Word: alie
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...anyone deserves an award, it is Ali; his charisma makes the film. A preacher whose fans are his congregation, he exhorts children to "Quit eatin' candy ... We must whup Mr. Tooth Decay." He hectors in poetry: "If you think the world was surprised when Nixon resigned,/Just wait till I kick Foreman's behind." Some reporters, like George Plimpton, suspected that Ali's smiles camouflaged his fear of the big, punishing champ...
...Gast and filmmaker Taylor Hackford (An Officer and a Gentleman) completed the film in 1994, hoping to promote it with a sound track CD comprising music from the festival stars (James Brown, B.B. King, Miriam Makeba) and new groups like the Fugees, who laid down a rap track over Ali's incantatory doggerel. But no one wanted to distribute the movie--until it won the documentary prize at last year's Sundance festival. The picture opens this week, 22 years late, but just in time for an expected Oscar nomination...
Foreman is largely absent from the film, partly because in 1974 he was not very good copy; next to Ali he sounded sluggish and luggish. But in his looming silence, Foreman was supernally intimidating--the shadow of death, everyone said, in what would surely be Ali's last, humiliating battle. Before the fight, "Ali's dressing room was like a morgue," says Norman Mailer, who as always is a top cornerman of the intellect, a brilliant intuiter of other men's fear and resolve...
King, Mailer and Plimpton stand out in the film's rich supporting cast. But two other characters hover above When We Were Kings like the Ghosts of Kinshasa Future: the Foreman and Ali of today. One became a preacher and found a rich comic voice that has finally made him an endearing figure in sports. The other is afflicted with Parkinson's syndrome, his grace palsied, his old raffish rhetoric muted. The King is a physical pauper now, and at his sight we age and ache. His mind, however, is not so impaired, nor is his taste for raillery. Ali...
...film's title is rueful. Ali proved that athletes could be kings then; today they are often multimillionaires who behave like kids with a mean streak of attention deficit disorder. Some are naughty and nuts, like Dennis Rodman, and are rewarded with fat contracts by sneaker companies. Even the best pros display their worth mostly by avoiding trouble. Ali was different; he found a gospel and lived by it, whatever the cost to his reputation or to the job that he so loved. When We Were Kings recalls a time, not so long ago, when an athlete could...