After her sister falls off of the top her dorm, Maisy (Joelle Farrow) transfers to Vanderton University and takes her place on the cheerleading squad. Maisy thinks her sister was murdered and is determined to find out why. She discovers that several of the cheerleaders are also working as webcam girls, some of them against their will.
My main thought while watching this movie was that maybe if the squad had been any good, they wouldn’t have had to make extra money as webcam girls. This movie had some of the worst cheer routines that I have ever seen and none of the cheerleaders seemed like they really had much spirit. Their cheers were awful. “Are you ready to play/G0 Sharks/It’s your big day!” Whoever wrote that should be ashamed. Hearing that’s not going to give the Sharks the extra encouragement they need to win!
When Maisy gets too close to the truth, another cheerleader spikes her water right before a big media event. Drugged Maisy loses one of her pom-poms in the middle of a routine and she has to crawl across the floor to get it. When I was cheering in high school, that happened to me in practice a few times and I wasn’t even drugged! Afterwards, Maisy’s coach says that if Maisy is on drugs, they can’t kick her off the squad because that will make it appear as if the cheerleaders weren’t willing to help her. I can’t think of a cheerleading coach in the world who would follow that logic.
Watching this movie made me glad that I stopped cheering after high school. Cheerleading in high school was fun, even though I was always worried that the people in the stands would notice that I always had bruises from falling during practice. Eventually, I figured out that no one in high school cared as long as you smiled and looked cute in the uniform. In college, though, they make you become a webcam girl and throw you off a building if you refuse! It’s a whole other world!
John Carluccio (Paul Carafotes) is the star running back on his high school football team until the district’s new chief doctor (Dennis Patrick) rules that John can no longer play because he’s partially deaf and wears a hearing aid. Coach Rizzo (Val Avery) protests but John is off the team. John stops hanging out with his squeaky clean best friend (William R. Moses) and instead becomes friends with the school delinquent (Stephen Nichols). John starts smoking pot and gets a bad attitude. Whenever anyone tries to help him or suggests that he can live a productive life even without football, John gets angry. Can his new girlfriend (Demi Moore) turn his life around?
I really wanted to feel bad for John and cheer him on as he fought to be allowed to play football but he was such a mopey character that it was hard. He acted like the rest of the team should have refused to play until he was allowed to rejoin them. It didn’t help that the new running back was just as good as John ever was. Eventually, John discovered that he loved music and Demi Moore but even all of that felt like it came out of nowhere. I know a lot of people who have had setbacks as bad as John’s who managed to get through them without treating everyone around them terribly.
Demi Moore is the big “name” here but she’s only in the movie for a few minutes. I recognized a few of the other actors. William R. Moses later played Ken Malansky in the Perry Mason movies and Stephen Nichols will always be Patch on Days of our Lives.
If you’re looking for football action, you won’t find it here. My choice, if I could do it again? Don’t watch.
The Blues Brothers! They’re on a mission from God.
Jake (John Belushi) and Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd) are two Chicago orphans who love the blues and committing crime. After Jake is paroled from Joliet Prison, he’s picked up by Elwood in an old police car. Elwood traded the original Bluesmobile for a microphone. Jake understands, even if he still doesn’t like being seen in a police car. When they visit the orphanage where they were raised, Sister Mary Stigmata (Kathleen Freeman) beats them with a ruler and tells them that the orphanage is going to close if she can’t pay a $5,000 tax bill. Jake and Elwood set out to reform their band, raise $5,000, and save the orphanage. Jake and Elwood may be two career criminals who never take off their dark glasses but they’re on a mission from God.
Along the way to putting the band together and raising $5,000, Jake and Elwood meet characters played by everyone from James Brown to Ray Charles to Aretha Franklin. You never know when a big production number might break out. Jake and Elwood also step on a few toes. Soon, the Blues Brothers being chased by the police, the national guard, Jake’s parole officer (John Candy), Charles Napier’s country-western band, and a group of Illinois Nazis (led by Henry Gibson). There’s also a mysterious woman (Carrie Fisher) who wants to kill them. She has an impressive array of weapons but terrible aim.
