Samuel L. Jackson Shoots and Scores
Coach Carter Joins Roster of Quality Sports Movies

Because the new Samuel L. Jackson movie Coach Carter has its theatrical release at exactly the same time that Friday Night Lights is being released on video, the two films are bound to be compared. So let’s get to it.

Both movies are based on true stories of high school athletes facing tough odds while attempting a run at a state championship. In the case of Friday Night Lights it is a small town in Texas where football is king and in Coach Carter it is the Oakland, California outskirt town of Richmond, where basketball is the sport with the most intense local following. The focus of each movie is the new coach and Jackson’s performance—like that of Billy Bob Thornton in Friday Night Lights—is powerful and shows that he is leading man material. Both movies feature impressive sports scenes and fantastic performances from a bunch of unknown young actors.

Friday Night Lights is the vastly superior film, however, when it comes to utilizing the secondary stories in the movie. The football movie rarely moved away from its focus, and when it did those secondary plot lines of players and their problems didn’t detract from the overall story. Coach Carter spends way too much screen time with one of the team’s star players, Kenyon, and his off-court romance with a petulant (we’re supposed to view her as sassy and independent) and pregnant girlfriend. The other side story involves the team’s only Latino player, Timo, and the lure of his uncle’s drug dealing empire on the dead-end streets of Richmond.

Quite simply, the basketball story of a new coach who challenges a bunch of street punks to succeed on the court and in the classroom is compelling stuff, but the side stories reek of an ABC After School Special.

Jackson deserves praise for not trying to raise his character to the point of sainthood. His Ken Carter cusses, loses his temper, and on many occasions humiliates his players into doing what he feels is best for the team. With Jackson’s immaculately pressed suit and salty language, I half expected his Pulp Fiction co-star John Travolta to stroll into the gym at any moment as new assistant coach Vincent Vega.

The makers of Coach Carter do a good job of presenting the story in a way that stays true to the young hip-hop generation of California high-schoolers that it is portraying while making it palatable to the rest of the us. By that I mean that it does not bombard the viewer with trash talk and rap music except where it is appropriate to the situation.

Hollywood trends seem to go in cycles and the two pervasive ones lately are the film biography (Ray, Kinsey, Alexander, etc.), and the quality sports movie (Friday Night Lights, Miracle, Bend It Like Beckham, Coach Carter, Million Dollar Baby). It is comparable to the great baseball movie era of the mid-to-late-80s that gave us The Natural, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams and Eight Men Out.

Coach Carter is rated PG-13 for violence, sexual content, language, teen partying and some drug material. It is currently playing at Regal Cinemas in Boone.

Golden Globe Awards

The 62nd Annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony was held this past Sunday evening and movie experts are already wondering whether winners will go on to Academy Award success. It’s hard to determine, but the general rule of thumb is that a winner of a Golden Globe Award is almost assured of at least a nomination in that same category when the Oscar nods are announced next month.

Although there are over a thousand of Academy members who vote on the Oscars, the Golden Globes are chosen by a secretive 90-member group known as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Over the years, the name has stayed the same but today only a small percentage of the group is actually involved with any kind of journalism—foreign or otherwise.

So who were the winners of the big categories last Sunday? The Golden Globes annually gives out two Best Picture Awards: one for Best Drama and one for Best Musical or Comedy. It’s an idea the Academy should adopt.

The Aviator won Best Drama while Sideways won Best Musical or Comedy. Leonardo DiCaprio won the Best Actor in a Drama Award for his performance as Howard Hughes in The Aviator while Jamie Foxx won the Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy Award for Ray.

Hillary Swank won the Best Actress in the Drama category for the new movie Million Dollar Baby while Annette Bening won the Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy category for Being Julia.

Closer swept the supporting role categories as Clive Owen won Best Supporting Actor and Natalie Portman won Best Supporting Actress for their work in the movie.

Clint Eastwood won the Best Director Award for helming Million Dollar Baby.

The Spanish film The Sea Inside took home the Best Foreign Film Award, besting two other high profile films, The Motorcycle Diaries (Brazil) and House of Flying Daggers (China).

Of course, it is hard to comment on the Golden Globe winners since only one of the above mentioned films—Ray—was actually shown in Boone.