Sport and Cinema.com

The cable sports giant, ESPN, is reportedly going to become the subject of a new film.

According to an Associated Press report, NBC, bidding against ESPN/ABC and Fox, has retained the U.S. Olympic television rights in a four-games deal through 2020 worth more than $4 billion.

Writer/Producer and Sportandcinema.com creator and contributor Randy Williams will be teaching a new course this summer at the renowned USC School of Cinematic Arts bringing his “Sports in Cinema” studies and findings to a new generation of students.

Well since my pre-playoff prediction of who will meet in the Super Bowl have quickly been proven wrong, time to turn to another sport – baseball.
In the vein of the hit series that ran on HBO about the NFL called “Hard Knocks”, cable network Showtime is teaming up with Major League Baseball Productions for a [...]

The road to Super Bowl XLV in Dallas gets more treacherous as the league enters the playoffs where it is lose and you’re done time. No rest for the weary (except for those that earned a bye – Steelers, Patriots, Bears and Falcons, but as recent history has proven the higher seeds aren’t locks for a Super Bowl berth.)

The curtain has fallen on a new and compelling “television film festival”. ESPN has just concluded its opening run of thirty engaging and provocative movies, premiering 14 months ago. Meticulous and sharply observed, this “30 for 30” project has been as ambitious an undertaking as anything the network has done.

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and co-director Lynn Novick go deep with an extra inning chapter to their earlier work about the sport.

This installment brings the national pastime’s recent history up-to-date, covering the years 1994-2009.

While on assignment writing a football story for the Los Angeles Times Down Under in Melbourne, Australia, I had the good fortune to catch up recently with noted Aussie director, Fred Schepisi.

With credits like The Russia House, Barbarosa, Empire Falls and Roxanne and busily editing his latest picture, The Secret River, the native of Victoria spent some time in his Melbourne high-rise to discuss his well-received fish-out-of-water sports comedy Mr. Baseball. The picture features Tom Selleck as a fading baseball player traded to a Japanese team and has trouble fitting into that culture.

On the evening of September 7, 1996, Mike Tyson, the WBC heavyweight champion, attempted to take Bruce Seldon’s WBA title at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

At this point in his career, Tyson’s fights had become somewhat of a cultural phenomenon, where the ever present hype of the professional boxing scene would come face to face with the worlds of big business, Hollywood, and hip hop.

In the fall of 1993, in his prime and at the summit of the sports world, Michael Jordan walked away from pro basketball.

After leading the Dream Team to an Olympic gold medal in 1992 and taking the Chicago Bulls to their third consecutive NBA championship the following year, Jordan was jolted by the murder of his father