'I, Tonya' (2017)

I, Tonya, directed by Craig Gillespie and winner of an Academy Award, focuses on the life and times of skater Tonya Harding (born, 1970; as an adult, played by Margot Robbie in the movie, with her mother played by Allison Janney), including her inescapable links to fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan. 

Тоня против всех ("Tonya Against All"), as fashioned in Russian.

Music bolsters the I, Tonya story, which is set mostly in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Most importantly, the Siouxise & the Banshees version of Iggy Pop's classic sing-along tune "The Passenger" accompanies archival footage of the real Harding and crew at the end of the movie. Impressive!

I, Tonya shares a spiritual kinship with Gus Van Sant's 1995 film To Die For, which stars Nicole Kidman, abetted by Matt Dillon, Joaquin Phoenix, Illeana Douglas and Casey Affleck, among others. Male sidekicks are absurd buffoons in both movies; music adds significant flavor to both (Donovan's "Season of the Witch" takes the cake in To Die For); and both proceed with a jaunty tone that's both satirical and sometimes touching. Put that on ice. Cult classics.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Bryan Fogel: 'Icarus' (2017)

Bryan Fogel's Academy Award-winning documentary film Icarus (Netflix, 2017) spotlights underground performance-enhancing drugs -- doping -- in sports. While doping itself is hardly surprising at this juncture (see Lance Armstrong), the international scale of usage, with the extensive backing of governments (such as Russia's) remains shocking and pernicious. 

Fogel's own willingness to stick needles into himself in order to improve his amateur bicycle ranking is also shocking, but the kicker is his burgeoning relationship with Grigory Rodchenkov, a Russian VIP in the world of doping -- a man who eventually turns on his overlords and is now in witness protection, no doubt with Vladimir Putin's enforcers even at this moment trying to hunt him down "with extreme prejudice." 

Icarus is riveting, considerably more so than, say, a film about Edward Snowden. 

Bottom line: all kinds of sports are compromised by such activities. Follow the money -- and the egos of competitors.  

Today's Rune: Harvest. Painting of Icarus: Jacob Peter Gowy, La caída de Ícaro (circa 1636). Museo del Prado, Madrid. 

From Moscow to Detroit and Back Again: Gabe Polsky's 'Red Army' (2014)

Red Army, Gabe Poslky's 2104 documentary, hands us a heady cocktail of strong hockey suffused with bittersweet history. Man, it's chock full of pizzaz and a lot of RED. 

(Note: the great German director Werner Herzog is listed as one of the producers.) 

From this action-packed yet thoughtful film, viewers will catch a pretty good glimpse at the arc of international sports (specifically ice hockey) and dueling propaganda machines within the context of the Cold War, ranging from the 1950s to the end of the Soviet Union -- and then spilling into the 21st century. There are dramatic twists and turns, especially toward the end. Believe me, это дикая поездка.  

Red Army features two of the elite Red Army hockey team's biggest coaches, Anatoli Tarasov (1918-1995) and Viktor Tikhonov (1930-2014).  The latter comes off as a ruthless bastard, with Tarasov as the more favorably critiqued. The cagey Tarasov is shown combining disciplines, studying hockey tactics, chess strategy, the Bolshoi Ballet's precision and the energy of boogie woogie. Brilliant.   

The Red Army dudes end up playing in the NHL for a while, and five of the top guys help the Detroit Red Wings seize the Stanley cup in the late 1990s, which is when I move to Detroit and get to see them play. 

What goes around comes around -- but I won't give away the ending here or now. Who knows? Just maybe you might check it out.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.  

Carlos Cuarón: 'Rudo y Cursi' (2008)

In Carlos Cuarón's Rudo y Cursi (2008), two dingbat brothers yearn for a more exciting life. One is married and both are stuck working on a banana plantation on the Pacific side of Mexico. Lucky for them, they're both good football (soccer) players, and both are recruited and wooed (one at a time, divide and conquer) to the big city -- Mexico City. Highs and lows follow. 

It's a primal storyline that goes back thousands of years, no doubt. In this case, there are touches of fraternal comedy and, girding the whole shebang, social satire. Want to know who (and what) really runs nearly everyone and everything? Follow the money trail.  

