Or rather, its official Olympic film, White Vertigo:
This review (which will be lengthier than usual) will spend some time discussing the sports I watch, including the niche in the United States.
As a tonic to both the horror movies I've mostly been devoted to since September and all those reviews of the Borat sequel (no offense to anyone reading this... personally, the “bothering people” genre has never been of interest to me so that's why I have avoided all of Mr. Cohen's characters that harass real life individuals... the same goes for that asshat Tom Green and the repulsive show he had) I decided to see another one of these Olympics films they have currently on the Criterion Channel, as I do enjoy watching sports-even though I am not an irrational fanatic about them like too many sports fans are.
In the United States I have seen the major ones (basketball, hockey, baseball, and what is known around the world as “gridiron football”) and attended various games in person, both amateur and professional. Association football, MMA and kickboxing are the other ones of note. Some niche sports are on television over here which are interesting to watch... both versions of rugby, cricket (well, highlights of games, anyhow; those events are even longer than Lav Diaz's films!) and Australian rules football are chief examples there. In fact, the last two nights were spent with an altered sleeping schedule so I could see a pair of events from the Land Down Under: the Grand Final games of both the Australian Football League and the National Rugby League. A recent revelation to me: thanks to YouTube, I realize that it's a shame neither Gaelic football or hurling can be seen on the boob tube in the U.S.; both are a lot of fun and I am glad those unique Irish sports have been pushed hard over there so they can theoretically exist forever. As for having sports during a pandemic...
Anyhow, I chose this as it has a nice rating on Letterboxd, as fair as Olympics films go. For something directed by a guy-Giorgio Ferroni-who helmed various Italian genre pictures (including one shown on MST3K, Secret Agent Super Dragon) this was pretty good. The opening 15 minutes or so is “arty”, spent on showing some of the residents and the area of Cortina d'Ampezzo, in the northern part of Italy-and the change of season from fall to winter. That area has stunning beauty & this showed it off rather well. Finally, the Olympic Torch is shown and we see a few minutes of the opening ceremonies. After that, it was at first fast-paced w/ some quick cross-cutting between different sports if they something in common. Thankfully, after awhile that mostly calms down so it isn't as frenetic. It was a nice recap of action in what was not a long piece of time (less than 90 minutes after the opening & opening ceremonies).
It was filmed well (believe it or not, the cinematographer had few notable credits to his name but Aldo Scavarda was the director of photography for L'Avventura) and did portray the various events in a satisfactory fashion-for example, how grueling a 50 kilometers cross-country event is. The score was varied and at times was inspired-such as hearing free jazz during the hockey segment. Finally, the narration had some great lines of dialogue... note that I am NOT referring to the casual sexism that is sometimes presented. Two interesting notes is that Cortina is scheduled to co-host the 2026 Winter Olympics (w/ Milan) and several of the sights seen here (like the ski jump area and the bobsled track) appeared in the Bond movie For Your Eyes Only, which of course has a section which was set & filmed in Cortina.
If nothing else, if anyone cared to know they got a snapshot at the sorts of sports I like to watch.
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