Nobby wrote:
djäveln:
There also was a movie with Bruce Dern and Garry Bjorklund in it. "On the Edge"? That was pretty good except for Bruce Dern running in one size too small New Zealand Split shorts! "When you run downhill, shout 'BURN!'" I like that...
I liked "On the Edge" too. By the way, its on DVD now.
Dying to be Perfect
Ellen Hart Pena story about bulimic Olympic aspirant. Pena is married to current? Denver mayor.
Sounds a bit boring for we hard core runners.
Although running was the lesser part of the story, Gallipoli was beyond great.
Has anyone seen Running On The Sun? Great documentary about the Badwater 135. The guy with the toenail story....wow!
Running brave was a bit "Hollywood", but I like how the final Olympic 10K scene was perfectly timed to the real one.
FYI: Here is a great site for running and related dvd's/books:
Run Like Hell is great, and Across the Tracks burns houses down..i wouldn't recommend it
Brad got a funny stride, pretty bad movie.
djäveln wrote:
in the bad running movie column:
Marathon Man
He had a poster of Bikla in his apartment, had a short sequence running around the reservoir, and away from the Nazis et al. but mostly lame and contrived tie-in. This was it in the wake of Shorter: it was new, hip, interesting to be a marathoner.
The chase took place right after he escaped from dental torture at the hands of the ex-Nazi patterned on Joseph Mengele and played by Lawrence Olivier. So he's barefoot and in pajama bottoms, has just had a hole drilled in his tooth (without anesthetic) and is being chased by car and then by badguys on foot. In the book, this chase scene happens on the West Side Highway, but by the time the movie was filmed the highway had collapsed, so instead they shot this scene on the approach ramps between the Brooklyn Bridge and the FDR Drive.
There's a story that Dustin Hoffman was very into method acting, and starved himself, went without sleep, and ran lots of miles, in order to really 'inhabit' his character. Olivier saw what he was doing, and said, "Maybe you should try acting."
Oh, and who can forget the running scene in Monty Python's Meaning of Life - where a group of "runners" chase down Arthur Jarrett. Such cinema beauty - brought a tear to my eye.
Image (not work safe):
http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/python/Scripts/MeaningOfLife/jpgs/vii-nude.jpg
"Across the Tracks" is an insult to the running community just as it is to the film community. It's no wonder the populace has such a misconstrued perspective on what running and runners are really like. The film's horrendous acting, trite plotline, and abysmal demonstration of ignorance of the sport of distance running all add up to a slap in the face of any view and and two-fisted wallop to the face of any runner. I believe the film's legitimacy can be summed up in one particular scene.
(Quotations not taken directly from script)
Brad Pitt- Hey coach, you think if I win this race I can get a scholarship to Stanford?
Coach- (Chuckling) I don't know about that. Just focus on the task at hand.
Brad Pitt- But coach, you got a scholarship to Stanford.
Coach- Yes I did, but that's because I was th best miler in the county.
Nuff said.
"The Games"? Get serious.....Really great casting, really life-like; a fat Ryan O'Neal playing a beer-swilling frat boy as the U.S. marathon entrant? Charles Aznavour playing a Zatopek-like East European runner being chased down endless roads by a commissar on a bicycle? (Aznavour couldn't run across the street for a packet of cigarettes, his favorite food....)
I'm in the movie; there's a scene by the Olympic swimming pool (Rome 1960 sites were used); the "crowd" in the stands is actually plastic torsos and heads, ten to a horizontal pole, with a few live individuals, including myself, interspersed to make the "crowd" look "live". Michael Crawford, later of "Phantom of the Opera" fame, played an English runner and claimed to have trained hard and run near 4 minutes (in his dreams). Crawford did at least look like a runner, and resembled Dick Taylor, a very good British six-miler of the era....I wrote a review of the movie for Runner's World when it was released (1970?) but didn't keep a copy.
"Tokyo Olympiad" (Kon Ichikawa)--1964 Games
"Olympia" (Leni Riefenstahl)--1936 Games
Naturally, both have footage of other sports, too; but they're both brilliant.