Fun performances by: Diego Luna as Beto el Rudo (who has a gambling addiction); Gael García Berna as Tato el Cursi (who desires above all to be a pop musician, even though he's terrible at it); Guillermo Francella as Batuta (their free-wheeling agent and all-around ladies' man); Adriana Paz as Toña (who hopes to hit the big time selling "homeopathic" health products); Jessica Mass as Maya (who wants always to be with the top dog of the day); and additional ensemble players as other family members, friends and enemies. 

In Rudo y Cursi, everybody wants more money, either through the sports racket, the loan racket, the gambling racket or the drug-selling racket -- take your pick. 

Today's Rune: Harvest. 

Facing Ali

Pete McCormack's Facing Ali (2009) is fantastic! Tonight, the fiftieth anniversary of the first Cassius Clay (soon thereafter to become Muhammad Ali) vs. Sonny Liston heavyweight fight in Miami, seems like a fitting time to cover it. 

This fascinating documentary looks at Ali from the perspective of ten of his major rivals in the ring. It serves spotlight cultural history, personal and sports history and riveting real life drama, woven together in a very cool, absorbing way (music and intertitles included).

Four of the ten participant boxers have since died, making Facing Ali all the more poignant and powerful. 

The ten, each of whom has something major to say -- underscored by brief discussions of their backgrounds and aspirations -- respond to Muhammad Ali (b. January 17, 1942) in complicated ways, even as they go over their together time in the ring. In alphabetical order, they are:

George Chuvalo (b. 1937)
Sir Henry Cooper (1934-2011) 
George Foreman (b. 1949)
Joe Frazier (1944-2011)
Larry Holmes (b. 1949)
Sonny Liston (ca. 1929-1970 -- archival footage)
Ron Lyle (1941-2011)
Ken Norton (1943-2013)
Earnie Shavers (b. 1945)
Leon Spinks (b. 1953)
Ernie Terrell (b. 1939)

I tell you, even if you have no interest in boxing, even if you hate boxing and think it's barbaric, this is an astonishing documentary. In fact, I just bought a copy on sale so I can see it again and spread the word.

Today's Rune: Fertility.   

Friday Night Lights

Checking out the 2006-2011 Texas-based TV series Friday Night Lights. It seems warm and familiar like The Last Picture Show (1971) or Dazed and Confused (1993) but also fresh and new, luxuriating in longer term character development, extensive moral dilemmas and the annual cycle of American football seasons. Very good stuff.

You can look at this from multiple angles. For instance: change versus tradition, sort of like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" (1948).  The cool thing is that Friday Night Lights lets you see change as both a good thing and a sad thing; same for tradition. What is football, anyway? What does football -- or any popular social ritual -- mean to people, and why? Is it important, or whimsical, or both? Is it healthy, or damaging, or both? Is it life-affirming, or life-denying, or both? 

One can empathize with all the main characters, no matter where they're coming from or going. I like that. It's a fun, thoughtful and engaging series.  Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose.  

Today's Rune: Partnership.    

Run Like a Villain to the Sugar Bowl!

Given the Super Bowl and its New Orleans setting, here are a few photos snapped during a not-too-distant voltigeur sortie into the Vieux Carré, the French and Spanish old city with its most excellent architecture and landscape design.
























For the record, the Baltimore Ravens defeated the San Francisco 49ers 34-31, barely, after a strange power outage in the third quarter.  

From a cherished courtyard at the Place d'Armes.

Today's Rune: Joy.  

How Great and Grand

Because of usage formal and informal, the words "great" and "grand" can be confusing, so let's step back and take a look at them for a few minutes, at least.

In daily use -- and I've heard and even muttered these from time to time -- one might sarcastically respond to bad news with, "Oh that's great" or "Oh, great, just what we need" or "Oh, isn't that grand?" But on the other hand, you might respond to someone else's good news with, "That's great" or "Great to hear!"

If you delve into your family's history in any detail, you'll quickly come across "grandparents" and "great-grandparents." Jeesh, how strange the distinctions between "great" and "grand" here!

Great often means "Really Big" or "Catastrophic" or "Universal" or "Epoch-shaking," as in:
The Great War, the Great Influenza, the Great Depression, the Great Recession. Here, French equivalents tend towards Grand or Grande, with terms like La Grande Guerre and
La Grande Dépression.

