Think the Olympics are all about fun and games? Heck, no. They have practical origins.

Police Comics #1, August 1941

You never know when you'll have to harpoon a fleeing pirate!

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Watching Olympics. Back soon.

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The Olympics are here again, which of course means that I'm watching fewer movies and more sports — just in time for the end of football season!

9/2018. Black Samson (1974)
The protagonist of this blaxploitation film has a pet lion that... doesn't ever do anything. Is it only here because the biblical Samson killed a lion? ("What is stronger than a lion? Black Samson!") More interestingly, although the film very much indulges in themes of black solidarity, the "white man" isn't really the bad guy here; that honor goes to one crazy, wannabe mafia boss who even the white men don't like. (Is Johnny Nappa a Philistine? Which of the girls dancing in Samson's topless bar is Delilah?) Hardly great cinema, but not entirely worthless, either.

10/2019. The Story of Three Loves (1953)
This anthology film lives up to its title, telling three different stories about lost loves is the good kind of weird. The middle chapter would appear to have inspired the movie Big (with Ricky Nelson in what would be Hanks' role), and the third chapter showcases Kirk Douglas' typical commitment to his roles, in this case as an obsessed trapeze artist.

11/2020. How to Build a Girl (2019)
Beanie Feldstein pretends to be young and English in the early 90s British music scene. As I've admitted before, I'm a sucker for coming-of-age films. This one hits all the usual beats, and of course I enjoyed it.

She orders a Coke in a bar, then never touches it. It just sits on that table. What is this, an SEC football press conference?

12/2021. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
Holy crap, the bus fight on this thing is amazing. They really should have found a way to make that the finale. I'd heard a lot of complaints about that CGI-driven finale, and I think they are all well deserved. The real problem isn't the CGI but the fact that the CGI characters introduced late in the third act have no character development before their action sequence. You've gotta give the audience a reason to care about your ridiculous animated dragons, Marvel, otherwise we're just checking our watches as we wait for the inevitable end-credit cameos.

13/2022. Putney Swope (1969)
The narrative is ostensibly about a no-nonsense outsider taking over a Madison Avenue advertising firm, but that's mostly just an excuse to satire consumerism, capitalism, socialism, racism, sexism, and, frankly, every -ism in all the best, most absurdist ways. Near the end of the film, there's a very self-indulgent several minutes of topless fight attendants which wouldn't be out of place in Kentucky Fried Movie but here comes across as appropriately damning of American society. As the man at the breakfast table eating Ethereal Cereal would say, "No shit!"

More to come.

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I'm still all-in on the Olympics, so I've little time right now for movies. However, the week before the games began, TCM ran a whole day of Olympics documentary. In training for the games, I caught three:

100. (1959.) The Games of the V Olympiad Stockholm, 1912 (2017)
This "documentary" is essentially three hours of remastered newsreel footage of preparation for the 1912 games, the games in progress, and the immediate aftermath of the games, all without any sort of commentary. While incredibly clear, the shots of the games themselves show disappointingly little of the actual competitions. All you're left with is hours of people swimming, running, boating, riding, and shooting through the frames on their way to standing on podiums. It's an interesting historical document but barely entertainment.

101. (1960.) First: The Official Film of the London 2012 Olympic Games (2012)
A century later, the potential of cinema is realized as the games are filmed as pure propaganda... for the games. Come see the Greatest Show on Earth, the ultimate triumph of the human spirit over physical and mental limitations! I very much enjoyed the London games themselves, but I found their official film to be as generally empty and unsatisfying as the average corporate sponsor's commercial tie-in product.

102. (1961.) Tokyo Olympiad (1964)
Somewhere in between the two extremes of documenting history and re-writing it is this, a true work of art. The games are messy and confusing, just like the very human athletes who participate in them. And despite — maybe even *because* of — all their shortcomings, they're also amazingly beautiful. If you watch just one documentary about an Olympic games, make it this one.

(Forget what I said earlier about unsatisfying corporate sponsors. Coca-Cola has been sponsoring the games since 1928. As they'll be quick to tell you, winners always have and always will drink Coke!)

A fourth documentary is still on my DVR, so there may very well be more to come.

Update 08/14: finally got to that fourth movie, so I might as well put it here:

107. (1966.) XIVth Olympiad: The Glory of Sport (1948)
This "documentary" is essentially two hours of color newsreel footage of the 1948 games, the first after the 8-year hiatus imposed by World War II. It's far more watchable than the 1912 documentary I mentioned above, but its value is still almost entirely as a visual almanac of what the games were like before they transitioned from a purely amateur endeavor to the slick, corporate-produced games we have today.

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Autocorrect continues to plague me.

After Simone Biles withdrew from Olympic competition citing mental issues, I tried to Google the definition of "gymnastics twisties."

