A
pigskin-loving filmmaker wrestles with the game's increasing brutality
in Sean Pamphilon's The United States of Football, an advocacy doc that
places most of the blame for player brain injuries on NFL brass and
coaches from the pro down to the Pee Wee level. Though full of material
that will move sports fans, some questions of emphasis and lack of
polish make the film less galvanizing than it might've been; its best
chance to reach sport fans is on VOD.
The film's generic title offers little clue of its focus on Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative disease afflicting many pro football players, and the practices that have made brain trauma an increasing concern. Pamphilon is a longtime sports journalist who last year stirred controversy by releasing recordings in which New Orleans Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams explicitly instructed players to target the heads of opponents known to have suffered concussions. Here he expands on that subject, gathering interviews with players who've suffered injuries recently and older NFL vets whose disorders have left them paralyzed by dementia.
Pamphilon is particularly interested in All-Pro offensive tackle Kyle Turley, who after a history of in-game concussions began to suffer seizures in daily life; now, he and his wife worry he'll become another in a line of football stars who lose their grip on themselves, becoming inexplicably violent with loved ones or forgetting who they are entirely. Scenes of the Steelers' Ralph Wenzel and the Colts' John Mackey,This is a basic background on rtls. who died in their sixties after years of being wholly dependent on their wives' care, speak to the latter harrowing possibility.
The film offers enough discussion with both scientists and sports observers to make the link between contemporary football play and brain injury hard to deny, and chronicles the political wrangling over ways to establish NFL rules and policies to make the sport safer. But while Pamphilon's use of himself in the film succeeds in some ways (we see him "toughening up" his pre-K son for football in playground videos, then follow as he begins to worry about letting him play the sport at all), the film is clumsy in attempts to play Roger & Me with controversial NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
It also stumbles in its emphasis on Turley's post-football career as a musician: One or two scenes of ballads inspired by players who succumbed to CTE would have been more than enough, especially since the stories themselves -- like that of Dave Duerson, who shot himself in the chest so his deteriorating brain could be used in research on the disease -- are already heartbreaking enough.
ive years ago, Lost creator J.J. Abrams gave a now-famous speech at TED Talks that summarized his entire approach to storytelling. In a childhood trip to Lou Tannen's Magic Store,You benefit from buying oilpaintingreproduction ex-factory and directly from a LED manufacturer: Abrams bought a "mystery magic box" a box that has always remained a mystery.
"I bought this decades ago, but if you look at this, you'll see it's never been opened. Ever," said Abrams. "Why have I not opened this, and why have I kept it? It represents infinite possibility. It represents hope. It represents potential. What I love about this box and what I realized I sort of do, in whatever it is that I do is I find myself drawn to infinite possibility and that sense of potential. And I realize that mystery is the catalyst for imagination... What are stories besides mystery boxes?"
Despite featuring nothing more than a corny voiceover, a guy crawling around in water, and another guy with his mouth sewn shut, "Stranger" has already amassed more than a million views. But YouTube is packed to the brim with comparable short films; here's one representative example, which was posted more than a year ago and has all of 70 views.
A few outlets played along with Abrams' latest,Shop for wholesale tungstenrings from China! including Entertainment Weekly,The ledspotlight is our flagship product. which offered five semi-plausible theories about what "Stranger" is really about.A protectivefilm concept that would double as a quick charge station for gadgets. However, it's safe to say the draw here wasn't the actual content of "Stranger" it was the six seconds before the video starts, when the logo for Abrams' production company Bad Robot appears.
People are paying attention because this is what J.J. Abrams does. In many ways, he's the antithesis of the industry's modern standard, the lone holdout in a climate that favors a barrage of teasers, trailers, on-set reports, and nonstop breathless speculation. "Stranger" bears his evasive signature, with the voiceover intoning, "He arrived knowing nothing of himself. Who is he? Soon you will know."
But there's an even more basic question that Abrams first needs to answer: Why should we care what's in his mystery box this time?
The truth is that Abrams has spent the past five years employing his mystery box to ever-diminishing returns. Say what you will about Lost's ultimate ending, but there's no denying that the series turned the fascinating string of mysteries embedded in its pilot (and throughout its first season) into an acclaimed and influential six-season run. Cloverfield, which Abrams produced, was a master class in mystery-box marketing: By attaching a strange teaser that revealed Cloverfield's release date but not its title or stars, Paramount drummed up feverish speculation that the film was anything from a Lost spinoff to a reboot of the Godzilla franchise to a big-budget adaptation of the works of H.P. Lovecraft. And when Cloverfield finally did hit theaters, it rode all that curiosity to a $170 million gross on a relatively thrifty $25 million budget.