Which reminds me of memorable names like Grand Canyon, Grand Illusion, Grand Boulevard, Grand Hotel, Grand Ballroom and Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five. Also, the Great Escape, the Great Fire and the Great Flood.

There's often so much confusion about the words Great and Grand that true understanding (and therefore effective communication) is in danger of being skipped over or misconstrued entirely. For instance, when I proposed a Great War and the 1920s class years ago, my academic dean at the time asked if the name could be changed, as she thought it sounded too much like Great as in Cool or Groovy War.  Once approved, the name of the course remained the same, because that's what the 1914-1918 catastrophe was called until 1939 or thereabouts, and "The Great War" recaptures its original context. Still, I understood her intitial concern.

There's also the Great Man (Person) theory, as in: Abraham Lincoln, now he was a great man; or, Queen Elizabeth I -- now there was a great queen of Great Britain. Let's not forget Alexander the Great.  

And finally, let's not forget sports, either -- terms like the Grand Slam, or Le Grand Chelem in French. Oh yeah, and the Grand Prix.

Today's Rune: Joy.   

Rivals

Here's another symbolic artifact, a token and objet de mémoire. Notice the symbol of a D-Devil (actually a Blue Devil), then revelation of date, place and seating: November 22, 1986, Wade Stadium, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America, West Side, Section 30, Row NN, Seat 16. Opponent: North Carolina (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).

What this entry ticket doesn't reveal is the list price ($15.00), or the intensity of the Duke-UNC rivalry. Not so much in football as in basketball, but real enough across the board.

And then there's the matter of who won the game. Answer: North Carolina. Score:

UNC 42
Duke 35

In the tradition of the ancient Greeks and Romans, spectators array themselves in a hippodrome-like stadium (both Greek words) to watch opposing teams go at each other. Humans love this kind of symbolic conflict as much as they love "real" conflict -- maybe more so. Luckily, with modern football and basketball, casualties are far lighter than in a full out assault with edged weapons. However, the vestiges of real combat in football are clearly in evidence with reinforced padding and helmets. The whole modern sports approach reveals a clever sublimation of primal, atavistic energies. Plus you can bet on the outcome, just as Greeks and Romans did.

"It is what it is." Do you have any favorite rivalries? Or "at the end of the day" . . . "going forward" . . . is it "all good?"

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.       

Jean Vigo avec Boris Kaufman: À propos de Nice

Set above, in and around Nice, France, Jean Vigo's À propos de Nice [more or less "About Nice"] (1930) lasts only twenty-five minutes, but every scene bursts with exuberance. In such a relatively short time frame, Vigo and cinematographer Boris Kaufman managed to capture a number of things: the contradictions and absurdities of socio-economic classes, the energy and disparities of twentieth century life between world wars, technological changes in process, adjustments in gender presentation, and gaps between rich and poor. Most importantly, it bustles with life! 

  

Less than five years after making À propos de Nice, Vigo was dead from TB. Kaufman continued to work and subsequently shot many very well-known films -- ranging from On the Waterfront (1954) to 12 Angry Men (1957).

Today's Rune: Movement.

In This World

On a shoestring budget, Michael Winterbottom and his small film crew have created a riveting docudrama -- In This World (2002) -- that combines specifics with universals. The main story line follows the efforts and harrowing (mostly overland) journey of Afghan cousins Jamal (Jamal Udin Tarabi, who looks sort of like singer Eric Burdon of The Animals) and Enayat (Enayatullah) from a Pakistani refugee camp, with the intention of finding de facto asylum in London during the still-ongoing Afghanistan War. Will they make it safely through Iran and Turkey and beyond?

In the tradition of John Steinbeck and many others, Winterbottom and crew's efforts are effective. By the end of this film, any alert viewer would learn a lot about the desperation and resilience of refugees and immigration efforts. From an international perspective, changing one's situation is hard, a long shot, unless one is extremely fortunate to begin with. On the other hand, if one doesn't make the attempt, one has no chance at all.

Today's Rune: Opening.   

