Drexl spivey biography of michael jordan

Whether or not you agree with an NFL team handing a potential $60 million in guarantees to a guy who has neck leprosy, I think that we can come to a consensus on one thing: John Elway has really big balls. HUGE balls. Balls the size of light bulbs. His balls are so big, you could harvest stem cells from them and plant them inside Peyton Manning's cervical vertebrae to facilitate the healing process.

Only Elway could have gotten away with this. If it had been some other figurehead running the Broncos, they wouldn't have had enough good will stored up to openly court Manning and prepare to trade away a player who, while lacking in many basic QB skills, is the NFL's most popular player and a huge audience draw. Elway wasn't afraid to piss off all the Tebowtards out there (get ready for lots of half-Bronco/half-Jaguar Tebow jerseys next fall). He won two Super Bowls and is the greatest player in Broncos history, which gave him the clout needed to take out his big balls and wipe them across Tim Tebow's chin.

There are many, many instances of great athletes going on to become ruinous front office executives: Matt Millen, Michael Jordan, Elgin Baylor, Peyton Manning (circa 2018). Elway might still end up joining their ranks. But for now, I applaud him for having the stones to shrug off a miracle playoff victory and give blue state Americans like me the hefty dose of Tebow schadenfreude we've come to know and lust after. God, I love it. If there were a network that alternated between Duke tourney losses and footage of Tim Tebow being flayed with broken glass, I'd never leave home. Tebow schadenfreude beats Manning schadenfreude every time.

I always get into trouble when I try to sound like I know football, but Manning is good fit in Denver. He'll be playing in a shit division, in a shit conference. And while I never doubt Fetushead's ability to lose a playoff game, he'll be playing with

In Hollywood, once you play a certain kind of character well, there's a good chance that becomes your gimmick forever. If you want a stoner with bags of charm; you go to Seth Rogen, an everyman hero, you see Tom Hanks or Paul Rudd; and if you want a schlubb with a heart whose jokes don't quite work any more, you dial A for Adam Sandler.

In a world where money needs to be guaranteed, dependability is a hell of a virtue, so you can see why film-makers (or studios, more accurately) might force their actors into stereotyped roles. But what do you do when someone breaks the mould and manages to play characters at both ends of the spectrum? What do you do when they're great in roles as fundamentally contradictory as heroes and villains?

Well, then you've got a nice problem on your hands. This isn't just a case of them playing both sides of the coin: they have to have EXCELLED as both heroes and villains. And there are a fair few of them out there...

10. Gary Oldman - Batman Begins & Bram Stoker's Dracula

Gary Oldman has a particular flair for playing villains as well as real-life historical figures, so it's a wonder he hasn't played some sort of blood-thirsty tyrant from the past (he did play Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK but he's a more ambiguous sort of figure). He's excelled playing fictional villains though, like Mason Verger in Hannibal, Drexl Spivey in True Romance, Zorg in the Fifth Element, Stansfield in Leon and Ivan Korshunov in Air Force One.

Even more notably, he also played the most terrifying, charming version of Dracula in movie history, adding the right blend of monstrosity and seductiveness to his performance. He's devilish and compelling in equal measure and a world apart from his Jim Gordon for Nolan's Batman trilogy.

In the corrupt cesspool of Gotham, his Gordon is an island sanctity of moral integrity, and while he knows difficult measures must be taken to win, he's the most fundamentally good character in the franchise.

Fir

As a kid I hated sudden bangs—hated them. No amount of explanation that everyone else was equally as startled would stop me losing my mind on fireworks night or any balloon-riddled birthday celebration. One of my earliest memories is ruining some kind of swimming gala by having a Damien-level tantrum because a starting pistol had the audacity to go off while I was in the building. My mother says it was instigated by me sitting on a balloon—which promptly went bang—as a tiny idiot. If you’ve got a fear, everyone knows you’ve got to overcompensate. And overcompensate I did via a lifelong preoccupation with cinematic carnage.

But Russian roulette scenes still make me sweat. It’s the guaranteed mark of a crazy film character—there’s some staggeringly obvious examples out there, but Geoffrey Lewis’s character in the underrated ‘Way of the Gun’ gets an effective debut playing the game. It gets under my skin. As a six-year old I recall hearing about Jon-Erik Hexum dying after playing around with a gun loaded with blanks and I became grimly fascinated. The recent bizarre footage of a guest being brain-damaged at a Russian wedding during an impromptu game that utlilised rubber bullets had me ruminating on the topic too. It beats Chris de Burgh and rope lights, but it was still an unfortunate move.

When my friend and trusted source of cinematic recommendations, Calum, put me onto a French film called ’13’ (which is more commonly known as ’13 Tzameti’) a few years back that contained something so grim that reviewers merely alluded to an unfortunate situation, I took the tip seriously. He was pretty wild-eyed about the movie and rightly so. Using a microbudget, local actors, family members and making good use of gloomy black and white plus some hugely imaginative touches, Géla Babluani made a classic bad-choice thriller that’s one of the most intense films ever, laden with hairpin trigger tension

In today’s Movie News: Gary Oldman on disappearing into roles; how The Wanting Mare director Nicholas Ashe Bateman built a fantasy world in a New Jersey warehouse, using tips from YouTube; John Carpenter wrongly assesses his musical talents; and Natalie Portman appreciates Mike Nichols for being a genuine mentor who wasn’t a creep.

Gary Oldman: One of our best actors talked to me about why he sought out roles like Dracula, Drexl Spivey and Mason Verger, the villain of Hannibal — and explains that the main challenge of Mank was making cruel jokes sound charming. And he explains why Citizen Kane isn’t the best film ever made.

Also:Mankleads the Critics Choice Awards with 12 nominations, in addition to leading the Golden Globes.

The Wanting Mare: In this terrific piece and extended interview, Nicholas Ashe Bateman explains how he built the fantastical world of The Wanting Mare in a New Jersey warehouse, learning in part from YouTube tutorials. Watch:

Plug: Subscribe to our friends at StudioFest — the folks who made that video and wrote that story. They’re giving a more transparent view than anyone else of the challenges and solutions to breaking into DIY moviemaking.

John Carpenter Is Wrong: The master of sci-fi and horror tells SPIN he doesn’t think he’s that great at music, despite compositions like the Halloween theme. Agree to disagree.

Muhammad Ali TV Series: Michael B. Jordan’s company, Outlier Society, has made a new deal with Amazon Studios that will yield a Muhammad Ali limited series. Jordan will not play Ali, since he already plays boxer Adonis Creed in the Creed franchise, Deadline reports. Also, congratulations to society at large for just rolling with the fact that there are two super-famous guys named Michael Jordan. We get very tripped up on some very silly things, but we’ve been pretty good about this. And thanks to the letter B for a great assist.

Mike Nicho