SXSW: "Olympic Dreams"

Guest contributor Tony Ruggio reporting from SXSW...

Olympic Dreams, starring comedian Nick Kroll and real-life Olympic athlete Alexi Pappas, is both innovative and a little mundane. Shot behind the curtain in Olympic Village during Pyongyang, it’s a romantic two-hander set against the 2018 games. It also doubles as a real deep-dive into an unknowable subculture. Blurring the lines between narrative and documentary, with many athletes and employees playing themselves, director Jeremy Teicher is a one-man band capturing the unglamorous side of the games. The dorm-like bedrooms, spare game rooms, and impending doom of life after it’s all over...

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Sundance Surprise: Fighting With My Family

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from Sundance

Each year, Sundance hosts a “surprise screening” that’s printed as such on its advance schedule and only revealed during the festival itself. It’s a chance to premiere a hit movie for a small audience that is usually pretty excited about it. Last year, it was Jason Reitman’s Tully, and the year before that, it was eventual Oscar winner Get Out. This year, it’s Fighting with My Family, slated for theatrical release in just two weeks.

This premiere brought out some big stars, including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Vince Vaughn, and real-life wrestler Paige, whose story serves as the inspiration for this film...

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'We're gonna score-ore-ore tonight. We're gonna score-ore-ore to-niii-ight 🎵'

omg. Big Little Lies went bowling! Okay so who won? Who was throwing gutter balls? And who was pulling off miraculous spares? Who sang a bar from Grease 2's "Score Tonight"? Your theories in the comments please!

Doc Corner: 'Icarus' Doesn't Fly

By Glenn Dunks

It is easy to see why Netflix purchased Icarus for a record five-million dollars. Charting director-and-subject Bryan Fogel’s attempts to prove how easily it is for athletes to dope and how easy it is to get away with it before getting sucked into the Russian Olympic doping scandal of 2015, it’s a premise that swings between two wildly popular forms of documentary. But blending the personality theatrics of Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me with true crime, Icarus ultimately isn’t able to replicate the entertainment and the sheer chutzpah of that 2004 perfect storm of charming lead and grotesquely captivating experiment.

For starters, Fogel greatly overestimates the desire to watch somebody screw the system and (attempt to) get away with it. After all, we live in a world with Lance Armstrong already in it – and it takes Icarus just 58 seconds to feature him in archival sound and video – so there seems little need for a talented, but self-admitted amateur cyclist to muddy the waters and prove how scandalous it all is...

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A League of Their Own, Pt. 4 - The World Series

Here is the conclusion of our 25th anniversary retrospective of A League of Their Own!

Part 1 introduced us to the team and Part 2 showed us their success and struggles on the field. In Part 3, the sibling rivalry between Dottie (Geena Davis) and Kit (Lori Petty) got Kit traded to the Racine Belles and the return of her husband from the war caused an exhausted Dottie to quit the team. Where will that leave the Rockford Peaches as they go on to the first all-women World Series?

Part 4 by Chris Feil

1:30:15 - It’s the first game of the first AAGPBL World Series and it’s our beloved Rockford Peaches against the Racine Belles. And wouldn’t you know Doris has some fawning fans in the stands (including “that guy” actor Joey Slotnick in his film debut)!

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