Betting, Sports and Games, or: Little Big War

Diagram of Chunkey yard playing field from William Bartram

Two favorite sports games for hundreds of years were Chunkey and "The Game," or lacrosse, traditionally involving smooth rolling stones, spears, balls or sticks. Some First Nations called these group activities "Little War" or "Little Brother of War." Culturally, the direct links between gaming, gambling, sports and war were explicit rather than hidden under an avalanche of commercials and corporate or nationalistic sponsorships.

George Caitlin (1831-1832): Tchung-kee game

In some ways, we are essentially the same in 2012 as we were in 1812 or 1012 or year 12, only with television and the internet. However, we are different in that much of modern life is probably more fragmented and compartmentalized, less holistic. Is the Nation at war, or only a little piece of the tribe?

Moccasin game: Mille Lacs Reservation (1936)

The Moccasin game is, apparently, not that different from "Battleship." One player or side hides a ball or similar object, the other tries to poke it, discover it, find it out. Each side places a wager. Note the war drum. Evidently, all ages can play.

George Caitlin (1830s): Game player

From now on, golfers must dress like this to keep everyone's attention. Ha! This dude is ready for The Game: stickball, lacrosse or something along those lines.

What would humans be like without games, sports, gambling and war?

Today's Rune: Signals.   

1968: Where Do We Go From Here?

Things have certainly changed since 1968, "Revolutionary Year Zero."  Social and cultural diversity.  Morphing of the Cold War. Deployment of new technology and more interactive communication.  An increase in world population from 3.556 billion people in 1968 to 7.000 billion today.  It's 1968, where do we go from here?  No, man, it's 2012, where do we go from here?

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.      

The Mick Jagger Theme Park and Athletic Club

Reading Marc Spitz's Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue (New York: Gotham Books, 2011) reminded me of some things. Haven't seen the Rolling Stones live in concert since the late 1990s. First saw them in the late 1970s. Once won a pair of tickets from a Virginia radio station by identifying a snippet of "Star Star" -- which was a sly song choice on their part because explicit lyrics prevent its ever being played on the air beyond such a brief sampling. Saw Mick Jagger in a Virginia hotel restaurant. Saw the Stones in Philadelphia, Hampton, Greensboro and Detroit. 

In London in 1991, I met then 25-year old Nick Dunbar a couple of times, son of Marianne Faithfull and John Dunbar, where I was boarding in Clapham and at the Bentinck flat of Bob Dunbar and Tatiana Blagoveshenskaya Dunbar, not far from Manchester Square. The older Dunbars at one point were chatting about how it felt like only yesterday when Mick and Marianne had dropped little Nicholas off with them (he wasn't quite four years old at the time) just before the massive free concert in Hyde Park, within easy walking distance -- that is, the July 5, 1969 event just after the death of Brian Jones. I got the chills listening to their banter.      
   

Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue also reminds me of my great uncle Wellman Lyle France, early slotted for a life in coal mining. His father, Joe France, once told him as a kid not to go where the books were at home, and when he caught him with a forbidden volume once, Joe decked Wellman with a nasty punch in the face. Joe France died at 56 and Wellman went on to college and earned a Ph.D at Purdue University after completing his dissertation, A Study of Relationships Between Tests of Physical Performance and Various Traits of Personality (1953). He also co-authored Philosophy and Principles of Physical Education (1963, 1965). 

When Wellman found out I was into the Rolling Stones in the late 1970s/early 1980s, he said he corresponded with Joe Jagger, Mick's father, and wanted to make sure I knew that Mick had attended the London School of Economics. Now I know why on both counts. One was to make sure that I appreciated college, the other was because Joe Jagger and Wellman shared a common cause -- physical education and its importance. It's not by accident that Mick maintains himself for energetic stage antics.  

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Zeitgeist 1968

1968 mustard seeds. Chicano Power.

Jimi Hendrix: electric eclectic.

Black Power salute: Mexico.

Civil Rights: Northern Ireland.

Occupy the Factories: France.

Today's Rune: Partnership.

The Archaeology of the Page, Test 1

This is a fun exercise from just about any perspective. Digging around this page, you can unearth a ton of stuff: some old, some new, some borrowed and some blue. The text is from Mae West's novel, Babe Gordon (1930), reprinted as The Constant Sinner. Let's poke around a little, shall we?