The Blues Brothers was the first comedy to be based on a Saturday Night Live bit. Unlike most other SNL movies, The Blue Brothers develops its plot far beyond what was originally seen on television. Jake and Elwood get a full backstory and they also get personalities that go beyond the black suits and the dark eyewear. The Blues Brothers features Belushi at his most energetic but it’s also one of the few films to actually know what to do with Dan Aykroyd’s eccentric screen presence. If Belushi’s Jake is all about earthly pleasures, Aykroyd’s Elwood almost seems like a visitor for another world. Aykroyd’s performance of the Rawhide theme song is one of the film’s highlight.
The Blues Brothers has its share of funny lines and its famous for the amount of pointless destruction that it manages to fit into its storyline (with the “unnecessary violence” being authorized by the Chicago police to stop the Blues Brothers) but it’s also as surprisingly sincere tribute to the blues. It’s a movie that can balance Ray Charles shooting at a shoplifter and a massively destructive car chase in a suburban mall with Cab Calloway playfully performing Minnie the Moocher and Aretha Franklin bringing down the house (or diner, as the case may be). The movie can feature both a jump over an open drawbridge and Steven Spielberg as the clerk at the tax office. It’s one of the strangest comedies ever made and it features all the excesses that would bring an end to 70s Hollywood but when Jake and Elwood say they’re on a mission from God, you believe them.
What if they played a Super Bowl and no one cared?
Back when I played Madden, the announcers would always say that Super Bowl Sunday was an “unofficial national holiday,” and I usually agreed right before I set the game to rookie mode so that the Ravens could win by a 100 points. But this year, no one seems to be too excited about the prospect of either the Patriots or the Seahawks winning the big game. I know that I’m not really enthusiastic about either team. The NFL doesn’t seem to be excited that either. Maybe if Taylor Swift was dating a Seahawk, the NFL would care more.
I always make a prediction though and I’m usually wrong. So, this year:
Patriots 28
Seahawks 7
Why not? The Patriots winning yet another Super Bowl would be the perfect anticlimax to this season.
Football Stories was a popular pulp magazine that ran from 1937 to 1953. Each issue featured stories about football players and the games that they won. Each cover featured exciting action drawn by George Gross.
Here, for Super Bowl Sunday, is a small sampling of the covers of Football Stories.
Whenever “Breakin’ My Heart” by Mint Condition comes on, it’s like flipping back to the spring of ’91 — those final high school days buzzing with possibility and that sweet uncertainty of what came next. I remember those silky keys and that laid-back groove spilling out of boomboxes in the parking lot after school, turning ordinary afternoons into something electric. It was the ultimate slow jam for passing notes in class and those marathon phone calls about crushes that felt like the whole world.
What made the track stick so deep was its smooth, patient vibe, like it was custom-made to linger in those tender high school romance moments — Stokley’s voice carrying that perfect mix of ache and hope. At senior prom, when “Pretty Brown Eyes” finally hit, the gym lights dimmed, and suddenly every sway felt like a promise. It bridged those innocent, heart-on-your-sleeve high school flings right into the haze of early college, where relationships got messier, longer-distance, and way more real, with calls late at night from someone met through college halls and weekend jaunts to clubs.
That song soundtracked our whole transition that summer before freshman year — cruising with windows down, radio cranked, as we traded high school goodbyes for the thrill and nerves of campus life. Mint Condition’s harmonies wrapped up all the nostalgia of backyard parties and first kisses, while hinting at the tougher navigations ahead, like figuring out if those feelings could stretch across states. Even now, it pulls me right back to that bridge between worlds — young love evolving, full of promise and those first real heartbreaks.
