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Bob Costas issued a warning against legalized sports betting while speaking to “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker on Sunday, emphasizing its impact on families.

“In the big picture, the house always wins,” he said, “[and] now you’ve got young guys with a phone in their hand, it’s right there. And some of those people are going to become addicted to it and it’s going to ruin some lives, that’s inevitable.”

Costas, who has been open about his father’s own sports gambling addiction in the past, also admitted to Welker he could not read gambling promos while calling games for the Major League Baseball Network.

“I just couldn’t in good conscience encourage people to do something which I know — for some of them it’s obviously just a little recreation and it’s fine, but there’s an insidious aspect to it that I didn...

Get ready to step back in time with Season 3 Episode 32 of “Greatest Sports Legends: Then and Now,” airing at 5:00 Am on Saturday, June 22, 2024, on ABC. This episode delves into a pivotal moment in sports history as it examines the politically charged 1968 Olympic Games held in Mexico City. Viewers can expect a reflective exploration of the Games, which were not only a showcase of athletic prowess but also became a platform for significant social and political statements.

The episode will offer a compelling look at the events surrounding the 1968 Olympics, where iconic athletes like Tommie Smith and John Carlos made a powerful statement against racial injustice during their medal ceremony. Their raised fists adorned with black gloves became a symbol of the civil rights movement, resonating far beyond the sports arena. The Games also witnessed challenges such as protests and controversies, highlighting the intersection of sports, politics, and global social issues during a turbulent era.

Spoiler Alert: This article discusses the third episode of “Clipped,” “Let the Games Began,” now streaming on Hulu.

Laurence Fishburne had never even heard of Doc Rivers before signing on to play the perennial NBA coach in FX’s “Clipped.”

“I’m not a sports fan. My manager is a Clippers season-ticket holder, one of the faithful. I had thought that she sent this to me because it was a promotion for her team. And that turned out not to be the case,” Fishburne says, then chuckles. “At all.”

Indeed, the 2014-set limited series follows the basketball organization at its all-time nadir, gripped by a scandal that’s much more demeaning and grotesque than the Clippers’ legacy of losing seasons. This week’s episode of “Clipped” follows the team’s PR spiral after TMZ publishes an audio recording of octogenarian owner Donald Sterling (Ed O’Neill) delivering a racist tirade to...

Palm Royale focuses on Maxine's quest to break into Palm Beach's high society, navigating power struggles and suspicions along the way. The stacked cast includes Kristen Wiig, Laura Dern, Allison Janney, and more, contributing to the show's lavish aesthetic and character depth. The visual style of Palm Royale incorporates elements of the 1969 setting and celebrity photographer Slim Aarons' influence, creating a beautiful yet complex world.

The rich have always lived separate from the rest of the world to a degree, and Palm Royale highlights this in the hotbed of its 1969 setting. Maxine Simmons is at the center of this story, attempting to climb the social and financial ladder to become an important part of the elite in Palm Beach. However, she faces others grasping onto their power as suspicions rise about her background and ability to fit in. Maxine may have a way in, but it may not be enough...

If there’s one thing married couple Floyd Rance and Stephanie Tavares-Rance know how to do, it’s keep a secret. Last year, on the eve of the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival, its founders were tight-lipped about their 20th anniversary opening-night presenters. “I just told my mother,” says Tavares-Rance of the fact that Barack and Michelle Obama were on hand to screen their Higher Ground and Netflix documentary Descendant.

This year, the Rances face the unexpected of another kind, with the SAG-AFTRA strike beginning weeks before the Aug. 4-12 fest, which is preventing actors from promoting their projects. Says Tavares-Rance, with equanimity: “Celebrity is awesome — people love to see their favorite actor or actress on the stage, but it really is about these filmmakers of color, specifically African American filmmakers, that we want to highlight.”

Programming includes panels with the National Museum of African American...

Spoiler Alert: This contains spoilers from “Swagger” Season 2, now streaming on AppleTV+.

As Reggie Rock Bythewood was gearing up for AppleTV+’s second season of “Swagger,” the filmmaker was thinking about how to elevate the series and take it to another level.

One film that came to mind was Sam Mendes’ “1917” and how cinematographer Roger Deakins had shot the film and presented it as if it were one continuous long shot.

