FanHouse Tv And Movies

Hoop Dreams was a simple, low-budget documentary about two high school basketball players in Chicago. But on the 15th anniversary of the film's release, Roger Ebert is hailing it as the great American documentary.

Comedy Central and The Onion have long dominated their respective venues in terms of satirizing the tar out of the general news. There has been, however, a distinctively awkward void in the world of sports -- Versus attempted to fill this with their production of "Sports Soup" but when the best moment of that show includes Brandon Marshall hosting, well, it's pretty much doomed.

But it seems as if the humorous basic cable take on sports that we have all pined longingly for is about to emerge: CC and The Onion are joining forces to create a show. And, yeah, if you didn't just scream, "HOLY YES!" then you're a total, well, um, something.

Stephen Colbert announced -- in case you missed it or thought it was fake like his Republican-y shtick-- on Monday night that Colbert Nation would become the new primary sponsor of the US speedskating team for the Winter Olympics.

Colbert jumped in because, as is happening all over the country, the former main sponsor for the speedskating team, DSB Bank NV, a bank of sorts, had to back out of their sponsorship. (Oddly, banks aren't doing well right now in this fantastic financial time.)

But you know who apparently is doing well? Colbert Nation -- Stephen announced on Tuesday night's show that, despite Canadian hackers allegedly going after the donation link, on the first evening of sponsorship, his viewers had raised over $40,000 (!!) to back up the speedskating team. Moving picture happy funtime after the jump.

One of the fascinating things about Without Bias, the ESPN documentary about Len Bias that debuts Tuesday night (review here), is the frank, matter-of-fact way that Bias's friend Brian Tribble talks about the night that Bias died. Some people said Tribble killed Bias by providing him with the cocaine that he overdosed on, but Tribble was acquitted when he went on trial for charges relating to Bias's death. Now, nearly a quarter of a century later, later, Tribble talks openly about that night.

Neither the Daily Show nor the Colbert Report delve into the sports realm all that often. However, the current Philadelphia-New York rivalry has apparently stoked enough passion in Jersey-born Jon Stewart (he's right in the middle, yo!) for him to send correspondents Jason Jones and John Oliver out on the street to measure the rivalry.

But, per usual, they're not just looking at the fans -- they're deciding which fans are more awful (or "bigger douches" as the clip actually says like 150 times; should you be afraid that such a phrase will not be popular on your office speakers, consider yourself forewarned). And they have real, live clips, which are hysterical, of course. "Clash of the Cretins" video, courtesy of the CC Insider, after the jump.

When Larry David was producing Seinfeld, he once had Derek Jeter (above, along with George Costanza and Bernie Williams) on the show. Apparently he liked Jeter a lot, because on Sunday night's Curb Your Enthusiasm, a sabermetric debate about Jeter's merits as a player was a central part of the plot -- with Larry insisting that Jeter's clutch hitting more than made up for any statistical failings as a fielder.

Bill Simmons is becoming like Brett Favre in the sense that ESPN is shoving him down our throats.

(Except in Simmons' case, it's for his new book, not for his annual coming-out-of-retirement announcement. Unlike Simmons, however, Favre doesn't block random bloggers from following his Twitter account. Moving on...)

And last night he landed on the Colbert Report to talk about his new 700-page basketball book with the world's favorite "fundit."

What resulted was a pretty fantastic interview, particularly when you consider that Simmons managed to stop Colbert in his Air-Bud-mentioning tracks with an "I've got two pages comparing Teen Wolf to Kobe Bryant" line. You could even tell that Colbert was asking if that was real as they cut away, and he somehow managed to let the interview run long, which almost never happens.

What if you took every fictional basketball player from every TV show and movie you've ever seen and compiled a "Dream Team" of sorts? Well, you don't have to, because we've done it (and have already done it for baseball and football -- see the links below). You may disagree with some of the selections, but you can't disagree that this is one stacked team. We have 15 players and a stout coaching staff. Check it out and let us know what you think.

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Howard Cosell's angry voice punctuates the opening of Muhammad and Larry, the documentary that will premiere on ESPN Tuesday, and the rest of the film serves to explain Cosell's anger: The documentary focuses on the 1980 fight between Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes, and it argues that Ali never should have been permitted to walk into the ring that night.

TV Guide once listed the ad in which Mean Joe Greene gave his jersey to a kid who gave him a Coke as one of the Top 10 commercials of all time. And now, more than 30 years after it first aired, that iconic commercial has reached a new level of notoriety: it has made Glenn Beck cry.