Out of print for more than 30 years, now available for the first time as
an eBook, this is the controversial story of John Wooden's first 25
years and first 8 NCAA Championships as UCLA Head Basketball Coach.
This is the only book that gives a true picture of the character of John
Wooden and the influence of his assistant, Jerry Norman, whose
contributions Wooden ignored and tried to bury.
Compiled with
more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man
behind the coach. The players tell their stories in their own words.
Click the book to read the first chapter and for
ordering information. Also available on Kindle.
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The Interview (1/10)
by Tony Medley
Runtime 112 minutes.
Not for children.
For some reason this is being advertised as “by the people who brought
you Neighbors!" Since my rating on
Neighbors was 1/10, what I said about that film is equally
applicable here. Writer Dan Stolberg (with a story credit to Seth Rogen)
and directors Evan Goldberg & Rogen rely on cheap sex jokes, priapism,
and foul language as a substitute for humor. However, the writers are
different from “Neighbors” and so are the directors, so they must be
referring to the producers. However, Rogen starred in both and is a
producer. Rogen, of course, is the guy who must count the F-bombs before
he agrees to be in a movie. Since he has a writing credit and a
producing credit, there was no worry that the movie would have a surfeit
of F-bombs.
The idea is that James Franco is a mindless, fatuous, uninformed TV
interviewer, Dave Skylark, and Rogen is his slightly more savvy
producer, Aaron Rapaport, and they’re hired by the CIA to assassinate
the President of North Korea, Kim Jung-Un (Randall Park). Even
considering the absurdity, what follows is more ridiculous than funny.
The only possible positive here is Park, who plays the schizophrenic
Kim. He gives a nice performance as charming and ingenuous when dealing
with Dave, but in real life he’s a horrible, selfish dictator who
starves his people.
One thing this proves is that modern Hollywood is abysmally ignorant
about satire. When Charlie Chaplin made The Great Dictator (1941)
lambasting Hitler, his character was named Adenoid Hynkel, not Adolph
Hitler. Only the initials were the same. And Hynkel’s country was not
Germany but Tomainia. If Hitler wanted to protest, he’d have to prove
that Hynkel was similar to him and Tomainia was similar to Germany, so
he didn’t say anything (of course he was also in the middle of a war and
planning on invading Russia at the time; the film was released on March
7 and Hitler invaded Russia on June 22).
But Rogen apparently doesn’t understand subtlety, so he uses North Korea
and uses the real name of the actual dictator of North Korea for the
character to be killed. Naturally kim and North Korea are going to go
ballistic. They don’t have the problem that Hitler had with The Great
Dictator. They don’t have to “prove” that the film is about them
because Rogen doesn’t hide it. Sony and Rogen brought all this on
themselves.
Even so, now everyone apparently wants to see this film. If Kim were
smart, he’d keep his mouth shut because this movie is a turkey’s turkey
and if he’d just keep quiet it would have died a quick death. As it is,
all the publicity it’s getting might draw people who haven’t had their
eyes opened by sitting through Neighbors to pay their money to
see what all the hoopla is about. Are they going to be disappointed!
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