Hive
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«Fanta "Acrobatics in bed" (18+)»
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2015 — 2019
Overboard!
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10 great sports series
10 great sports series In this issue of the special project, film critic Yegor Belikov chose ten sports series that will hook even those who are far from the world of constant training.
10 great sports series
In this issue of the special project, film critic Yegor Belikov has chosen ten sports series that will hook even those who are far from the world of constant training.
Egor Belikov
football players
Ballers
Julian Farino, Simon Cellan Jones
Dwayne Johnson, John David Washington, Omar Benson Miller, Donovan W. Carter
Look
One of the most popular HBO projects of recent years is a series about young professional football players, shot like the unforgettable "Handsome" (only there were actors conquering Hollywood, but the difference is small). As you know, almost all film projects where Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is filmed are doomed to success. Here he plays the former athlete Spencer (therefore, for the sake of filming, the actor threw off some muscle mass). Spencer retrained as a financial consultant to help potential dollar millionaires, including the unrestrained football player Ricky (John David Washington, star of "Black Klansman" and Christopher Nolan's next film "Tenet"), not to spend all the fees by the time the contract ends.
«This movie is a direct connection from the first world, a story about people living in the sunny and therefore the most expensive cities of the American West Coast, those who at the same time fight with all their might for a piece of bread with black caviar and at the same time try to arrange a life that they have suspiciously similar to ours. Football players, it turns out, are people too, they have problems with money, friends, girls, alcohol and drugs.»
"At the bottom"
2009 — 2012
Eastbound & Down
Jody Hill, David Gordon Green
Danny McBride, Steve Little, Katy Mixon, Lisa De Razo
Look
Actor and showrunner Danny McBride is a master of comedy that makes the viewer not only and not so much funny, but rather very embarrassing, and this, if anything, is a big compliment.It is thus manifested in any storyline, where he defines his own character (a traditional image – a pompous self-love idiot), very accurately make fun of the surrounding reality. Recently, his new project was released on the topic "Righteous Gemstones" religion, and before that McBride became famous thanks to the series "At the bottom", a peculiar parody of all kinds of movie about sports and overcoming himself; At the same time with this – on a variety of brain-lifting comedies about the star at the social day (something like "all or nothing" with Sandler).
His hero is Kenny Powers, a former baseball player, it wondered all the chances that fate gave him. He returns to his native city without money and prospects (but with acquired drug addictions) and is satisfied with the school teacher on physical education. Narcissical Kenny is confident that he is still a star, although his time has long passed, continuously confuses ambiguous statements and children, and teachers' colleagues (intrusively trying to beat off her girlfriend of school times, which is engaged with the director of the school – he, however, Rokhal ). But according to the law of the genre, his sleep talent should awaken, and therefore Kenny in the interruptions from the painful escapad begins to train the school team on baseball to bring it to victory and reborn in the process itself.
2011 — 2012
Interestingly, McBride is completely clearly and unambiguously rises in the series aesthetics of the Baseball itself, the sport, which in American pop culture has long been sacralized, they have such an important national scrap. "At the bottom" boldly shows all the absurdity of baseball, and any other fanaticism.
Gymnasts
Make it or Break IT
David Paler, Chris Grismer
Ayla Kell, Josie Lauren, Kassie Kerbo, Chelsea Hobbs
The American analogue of "Ranetok", only without terrible songs, but with the girls of senior school age (in the plot), which three seasons make their way to the Olympic gymnastic team. The series from the Essential TV channel, so that you can watch relaxed – narrative simple, flowing exactly, all the problems of characters are more than overcoming.
On the other hand, "Gymnasts", with all its apparent simplicity, includes very unexpected elements. For example, remember the plot of the film “Summer” by Kirill Serebrennikov, built around the fact that the main character, musician Mike Naumenko, once meets the notorious Viktor Tsoi and suddenly realizes that a genius has appeared in his sphere who will become a national hero. How to behave in such a situation, how to moderate pride? “Gymnasts” starts with the same unusual collision: a certain Emily from a poor incomplete family, where, in addition to her, a dangerously beautiful mother, not quite in her mind and a disabled brother, exercised all her life not in gyms (there was no money), but at municipal sports grounds. She is accidentally noticed and called to the training base, where she meets with major girls who have long outlined a cloudless future for themselves. However, all kinds of Salieri are trying to solve the eternal conflict with the new gymnastic Mozart as simply as possible – to substitute a friend so that she does not get into important competitions.
«In each episode of "Gymnast" one feels the unspoken aloud (after all, the channel is not cable, the heroines are minors, the time is childish), sexual tension that no one has really relieved. It is no wonder that already in the third series one of the heroines will lose her virginity, and this is a real tragedy, because this circumstance can affect her athletic performance.»
From this follows the most important theme raised in "Gymnasts" – is the game worth the candle? All the heroines are sharpened by the realization that their childhood is not quite normal, and now they are spending the best years of their lives creating for themselves a cloudless future, which, however, is not guaranteed to anyone. On the other hand, for the same Emily, sport is the only way to escape from the social bottom (in this regard, the series rhymes with the Oscar-winning film “Million Dollar Baby”). “Gymnasts”, of course, does not give any unambiguous answers to the eternal questions about how to properly raise children, but we can confidently say that over fifty episodes all aspects of the life of these beginning gutta-percha men (by the way, all the actors duplicated in the scenes of exercises and performances by real athletes).
2005 — 2011
Allen Coulter, Brian Kirk
Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Farina, John Ortiz, Richard Kind
Look
An old-school and measured series by American television classic, HBO veteran David Milch, author of Deadwood (and the pilot was directed, for a second, by Michael Mann, one of the most important genre directors in the history of cinema), is about luck as an ephemeral sensation that leaves, then comes, and there are no explanations for that. Therefore, places of action better than the hippodrome, where every visitor smells the smell of horse dung and big money, it was impossible to imagine such a project for such a project.
"Fart" immediately impresses with an amazing amount of details from the world, which previously remained completely closed to the vast majority of viewers. We know about horse races and hippodromes at best from the prose of Charles Bukowski (or from the cartoon "The Underwater Tale"), at worst, we never thought about the fact that even in our time, for example, in the center of Moscow, they regularly gallop along a special ellipse, as of old, thoroughbred horses with slender jockeys on their backs.
«Already in the pilot, a seasoned con man named Ace (the great Dustin Hoffman), just out of prison, is planning a huge horse scam; a big conflict of jockeys, a new girl and an unpleasant old alcoholic is preparing; three disabled people cheat the casino and win two million dollars thanks to an insider security guard.»
Unfortunately, from noble races on amazing mounts, horse racing has long degenerated into an anachronism, where evil people drive thoroughbred animals that die regularly (for the first time this will happen already in the pilot). It is curious that the series was closed for ethical reasons. On the set, horses were injured, and this is taking into account the fact that, according to the creators, they did not live at all and treated animals much better than at real races. It turns out that things are even worse on real hippodromes, and such mockery of horses gets away with everything every day.
Friday night lights
Friday Night Lights
Jeffrey Reiner, Michael Waksman
Kyle Chandler, Connie Britton, Taylor Kitsch, Zach Gilford
In this hyper-realistic series, most of all it is sports. Peter Berg is a clearly underestimated director who today trades in military action movies and disaster films, once started with Friday Night Lights based on a non-fiction novel, then worked on a serial adaptation. All his life he stubbornly makes films about a heroic man, in many of his works the initial scene is similar in form: the notorious protagonist gets out of bed, kisses his wife and goes to work, where he has to do the impossible – escape from an exploded oil platform ("Deepwater Horizon") , to deal with the consequences of the terrorist attack ("Patriot Day") and so on.
The scheme is repeated in Friday Night Lights, where Kyle Chandler, who plays the coach of the Texas American football team (both the film and the series are loosely based on real events), takes over the position, and already in the pilot the team miraculously wins. In his simple scheme, Berg achieved impressive skill, but this is not the main thing in Friday Night Lights, but the background for the traditional story about the development of a team that won everyone. This team is selected from an extremely provincial one-story America, familiar from the sad documentaries of Michael Moore, from the damned lands inhabited by people who are dead alive.
