Quitting Time. 2022. USA. Directed by Cameron Yates. DCP. 7 min.
“An MTA city bus driver finds an unexpected way of keeping on the move, practicing cheerleading routines in a group of game-but-unlikely prospects for the New York Liberty’s Timeless Dancers. Timeless is what they all are” (Amy Taubin).
High Flying Bird. 2019. USA. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Screenplay by Tarrell Alvin McCraney. With André Holland, Zazie Beetz, Melvin Gregg. DCP. 90 min.
“Visually minimalist and shot by Soderbergh on a couple of souped-up iPhone 7s, this basketball story contains no more than a minute or two of passing and shooting by teenagers in a Bronx community center. Its thrills are heady rather than kinetic. Soderbergh depicts a deal-driven Manhattan as a construct of vertical rectangles: the tall windows that frame the interiors of offices, restaurants, and apartments in high-rise buildings; the buildings themselves that line the streets. André Holland plays a sports agent working on behalf of a rookie client whose career might be destroyed before it even starts when the NBA owners call for a lockout at the beginning of the season. The agent, who has the ability to read the movement of power in the way that great point guards read the court, has a visionary plan to reveal the owners as mere middlemen, standing between the players (the talent) and the source of the money: new media platforms that have cut into broadcast TV profits, leaving the networks as vulnerable as the owners. You could read this as a new model for the film business as well. High Flying Bird is reflexive, a movie about basketball that is also about its own making. In addition, it’s a promo for a book that’s as revelatory today as it was when it was first published in 1968: The Revolt of the Black Athlete by Harry Edwards—a civil rights activist, scholar, and former college athlete. The book is the movie’s ‘Rosebud.’ You’ll see…” (Amy Taubin).