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Filtering by Tag: boxing
Director/star Michael B. Jordan confers with Jonathan Majors on the set of Creed III. (Eli Ade/MGM)
I was glad to join Aisha Harris and Shamira Ibrahim — and to reunite with Gene Demby from the Creed II episode of PCHH back in 2018 — for this hard-hitting dissection of the disappointing-to-me Creed III.
My review of the film is here, and the Smithsonian piece I plugged in the Happy segment is here.
Liev Schreiber and Ron Perlman in Philippe Falardeau's Chuck Wepner biopic. (Sarah Shatz/IFC)
Here's my NPR review of Chuck, a biopic about Chuck Wepner, the self-sabotaging New Jersey boxer who inspired Sylvester Stallone to write Rocky. It ain't bad, but I wanted to love it. Anyway, Rocky already has a wonderful latter-day lega-sequel.
Here's my NPR review of Bleed for This, writer-director Ben Younger's new biopic about super middleweight champion Vinny Paz's unlikely-but-true comeback from a massive injury. Not essential, but not bad.
Roscoe Orman and Eddie Ray Jackson as Stephin Fetchit & Muhammad Ali in Fetch Clay, Make Man. (Round House)
My review of Round House Theatre's strong production of Will Power's Fetch Clay, Make Man, a play about the unlikely friendship of Muhammad Ali and Stephin Fetchit, is in today's Washington City Paper. I also review Constellation Theatre's update of a century-old Luigi Pirandello play, ABSOLUTELY! {perhaps}.
If you want to see if your eyes are fast enough to catch the "phantom punch" Ali used to put down Sonny Liston in the first round of their 1965 rematch -- the punch that serves as Fetch Clay's MacGuffin -- it's at about 7:20 in this video.
Neil Leifer's iconic photograph captured the aftermath of the controversial "phantom punch" with which Ali felled Sonny Liston for the second and final time, in 1965.
Muhammad Ali is already the subject of many, many fine books and films. The distinguishing feature of the new documentary I Am Ali, which I reviewed for NPR today, is that filmmaker Clare Lewins was given permission to use never-before-released private tapes that Ali made of his conversations with his daughters and close confidants for his own enjoyment.
As someone who has listened to all 537 episodes of This American Life, many of them more than once and some of them more than twice, and who has annoyed my parents, brother, friends, and girlfriends by recording lengthy interviews with them on various occasions, this approach strikes a chord with me. The recorded voice of someone speaking to one other person will always feel more intimate than a close-up photograph ever could – to me, at least.The excerpts Lewins uses mostly date from the late 70s, by which time Ali, having reached his mid-30s, had slowed down and was getting hit more than he ever had in his twenties. He also started to exhibit symptoms of the Parkinson’s syndrome with which he would finally be diagnosed in 1984.
With so much strong Ali scholarship in the world already, I Am Ali can muster only slight contributions to the canon, but it’s a well-made and inspiring tribute to The Greatest if you're looking for an all-in-one Ali doc. Like I said in my review, the best Ali documentaries have tended to zoom in on a single fight or era of his life. What I happened to learn from this one is how Ali came to pose as St. Sebastian for the April 1968 issue of Esquire.
Muhammad Ali had to get Elijah Muhammad's permission to "dress up" as a Christian for this photo shoot.
Trainer Dave White
The thermostat at Downtown Boxing Club read 43 degrees -- Fahrenheit -- the Sunday afternoon I spent reporting this story for Metro Connection. It felt strange to be in a boxing gym and not be moving around. I've wanted to go train at this place for years; a couple of the guys I train with off and on have told me good things. Anyway, I'd better get on it: Downtown Boxing Club will have to move this year, for the third time in its 15-year existence.
You can hear the piece here. I was sorry to have to lose the part where trainer Dave White says that to land a punch you have to be quick enough to catch a penny.
