Hollywood Week: Boston Celtics Win NBA Championship, Megalopolis Lands, Willie Mays, Donald Sutherland

Details: Category: Haute This Issue; Published on Saturday, 22 June 2024 11:31; Written by Janet Walker

The Boston Celtics became the winningest team in basketball as they steamrolled over the Dallas Mavericks, to capture a record setting 18 Championships, which puts them one up over their chief rival, the Los Angeles Lakers.

Megalopolis Lands at Lionsgate

Francis Ford Coppola's passion project, Megalopolis lands at Lionsgate for a fall distribution, after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The film, which received mixed reviews, was rumored to cost upwards of $120million to make, much of which was self-funded by the Apocalypse Now, and The Godfather director.

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Reviews range from describing the project as bold and daring and praising the film for its ambition and "creatively unbounded approach" to others that "were blisteringly bad. Peter Bradshaw for The Guardian called it "megabloated and megaboring." Tim Grierson for Screen Daily called it a "disaster" "stymied by arbitrary plotting and numbing excess." Kevin Maher for the Times of London wrote that it's a "head-wrecking abomination." Critic Jessica Kiang said "Megalopolis" "is a folly of such gargantuan proportions it's like observing the actual fall of Rome," reported The Associated Press.

Baseball Legend Willie Mays Dies

Willie Mays, a baseball legend who began his career in the Negro Leagues, and the oldest living member of the Baseball Hall of Fame died this week. He was 93.

While deemed the greatest player in the history of baseball, Mays was not without a losing streak. AS he later recalled, "Mr. Mays, a right-handed batter, began his career 1-for-26, a miserable stretch. "I was crying," he recalled almost 70 years later. "I wanted to go back" to minor league Minneapolis," reported The Washington Post.

However, then New York Giants coach Leo Durocher kept the young rookie, and later explained that May was the greatest player he had ever laid eyes on. To this day, Mays' records stand in the all-time top ten in baseball history.

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Before the days of strategies, algorithms, and fancy new words, Mays would explain his skill on what history would record as The Catch, a hard jump catch, deep into center field, just close enough to a concrete wall, that would cause physical injury should a player be running at full speed, and be unable to stop before the collision. Mays, however, explains the catch as simply step-by step procedure that included a full speed chase to catch the ball, a dead stop, full brakes before hitting the wall, a quick, split second spin, (so fast it as been recorded that Mays' cap flew off), and a straight fastball to ensure the tie.

Mays' career highlights include a record 24 times named as an All-Star (1954-1973), World Series Championship (1954), 2 times, NL MVP, NL Rookie of the Year, 12 times, Gold Glove Award, Roberto Clemente Awards, NL Batting Champion, NL Home Run leader, NL Stolen Base Leader, hit four home runs in one game and the list continues.

To say he is the greatest in baseball is an understatement, although those could be fighting words, in the world of baseball, he is certainly one of the greatest.

Even with fame America was still struggling with integration, and negro players were still confronting overt racism. For Mays, baseball was his way of fighting against the insidious tentacles of racism and segregation. Doing what he loved to help make America's past time, something all Americans could enjoy.

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Donald Sutherland, an Acting Icon, has Died

The award winning actor Donald McNichol Sutherland, 88, whose career spanned six decades, died this week in Miami, according to a statement his son, actor Kiefer Sutherland, released. A cause was not included, although it was announced that Sutherland had been ill.

Since the announcement of his passing, his vast body of work has been the subject of review, as media prepare what would be a fitting tribute to someone who became a legend, seemingly without effort or concern. Although anyone in a creative craft understand the effort is daily, getting up, and doing. Not one to allow fear stop him, Sutherland took on many roles that were considered failures, and received scathing reviews, and others that catapulted him into an iconic stratosphere, that few ever really achieve.

With more than 200 credited performances, Sutherland was an actor who could be depended upon to do the work, be prepared and understood breaking down a script, finding the emotion, the humanity and giving themselves over to role.

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Sutherland explained to The Los Angeles Times, "The reality was working and doing the work as well as you could and avoiding reading reviews and getting to the heart of the truth of something with the director. And if the director was pleased and we had that connection, then that was wonderful," reported The Washington Post.

The pivotal roles, which have risen to the top in his body of work include M.A.S.H, (1970) where Sutherland played Hawkeye Pierce, trying to survive the lunacy of war through over the top humor, The Dirty Dozen, (1967), Animal House (1978), Ordinary People, (1980) Backdraft (1991), JFK (1991), Six Degrees of Separation (1993), Space Cowboys (2000), The Italian Job (2003), The Hunger Games (2012), and The Burnt Orange Heresy (2019), which means that of these dozen or so films that have become signatures are about one-tenth of his body of work.

Personally, I can remember the first time I witnessed Sutherland's ability to become the character, it was in the 1981 thriller, Eye of the Needle, his performance was so vivid, authentic, and captivating, I remember it to this day. I can see the scenes from the film as I write this, it was then I became a fan.

To many Donald Sutherland will be remembered for the dystopian President Snow, in the wildly successful Hunger Games films, which he explained he got the role as he reached out to the director, after reading the script, and original the role was minor, but once the director agreed, the role was expanded.

""I wasn't offered it," he told GQ in a 2014 interview. "I like to read scripts, and it captured my passion. I wrote them a letter. The role of the president had maybe a line in the script. Maybe two. Didn't make any difference. I thought it was an incredibly important film, and I wanted to be a part of it. I thought it could wake up an electorate that had been dormant since the '70s," reported The Hollywood Reporter.

Although never nominated for a performance Academy Award, Sutherland received an honorary Oscar for his lifetime of achievement, in November 2017.

Sutherland is survived by his wife, Francine Racette, and his children, actor Kiefer Sutherland, daughter, Rachel Sutherland, Roeg, Rossif, and Angus Sutherland, and four grandchildren.