The Super Bowl just ended so I guess it’s time to recap the reaction of the members of the TSL Team who watched and tweeted about it. Jeff, Erin, Case, Leonard, and I all watched and …. I don’t know. The game kind of sucked this year. I didn’t care about the game and I thought that commercials were kind of boring.. Case thought the commercials were depressing. Leonard got so bored that he left for ice cream. Jeff and Erin are mad that the Bengals lost. Even though it wasn’t as bad as last year, there was still weren’t as many movie commercials as in the past.
I think our collective reaction can be summed up as this:
If this aired during the Super Bowl, I missed it. Regardless, here is the DC — The World Needs Heroes trailer, which features scenes from several upcoming DCEU films.
Here’s the teaser that I know a lot of people were watching the Super Bowl specifically to see, the teaser for Amazon Prime’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power!
Here’s the Netflix Super Bowl spot, which includes an extended look at The Adam Project. Netflix is promising a new movie every week. Hopefully, they’ll all be good.
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
I have to admit that I don’t know much about football but I do know quite a bit about football movies. Since today is Super Bowl Sunday, it seems appropriate to pay tribute to America’s unofficial holiday with….
4 Shots From 4 Football Films
The Freshman (1925, dir by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, DP: Walter Lundin)
Any Given Sunday (1999, dir by Oliver Stone, DP: Salvatore Totino)
Friday Night Lights (2004, dir by Peter Berg, DP: Tobias Schliessler)
Carter High (2015, dir by Arthur Muhammad, DP: Ron Gonzalez)
I once read an article where Al Pacino’s lock room speech in Oliver’s Stone 1999 football film, Any Given Sunday, was described as being the most inspirational locker room speech ever.
I don’t really know if I agree with that.
I mean, to be honest, Al Pacino’s Tony D’Amato kind of looks really beaten down in this scene. It looks like, instead of spending the previous night studying game film and coming up with plays, the coach spent the previous night out drinking. If I was one of his players, I would be wondering if the coach was hungover and I might reset that. I might be like, “Hey, I’ve been staying off cocaine all week for this game and then coach shows up looking like he’s just killed Frank Lopez. Someone get Aaron Eckhart in here — he’s the coach we need!” Also, for the most part, his speech seems to be more about him than the team. It’s like, “I’ve got failed marriages, I’ve got this, I’ve got that …. life is a game of inches!” Well, that’s great, Tony, but how are we going to win the game? “I got problems!” Well, we’ve all got problems, coach! I mean, he’s talking to a room full of people who probably can’t stand up without hearing a hundred different things going snap in their knees.
Do locker room speeches really make that much of a difference? I’ve seen enough sports films that I often wondered this. Is it a requirement that a coach give a speech? If the coach refused to give a speech, the team would still be obligated to go out there and play hard, right? As I’ve said many a time, I really don’t get the point of long speeches but some of that is because of the ADD. There’s no way that I could listen to anyone talk about life being a game of inches for four minutes. I would just zone out.
What if a coach filibustered and just kept going and going in his speech? Would the team have to forfeit?
Would it have been more effective to show the team the Willie Beamon music video as opposed to forcing them to listen to a speech from hung over Tony D? Well, probably not. If I remember correctly, the team did win the big game and they did it even after Dennis Quaid got injured for like the 100th time. So, I guess the speech did work. That shows you everything I know about football.
Anyway, I know a lot of people love this speech. I mean, there’s a reason why it showed up in that car commercial. And, to be honest, it worked pretty well in that commercial. Certainly, it made more sense to use Tony’s “life is a game of inches” speech as opposed to Robin Williams’s poetry speech from Dead Poets Society. (Car commercials are weird.) So, in honor of those people and Super Bowl Sunday, here is the Tony D’Amato Any Given Sunday locker room speech:
