wed 14/05/2025

sport

Sporting Heroes: After the Final Whistle, BBC One

It’s a funny old game. Sport rewards the talented when they are young and their bodies responsive. A profession which requires the reflexes to work in instant harmony with the brain means that beyond a certain age, the gifted become instantly...

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Town of Runners

Footage of wiry East African men and women breaking the tape in marathons and distance track-events is now more or less synonymous with the highest achievements in top-level sport, and it won’t come as a surprise to those who’ve lived through more...

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Reverse Missionaries, BBC Two

Despite an unfortunate title which seemed to have fallen from the pages of the latest Cosmo sex survey (“add some spice to the bedroom: try reverse missionary”), the first instalment of this three-part series about faith, community and religious...

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DVD: Moneyball

It's probably no coincidence that non-American reviewers have been less exalted in their praise for this film than US ones, as it's sort of in a foreign language for them – that of baseball, a sport in love with nerdy statistics and clichés, even...

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Sport and classical music: they should hang out more

Classical music and sport: should they spend more time together? The idea was posited more than 20 years ago that football and opera made for ideal bedfellows, so long as the football was being played in Italy and the operatic aria was Nessun Dorma...

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theASHtray: Janáček, Carnage, and Seth MacFarlane v George Clooney

Mea culpa. I take it all back. Christoph Waltz can act, and like a dream. You know, that dream you have where Tarantino's favourite pantomime Nazi demonstrates his apparently incurable fixation on apple-based desserts, and then Kate Winslet yakks...

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Freddie Flintoff: Hidden Side of Sport, BBC One

The recent suicide of Wales's football manager Gary Speed prompted angstful outpourings about the hidden menace of depression in top-level sport, even though there was no evidence that Speed was a sufferer. But depression clearly is an occupational...

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Goon

A capsule summary of Goon doesn't sound very appetising - slow-witted hockey player with awesome fighting skills helps lift the Halifax Highlanders out of their low-achieving doldrums. Yet within the film's oafish wrapping lies a touching little...

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2011: Farce, Fire and Fast Cars

Every now and again there's a TV series that lives up to the hype, and in 2011 it was Channel 4's Top Boy.  Although this crushing saga of gang violence, drug dealing and conflicted loyalties in Hackney was written by Irishman Ronan Bennett, it...

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Moneyball

It's a problem many a cash-strapped Premier League football manager is familiar with. The über-teams like Chelsea and Manchester United have loads more money than you, and can simply spend you out of contention. Over in California, this was what was...

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Go clubbing and running to support planting urban trees

Battersea Park: run a half-marathon there and then go clubbing, all to raise money for planting urban trees

As artificial spaces, clubs struggle to embrace the organic environment. The music and arts collective Noise of Art are bridging the gap by working with the charity Trees for Cities, with DJs donating their time to raise funds for planting trees in...

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Peace dance! A call for more fancy footwork at the Rugby World Cup

Dance away the heartache: perennial Kiwi underachievers do the haka

We’ve long grown used to culturally themed opening ceremonies for big sporting events, but when New Zealand and Tonga come together this morning for the first match in the Rugby World Cup 2011, there won’t just be singing and dancing in the pre-...

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