Cena, defends his title against HBK, Edge & Randy Orton. In a Last Man Standing match, World Champ, The Undertaker, goes up against Batista. Also, Bobby Lashley puts his ECW title on the line in a 3-on-1 Handicap match against Mr. McMahon, Shane McMahon & Umaga. And, in a Wrestlemania rematch, US Champ, Chris Benoit, battles MVP.

Once in a Lifetime
ESPN Classic, 10 p.m.
This 2006 doc about the Cosmos is running Sunday night on Classic. If you haven’t seen it, definitely cue up the Tivo – it’s a lot of fun. Click here for I-berg’s original review.

De la Hoya/Mayweather 24-7
HBO, 10:30 p.m.
I was just talking to the writer of this show today, Aaron Cohen, true friend of No Mas and sometimes contributor. I was telling him how awesome the show is, and I wasn’t just buttering his muffin. Shit is awesome with a capital awe. The new episode takes us through the last days of training.

Most of our entries for the No Mas Caption Contest worked the angle of the perceived unfairness of the draw in the Chavez/Whitaker fight. We received a lot of captions on a variation of the “I’m punishing his fist with my face en route to certain victory” theme.

The one that grabbed us, though, has no ulterior meaning – it’s just ridiculous. But it’s short and punchy and it made us laugh, and thus, one Ken from Brooklyn earned himself two tickets to tonight’s Chavez premiere. Thanks again to artist Andy Amato for allowing us to use his work for the contest.

But I asked for a bolo tie, not a bolo punch

In this case, the “deal or shit deal” motif is largely moot – this is one of the great shit deals of the 70′s. On this day 23 years ago, the Yankees sent Fritz Peterson, Tom Buskey, Steve Kline and Fred Beene to Cleveland for two players who would become crucial to their late 70′s dynasty – Chris Chambliss and Dick “Dirt” Tidrow (the Yanks also got Cecil Upshaw, who was out of the bigs by the following season).

As I think is clear below, the moustache parity between the two teams was not disrupted in this deal, as Tidrow and Buskey’s liprugs cancelled each other out and those Zapatas that Peterson and Chambliss had going were of equal measure. The Yankees may have lost on the locker-room cheesecake quotient in this deal. I mean, check out Beenesy and Fritzie down there. Freakin Playgirl models already. Chambliss and Dirt weren’t much to look at.

Of course, they made up for that fact with one important skill – their ability to actually play baseball. Meanwhile, ole Fritzie was long past his prime, Kline’s arm was shot, and Beenesy and Buskey were never any good in the first place. They’re still crying about this one in Cleveland.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was walking out of a movie theatre with a couple of friends when I saw a poster for the coming attractions. The top of the poster read: ‘The movie Vince McMahon doesn’t want you to see.” What? A wrestling documentary…in theatres…and Vince McMahon DOESN’T want me to see it? They could have wrote ‘win a million bucks if you lick this poster” and I probably wouldn’t have gravitated towards it as quickly. You see, wrestling is like the circus and wrestling fans, such as myself, would do anything for the opportunity to peek through those curtains and find out what really happens behind the scenes. Would circus fans do the same? Not sure, but you catch my drift. If a documentary promised to spill the beans on the twisted world of professional wrestling I was all for it. And this wasn’t just some documentary. This turned out to be the greatest film ever made about the wrestling business.

Beyond the Mat, directed by Barry Blaustein, is a must-watch for any wrestling fan and, even more importantly, any non-wrestling fan. In many ways, this film is dedicated to all those who are quick to dismiss the sport as fake, stupid, sophomoric or any other negative connotation that has been used to describe the wrestling industry. Throughout the film, Blaustein, who also wrote the screenplay for Coming to America, The Nutty Professor, and Boomerang, spotlights several wrestlers at different points in their respective careers. Some of the notables are Jake ‘The Snake” Roberts, Terry Funk and Mick Foley. In the mid-1980s, Roberts was one of the best wrestlers in the WWF (now known as WWE). But don’t watch this documentary to relive the Snake’s glory days. Roberts is seen as way past his prime, addicted to drugs and a deadbeat dad. Funk is portrayed as a legend that continues to come out of retirement for one last moment in the sun. However, the most captivating scenes in ‘Beyond the Mat” are the ones involving Mick Foley.

