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Fullback to the Future (or, The greatest Hungarian science-fiction sports movie you’ll probably never see)
A football ascending to the heavens kicks off (snigger) 6:3; a truly appropriate image this is, for 1990s garbageman Tutti (Károly Eperjes) is about to enter a Hungarian sports fan’s heaven. Said Valhalla is actually of no great distance in space, but requires a time-travel voyage some 45 years back to the “Match of the Century” bringing victory Hungary over Team England at Wembley Stadium to snap a 30-year undefeated run. Against the early 1950s’ antediluvian and repressive system, Puskas and his teammates were nothing sort of angels for Tutti.
November 25, 1953 holds extra significance for our hero, doubling as the day of his birth. When he suddenly awakens to find himself miraculously transported to that age of 3-forint beers and communist propaganda, he finds himself torn in priority between meeting the mother he never knew and listening to the game on radio.
Right. So … where’s the damn radio, already?
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Dreaming of 1992: An Olympic basketball movie trilogy
In 1992, the landscape of international basketball was changed forever. While most recall the dominance of the USA’s Dream Team – quite probably, BuckBokai asserts, the greatest squad ever assembled in any sport – the hoops in that famed Olympiad of 20 years ago were packed with dozens of compelling backstories, the least two of which were certainly not the silver- and bronze-medal winning Croatia and Lithuania teams.
On the eve of the opening of the XXX Olympiad and with that 20th anniversary observation firmly in mind, BuckBokai recommends a loosely connected trio of films that’ll make for fantastic viewing for the sports history nut. In the virtual screening room, we’ll run this trilogy in order of subject’s finish in the Olympic games.
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Batman given Cardboard Gerald treatment in Dark Knight Rises review
Ben Swanson: Greatest Twitter-side movie reviewer ever? After busting up with 141-character bon mots from Cardboard Gerald, the “resident [Charlotte] Bobcats sadsack blogger” and “progeny of Shawn Kemp’s Lister Blister, on “The Dark Knight Rises” all morning, BuckBokai figured he’d repost ‘em all here for posterity. One caveat: Swanson has seen things we people wouldn’t dream – this one’s quite a departure from the franchise, it seems…
Spoilers follow … yeah, surrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre.
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Edward Cullen vs. Pau Gasol: Who wins?
The brainwashed
Since this piece got little to no love over at big sister ‘site BallinEurope.com, BuckBokai reruns it here – search engine voodoo be damned – for an audience perhaps more in touch with the eternal war between the supernatural undead and NBA basketball…
BuckBokai recently read the latest anti-Laker screed basketball column by ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons, an alternately funny and blood-boiling confession-style bit about conditioning one’s children to cheer for the “right” sports team, i.e. Daddy’s sports team.
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R.I.P. Leslie Nielsen (1926-2010), world’s funniest umpire and Kirk precursor
One of BuckBokai’s faves – and surely one of anyone who digs on sports and science-fiction movies – has passed on, is no more, has ceased to be, has expired and gone to meet his maker, et cetera. Leslie Nielsen succumbed to complications caused by pneumonia in a Ft. Lauderdale hospital last night.
Nielsen is most remembered among sports fans (and the general movie-going populace) for his starring roles in “Airplane,” also featuring Kareem “Roger Murdock” Abdul-Jabbar, and the “Naked Gun” trilogy alongside He Who Shall Not Be Named plus a most memorable turn in episode one by Reggie Jackson. Goddamn it, too, if that umpire scene in Naked Gun I still isn’t one of moviedom’s funniest baseball scenes ever. We love it!
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Happy anniversary, Hungary’s Golden Team!
In the mode of Pardon the Interruption, happy anniversary goes out to soccer’s Golden Team! On this day in 1953, Ferenc Puskas and Team Hungary recorded possibly their greatest win of all-time in torching England at Wembley, 6-3.
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