The series follows a team of basketball players inspired by NBA star Kevin Durant and in the latest “maze,” as Bythewood calls it, the team down to six players, Jace (Isaiah R. Hill), Phil (Solomon Irama), Musa (Caleel Harris), Drew, Royale (Ozie Nzeribe), and Nick (Jason Rivera) head to Maryland’s Youth Facility, a detention center for young offenders for a game. “I thought about ‘1917’ and the entire film is shot as if it were one shot.

Legendary Olympic athlete Michael Johnson has called on sporting brands to support athletes who want to speak out about social change and other issues meaningful to them.

In an impassioned speech, given without notes, at the Cannes Lions international advertising festival, Johnson celebrated the modern era where athletes are more outspoken and pushing back “on the idea that they should just shut up and dribble.”

He praised stars such as LeBron James, Marcus Rashford, Lewis Hamilton, Megan Rapinoe and Naomi Osaka as “athletes pushing back at the status quo and using their voices the way they want to and feel they should.”

As for sporting brands and companies, Johnson said: “Those partnerships — where an athlete decides to partner with a brand that shares their values — can be extremely helpful for an athlete when they make that decision to use their voice if they have that sort of support.”

He compared...

Biopics about star athletes or artists tend to have the same broad shape: the rise to achievement and fame, the fall from triumph (often fueled by some combination of addiction and ego), the restoration to a harder-won glory. A great biopic, like “Get on Up” or “I, Tonya,” will tease a profound portrait of the subject out of that form; a middling one will oversimplify the subject just to hit the right beats. But then there’s a film like “Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World.” That’s not a movie title — it’s the title of a parable. And it’s well chosen, since “Big George Foreman” is about a life that feels so outlandishly ready-made for the ups and downs, the lessons and inspirations, of the superstar biopic genre that you don’t even have to mess with it.

Exclusive: A ban on drag performances in public places has been enacted in Tennessee, and more than a dozen other states may follow suit, a movement predicated on the fear that children who might glimpse such a show would be scarred by it. But an upcoming documentary defies that demonization by portraying drag performers as a force for good in their community.

Emmy-winning media company World of Wonder and Gatekeeper Productions today announced they have wrapped production on The Little Pageant That Could, a feature documentary that chronicles the journey of L.A.’s Best in Drag Show to support the Alliance for Housing and Healing.

“The event, which started as a spur-of-the-moment spoof of Miss America thrown by a few twenty-something friends in a tiny West Hollywood apartment in 1990, grew to become L.A.’s longest-running drag benefit including appearances by A-list actors,...

This week has seen the frequent replay of one of the most memorable moments in Olympic history – the black power salute by two brave black athletes, when they took to the winners’ podium in Mexico 1968. But another man was there, too.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in Mexico, while Peter Norman wore a human rights button

200-metre gold and bronze medallists Tommie Smith and John Carlos were booed and thrown out of the stadium for bringing politics into the Games, but their names were engraved on the hearts of every black person in America.

But there was another man standing on the podium that day, the Australian silver medallist Peter Norman, and his fate was sealed then, too. As bronze medallist John Carlos remembers, "The only thing he did wrong was to strive to be the best he could be, in a race that Tommie Smith and I happened to be in.

This week sees the Oscar-winning Jean Dujardin (The Artist) in his follow-up performance, The Players, the 18-rated comedy that promises a very different side to his silent-film award-winning performance. We are also treated to the Carnegie Hall performance of blind pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii, who performed late last year a fantastic array of pieces, including one of his own, written in dedication to the memory of the victims of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March last year.

My picks of the week:

The omnibus comedy, with multiple directors, The Players.

Nobuyuki Tsuki: Live at Carnegie Hall.

The Players Iframe Embed for Youtube

DVD

After taking the Oscar for Best Actor earlier this year in The Artist, Jean Dujardin returns behind and in front of the camera in The Players (Les Infidèles), a series of vignettes based on the theme of male infidelity.

As you can imagine, it looks to be...

The best side-effect of the impending Olympics is the retrieval of these two outstanding films. Norman's small-scale Australian documentary of 2008 and Hudson's sublime 1981 Oscar winner help us soar over the commercialism, the greed, the exploitation and the hypocrisy of what the Games have become. Salute looks at the story behind the iconic photograph in which the African-American political activists, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, respectively the gold and bronze winners in the 200 metres at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, raised their gloved fists in the Black Power salutes on the podium. The Australian silver medallist Peter Norman showed his solidarity by wearing an officially proscribed Olympic Project for Human Rights badge. All three suffered ostracism for their actions but, brought together by Norman's nephew two years before his uncle's death in 2006, none of them regretted their actions.