X-ray lamps. What the hell are those?  These are probably not medical X-ray lamps at a boxing match, so must be a slang term from the 1920s. The term "X-ray" was coined in the late 1800s.

"The restless spectators were howling and stamping for the bouts to begin." Could apply to anything from a Roman gladiator fight to a Duke-UNC basketball game. Timeless human nature.

Aisle seats. These go back at least to the ancient Greeks, eh?

"Old-timers of the fight club."  Old-timers = veterans, experienced people.  The term goes back to just before the American Civil War (1861-1865), if not earlier.

Fight club. I have no idea when or where this idea began, but clearly Mae West's text --  written during the 1920s -- spells it out a long time prior to Chuck Palahniuk's hugely influential 1996 novel, Fight Club, which was adapted into a 1999 film starring Brad Pitt.

Folks, that's just the first four sentences of one page . . . see what I mean?

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

Dziga Vertov: Man with a Movie Camera, Part 2

Man with a Movie Camera / Человек с киноаппаратом by Dziga Vertov (aka David Kaufman), Elizaveta Svilova (editor), and Mikhail Abramovich Kaufman (cinematographer), Part 2.

Picking up from the last post, much of the rest of this silent black and white film proceeds at a dizzying pace, with quieter interludes. On display are various social activities ranging from marriage and divorce to birth and death and funeral cememonies.  

Velocity. Various sports, Motorcycles, racing, high jumping, swimming at a beach, sunbathing, manufacturing, processing, walking, napping on benches. Checkers, chess.

A short-haired woman puts on a bra, or brassière. Remember, this is a 1929 release, and the style was still fairly new. This activity happens earlier in the film.   

Today's Rune: Gateway.

Ali-Frazier: The Fight of the Century Plus Forty

[Orginally posted on November 6, 2008 -- now it's forty years later . . .]

Taking a break from the present, I found a ticket dated March 8, 1971, saved from when my Dad took little-kid-me over to Raleigh, North Carolina, to see "THE BATTLE OF CHAMPIONS" on large closed circuit TV at Reynolds Coliseum on the North Carolina State University Campus. The champions in question were Muhammad Ali and Smokin' Joe Frazier. What I remember: the palpable excitement, my Dad favoring Frazier because of his Philadelphia connections, and Frazier winning after fifteen tough rounds of mutual Frazier-Ali bashing. It was amazing to experience, and both men came off memorably well (hell -- here I am fondly writing about it thirty-seven -- yes, thirty-seven -- years later . . .)

What I didn't know then was that Ali had to fight in order to regain the championship -- he'd had his title taken away for protesting Vietnam. Good God, the more things
change . . . I also had no idea at the time that several of my favorite artistes were at the actual ringside in Madison Square Garden, wild cats as widely ranged as Woody Allen and Frank Sinatra (gee, was Mia Farrow there?), Norman Mailer and Burt Lancaster.

Glad that both Ali and Frazier are still alive and in their mid-sixties, about the same age as many of my favorite rock stars from the 1960s and 70s . . .

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Just the Night for a Conquering Tribe: Super Bowl Sunday, 2011

Getting in touch with my inner barbarian, my limbic system is lighting up already . . . This is one of those rare sporting events where I like both tribes about equally even though with the exception of Pittsburgh I usually go for the NFC team. All we need are some big scores from the Packers and Steelers both and I'll be happy. 

The Packers led by Bart Starr won Super Bowl I in 1967 and the Steelers beat the Dallas Cowboys bespangled with Bicentennial patches in Super Bowl X.  And all those other championship victories. Laissez les bons temps rouler . . .




















Though lucrative in the short run, professional sports are not particularly kind to the participants. A longitudinal study might indicate a lot of health problems for these kinds of pseudo-ersatz-gladiatorial athletes. I remember seeing Cowboys QB Roger Staubach, now 69, up close and noticed his hands, mangled from wear and tear. Boxers and football players take a lot of punishment over the years.













But it's grand theatre, and otherwise rational folks can go crazy for a while like English friends on holiday. Or at a football match. Except for the sacking and burning of the loser's city, it's the Trojan War all over again!

Today's Rune:  Breakthrough.