And I enjoyed "Visions of Eight"--1972 Games
Running on the Sun is a great doc. movie, but I still don't think I could ever finish that race or any other ultraMarathon for that matter.
features more movies about running than any other site I've visited. This past year the readers voted for their favorite films and the results posted at the site are:
1) Fire On The Track
2) The Jericho Mile
3) Endurance
4) Saint Ralph
5) Running On The Sun
6) Five Thousand Meters
7) Jim Ryun: America's Greatest Miler
8) A Race For The Soul
I remember reading in Sports Illustrated that Crawford allegedly ran a 4:23 mile after training several weeks with Gordon Pirie.
Punk in Drublic wrote:
"Across the Tracks" is an insult to the running community just as it is to the film community. It's no wonder the populace has such a misconstrued perspective on what running and runners are really like. The film's horrendous acting, trite plotline, and abysmal demonstration of ignorance of the sport of distance running all add up to a slap in the face of any view and and two-fisted wallop to the face of any runner. I believe the film's legitimacy can be summed up in one particular scene.
(Quotations not taken directly from script)
Brad Pitt- Hey coach, you think if I win this race I can get a scholarship to Stanford?
Coach- (Chuckling) I don't know about that. Just focus on the task at hand.
Brad Pitt- But coach, you got a scholarship to Stanford.
Coach- Yes I did, but that's because I was th best miler in the county.
Nuff said.
Yea, that part was inaccurate. But overall, the movie did a good job giving a glimpse of training/racing. It was also realistic with HS splits, etc... I liked it.
Finish Line. A struggling college freshman who starts doping to win.
http://www.runningmovies.com/f.htm
"A father pushes his son to the limit... as he will stop at no cost to ensure his son's success in the sport of track & field... Filming of track sequences took place at Hayward Field at the University of Oregon."
even in still picture they can't act!
A few years ago I saw a movie about the Comrades' Marathon. An old coach with a young South African woman. Not bad. If you like running. Anyone know its name?
I think the Comrades Marathon video you are referring to is called "The Long Run". It was in theaters in the United States in 2001 (Rated R) and made available for home distribution in both VHS and DVD in 2002.
oneill wrote:
"The Games"? Get serious.....Really great casting, really life-like; a fat Ryan O'Neal playing a beer-swilling frat boy as the U.S. marathon entrant? Charles Aznavour playing a Zatopek-like East European runner being chased down endless roads by a commissar on a bicycle? (Aznavour couldn't run across the street for a packet of cigarettes, his favorite food....)
I'm in the movie; there's a scene by the Olympic swimming pool (Rome 1960 sites were used); the "crowd" in the stands is actually plastic torsos and heads, ten to a horizontal pole, with a few live individuals, including myself, interspersed to make the "crowd" look "live". Michael Crawford, later of "Phantom of the Opera" fame, played an English runner and claimed to have trained hard and run near 4 minutes (in his dreams). Crawford did at least look like a runner, and resembled Dick Taylor, a very good British six-miler of the era....I wrote a review of the movie for Runner's World when it was released (1970?) but didn't keep a copy.
True, that The Games was cheesy with its casting and the "Olympic" scenes, but the scenes of the English National X-C weren't too bad. It was Gordon Pirie that said that Michael Crawford ran in the low 4:20's mile, but that may have just been Pirie (and you know how movie publicists are). Another instance of a movie not doing justice to the novel by Hugh McIlvaney. An absolute powerful read; you would think you are reading non-fiction. The plausible speculation about why the 1968 Games were awarded to Mexico City smacks of State Department interference. READ IT, you won't be disappointed.
wasnt golden girl a series? I remember a tv series called that, in some scenes she used to train indoors and run into padded walls at the end of the track, and in the last episode she didnt take her pills cos one of the other athletes was watching her, and she was afraid the other athlete would think she was taking steroids. She ended up passing out during the race, near the end or at the end, I think she won and then passed out. maybe. if its the same one I saw it was in 1989, but maybe they made it in 88, an olympic year. I was living in south africa at the time so we could have got that show from the US a while after it aired there.