My autocorrect changed it to "gymnastics titties."

I'm sure they're nice, but that's not what I'm interested in (right now).

If it's true that the average man thinks about sex once every 7 seconds and that computers process information 10 million times faster than humans, how often does my computer think about sex?

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What with plywood going for $85 a 4-by-8 sheet these days coupled with the bad mildewing of last year's Kool-Aid Man (who now has a permanent home screwed to the wall of the garage), I hadn't planned to do any new lawn art this summer.

Then while watching the preliminary Olympic softball games, I got an idea. Finding a leftover scrap of plywood, I put this fella together in world record time (three days from idea to placement):

It's been 25 years since the Atlanta games, and not once in the past decades have I thought to myself "I wonder what Izzy is doing these days?" He's the New Coke of Olympic mascots: remembered mostly for what a terrible mistake it was.

But he'll always remind us of the summer of '96.

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Finishing off movies from July:

69. (1007.) You Said a Mouthful (1932)
I think I've said this before, but Joe E. Brown was the Adam Sandler of the 20s and 30s. This light comedy of errors generates the occasional smile, but it's hardly must-see watching.

70. (1008.) Donovan's Brain (1953)
In this science fiction thriller, a scientist makes the mistake of saving the brain of an evil capitalist. The thoughts of the brain are too powerful to be contained in a single tank, and things go downhill for everyone involved. I liked this movie a lot but felt it fumbled the ending where Nancy Reagan should have been revealed as the master manipulator. Maybe I was reading too much real life into it.

71. (1009.) The Drowning Pool (1975)
This film noir detective mystery is a sequel to Harper, also featuring Paul Newman in the title role. It lacks the previous movie's seditious Hollywood Babylon elements, but is plenty entertaining in its own right. (I just love detective movies.)

72. (1010.) Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016)
A stupid comedy that is more fun than it ought to be. I think the actors/actresses had a great time drinking and clowning in the Hawaiian sun, and it shows.

Fair warning: So far, I've watched exactly one movie in August. There's been way too much Olympics on television to have time for scripted entertainment. We'll see what happens when the games are over.

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When did the release of a movie trailer become something that gets hyped for weeks? A trailer isn't a movie, it's a commercial. It's 60 seconds of clips from a movie that are usually better than the movie itself. Is that worth getting excited about?

NBC and Disney seem to think it is. For the first week of the Olympics, they told me to hang on until Thursday, when I'd finally get my first taste of the new Star Wars movie in the form of a new trailer. Now the trailer has been released, and I have to wait only four more months until the film comes out. Hooray?

What's so magical about trailers? The new Marvel movie, Doctor Strange, runs a television ad suggesting I should sprint to the Internet to see the "full" trailer, as though it's too good for television. If it's that great, it will come to me. That's what good movies do; they transcend.

And is all this hype really necessary? Summer blockbusters are grossing half a billion dollars these days. If Louis B. Mayer got wind of that amount in the afterlife, he'd step out of his tomb and start making zombie musicals.

Ask yourself, is your life so terrible that the only thing keeping you going is the prospect of a new movie coming out for Christmas? If so, I suggest you need to see a psychiatrist, not a movie.

(For the record, I wasn't impressed with the Star Wars trailer. Can't they tell a story that doesn't have to do with prequels or sequels? That galaxy far, far away is starting to feel like a really small place. Also, part of the appeal of the Star Wars universe has always looked lived in, but now it looks like a fine layer of dirt has coated the camera lens, too. Ugh. That's what I want when I go to the movies: to watch a solid gray screen for 2 hours. What's wrong with color, Hollywood?)

Now get off my lawn.

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Eleven years ago, I attended Dan Marino's Hall of Fame induction ceremony. The crowd was made up almost entirely of Dolphins fans. I imagine it was much the same thing for Packers fans yesterday when Brett Favre was inducted yesterday. However, I don't know, because I spent all day watching the Olympics.

I found out only after the fact that they canceled the Hall of Fame Game, the annual kickoff to the NFL preseason, because of poor field conditions. Apparently, no one had tested their field prior to today, and their choice of field paint made it too slick. That, or they worried that no one would be watching.

In years past, I've sometimes tuned into the HoF Game because there was nothing else to watch. But because of 5 NBC channels of Olympic coverage — including Michael Phelps own the men's 4x100-meter freestyle relay, Novak Djokavich loose a fantastic first round match of tennis, Gabby Douglas place third overall and still be disqualified from the all-around gymnastics competition — it never occurred to me to turn on the NFL Network. I suspect that I wasn't the only one.

Maybe I'll watch next year, NFL. But don't count on it. The Olympics come only every four years, but the NFL preseason is always too long.

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