A Wednesday clip show with Cronenberg and Footloose, plus Tyson and Spike Lee to HBO

Let's start with HBO, since they're clearly intending to keep scheduling programming made specifically for me in an attempt to just wring as much money out of me as possible.

"True Blood" returns Sunday, and then the rather miraculous eighth season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" will return Larry David to New York, where he of course belongs. And after that, HBO has just set in motion a boxing project that should be nothing but great.

"Da Brick" will be a drama loosely based on Mike Tyson's early years in the boxing ring, with Tyson involved to offer his perspective on it. Much better, Spike Lee will direct at least the pilot episode, and John Ridley is on board as the showrunner.

Toiling largely in the shadows in the last five years or so, Spike has nonetheless managed to make two of his best movies (no small accomplishment) with his two New Orleans documentaries, "When the Levee Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts" and "If God is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise," and his movie of the Broadway musical "Passing Strange" is easily one of my favorite movies of 2009 (please rent that one now if you've never seen it.) And there are few genres of entertainment I love more than boxing, so this should nicely fill the void left by the sorely-missed-by-at-least-me "Lights Out."

OK, working briskly so I can have time to go swimming before going to work, let's move on to the clips, starting gloriously with the first trailer I know of for David Cronenberg's "A Dangerous Method," one of the movies I'm definitely most looking forward to for the rest of this year. As you'll see from the trailer below, it stars Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud, Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung and Keira Knightley as the patient on which they try the titular cure (which, as you'll see, somehow involves spanking ... juicy.) Enjoy the trailer, and keep an eye out for this one hopefully opening wide enough to even reach my little corner of the world in November.



Up next comes the first trailer I've seen for Craig Brewer's take on "Footloose," which, not terribly surprisingly, appears to be the exact same movie as the original, except with some rather flashy hip-hop dancing to excite the young folk. I'm clearly not one of those, so I probably shouldn't complain, but how in the world did Brewer go from making one of my all-time favorite movies in "Hustle & Flow" to this? Sheesh. Oh well. At least Miles Teller of "Rabbit Hole," an actor definitely worth keeping an eye on, is getting work in this, but he'll never be able to fill the shoes of the late, great Chris Penn. "Enjoy" the trailer, keep an eye out for the movie if this is your kind of thing on Oct 14, and then stick around for a glimpse of new "Futurama" (huzzah!).

Tags: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

How in the world "Futurama" has managed to survive and thrive for so long is something I'll never understand, but I certainly do appreciate it. Believe it or not, the show is back for its second season of new episodes on Comedy Central starting Thursday night. That's also the same night that FX's "Louie" returns and its new series "Wilfred" premieres, so my DVR will finally be getting a bit of a workout. Enjoy this brief clip from Thursday's "Futurama" premiere, and have a perfectly endurable Wednesday. Peace out.

What makes this growna** man cry?

Well, I didn't quite this morning when I read just what has happened to "Hustle & Flow" director Craig Brewer, but that's pretty thoroughly depressing too, so let's just start there.

It's really hard to exaggerate just how much I love "Hustle & Flow." It's just a very moving story incredibly well told, and it was easily one of my favorite movies of 2005 (coincidentally enough the year I started doing this.) I really had very little time for "Black Snake Moan" apart from seeing David Banner's debut movie role, but I'm still glad I saw it, because it's at least the most fascinating kind of mess.

Now, however, and believe me, I'm not making this up, Mr. Brewer is on a very short list of the directors being considered to step in and take over the remake of "Footloose" that would star Gossip Girl's Chace Crawford. Wow. Sounds like a nightmare to me, but when Kenny Ortega was removed from this, he said whichever studio is making this wanted something "edgier" than the straight-up feel-good musical he had in mind. Well, if that's what they really want, I suppose they'll get it with Brewer.

But enough of that. This was supposed to be about the ESPN movie "Without Bias," which just happens to be about easily my favorite athlete in any sport, any time, and of course just one of the saddest sports and life stories you'll ever hear.

I wasn't sure I could bring myself to watch it at first. As usual, because he's a much better writer than me, mi hermano puts it a whole lot better why Len Bias was so important to us kids growing up in Maryland in the '80s.

He was certainly much more than a basketball player for my beloved Maryland Terrapins, who, now that Comcast has relented and given us ESPN360.com, I'll still watch in just about every single game they play (hey, since they finally managed to sign two kids who at least start to approach being able to play center and Greivis Vasquez is coming back, they're gonna be pretty great this year.)

But not ever as great as they were when they had Bias. If you somehow don't know the story, Len Bias, after making his college career a rather amazing highlight reel, signed with the Boston Celtics as the No. 2 player in the NBA draft (who in the world could have gone higher? Brad Daugherty, in case you're wondering.) He would, however, never get to play a game for the Celts, because as he was celebrating his good fortune with some teammates, Brian Tribble (more on him later) and a supply of fishscale cocaine, his heart would stop less than two days later. I can still remember just laying in bed and bawling about it, and just thinking about today makes me start to break down all over again.

So, it's certainly a compelling story, but how does director Kirk Fraser do with his hourlong ESPN feature? Well, from the perspective of someone who clearly cares about the subject, I'd say fairly well.

He very efficiently sets up just how great Lenny was with highlights of his college career, and just seeing him shoot that pure jump shot again was a thing of sheer beauty. This is supplemented with a lot of talking heads who provide varying degrees of insight into his life, but the best of it comes from Bias himself and his former Terrapin teammates, including Jeff Baxter, Derrick Lewis, David Gregg and, my sentimental favorite, Keith Gatlin (and no, not just because we share a first name. He solidified that title with one play, which if you stick with me to the end, you'll get to see.)