2010 — 2011
The life and customs of the region are embodied in such painfully accurate and microscopically small details that there is a distinct feeling that you yourself have been to such sad places (however, this feeling will be familiar to anyone who has visited the Russian provinces – everything looks the same there, and not as in some spiritually uplifting fake like "Coach" by Danila Kozlovsky). This deadly accuracy in creating the entourage takes the series to a completely different level: at its best moments, Friday Night Lights almost reminds of the works of the neo-classic of marginal cinema Harmony Korin (Gummo).
Shine
GLOW
Lynn Shelton, Jesse Peretz «Alison Brie, Betty Gilpin, Britt Baron, Sydel Noel»One of Netflix's biggest hits focuses on the deliberately staged sport of wrestling. But there is a nuance: instead of traditional oversized men in ridiculous costumes, who are bludgeoning each other for no reason, here women enter the ring in front of television cameras.
The plot of the tragicomedy pro-feminist "Glitter" revolves around the wrestling league "GLOW", which, surprisingly, really existed in the 80s. Unlucky actress Ruth (Allison Brie was nominated for a Golden Globe for this role) comes to the casting for this new exotic show, her friend Debbie also gets into the troupe. Ruth slept with Debbie's husband, Debbie finds out about it, and now the girls are beating each other to the delight of the viewer. Wrestling is not so much a sport as an amazing theatrical performance, where violence, maybe sometimes pretend, but the feelings of Zoya the Destroyer (the original nickname contains the rhyme Zoya the Destroya, which is funny for the Russian ear) and her rivals can be quite real.
"Real boys"
«blue mountain state»
John Fortenberry, J. Clark Mathis
1998 — 2000
Darin Brooks, Alan Ritchson, Chris Romano, Ed Marinaro
Lions Gate Television
There are times when you just want to sit down and have an American Pie and/or a Scary Movie. A good analogue of these respected franchises in the genre of teen comedy "about this very" is the series
Blue Mountain State
« (The variant of the translation of the title “Real Boys” seems especially symbolic, which completely coincided with the title of the infamous TV series about gopniks from TNT, which started in the same 2010).»
Already in the very first scene, the first-year heroes of the college – a big football pitcher and his masturbator friend who wants to become the team's mascot – meet two girls at the door of the hostel room, who, having learned that a young athlete lives here, are immediately ready to give themselves to him. . Football gives the heroes the opportunity to sleep with absolutely anyone in the entire college.During the pilot half an hour, approximately all the characters will have sex somewhere behind the scenes a total of a couple of dozen times. In general, the fierce concern of the heroes with sexual issues is amazing. Other events from the first-year first-class life are also shown in a similar way: excessively alcoholic parties, miserable initiations into students produced in the format of gay hazing, and so on.
2014 — 2017
Warning: this movie is not at all intelligent and even anti-intellectual, the spectacle is sometimes vile and therefore somewhat curious. Today, the goofy comedy genre has shrunk to the unwatchable annual Adam Sandler movies on Netflix, which means it's not a sin to think of an artifact like Blue Mountain State. Just don't tell anyone you've watched it.
Sports Night
sports night
Thomas Schlammy, Robert Berlinger
Josh Charles, Peter Krause, Felicity Huffman, Joshua Malina
One of showrunner Aaron Sorkin's many series about the production processes in one specific creative team. In this case, we are talking about the editorial office of a fictitious TV program (suspiciously similar, however, to the real, popular and still outgoing program "SportsCenter"), where two presenters, whose soul hurts both for sports and for high-quality journalism, are trying to search for and to present the viewer with human, living stories about athletes.
Behind the scenes and on the air, the main characters and other editors, producers and bosses seek the boundaries of journalistic ethics, resolve work issues and make non-corporate connections among themselves. Today, Sports Night is often cited by TV critics as one of those series that was canceled too soon, with only two seasons in total.
