Happy Thursday jive turkeys! Hope you all survived the perfect storm that was this weekend. If there ever was a MOVIES&FOOD god it was this past weekend, granting us four consecutive days with an excuse to get blacked out, park ourselves on the couch and watch college basketball, and eat a shit ton of food. Now that your brackets are all destroyed it's time to tune back into the only one that matters: The MOVIES&FOOD 30 for 30 Elite Eight. This week we got two basketball classics facing off with (2) No Crossover VS (7) The Fab Five.
The Case for The Fab Five: They invented swag before swag was swag. The documentary is a
flashback to a time when baggy shorts, hip-hop music and black socks were considered controversial. Led by five freshman known as "The Fab Five", the documentary dives into the trials and tribulations faced by the Michigan Men's Basketball team in the early 90's. Director Jason Hehir lets the players speak for themselves, except for Chris Webber who declined to participate. It explores topics such as Chris Webber's infamous timeout snafu, captivating tourney runs, opinions of Christian Laettner and the pay-for-play scandal that led Michigan to vacate their consecutive NCAA tourney runner-up finishes. The film is an essential document of a defining moment of the new wave of sports culture.
The Case for The Fab Five: They invented swag before swag was swag. The documentary is a
flashback to a time when baggy shorts, hip-hop music and black socks were considered controversial. Led by five freshman known as "The Fab Five", the documentary dives into the trials and tribulations faced by the Michigan Men's Basketball team in the early 90's. Director Jason Hehir lets the players speak for themselves, except for Chris Webber who declined to participate. It explores topics such as Chris Webber's infamous timeout snafu, captivating tourney runs, opinions of Christian Laettner and the pay-for-play scandal that led Michigan to vacate their consecutive NCAA tourney runner-up finishes. The film is an essential document of a defining moment of the new wave of sports culture.
The Case for No Crossover: As one of the most electrifying NBA players in recent memory, Allen Iverson was as polarizing as it gets; you either loved him or hated him. As an unathletic, prepubescent youth I grew up idolizing AI for his tenacity on the court, but I never knew anything about his ambiguous back story. The fascinating part about this documentary is that Allen Iverson was not even interviewed, but in reality, he didn’t need to be. More so than examining Allen Iverson, the person, No Crossover instead investigates the cultural phenomenon that he became following an incident in February 1993 when Iverson was in high school. Iverson eventually landed in jail and what ensued was years of racial tension leaving his hometown divided and Iverson's once golden boy reputation in shambles.
The Verdict: Both of these stories explore the impact that race had on sports in the 90's. They were both set in a time when contemporary media painted AI and The Fab Five as thugs and villains because they represented a culture that was different. In my opinion No Crossover did the better job. Giving a voice to both sides, No Crossover makes a valiant attempt to stake out a seemingly impossible middle ground between the white and black communities in the early 90's. The film has the extraordinary quality of being simultaneously clarifying and murky, and that’s just great journalism on James’ part. Michigan and The Fab Five come up short once again.
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