After the first commercial break, however, is when it gets into the still very chilling details of Bias' death, and that's when I had to stop the DVR'ed show several times because - although it's extremely well done - it was really just too much for me to take (and yes, as the title of this post makes clear, this grownass man did indeed cry again last night about Len Bias.) Fraser deals with the sad story very efficiently through the eyes of people who where there or very near by at the time, chiefly Baxter and Gregg. And we hear a whole lot from Brian Tribble, who was demonized at the time as the man who provided Lenny with the coke (personally, I could never really buy him as the enemy - they were clearly friends, and Bias was himself a grownass man who made a very big mistake of his own volition.)

The movie falls apart more than a bit at the end as it delves into several plotlines (did Bias' death spur mandatory minimums? what about the equally tragic death of brother Jay Bias?) that never get any resolution, but by that point Fraser had already slain me, so I was just too wrapped up in it to quibble.

Just how seriously do folks like me take the story of Len Bias? I'll leave you with this quote from basketball commentator Jay Bilas which, though it may indeed be extreme hyperbole, is still very much at least kinda true:

"For people of my parents' generation, they mark time by when President Kennedy was assassinated. For me, and I think for many people who are about this age, I mark time by the death of Len Bias. We knew exactly where we were when told he had died."

Now, don't get me wrong. I'd certainly never equate Bias with JFK, but on at least one level, Bilas is dead right: In the rather limited world of a 16-year-old when you first hear news like that, it is indeed something that sticks with you for the rest of your life, and why I can still remember it so vividly today.

As for Fraser's movie, you can watch it five more times on the ESPN networks. Here are the times:

Tonight, 10 pm ESPN 2
Thursday, 10 pm ESPN Classic
Thursday, 11:30pm ESPN 2
Sunday, 9 pm ESPN Classic
Monday, 7 pm ESPN 2

And, as promised, I'll leave with what is still my favorite Maryland Terrapins clip of all time. I won't spoil it for you completely, but let's just say it involves Keith Gatlin, Kenny Smith and the thorough shaming of Dean Smith's UNC Tar Heels. Enjoy, and have a perfectly passable Wednesday. Peace out.

Whatever happened to David O. Russell?

The last time I ever remember seeing or hearing about director David O. Russell was when that clip of him going nuts on poor Lily Tomlin hit YouTube, so he's definitely in need of a new gig to wipe away that memory. And now, in what would be - rather amazingly - his first feature film in five years, that's taking shape in the form of "Nailed."

And speaking of "I (heart) Huckabees," the flick which generated that infamous clip, it fits for me in that odd category of movies that I "appreciate" rather than "like." Though I think I have an idea of what he was going for there, I'd still much rather see flicks that fall into the latter category. But he did also make two movies I love in "Three Kings" and "Flirting with Disaster," so any news of a Russell comeback is good news to me.

And, believe it or not, he's making that comeback with a romantic comedy co-written with Kristen Gore (yes, the daughter of that man obsessed with Manbearpig.) I had originally heard it would be based on Gore's Capitol Hill chick lit novel "Sammy's Hill," but the flick - now called "Nailed" - seems to have become a little more interesting (with quite a cast developing too.)

Catherine Keener (hearty huzzah!), James Marsden and Tracy Morgan are about to join the already-announced Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Biel.

In what's now described as a D.C. satire (set for release in 2009), Biel plays Alice, a waitress who starts behaving erratically (in the form of "wild, sexual urges" according to the IMDB) after getting shot in the head by a nail. Determined to fight for better health care, she heads to Washington, where she (of course) falls for a congressman (Gyllenhaal) who says he will fight for her cause. Marsden will her hometown boyfriend, Keener will play a Congresswomen, and Morgan will most likely play an injured compatriot of Alice's.

That all sounds more than a bit meh to me, but if it's sharp enough satire it just might work. Besides, a return by David O. Russell in just about any form is welcome to me. Now, if he can just manage to stay on his meds this time ...

Brewer on the comeback trail too

It's really hard to exaggerate how much I love Craig Brewer's movie "Hustle & Flow." I've probably seen it 10 times by now, and in it's own odd way, it never fails to be inspiring and entertaining.

On the flip side, I have almost as negative a feeling for Brewer's second feature flick, "Black Snake Moan." I've seen it twice now (just to see if I had somehow missed something the first time - I didn't), and I still can't tell what in the world he was going for with that more than slightly offensive mess.

I had heard he was going to rebound with what would be a surefire hit - a music biopic (I know there are too many of those already, but bear with me) about the black country singer Charley Pride, to star the great Terrence Howard, but it would seem that's dead for now.

Instead, Brewer has signed on to work with someone else script, in this case "Sopranos" scribe Michael Caleo, for an adaptation of Columbia professor Sudhir Venkatesh's book "Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets." Even if didn't come directly from the mind of Mr. Brewer, it sounds right up his alley.

The book apparently recounts years that Ventakesh spent with a crack-dealing gang in Chicago for a research project. After befriending the Black Kings, he found a close-knit group whose corporate culture was much like that of a successful legitimate business, and was eventually given the job of calling the shots of the criminal enterprise for a day.

Sounds pretty cool to me, and if I may digress a bit, Terrence Howard (who indeed seems to work all the time) appears to have landed the role that will win him the Oscar he surely deserved for "Hustle & Flow." In a 2009 flick titled "The Crusaders," which was written by former "West Wing" scribe Lawrence O'Donnell, he'll play Thurgood Marshall in the story of the drive to outlaw segregation in the U.S.

But getting back to Mr. Brewer, I'm happy to see him getting this rather cool-sounding project, and hoping for a big comeback from the dreck that was "Black Snake Moan." I'll leave you today with this video for "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," which will hopefully brighten up everyone's Monday morning just a bit. Peace out.