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The film's generic title offers little clue of its focus on Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative disease afflicting many pro football players, and the practices that have made brain trauma an increasing concern. Pamphilon is a longtime sports journalist who last year stirred controversy by releasing recordings in which New Orleans Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams explicitly instructed players to target the heads of opponents known to have suffered concussions. Here he expands on that subject, gathering interviews with players who've suffered injuries recently and older NFL vets whose disorders have left them paralyzed by dementia.
Pamphilon is particularly interested in All-Pro offensive tackle Kyle Turley, who after a history of in-game concussions began to suffer seizures in daily life; now, he and his wife worry he'll become another in a line of football stars who lose their grip on themselves, becoming inexplicably violent with loved ones or forgetting who they are entirely. Scenes of the Steelers' Ralph Wenzel and the Colts' John Mackey,This is a basic background on rtls. who died in their sixties after years of being wholly dependent on their wives' care, speak to the latter harrowing possibility.
The film offers enough discussion with both scientists and sports observers to make the link between contemporary football play and brain injury hard to deny, and chronicles the political wrangling over ways to establish NFL rules and policies to make the sport safer. But while Pamphilon's use of himself in the film succeeds in some ways (we see him "toughening up" his pre-K son for football in playground videos, then follow as he begins to worry about letting him play the sport at all), the film is clumsy in attempts to play Roger & Me with controversial NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
It also stumbles in its emphasis on Turley's post-football career as a musician: One or two scenes of ballads inspired by players who succumbed to CTE would have been more than enough, especially since the stories themselves -- like that of Dave Duerson, who shot himself in the chest so his deteriorating brain could be used in research on the disease -- are already heartbreaking enough.
ive years ago, Lost creator J.J. Abrams gave a now-famous speech at TED Talks that summarized his entire approach to storytelling. In a childhood trip to Lou Tannen's Magic Store,You benefit from buying oilpaintingreproduction ex-factory and directly from a LED manufacturer: Abrams bought a "mystery magic box" a box that has always remained a mystery.
"I bought this decades ago, but if you look at this, you'll see it's never been opened. Ever," said Abrams. "Why have I not opened this, and why have I kept it? It represents infinite possibility. It represents hope. It represents potential. What I love about this box and what I realized I sort of do, in whatever it is that I do is I find myself drawn to infinite possibility and that sense of potential. And I realize that mystery is the catalyst for imagination... What are stories besides mystery boxes?"
Despite featuring nothing more than a corny voiceover, a guy crawling around in water, and another guy with his mouth sewn shut, "Stranger" has already amassed more than a million views. But YouTube is packed to the brim with comparable short films; here's one representative example, which was posted more than a year ago and has all of 70 views.
A few outlets played along with Abrams' latest,Shop for wholesale tungstenrings from China! including Entertainment Weekly,The ledspotlight is our flagship product. which offered five semi-plausible theories about what "Stranger" is really about.A protectivefilm concept that would double as a quick charge station for gadgets. However, it's safe to say the draw here wasn't the actual content of "Stranger" it was the six seconds before the video starts, when the logo for Abrams' production company Bad Robot appears.
People are paying attention because this is what J.J. Abrams does. In many ways, he's the antithesis of the industry's modern standard, the lone holdout in a climate that favors a barrage of teasers, trailers, on-set reports, and nonstop breathless speculation. "Stranger" bears his evasive signature, with the voiceover intoning, "He arrived knowing nothing of himself. Who is he? Soon you will know."
But there's an even more basic question that Abrams first needs to answer: Why should we care what's in his mystery box this time?
The truth is that Abrams has spent the past five years employing his mystery box to ever-diminishing returns. Say what you will about Lost's ultimate ending, but there's no denying that the series turned the fascinating string of mysteries embedded in its pilot (and throughout its first season) into an acclaimed and influential six-season run. Cloverfield, which Abrams produced, was a master class in mystery-box marketing: By attaching a strange teaser that revealed Cloverfield's release date but not its title or stars, Paramount drummed up feverish speculation that the film was anything from a Lost spinoff to a reboot of the Godzilla franchise to a big-budget adaptation of the works of H.P. Lovecraft. And when Cloverfield finally did hit theaters, it rode all that curiosity to a $170 million gross on a relatively thrifty $25 million budget.
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