"Hoop Dreams" plus 15

The basketball documentary Hoop Dreams, which was released in 1994, is this year celebrating its 15th anniversary. A couple of new essays available online recognize the milestone, and discuss the film's legacy, including the fact that it is about so much more than just basketball.

Roger Ebert, in his amazingly insightful "Roger Ebert's Journal" (which is often about so much more than just movies), discusses his and the late Gene Siskel's early involvement with the film as cheerleaders who helped the documentary gain first distribution and then an appreciative audience. Ebert recounts the recent Chicago event in which the film's two subjects, William Gates and Arthur Agee, sat on a panel discussion with the filmmakers to talk about the film's impact on their lives.

Ebert provides a link to an older but still incisive essay on the Criterion Collection website by John Edgar Wideman. Wideman, writing from the perspective of an African-American man who fostered some of the same dreams as Gates and Agee, drills just as deeply into the idea that Hoop Dreams is about so much more than basketball, and about how dreams of basketball stardom were about so much more than sports and glory for young people like himself and the stars of this incredible documentary film.

The Quality of Movies, in IV Parts, from Movies from Every Angle

The movie blog Movies from Every Angle posted a sort of state-of-the-movies manifesto earlier this summer that is worth taking a look at. Here it is, in four (or should I say, IV) parts: Part I; Part II; Part III; Part IV. It has some interesting insights about the current (as well as past instances of) trends towards remaking movies. For instance, there's a particularly astute observation regarding how the makers/distributors of these movies have started to shy away from the term remake in favor of "reboot," or "reimagining."

The blogger at Movies from Every Angle, Michael Brody, was also quoted in a recent AP article about the strategies being used by movie theatres to compete and attract customers in this new streaming-video, hi-def, iPod age.

A.O. Scott on "The Graduate" in NYT's Critic's Picks

New York Times movie critic A.O. Scott, in the paper's online "Critic's Picks" video series, offers a perspective this week on the landmark 1967 film "The Graduate" (a favorite of the MediaLog). Scott doesn't really make any new observations about the film, but he does reiterate well three of the biggest reasons for the film's historical importance: (1) the ways in which Dustin Hoffman's performance (and appearance) helped rewrite the rules of being a movie star; (2) the ways in which the film exploited the new permissiveness in movies that was then emerging; and (3) the film's groundbreaking use of popular music. All of these helped contribute to the film's massive popularity among young people, another measure of the film's importance which Scott also mentions.

The MediaLog MediaFix: Vintage March Madness from 1983

In honor of the now-annual cultural and sports ritual known as March Madness, the MediaLog presents this pair of video clips from the 1983 NCAA men's basketball championship. Until the early-1980s, the NCAA tournament was a much smaller affair than it has become in the decades since. The 1979 championship game between Magic Johnson's Michigan State Spartans and Larry Bird's Indiana State Sycamores (won by Michigan State) raised the tournament's profile greatly, and by 1985 the tournament had expanded to the 60-plus team size it has been ever since.

The 1983 championship was a match-up between the North Carolina State Wolfpack, coached by Jim Valvano, and the Houston Cougars, best known that year for their group of players (including future NBA stars Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler) nicknamed "Phi Slama Jama." Valvano's Wolfpack pulled out a last-second upset over the favored Houston team. The first clip is a network preview package by sportscaster Dick Schaap that consists mainly of interview footage with Valvano. The second clip is the last minute or so of the championship game itself, with the customary immediate post-game jubilation.

"Phantom of the Opera" and More in "The Reel Journal" from 1925

Open publication - Free publishing - More film

A magnificent new resource for film historians and researchers--or for anyone interested in learning about old movies and the history of the American film industry--is the website Issuu, specifically the collection of "Boxoffice" magazines hosted there. "Boxoffice" (which is still publishing) is a trade publication for movie distributors and exhibitors that dates back to the 1920s. The historical back issues, nearly all of which can be found and browsed at Issuu, are a wealth of information--an embarrassment of riches, really--for studying American film history.

The above issue of "The Reel Journal" (a predecessor of "Boxoffice"), from February 14, 1925, features this double-page advertisement for "The Phantom of the Opera," starring Lon Chaney, which was then in release from Universal Studios. Interestingly, the image featured in the ad does not include Chaney, perhaps because the actor--known as the "Man of 1000 Faces" for his elaborate make-up--was being kept under wraps in the film's publicity to preserve the impression his visage would make on viewers.

The old issues of "Boxoffice" available for view on Issuu represent a unprecedented level of access for such an historical resource. Although the Issuu interface (available for use by anyone to "publish" newsletters and the like) is somewhat clunky--there's no easy way to conduct searching, for example, and in the case of "Boxoffice" at least, poor indexing of the hundreds of issues available--it is possible to bookmark particular pages, create your own library of publications, and (as seen above) embed individual publications on your own webpage or blog. There are several options for navigating individual issues, although (again in the case of "Boxoffice" at least) image quality is rather poor.

The above issue of "The Reel Journal" can be navigated and explored fully. It's an amazing immersion in movie culture of past eras. In the future, I will likely post additional issues of "Boxoffice" and its predecessor publications, as I discover nuggets of information and images that I think warrant the treatment.