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.

Zack and Miri make a porno (3/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 97 minutes.

I’m terribly disappointed that Elizabeth Banks has such questionable judgment as to take a roll in a vulgar film like this. She is drop dead, Diane Lane-like, gorgeous. On top of that, she is a terrific actress. It’s horrific to think that this beautiful, talented woman has to sign up for rubbish like this. The Weinstein Company was apparently so disheartened about it that they actually hired shills to laugh at a sparsely-attended screening today, and the Weinsteins often know what’s good and what isn’t. Well, I don’t know for sure that these people were laugh shills, but there was one guy there and one woman who laughed uproariously at every line. While they certainly acted like shills, it’s possible they were just myopically stupid. The screening did have some influential attendees among the approximately ten people there, David Ansen of Newsweek, and ABC’s Movie Phone guy. They are too sophisticated to be taken in by laugh shills, so what’s the point? Laugh shills actually hurt a movie because it’s so irritating it destroys real laughs.

This is a low class story full of profanity and common dialogue about body parts, including female lubrication. What is an apparently classy lady like Banks doing in a film like this? Would Ingrid Bergman or Diane Lane sign up for something as crude as this, no matter what the salary? To Banks’ credit, she eschewed nudity. Not that there isn’t nudity; breasts are flapping all over the place. Although played for fun, there are graphic scenes of fornication with gymnastic positions.

Miri (Banks) platonically shares an apartment with high school buddy Zack (Seth Rogen, who apparently won’t consider a script unless it has him saying the “f” word at least 50 times in the first ten minutes). They don’t have any money whatsoever. Their utilities are all cut off so they come up with the idea of making a porno film with their friends, the climax of which will be Miri and Zack having sex with each other, which they haven’t done as of yet. What happens next is little more than juvenile hogwash.

This infantile film full of gutter language only has two things of interest to me. The first is just looking at Banks, who is indescribably beautiful. The second is getting a look at 40-year-old Traci Lords (Bubbles), who was a notorious porn star when she was only 15 years old.

This is pretty much an auteur performance by Kevin Smith who wrote, directed, and edited the film. It has been argued that Smith’s work was the inspiration for the Judd Apatow genre of film that concentrates on juvenile obsessions with foul language, free sex, and genital humor. This type of flim attempts to reduce American culture to its lowest common denominator. I don’t think that’s much to be proud of.

October 28, 2008