"Haha, I don't have an agent either!"

Never in a million years would I have ever thought I’d say, “Please, bring back Bow Wow.” But there I was last night, flipping through the channels during a timeout in the Miami Heat’s series-clinching victory over the Indiana Pacers, when I stumbled upon the film Like Mike 2: Streetball, as it aired on BET. I was 23 when the original Like Mike was in theaters, so it wasn’t exactly my type of film, and needless to say that a 2006 straight-to-DVD sequel wouldn’t be my cup of Sanka either.

But there it was, in all its glory – the rehashed, recycled and redonkulous sequel to the story of a kid who receives the magical ability to play basketball like Michael Jordan from a pair of dirty old sneakers hanging from a power line. This time, instead of Bow Wow’s Calvin Cambridge, the young hero is Jascha Washington’s Jerome, who is the son of a streetball legend and therefore wants to be the best as well. The only problem is he’s too young and small and clichéd.

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We usually leave the film stuff to Vince but this anecdote from the production of The Fighter was too interesting (to me) to not be mentioned here. To set the table for this gem of a quote from producer/star Mark Wahlberg, the production had to shoot the fight scenes for the film on a limited budget of time. But instead of shooting those scenes old-school, which would have taken five weeks to shoot, Wahlberg said F that S and explained in the DVD commentary of the film why he brought in one of the camera crews that films actual live fights for HBO.

Every filmmaker that we talked to about directing this movie was like you can’t shoot the fights in 20 days, you need 35 days. And I said, “Well, we’re going to shoot the whole movie in 33 days and we’re going to shoot all the fights in three days.” And they said, “How are you going to do that? It’s never going to work.” And I said, “Because we’re going to film them like actual fights.”

So we literally did every fight from the actual beginning, coming out of the dressing room into the arena, into the ring, first bell, introductions, to the last bell, and everything. And we just did it over and over and over again.

And what I kept telling everybody is that HBO does it in one take and they don’t know what’s going to happen and they never miss a thing. We have the luxury of showing them what we’re going to do in the morning before we shoot it and doing it over and over and over again. So why do you need 20 days? For what? To jerk each other off? To touch up your makeup? To go in the trailer and take a nap?

We’re not talking about putting the camera in there and saying, “OK, we’re going to do a stunt punch here.” No, we’re going in there and beat the shit out of each other and we’re going to make it real.

–via Kevin Inouye/37 Signals, via Kottke

I was one of those people that said this was another blah blah boxing film, but after that quote (and realizing Wahlberg’s approach to the production), I really want to see this movie now. Hell, if just thinking about The Fighter made Christian Bale forget his wife’s name, it must be pretty awesome.

By now you’re probably caught up with the latest shenanigans of Charlie Sheen. Yes, we still call them shenanigans. It’s a nice umbrella term that captures everything from “walking in puddles without shoes” to “snorting five-figures-worth of cocaine out of a hooker’s buttcrack.” So, shenanigans.

Anyway, now that “Two And A Half Men” is on the shelf, perhaps for good, there’s one other project that might catch Charlie Sheen’s eye: Major League 4. It’s hard to think that Sheen’s career could get any lower than rock bottom, but I’m sure he’ll prove me wrong on that. The great ones always do.

Let me give you some other arguments that Major League 4 could, if not necessarily should happen:

• Bob Uecker is still alive. Barely. After two heart operations last year, Uecker plans to continue working as the Milwaukee Brewers’ radio announcer, a job he has held down for 40 years. I thought he was in great shape…I guess. Either way, he could pull a Peter O’Toole and perform a heart-warming death in the first scene. Remember Up? After a scene like that, everything will seem hilarious.

