Apr 29 2008
ESPN EVERYTHING
ESPN started in 1979 with one cable television station. Today, the media conglomerate has over 15 television stations in addition to radio stations, websites, a large circulation magazine, a prime time awards show, and a chain of restaurants. The obviously glaring omission here is a film production company, and that is not to say they does not have one. ESPN Films has been around for seven years, mostly under the name ESPN Original Entertainment, but has yet to do something worthwhile. At least not until now.
ESPN Films has produced such unmemorable made for TV movies as the Bobby Knight biopic “A Season on the Brink”, Pete Roses’ “Hustle”, and Texas A&M football flick “The Junction Boys”. These moves obviously required very little effort and featured absolutely no talent. Wait, I take that back. “Home Improvement’s” Zachary Ty Bryan (AKA Brad) starred in the Army football scandal movie “Code Breakers”.
I said at least not until now because ESPN has already signed up with Robert Redford to produce a Jackie Robinson biopic, a revolutionary move I have already talked about as breaking the baseball film color barrier. ESPN has also joined forces with indie cinema in creating the 2nd annual Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival, with all eleven featured films appearing in New York back to back Sunday, April 27 and Saturday, May 3. ESPN Classic (channel 9,876 on most home sets) will also be airing festival coverage and related sports movies on May 15. But ESPN’s best move yet is teaming up with Spike Lee to produce a new documentary on Kobe Bryant.
Inspired by “Zidane: A 21st-Century Portrait” which followed the French soccer star during every second of a game, Lee wanted to do something similar with Kobe. On the second to last game of this season, Lee positioned 18 cameras around the Staples Center following the Laker’s star pre, during, and post-game.
So finally ESPN secured some talent in Lee and Redford, and put some effort into this film festival thing. And while I am by no means rooting for ESPN to monopolize anything else, I am excited about better sports films and the prospect of watching them for free through my cable service. The Spike Lee Kobe joint will be aired sometime next year on either ESPN or its sister station ABC. That is going to look great in HD.
I have always thought of the Olympic opening ceremonies as a little overdramatic and dare I say cheesy. Well thanks to a 300 million dollar budget and the artistic vision of renowned Chinese film director Zhang Yimou, 2008’s Bejing ceremonies were legendary - despite the frequent flood warnings and technical difficulties interrupting the broadcast thanks [...]
Bret Easton Ellis strikes again; Wayfarers, New Order, drugs, sex, and rich LA brats. Welcome to the first look at “The Informers”, the film adaptation of Ellis’s 1994 novel of the same name in which he also wrote the screenplay.
“The drama is set over the course of a week in 1983, in the chillingly [...]
In the 1950’s Hollywood was producing around forty westerns per year, that number fell to twenty during the 60’s, around ten per year in the 1970’s through 90’s, and in the new millennium, we are lucky to get five westerns each year. But when those westerns are of the caliber of 2007’s “3:10 [...]
[...] had mentioned before how ESPN is going full force into the feature film game, one of the only markets they have yet to conquer. This has included both an upcomming Spike Lee [...]