🎬 So Jamal, tell me something about yourself.
Double digits, baby. Welcome to the 10th edition of The Reel!
Estimated reading time: 6 mins 38 seconds.
Did you know that there are definitions for emojis?
It gives me great pleasure knowing that someone on Emojipedia’s job is to articulate each and every meaning of these small yellow fellows on the internet.
What does the classic smiley mean, Emojipedia?
Hmm. This is more nuanced than I thought.
What about 🙄?
Wow, comprehensive and complicated.
But I know one thing that Emojipedia surely doesn’t…
Prithee, kind website, what say you of 🍆?
Ha-HA! Muahaha you fools, you know nothing of the internet! You think it’s just an eggplant? You don’t eve-
Damn it!
Is there no straightforward emoji?
Something simple?
Positive?
Cheerful, in these dark times?
That’s better. 💩
Time for some reviews!
This week: Shooting hoops, self-iso in space, and who you gonna call?
🏀 Be Like Mike.
The Last Dance (2020), series, directed by Jason Hehir.
Despite my remarkable lack of sporting talent, I once harboured brief dreams of becoming a basketball player.
However, I have also wanted, at various times, to be an astronaut, a lawyer, and a superhero. Progression on all these fronts has been minimal.
The Last Dance details superstar athlete Michael Jordan and his glittering career with the Chicago Bulls, in particular the double “three-peat” of NBA championships achieved by the team in the 1990s.
ABOVE: Michael “Big Bucks” Jordan and Scottie “Proportionately Very Small Bucks” Pippen.
An engrossing series in 10 parts, it’s a triumph of sports media. What is most interesting, and astounding, is the sheer scale of Jordan’s celebrity. His fame reaches stratospheric levels.
Even before Space Jam, children in Ireland knew who Michael Jordan was. I myself had a mini basketball hoop exactly like this on the wall of my room when I was about 7 or 8:
ABOVE: Lil Gogzi spent years hitting 3s into this thing, all day and night. God knows what my parents thought I was up to.
One eye-opening sequence follows MJ as he leaves his hotel room the day of a game. He is hounded by media and fans the second he leaves the building, on the way to the arena, after the game, and on his way back to the hotel.
Only when he closes the door to his hotel room is he alone. The scrutiny he’s under seems almost nightmarish.
A sweeping account of a booming period in US sports history, the series is just about coherent enough to follow despite an ambitious, time-jumping structure. Aside from MJ and the key figures of the era, interviewees include Kobe Bryant, Barack Obama, and (all too briefly) Carmen Electra.
ABOVE: MJ compares the defensive styles of the Detroit Pistons and the Moron Mountain Monstars.
The Last Dance is sure to enthrall. If nothing else, it’s a fascinating insight into the media, culture, and indeed fashion of late 20th-century America.
Come for the basketball, stay for the shoulder pads.
Look out for: OG basketball bad boy Dennis Rodman is the standout among several big personalities. As mentioned, the 90s fashion is something to behold. Two questions: do they still make those oversized suits, and do they come in 30 waist and -7 chest?
If you liked this: Few sports documentaries, basketball or otherwise, will ever reach the lofty heights of Hoop Dreams. Until the Space Jam sequel with LeBron James is released, tide yourself over with the original from our childhood.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
👻 You best start believing in ghost stories, Ms. Dooley.
Extra Ordinary (2019), film, directed by Mike Ahern & Enda Loughman.
In this very blog two weeks ago, I bemoaned the low rate of production in Ireland, in particular with films.
What a pleasure it was then to be recommended Extra Ordinary, a small gem of a comedy on Netflix (hat-tip to Phil and Liz, you have my thanks and my blessing).
ABOVE: An awkward driving lesson/test , but not as bad as Simon in The Inbetweeners.
Meave Higgins stars as Rose Dooley, a driving instructor/ex-paranormal investigator. She’s pulled back into ghostbusting and comes up against faded rock star Christian Winter, played by the delightful Will Forte.
