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.
Notre Dame Coach Digger Phelps said, "I used this book as an inspiration
for the biggest win of my career when we ended UCLA's all-time 88-game
winning streak in 1974."
Compiled with
more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach.
Click the Book to read
the players telling their stories in their own words. This is the book
that UCLA Athletic Director J.D. Morgan tried to ban.
Click the book to read the first chapter and for
ordering information.
|
Atonement (1/10)
by Tony Medley
Any man who says he likes
this movie needs a double shot of testosterone. It’s not that I don’t
like romances. Three of my favorite films this year are Love in the
Time of Cholera, Stardust, and Evening. But what sets
them apart from Atonement is that they are ROMANTIC!
Atonement, on the other
hand, didn’t have an iota of romance in it for me. Oh, maybe it does
have one iota. Patrician Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) and Robbie
Turner (James McAvoy), her family’s gardener, have a romp in the sack
early on. Well, not in the sack, really. Actually he pins her against a
wall á la Sonny Corleone in The Godfather. That and a little hand
holding at dinner is the sum total and extent of their “romance.”
Just after they’re holding
hands at dinner, Cecilia’s 13-year-old sister, Briony (Saoirse Ronan),
accuses Robbie of a crime and breaks them up. So much for their romance.
But director Joe Wright apparently had reams of film to use up, so he
darts in and out of the next four years in an incoherent telling of what
apparently happens to Robbie and Cecilia. First he shows a scene, then
jumps us back in time to show how the characters arrived at that spot.
It’s far more annoying than charming. Trouble is, he takes so much time
on things like the evacuation at Dunkirk, which took three days in 1940
and which Wright has apparently attempted to film in real time, that
there’s not much time to look at Cecilia. Actually, Knightley looks as
if she’s in the advanced stages of anorexia. If I had to estimate her
dimensions from this film, I would put them something like 22-22-22,
hardly femme fatale qualifications. That said, Knightley is a treasure
as an actress. She’s beautiful, creates believable characters, and has a
charming accent. She’s a rarity, someone it’s worth paying to see. Added
to her acting talent, she proves, maybe, that a voluptuous body isn’t
essential for sex appeal. On top of all that, she’s dyslexic. Anybody
who conquers that has my admiration.
There really isn’t much
story here. It starts out like a gothic tale as Briony is a troubled,
spooky-looking and acting little girl. But then it stretches out into
just your every day, run of the mill The English Patient-paced
ordeal for the viewing audience. The Dunkirk scenes are so
phantasmagorical and incoherent as to make one bilious. Worse, there’s
no reason for them to take up what seems like a third of a 130-minute
movie that seemed as if it weren’t going to end before breakfast.
The shot of a cabin
overlooking the White Cliffs of Dover is so flat it reminded me of the
opening scene shots of Casablanca in the film of the same name, and
that’s no compliment. I don’t know if it was graphically inserted, but
the scene sure looked like it.
There’s a twist at the end
that infuriated me. Even though there is a lot of good acting by
Knightley, McAvoy, Ronan, and Romola Garai, who plays Brioney at 18, I
sat through all of this for that?
I could go on, but why?
December 15, 2007
|