Peter Norman was a Christian, an officer in the Salvation Army, a man of principle,...

This week’s box office was absolutely dominated by The Amazing Spider-Man, to the point where all other films may as well not even have bothered. Marc Webb’s web-slinging reboot took a whopping £11million in its opening weekend on release.

To put that into context, the movie in second place this week, Ice Age 4 (still not technically released yet), took around £700,000 in the same time, which means, if my rudimentary maths is correct, that Spidey took over £10 million more than it’s nearest rival….. *gets out calculator and makes sure*….yes, £10 million. It’s already on course to be one of the box office smashes of the year with perhaps only Avengers Assemble and The Dark Knight Rises expecting to take a larger haul. Critics have been resoundingly positive, and while few are totally raving about the movie, it seems to have more than justified the studios decision...

★★★★☆ The Olympics have long proven to be an excellent stage for socio-political statements. At the 1968 Mexico Olympics, American 200m sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos both raised a black-gloved fist during their medal ceremony to show their support for racial equality. Despite being on the podium that day, Peter Norman's role in the proceedings have gone largely unknown - hence filmmaker Matt Norman (Norman's nephew) taking it upon himself to tell Peter's story with his 2008 doc Salute.

Read more »...

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Mexico’s 1968 Summer Olympics are best remembered not for the tremendous physical displays, but rather for the now-iconic Black Power salute given by two black American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, on the winner’s podium. The star of this story, however, is the third man on the podium, Peter Norman, the white Australian who stood in support of their actions, donning an “Olympic Project for Human Rights” badge, as would make headlines worldwide.

In the late sixties, a time of great change and also of great peril, the fallout to these men and their stand naturally proved contentious. Director Matt Norman, Peter Norman’s nephew, manages to, through extensive archive footage and intimate interviews with the subjects, immerse us fully in the time and place of this delicate period of social unrest.

Norman gives us a well-rounded, three-act delivery of the events, beginning with...

If you prefer something a little more grown-up and historical than the Monsters University teaser earlier today, how about Salute? A documentary about events at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, it hits cinemas in the UK just ahead of this year's Games, on July 13. And we have an exclusive new trailer for it here. brightcove.createExperiences();The story, as you may have gathered, concerns what happened on the podium following the 200m race that year. The Gold and Bronze medalists, Tommie Smith and John Carlos respectively, raised their arms in a salute similar to the Black Power salute (they describe it as a human rights salute), while Silver medalist Peter Norman wore a badge supporting the statement. All three faced controversy and criticism for the move afterwards.Salute is directed by Matt Norman, Peter's nephew, and looks at both the statement itself and its aftermath. While it's been around...

It.s a 2008 documentary but Salute has been sold to Arrow Films for an imminent UK theatrical release because of its relevance to the Olympic Games, which kick off in London on July 27.

Salute is about a very symbolic event in the history of African-America civil rights and the part played in that event by champion Australian sprinter Peter Norman.

It was in the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City that Tommie Smith won the 200 metres, Norman came second and John Carlos came third . and all hell broke loose in sporting circles when the two Americans raised their fists in support of black power after accepting their medals.

What happened on the podium that day was highly controversial because many saw it as politicising the Olympics and all three sprinters paid the price, including Norman, who made it clear he supported his fellow runners. Norman died in 2006 and never ran for his country again.

As expected, Tate Taylor's "The Help" won big at the 43rd Annual NAACP Image Awards. The film won Outstanding Picture of the Year with Viola Davis winning Outstanding Actress and Octavia Spencer taking home the Outstanding Supporting Actress award. Taylor lost to "Jumping the Broom's" Salim Akil for Best Director because apparently, it's a better picture than "The Help!"

Here's the complete list of winners (highlighted) and nominees of the 43rd Annual NAACP Image Awards (To visit other award-giving bodies, check out our Awards Avenue coverage right here)

Motion Picture

Outstanding Motion Picture

.Jumping the Broom. (TriStar Pictures)

.Pariah. (Focus Features)

.The First Grader. (National Geographic

Entertainment)

*** .The Help. (DreamWorks Pictures/

Participant Media/Touchstone Pictures)

.Tower Heist. (Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture

Eddie Murphy . .Tower Heist.

(Universal Pictures)

Laurence Fishburne . .Contagion.

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

*** Laz Alonso . .Jumping the Broom.

(TriStar Pictures)

Oliver Litondo . .The First...