Posts with tag SpaceJam
It's March Madness -- Time for the Best Basketball Movies Ever!
Filed under: Sports », Fandom », Lists »
Sure, you've got Hoosiers, Hoop Dreams and (my personal favorite) White Man Can't Jump, but can you name the top 20 basketball flicks of all time? Not sure I can get past eight -- so major props go out to the folks at Moviefone for coming up with a list of the 20 best basketball films of all time, in honor of March Madness. Ah, the madness of it all; the teams, the brackets, the Cinderella stories. Where would we be in life without the Final Four?
Unfortunately, Air Bud and Eddie didn't make their list, but among the top 20 we have films like The Air Up There (oh, Kevin Bacon can do more than just dance), The Basketball Diaries (drugs and b-ball don't mix so well), He Got Game (he got Denzel, Jordan and Shaq), Space Jam (because we always desperately wanted Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan to pair up on the big screen) and the recent Semi-Pro (Will Ferrell's 85th sports-related film). Of course there's a whole lot more -- including films I bet you've never heard of -- so make sure to dribble on over to Moviefone and vote for your favorites. Alternatively, feel free to enter your own write-in vote ... in case, ya know, Air Bud just happens to hit you in a personal place.
Oregon Gets an Animation Studio
Filed under: Animation », Tech Stuff », Newsstand »
If you're an aspiring animator, you might want to start looking at real estate in Oregon., becausePhil Knight's new animation company, Laika Entertainment, is about to expand. Knight plans to build a 30-acre campus in Tualatin, Oregon, not too far from his Nike headquarters. With the new complex and studio will come more openings for talented animators to work on Laika's first two films, Coraline (based on Neil Gaiman's book, pictured) and Jack and Ben's Animated Adventure. Right now Laika is centered in Portland with less than 200 employees, but they plan on hiring about 400 more by the time the campus opens in 2008.
Although Knight hasn't always been the most admirable man in business (see Michael Moore's The Big One), I am excited about his move into movie-making. As you can expect from the man who made sneakers one of the most important consumer products of our time, he is taking great care to learn his new business in depth so that he can be just as successful with animated films as he is with high-tops. Of course, the thing I keep thinking is that he could easily do some cross-promotion by producing a sequel to Space Jam. But he's probably smarter than that.