Breakin’ My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes)
Pretty Brown Eyes
Pretty brown eyes, you know I see you It’s a disguise, the way you treat me (The way you treat me, pretty brown eyes) You keep holding on to your thoughts of rejection If you’re with me, you’re secured
You keep telling me that your time is always taken But I keep seeing you out alone (Out alone, pretty brown eyes) yeah Listen to love, your heart is pounding with desire Waiting to be unleashed
Quit breakin’ my heart Breakin’ my heart (pretty brown eyes) Yeah, breakin’ my heart, oh, yeah Breakin’ my heart (pretty brown eyes) Sugar, yeah, yeah
Don’t tell your friends That I don’t mean nothing to you Please, don’t deny the truth (Pretty brown eyes) Tell me right now, I know your heart is in the right place You know I won’t let you down, oh, yeah, yeah
You can’t disguise all the pounding of your heart, yeah (I see your eyes) I see your eyes (Pretty brown eyes) and you can’t hide Start to make sense and quit playing These love games (silly little games) Tell me what you’re gonna do, yeah
Quit breakin’ my heart Breakin’ my heart (pretty brown eyes) Yeah, breakin’ my heart, ooh Breakin’ my heart (pretty brown eyes), yeah
I just want to know one thing Will you be with me? (Pretty brown eyes) Ooh, ooh, ooh, oh, oh Here comes my darlin’ (here comes my darlin’) Here comes romance (here comes romance) Here comes my lovin’ (here comes my lovin’) (Please, honey will you dance?)
Quit breakin’ my heart Breakin’ my heart (pretty brown eyes) Breakin’ my heart, yeah Breakin’ my heart, whoa
Got me cryin’ all inside (pretty brown eyes) Ohh, ho, ho, ooh, I’m talking ’bout (breakin’ my heart) I’m talkin’ ’bout you, I’m talkin’ ’bout me I’m talkin’ ’bout we, I’m talkin’ ’bout we, we (pretty brown eyes)
Here comes my darlin’ (here comes my darlin’) Here comes romance (here comes romance) Here comes my lovin’, will you dance (here comes my lovin’, please, honey will you dance?) Oh yeah, sugar pie, baby Breakin’ my heart
Here comes my darlin’ (here comes my darlin’) Here comes romance (here comes romance) Will you dance (here comes my lovin’, please, honey will you dance?) Oh, hoo, ohh, yeah (pretty brown eyes) Heart, breakin’ my heart (pretty brown eyes) Breakin’ my heart (pretty brown eyes) Breakin’ my heart, breakin’ my heart
Happy Super Bowl Sunday! By the end of the day, some dreams will have come true and others will not. The important thing is never stop dreaming and to always keep trying, just like Charlie Brown in the scene from A Boy Named Charlie Brown!
If you were like me and you were hoping for some sort of big upset at the Oscars next month, it looks like we’re out of luck! The Directors Guild has honored Paul Thomas Anderson as director of the year for One Battle After Another.
The winners are in bold:
FEATURE FILM Paul Thomas Anderson – “One Battle After Another” (Warner Bros.)
Ryan Coogler – “Sinners” (Warner Bros.)
Guillermo Del Toro – “Frankenstein” (Netflix)
Josh Safdie – “Marty Supreme” (A24)
Chloe Zhao – “Hamnet” (Focus Features)
FIRST-TIME THEATRICAL FEATURE FILM Hasan Hadi – “The President’s Cake” (Sony Pictures Classics)
Harry Lighton – “Pillion” (A24)
Alex Russell – “Lurker” (Mubi) Charlie Polinger – “The Plague” (IFC)
Eva Victor – “Sorry, Baby” (A24)
4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Today, we celebrate the 132nd birthday of Texas-born filmmaker, King Vidor! Though Vidor may no longer be a household name, he was one of the most important and idiosyncratic filmmakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The Crowd is regularly cited as one of the most influential films ever made. (Certainly every film that’s ever featured a shot of an anonymous office worker sitting in a room full of cubicles owes a debt to it.) Duel in the Sun went on to inspire countless spaghetti westerns. The Fountainhead is also regularly cited as a favorite by a surprisingly large number of directors.
In honor of King Vidor’s life and legacy, here are….
4 Shots From 4 King Vidor Films
The Champ (1931, dir by King Vidor, DP: Gordon Avil)
Duel In The Sun (1946, dir by King Vidor, DP: Lee Garmes)
The Fountainhead (1949, dir by King Vidor, DP: Robert Burks)
Solomon and Sheba (1959, dir by King Vidor, DP; Fred A. Young)
Through the Shattered Lens 