There are light horror elements, but it verges more on parody than truly scary. We open with archival footage of Rose’s father, in an 80s-style instructional video on the paranormal:
“Why don't we see ghosts every day? The truth is ghosts are around us all the time, but most hauntings are so small they go unnoticed. For example, a pen, a pen lid, a gravel, a trapped sound, a child's ball or balls, a wheeled bin.”
It’s not many films that reference children’s balls in the first 90 seconds.
There’s also thrifty use of what is a presumably small budget. “Ghosts” are most frequently shown on screen by possessing Rose’s love interest Martin, and then puked up into mason jars.
ABOVE: Ah, getting sick in a chipper. When will we see such glorious sights again?
It loses its way in the third act, but Extra Ordinary’s short length and easy watching are definite pluses.
And c’mon Ireland, obviously.
Look out for: A montage of Forte’s character softly singing “Olé, olé, olé, olé, Satan, Satan” is one of the more unique cinematic highlights I’ve had this year. Risteard Cooper makes an enjoyable cameo as Rose’s father - revisit his impression of icon Bill O’Herlihy with Bill O’Herlihy here.
If you liked this: The cream of the light comedy-horror/parody crop has to be What We Do In The Shadows. For peak Irish comedy, look up the RTE series The Savage Eye on YouTube. Or just watch their take on the Catholic Church here (warning: not for the easily offended).
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
⏩ Quickies
Short and snappy reviews for a short and snappy time:
Prisoners (2013, film, dir. Denis Villeneuve): ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Jake Gyllenhall and Hugh Jackman produce the goods in this gripping, gruelling watch. Two young girls go missing, and a detective and a father take different approaches to tracking them down. Probably not one to start late at night. Or if you have kids.
ABOVE (Prisoners): “Tell me what I want to know or I WILL write you another love letter.”
The Martian (2015, film, dir. Ridley Scott): ⭐⭐⭐
Why was this film so popular? And how did it get nominated for best comedy at the Golden Globes? Too preposterous and cringe to be a space drama/thriller, yet too boring to be sci-fi. Gets an extra star because Matt Damon put his togs in a SuperValu bag.
ABOVE (The Martian): When it drops in Gimme Gimme Gimme by ABBA.
Just Kids (2010, book, aut. Patti Smith): ⭐⭐⭐
If you know who Diane Arbus, Steve Paul, Gerard Malanga or Rene Ricard are, you might be very impressed by this autobiography. Rock legend Patti Smith name-drops for 279 pages, but delivers a touching portrait of her formative years as an artist in New York.
📃 Quote of the Week(s)
“I wasn’t trying to do anything. I was just trying to play basketball, party, blah blah blah, f**k all the girls. And so that just happened to be me, Dennis shit, you know.”
In The Last Dance, Dennis Rodman tries to explain why he missed practice during the 1998 NBA Finals to smoke cigars with Hulk Hogan in a televised wrestling event.
ABOVE (The Last Dance): Rodzilla with the ultimate lockdown hairstyle - shave your head and colour it in with markers.
📅 Previously, in pop culture…
Landmark events from the last two weeks in film and TV histoire:
May 19 - American actress Meghan Markle marries Prince Harry at a ceremony at Windsor Castle, England in 2018.
May 19 - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End premieres in 2007. With a $300 million dollar budget, it is most expensive film ever made at the time.
ABOVE (Jack Sparrow): The most underrated Lonely Island song.
May 22 - Fahrenheit 9/11, directed by Michael Moore, becomes the first documentary to win the Palme d’Or at the 57th Cannes Film Festival in 2004.
May 27 - In 1995, Superman actor Christopher Reeve is paralysed from the neck down after falling from his horse in a riding competition.
✅ Th-th-that’s all, folks.
Thank you very much for reading!
To mark the 10th edition of The Reel, I’ll be doing a commemorative poem in the next blog.
If you get one person to sign up before then, I’ll include you in said poem!
Your shout-out could be humorous (potentially), defamatory (probably), or underwhelming (almost definitely).
There’s only one way to find out. 🤭
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Thanks again, and I’ll see you in two weeks!
💩
xxx
Previous Reels:
🎬 May 13 - Normal People, After Life, Jurassic World, I, Tonya.