A funny thing happened to Foley during the filming of the movie. After almost 15 years in the wrestling business, he finally captured the WWF Heavyweight title , the industry’s holy grail. Finally recognized as one of the best, Foley decides to put his body through an unfathomable amount of pain to help make his title run as memorable as possible. Sadly, his actions go too far and he is left questioning whether it was all worth it.

Also interviewed are a bunch of up-and-coming wrestlers whom, as the years go by, it’s interesting to revisit how they all started. But what makes this documentary so fascinating is that a man who simply loves wrestling directed it. He isn’t looking to expose the business or degrade it. He is simply trying to learn why these individuals are so misunderstood within our society and why they’ve decided to earn their livelihood in this virtually taboo form of entertainment. Do some of the wrestlers play up to the slimy wrasslin’ stereotype? Absolutely. But consider this – my father, by far the strongest wrestling critic I have ever met, was actually moved after watching this film about an industry he despises with a passion. It was because Beyond the Mat is about much more than just wrestling. And if that doesn’t entice you enough, remember: Even Vince McMahon himself DOESN’T want you to see it.

Below is the opening scene of the film. I might as well be narrating it because I feel the exact same way.

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Franchise dedicated his “Sharpshootin” column this week to Beyond the Mat as part of our ongoing partnership with The Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival which runs from April 25 to May 26 right here in NYC.

Legendary Nights
HBO, 12 noon
Hawk time is what time this is, or what HBO calls The Tale of Pryor/Arguello. Learn about the whole secret bottle controversy… you know, the one I mixed.

High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story
IFC, 7:05 p.m.
The main thing to know about this movie is that it’s not nearly as good as it should be. The other thing to know is that Michael Imperioli – a.k.a. Christopher Moltisanti (and I hate to get all Mike and the Mad Dog here, but is he going to wack Tony?), a.k.a. Spider the dancing bartender – plays Ungar and he’s very good despite the bad script (Stu Ungar No Mas shirt is on the way, btw).

TNA iMPACT!
Spike, 9 p.m.
For the first time ever, Kurt Angle goes up against Sting. Also, Team 3D defends their NWA Tag Team titles against Tomko & Scott Steiner.

The Ultimate Fighter 5
Spike, 10 p.m.
Can Team Pulver make it four in a row against Team Penn? Will Gabe Ruediger finally be forced to make weight? Find out tonight on arguably the best season of TUF yet.

Late Show with David Letterman
CBS, 11:35 p.m.
His Royal Jeterness joins Dave to tell him how the bitchslaying business is going these days.

You can imagine the enthusiasm with which I greeted Bill Simmons’ latest column about De la Hoya/Mayweather and the death of boxing. In general, I don’t have much of a beef with The Sports Guy other than the fact that he bores me and he seems like an aggressively mediocre sort for the entire sports world to find itself waiting upon every single thought that pops into his head.

His boxing column boils down to the firm grasp of the blatantly obvious that I’ve come to expect from him: in short, boxing used to be good, now its not. He throws in the blanket assertion that De la Hoya/Mayweather will be the last big fight, unlike his memories of the good old days when he and his buddies evidently watched a fight of this caliber every weekend (I can only imagine how The Sports Guy and his posse whooped it up for the likes of Zaragoza/Morales).

It’s hard to argue with most of his assertions – boxing is indeed in decline, has been for quite some time now (was it Allen Tate or Randall Jarrell who said, “for the apocalyptically minded, it’s been later than we think for about the last six hundred years”?). With Simmons and his ilk, in those rare moments when they deign to pay any attention to the sport at all, beating this dead horse again and again in the major media, it’s hard for any fight fan to forget it.

