1 Love: A Tribute to Basketball in America
Picture: B- Sound: B- Extras:
D Film: B-
Basketball, in some form
or another, has existed for over a century and its strength in America
in unsurpassed by any other country. It is the one sport that America
has always dominated in, well considering strong players from other countries comes
here to play similar to hockey, but that’s just minor detail. What basketball
started out to be and what it has become are very opposite though. It has, for
the most part, been a game dominated by the African American population in its
last 20-30 years, but was not always that way. Nor was it always the business
that it has become, with multi-millionaires abounding. Needless to say just
about every sport has become this way, including hockey, baseball, and
football. Nothing seems quite as political though as the basketball business
though, which starts out in local high schools then goes onto college and then
finally pro.
The question then at hand
it whether these players truly love the sport or if it’s just the money that
goes with the sport. While some players might initially have every intention
of solely making it about a passion of theirs corruption always seems to set in
even for those who try to resist it. There have been very few insights into
this sport with the most recognized being Hoop Dreams, the powerful 1994
documentary, which follows the lives of two African American boys on their
pursuit of the big leagues.
The majority of this
documentary rests with the interviews of some of the top players in the game
such as Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Directed by Leon
Gast, the acclaimed director of When We Were Kings, comes forth another
strong documentary, but as passionately directed and thought out as this seems,
it’s a little to hard to swallow for the millions of hard working average
American’s who know that these players are making millions and millions of
dollars doing something so simple. Yes, basketball does require skill, but the
world is not changed by such a game. We pay doctors a lot less to save lives
than a man to dribble a ball every couple of days.
Believe it or not, this
DVD from Paramount has been issued with a Dolby 5.1 mix, which works
well despite it being an interview based documentary. Music and other ambient
noises fill the surrounds making it a more special mix than a stereo mix would
have ever garnered. The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 widescreen transfer
mixes footage from all over and mattes most of the material. Overall, this
release has raised the bar over what most material like this received when
issued onto DVD. The picture only suffers from the fact that some of the
material is dated and analog sourced. Nevertheless the presentation holds up
well.
- Nate Goss
