Alex celebrates the return of the NFL with a live blog of Any Given Sunday.<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s the most wonderful time of the year: football is back! And for those of us that structure our fall and winter Sundays around watching Tom Brady\u2019s hair blow in the wind, or watching Larry Fitzgerald wish he played with a real quarterback, or simply watching Andy Reid make funny faces on the sideline, this is a significant time of our calendar. As some weird tradition that I didn\u2019t actually recognize until recently, I tend to watch Any Given Sunday every year around when the NFL is about to return. And since it\u2019s a truly ridiculous sports movie that I have seen about ten times, I feel I should probably live blog it this time.<\/p>\n I never expect this movie to be taken seriously, mostly because nobody should ever do that with an Oliver Stone film (I\u2019m talking to you, JFK fans). When I first started working at a video store, I tried to rent Any Given Sunday only to find out that somebody else had already rented it. After I got over the initial confusion of another person renting this film, my boss told me the store had a copy I could buy for $10, and my excitement to do so was met with my boss\u2019 look of \u2018really?!!?\u2019 Even this woman, a pretty big football fan, couldn\u2019t deal with the idea of somebody actually wanting to purchase this movie. And years later I still can\u2019t, really. I know the movie features a lot of things I love: Al Pacino, football, John C. McGinley\u2019s haircut, and some really impressive cinematography, but it also has a lot of things I really hate. The movie is co-written and directed by Oliver Stone, features Jamie Foxx and Matthew Modine, and has some of the most ludicrously over the top editing you\u2019ll ever see. (This movie makes the editing in Requiem for a Dream seem restrained.) But somehow Any Given Sunday works for me, and has just enough interesting thematic ideas in it to make me want to watch it a bunch of times. It might be good, or it might suck, but it\u2019s always an entertaining thing to have playing on a screen in front of you while you eat chicken wings. Let\u2019s do this.<\/p>\n 00:00:07 \u2013 Vince Lombardi quote to kick things off in the epigraph! Because, obviously.<\/p>\n 00:01:01 \u2013 Like I said above, I have a conflicted relationship with this movie; it\u2019s shitty, but it\u2019s so entertaining that it\u2019s tough to deny. That being said, some moments are truly perfect. Like the first real scene of the movie, when quarterback Dennis Quaid gets destroyed by way of multiple linebackers converging on his spine. And then, the Oliver Stone we know and despise shows up, both in the shitty editing that gets us out of the sequence and literally as the Miami Sharks announcer\u2026 Who drinks liquor straight from the bottle in between plays. That\u2019s a metaphor for this movie, probably.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 00:04:28 \u2013 John C. McGinley, y\u2019all! The king of 1990s jackasses is here playing every hilariously over the top sports reporter ever, although mostly just ultra jackass Jim Rome. And yes, somebody really did look at that hair style to the right and say, “Yes! Let us allow a human being to look like this in a major motion picture.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 00:06:05 \u2013 Remember that time when Cameron Diaz believably played the owner of a major sports team? Neither do I.<\/p>\n 00:07:50 – Jamie Foxx, playing third string quarterback Willie Beamen, has checked into the game, and promptly throws up on the field due to nervousness. I used to think this was ridiculous, but then Donavan McNabb actually (allegedly) did this just before attempting to lead the Philadelphia Eagles on a comeback drive against the New England Patriots in Superbowl XXXIX. (The Eagles notoriously managed their time horribly in the fourth quarter and lost the game.)<\/p>\n 00:08:56 \u2013 Beamen gets dropped with a late hit by one of those linebackers that destroyed Cap\u2019s spine, and then says, \u201cYou better get used to that, mother fucker. I\u2019m going to be picking peanuts out of your ass!\u201d In no context does that make sense, not even in the realm of nonsensical trash talk.<\/p>\n 00:10:05 \u2013 All Sport sighting! It\u2019s the drink of the future!<\/p>\n 00:18:22 \u2013 I always think that the blonde assistant coach in this movie is played by former New Orleans Saints head coach\/current Washington Redskins defensive coordinator Jim Haslett, but that is incorrect. There are a number of former and current players in the movie though, including Jim Brown, Terrell Owens, Dick Butkus, Lawrence Taylor, Johnny Unitas, Warren Moon, and probably more. Office Linebacker Terry Tate is also in this movie, if that counts.<\/p>\n