But beyond a general question of “why?” (why not a piece about how Hollywood makes fatuous movies? or McDonald’s food is fattening? or maybe something else about how he is a Red Sox fan and that is very very important?), I will take issue with two of his specific points. First, he says boxing is irrevocably doomed “unless someone improbably emerges as the Tiger Woods of boxing.” Why is this improbable? I mean, how improbable is it that there was a Tiger Woods of golf? All sports live and die with their Tigers, their Jordans, their McGwires and Sosas, their Tysons and Gretzkys. Babe Ruth made baseball, football blew up after a single, epic game. Boxing was in decline when Ali came along, and again when Ray Leonard and Tyson and Oscar himself reinvigorated the sport. Hell, Joe Louis was something of a savior to fistiana in the 30′s, ending the sorry era when the likes of Jack Sharkey and Primo Carnera held the heavyweight crown. Boxing goes as the big guys go – it was as true eighty years ago as it is today – and yes, the recent state of the heavyweight division leaves the sport in dire condition. And yet my main concern with the Simmons party line these days is that even if another Tyson comes along, they won’t pay attention to him, because they’ve already written boxing’s obituary one too many times.

My second issue with Simmons’ column is a point that I alluded to earlier. He would have us believe that Oscar/Floyd is a uniquely big fight right now, but that back in the day there were big fights like this all the time. I don’t know how old he is, but, well… when exactly were there big fights like this all the time? There has been exactly one fight of this magnitude in the new millennium – Tyson/Lewis (maybe the Barrera/Morales fights belong in this category, but not among the gringos). There were how many in the 90′s? Let me do an unscientific tally right now – two Tyson/Holyfields, Lewis/Holyfield, Chavez/Whitaker, Chavez/De la Hoya, De la Hoya/Tito… what am I forgetting? Christ, how many were there in the 80′s? Tyson/Spinks, Leonard/Hagler, Hagler/Hearns, Leonard/Hearns, Leonard/Duran, Holmes/Cooney. And look, I’m assessing these fights on his index of magnitude, not mine – the category here is fights that were so big that they crossed over from the boxing and even sports subculture into mainstream culture at large. It just doesn’t happen that often.

Obviously I am a big boxing fan. I love the sport and I feel compelled to defend it against cheap shots. But I am not so far gone as to willfully ignore its glaring problems as an ongoing enterprise. Then again, columns like this one from Simmons seem to me as much borne of the pathetic fallacy of nostalgia as they are from a concern for the actual decline of the sport of boxing. We tend to have selective memories when it comes to the past – we select the good memories, decide that those memories represent how it was all the time back then, and contrast that with the omnipresent reality of the present, where the good moments, as they tend to be in real time, are fleeting. It’s a human impulse, but in my mind, one to be greatly resisted.

(Due to some sort of screw-up, undoubtedly my own, this preview post is unfortunately going up while the match in question is actually on the pitch – my apologies… Large)

Manchester v. Milan turned out to be one of the most enjoyable games of the year with the Mancunians taking the lead in the final seconds of the game. They will be in the very uncomfortable position of having to win again in San Siro next Wednesday. But a win is always good at this point. The second semi-final will feature old acquaintances.

Chelsea v. Liverpool

José Mourinho and Rafaël Benitez used to be quite fond of one another. That period is long gone. The mutual admiration turned into hatred between the two coaches two years ago at the same stage of the competition when Rafa’s Boys gave Chelsea a lesson in teamwork (even though Luis Garcia’s goal was more than questionnable and was bound to spark some controversies). A new rivalry was born in the Premiership and that will give this first leg a peculiar taste.

Aside from Luis Garcia and Harry Kewell, everybody will be reporting for duty at Stamford Bridge tonight on The Reds side. That won’t be the case for Chelsea. Robben and Ballack won’t be there and UM’s homie Essien is suspended. Chelsea’s midfield will suffer but Makelele and Diarra definitely will be up to the task.