The rest of the cast could come back for one or two scenes at the funeral, and then we can jettison them back into no-man’s land. Well, everyone except Lou Brown, played by the late James Gammon, but we could CG him in, urinating on Roger Dorn’s handwritten eulogy.
• The Cleveland Indians are “sh:tty again”. When the abortion known as Major League: Back to the Minors was released in 1998, the Indians had just won the AL Central. Now? The Indians suck. They finished 25 games out of first, and their best player was some guy named Shin Soo Choo. I couldn’t make that name up if you gave me all day.
• All Hollywood is making now is sequels. Hollywood has 27 sequels slated for release in 2011; the most ever in a year. The fact that 2 and 3 were awful would stop any rational person from making a fourth film. Such a person does not exist in Hollywood.
• The plot is already built in: Former major league pitcher tries to recover from drugs while the Indians need a new manager. Rick Vaughn takes the managerial job, relapses (spectacularly) and the team wins the pennant. Why do they win the pennant? They just do? It’s a perfect athlete story, although it sounds a lot like that Dewey Cox movie, and Steve Howe might sue for compensation.

I hope this movie gets made, if only so we can hear more Charlie Sheen stories. This guy needs to stay in the limelight as long as possible. It’s the only thing keeping my mind off Libya.

UPDATE: Of course, Vince is all over this, and the guy actually trying to make the movie says he won’t use Sheen. Obviously, his idea sucks and mine is totally better.

There’s not much to add to this mashup of big coach pep talks from various sports movies like Miracle, Hoosiers, Varsity Blues, Remember The Titans, and We Are Marshall. If you don’t get goosebumps, then you probably never will.

I nearly punched a hole in my monitor the first time I saw this, but it wasn’t because of the adrenaline. It’s because I really hate Dennis Quaid. Well done, Screen Junkies. Well done, indeed.

When Hollywood studios aren’t insulting us with films based on Candyland and Where’s Waldo?, they’re making terrible sports movies about dogs that can play football and Freddie Prinze Jr. throwing like Jim Abbott’s niece. And the latest sports-related movie idea receiving a green light is the Madden Curse. That’s right, EA is making a movie about a running joke based on coincidence. Why not?

So is this film going to be professional football’s Final Destination, as some magical force stalks elite players, ending their careers in their prime? No. Not at all. Instead, it will focus on a retired video game champion. Seriously.

Specific details concerning the plot remain sketchy, but EA VP Pat O’Brien reportedly said, “The story will follow a former ‘Madden’ video game champion who is forced out of retirement just as he finds himself on the corner of the game’s cover — and subject to the curse.” (Via Switched)

Hold on, the guy comes out of retirement because for some reason EA put him on the cover of Madden? The Madden Curse involves active players who have stellar, MVP-type seasons only to be injured the next season and never play at that elite level again. So why does the guy come out of retirement? Is he afraid that he’ll break his thumbs in a freak Call of Duty accident? Perhaps the main character could spend the entire film insisting that he’ll stay retired but then unretiring. And he can text a picture of his penis to Olivia Munn. Lord knows I’d like to.

A look back at the history of the Madden Curse after the jump…

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We like to keep the actual bad news to a minimum around these parts of the interwebs, and it sucks to come back from a wonderful Andre Johnson uppercut of a four-day weekend with a sad story, but we can’t control the news… yet. Actor Leslie Nielsen passed away yesterday at 84 of complications from pneumonia. While this may seem like news more suited for part-time bullfighting enthusiast Vince and FilmDrunk, we wanted to pay respect to Nielsen’s contributions to the sports world as well.

Despite his roles in terrible spoofs like 2001: A Space Travesty, Superhero Movie, and two of the Scary Movie sequels, sadly among many others, Nielsen will thankfully always be Lt. Frank Drebin, Police Squad. Growing up, Naked Gun and Airplane! had huge impacts on my sense of humor, as I’m sure they did for the majority of people in our generation. The Naked Gun franchise gave us OJ Simpson, Reggie Jackson trying to kill the Queen of England, and Priscilla Presley’s stuffed beaver. Most of all, Nielsen gave us a terrible umpire, the best worst National Anthem of all-time, and the most reusable comedy quotes before Anchorman was even a drop from Will Ferrell’s pen. And I can’t wait for Spring Training to go to a game and yell, “Hey! It’s Enrico Palazzo!” one more time.

In the meantime, we can remember his contributions to sports comedy…

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