Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

So has anyone seen Invictus yet? Seeing the trailer for this ad reduced my polish flatmate to a helpless giggling fit. It looks like such an unbelievably awful steaming pile of shite.

I only found out today that it is written by the one and the only john carlin, perhaps the worst journalist writing about sport, and that not only is he the author of the book this movie is based on, (In which rugby builds a new south africa) but he's also in some way responsible for Die Hard 4.0.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

Is this the one with Matt Damon as François Pienaar?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

Is that who he's supposed to be?

[Reed John]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

It got great reviews here, especially Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, but then, I think the film could just be Morgan Freeman playing Nelson Mandela taking a shit and many critics would say it is brilliant.

I don't get the story, exactly. I recall it was a big deal at the time, but from the trailers it looks like there weren't any black players on the SA rugby team. How did that bring the country together?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

it made some white people feel a bit better or something about how things were turning out. but ultimately it's only rugby so most people didn't give a shit.

but since it's john carlin does hollywood, it's probably going to be hilariously overblown nonsense.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

Chester Williams was the only black player in the team, wasn't he?

And he admitted years later that several of his white team-mates treated him like shit.

[Wyatt Earp]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

I don't know about the film, which sounds rubbish, but people are being a bit airy about the RWC and its importance in South Africa, I think. It would be a mistake to overstate this, but for the Boks to contest the RWC, at home, under the banner of the new South Africa, and stand to attention for N'kosi Sikelele, and all that: well, symbols do mean stuff to people. I reckon Mandela was shrewd enough to realise that. It didn't emancipate the townships or anything, but it was a handy way for the ANC to underline that it was serious about the "non-racial" thing, and for Nelson to further dissociate himself from the Winnie strand of race politics. For good or ill, like.

G-Man will correct me if I'm wrong.

[San Bernardhinault]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

I'm off to see it next week. Both me and my better half were giggling hysterically when we saw trailers for it in the US. Matt Damon playing a SA rugby player in a film directed by Clint Eastwood seemed more like something a satirical magazine would invent than a real thing (none of the Americans we were with could understand why we were laughing). As a result of the piss-taking we finally decided we had to see it. I expect it to be laughable.

[Reed John]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

I may rent it someday.

Is the RWC a big deal in rugby circles like the football world cup or is it a more recent invention like the Cricket World Cup and therefore not as revered?

One thing the USA has going for it, sports wise, is that we've got one sport - American football - that is not only almost completely ours but it is one of the few institutions we've got that crosses all racial boundaries.

[Wyatt Earp]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

Reed of the Valley People wrote:

I may rent it someday.

Is the RWC a big deal in rugby circles like the football world cup or is it a more recent invention like the Cricket World Cup and therefore not as revered?

It's recent like the cricket one (more recent, actually), but the reason the cricket one ranks lower than you might think it should isn't really that it's recent--it's because it's strictly a one-day competition, and in England, Australia and several other countries Tests rank higher. The RWC is the premier competition in rugby union; I don't think you'd find many to disagree with that.

South Africa's unusual in the extent to which sport divides along racial lines. As you know, there are plenty of black footballers in England. As you may not know, there are plenty of non-white players in Union, League and cricket as well. It's more about the interaction of geography and class here.

[Reed John]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

I meant to add that American football largely transcends class and geography as well, although it's not as popular in the Northeast on a grassroots level as it is in the south and midwest. It's popular among Asians and Hispanics too, although they are not very welll represented at the top levels of the game yet.

Baseball used to be like that, but it is really suffering in the black communities and I don't think it does very well it does in the South Asian and Southeast Asian communities.

[Ray de Galles]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

Reed of the Valley People wrote:

One thing the USA has going for it, sports wise, is that we've got one sport - American football - that is not only almost completely ours...

That is good why?

Who plays Suzie the waitress in 'Invictus'?

[Ray de Galles]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

The Mighty Kubelgog!!! wrote:

I only found out today that it is written by the one and the only john carlin, perhaps the worst journalist writing about sport, and that not only is he the author of the book this movie is based on, (In which rugby builds a new south africa) but he's also in some way responsible for Die Hard 4.0.

Carlin didn't write the screenplays for either film did he? Only the source material they were based on.

[Reed John]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

One thing the USA has going for it, sports wise, is that we've got one sport - American football - that is not only almost completely ours...

That is good why?

That part isn't necessarily good, I was just noting it for no particular reason.

[Guest]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

And there was me thinking Mihir Bose had made a film

[Stumpy Pepys]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

Extremely dull according to Peter Bradshaw.

[G-Man]

Worst Sports journalist gets movie made

G-Man will correct me if I'm wrong.

No, you're quite right. Rugby was, and is, divided along racial lines. Rugby is big only among black Africans (i.e. Nguni speakers) only in the Eastern Cape, and then only as an active sport. In the Western Cape, rugby is huge in the Coloured community, but the Western Cape is not representative of SA. Rugby was political, symbolic of white might.

The impact of the World Cup was massive, if not necessarily lasting. Not only was it significant that white Afrikaners were singing Nkosi Sikel' iAfrika and that Nelson Mandela wore a Springbok jersey, but the World Cup win was celebrated in the townships. It was, after the 1994 elections, a brief time when there was a sense of national unity. Remember, the corpse of apartheid was still twitching.

Sports is the only thing that seems unite South Africans: the 1996 African Cup of Nations win, the hosting award of the 2010 World Cup, and the last Rugby World Cup win.

Invictus tells a great story from a quite extraordinary period. I haven't seen it, so can't say whether it does so well. But it is a quite amazing story.