England just lost Alan Ball, one of their 66′ World Cup Winners and no doubt, there will be some emotion in London tonight.

The following is an excerpt from our man Jeffrey Lane’s excellent new book: “Under the Boards: The Cultural Revolution in Basketball”. We deeply dug the chapters on Tupac and Biggie’s influence on basketball culture and the selling of Allen Iverson, but his work on “The Milan Miracle”–the true story behind Hoosiers–and its impact on race and sports in Indiana seemed like the perfect fit for our ongoing look at sports in film.

The movie Hoosiers captures both the enormous pride Indiana takes in its basketball tradition and the throwback aestheticism routinely attached to this pride. Two former Indiana University students, director David Anspaugh and writer Angelo Pizzo, collaborated to recreate an immortal slice of Indiana folklore, the “Milan Miracle,” which is considered by many the greatest Cinderella story in all of hoops history.

In the film, the undersized but resilient boys of Hickory High overcome the odds and a minuscule enrollment (only 161 students) to capture the state title. (Hickory High is modeled after Milan High School in Milan, Indiana, which was the source of the real “Milan Miracle” in 1954.) The accuracy of the film is close enough for a Hollywood production; more important, what basketball means to the people of Indiana comes across in spectacular fashion. The sport is infused with monumental significance and powers: it represents the fabric of rural life and the glue that holds fathers and sons together, and it is a means of personal salvation for both a town drunk and a disgraced coach who assaulted a player (sound familiar?).

In the movie underdog Hickory High triumphs over the big-school favorite, and a farm town bests a “big” city. It is also the true story of little, all-white Milan High School, in a town without a single black resident, which outplays both integrated and all-black schools on its way to a state championship. Although the year is changed in the film, the basketball season of the real “Milan Miracle”–1953-54–was the last before the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision banning racial segregation in the schools in Brown vs. the Board of Education.

Read more…

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Jeffrey Lane grew up playing basketball in New York City. As a high schooler in the mid-nineties, Lane captained a mostly white team playing against nearly all-black competition and realized then that basketball is an awesome forum for understanding race in America. Today Lane writes on the construction of race in sports and just published his first book, Under the Boards: The Cultural Revolution in Basketball.
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This post is part of our ongoing partnership with The Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival which runs from April 25 to May 26 right here in NYC.

Wonderful World of Golf
Golf Channel, 2 p.m.
I was going to stop plugging these things due to an overall lack of interest from our audience, but I just couldn’t resist this – two Byron Nelson Wonderful World of Golf’s back-to-back, including the very first WWoG broadcast from 1962 against Gene Littler (the other one’s from 1963 against Gerry DeWitt).

Liverpool v. Chelsea
ESPN2, 2:30 p.m.
Champions Leagues, mates. Semifasizzo numero dizzo. It is my firm belief that there will be a Madsear preview sometime soon to guide you through the pre-game hours (replay on Classic at 5).

Carlos Bojorquez v. Pernell Whitaker
ESPN Classic, 8:30 p.m.
The requisite, tragic final act – Pernell loses to a Mexican journeyman, forced to retire after the fourth round due to a broken collarbone. Only his second genuine loss, and the last fight of his brilliant career. A decline into cocaine hell ensued.

Jason Litzau v. Aldo Valtierra
ESPN2, 9 p.m.
Wednesday Night Fights showcases Litzau, The American Boy, in his first fight since his stunning knockout in December at the hands of Jose Hernandez, maybe my favorite fights of 2006. Click here for my original piece on that fight, and here for the K.O.W. complete with footage.

Legends
TVG, 12:30 a.m.
An interview with Merv Griffin, but not in order to get to the bottom of that time that Andy Kaufman was on his show and he went completely berserk. This interview is to talk about Griffin’s horse Stevie Wonderboy.