The tournament was in Wales and the scenic Celtic Manor Resort was the first time host, however, powerful rain storms set the tournament up for another first, the game had a Monday finish, as Europe, together with the USA, ended with a fourth day decider.

After three days of tough gaming, not to mention that it was in front of the 40,000 strong crowd, rain soaked but never faltering in passion and spirit, Europe’s resolute 12 had managed a surely momentous three point lead. On day three and with all 24 golfers out on the course the hosts, encouraged by the authoritative Lee Westwood, took five and half points out of a possible six.

The start of the first ever Monday in this tournament saw the mist slowly lift and the sun finally start to shine through. The fans had seen Tiger Woods lead an assault as Captain Corey’s boys boosted the scoreboard. For Europe, poker like Luke Donald, enticing Ian Poulter and the outstanding Miguel Angel Jimenez all managed to deliver precious points. Then it came down to McDowell – that last man standing in the competition, already The US Open Champion, already The Wales Open Champion, surely he could bring one of the most prestigious golf trophies ever designed home…

Relive the Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor with this DVD and bring home the excitement all over again.

Brown’s own narrative is enthusiastic and contagious, entertaining and informative. His cinematography is bright, colourful and no less than exceptional when considering that the film was made 30 years ago. Its soundtrack is utterly 70s at its cheesiest worst, although this minor downside adds retro authenticity.

As a passionate motorcycle racer himself, the late great McQueen himself features in several scenes, although his star power was not intended to, and does not, eclipse the subject matter. The film was a joint labour of love for both Brown and McQueen, who contributed funding and support to On Any Sunday’s making.

It gained an Oscar nomination in 1972 for Best Documentary Feature. For anyone even remotely interested in motorcycles, it is an absolute must. For those not, it still provides an interesting snapshot of its time. It continues to stand tall as a 70s classic and now has the well deserved opportunity to become a newly rediscovered classic for another generation.

Special Features

Additionally, the special On Any Sunday Collector’s Edition is accompanied by On Any Sunday Revisited. This extra feature is an all new classic created by Brown and his son, Dana, also a film maker. It is an exciting bonus that has been especially released to mark the 30 year anniversary of the original movie.

Secretariat chronicles the life of the race horse of the same name and how his owner, Penny Chenery (Lane), and trainer, Lucien Laurin (Malkovich), were instrumental in him winning the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing in 1973. After her mother dies, Penny helps her brother (Baker) organize their parents’ estate and this includes several horses that her father (Glenn) almost sold. After finding out that the family trainer tried to sell the horses illegally, she fires him and takes control herself. Having little to no knowledge about horses, Penny asks eccentric trainer Lucien to help her but he’s lost interest in the sport of horse racing. However, he changes his mind and is soon training a newborn horse that has none of the traditional racing traits. The rest of the film follows the sports movie template as it tracks Secretariat’s unconventional rise and the sacrifices Penny makes and the obstacles she faces along the way.

What makes this predictable tale watchable is the performance of Lane and John Malkovich. They play well of each other as her strong-willed optimist goes up against his curmudgeonly character. Visually, they are a study in contrasts as Penny dresses conservatively while Lucien sports all kinds of flamboyant attire. Their scenes together crackle with an energy that is fun to watch.

Director Randall Wallace does a good job of conveying the energy and excitement of a horse race through editing and dynamic point-of-view angles that put you right in the race. You can’t help but get caught up in them even though their outcomes are known. Lane delivers inspirational speeches like a trooper and does a good job portraying the real-life Penny. This role may not get her an Oscar but no one could accuse her of phoning in her performance in an entertaining and engaging film.

Special Features:

“Heart of a Champion” is your standard making of featurette as cast, crew and horse racing experts talk about Secretariat and bringing his extraordinary story to the big screen including some fantastic vintage footage of him in action. Best of all, the real Penny tells her side of the story.

Also included are three deleted scenes with optional commentary by director Randall Wallace. They shed a bit more light on Penny’s home life and there is also a bit more character development. Some of this footage disrupted the flow of the film or was redundant.

Finally, there is a standard movie tie-in music video for “It’s Who You Are” by A.J. Michalka. The video cuts footage of her performing with clips from the film.

When one of the members of the United States Olympic skiing team breaks both his legs in a competition, David Chappellett (Redford) is flown in to take his place and try out for a spot on the team. Ritchie captures the opening race in a dynamic, you-are-there style that conveys the speed and intensity of hurtling yourself down a steep, snowy hill. He accomplishes this by employing snap zooms, freeze frames, intense close-ups, and point-of-view shots from the skier’s perspective. This kind of camerawork also conveys the danger inherent in this sport. Chappellett is arrogant and immediately resents the team’s coach (Hackman) for placing him so far back in his first race. So, he refuses to ski until he gets a better placement.

When Chappellett does race he finishes an impressive fourth place. However, he wipes out on his second race and butts heads with his coach over placement yet again and is told that he just wasn’t good enough. In the off-season, he trains hard and goes home to his boring hometown and disinterested father. It’s no wonder that he wants to get as far away as possible from his humble origins and strive to achieve greatness at the Olympics.

Robert Redford is well cast as the driven loner who strives to be the best skier in the world. A youthful Gene Hackman is his ideal foil as the coach who refuses to put up with Chappellett’s prima donna antics. Downhill Racer has the look of a late 1960s – early 1970s film that came out of Hollywood on the heels of the success of Easy Rider (1969), which opened the floodgates to offbeat subject matter, like downhill skiing, to get made. Unfortunately, Paramount didn’t really care much for the film and it quickly disappeared into obscurity for years, making it a prime candidate for rediscovery by the Criterion Collection.

Special Features:

“Redford and Salter” is an interview with Robert Redford and the film’s screenwriter James Salter. They talk about the genesis of Downhill Racer. Redford wanted to make a trilogy of low-budget films about winning based on his experiences with sports. He chose skiing because he hadn’t seen many films dealing with it. Redford liked that Salter approached the material in an abstract way. They also both wanted to explore the nature of winning.

“Coblenz, Harris and Jalbert” features interviews with production manager Walter Coblenz, editor Richard Harris and technical adviser/ski double Joe Jay Jalbert. They discuss their involvement in Downhill Racer. Jalbert point out that many of its dynamics ring true today. The film’s cinema verite style is still popular with skiers of today. All three men tell several engaging filming anecdotes.

“Michael Ritchie at the AFI” includes audio excerpts from a 1977 seminar at the American Film Institute. Naturally, he talks about working on Downhill Racer and his career in T.V. He also speaks about getting involved in the project and the studio’s resistance to the film.

Also included is the trailer.

Finally, there is “How Fast?” a promotional featurette done for the film’s theatrical release. Narrated by Redford, it’s not your usual press kit fluff, opting instead for a fascinating look at the sport of skiing before showing off some really good behind-the-scenes footage.

Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Rourke) is an over-the-hill professional wrestler who has seen better days. He’s been locked out of his trailer because he’s behind on the rent. During the week he works at a grocery store and on weekends he wrestles in small, crappy auditoriums and halls to a diminishing yet loyal fanbase that still remembers Randy’s glory days in the 1980s. He finds solace and a sympathetic ear with Cassidy (Tomei), a stripper in the twilight of her career as well. They are both lost souls who have been beaten down by life. After suffering a near-fatal heart attack, Randy’s doctor warns him against entering the ring again. However, his manager has set up a rematch with an old foe from back in the day that just might be Randy’s ticket back to the big time.

The unflinching way director Darren Aronofsky depicted drug use and its devastating effects in Requiem for a Dream (2000) is applied to the wrestling sequences in The Wrestler. One fight, in particular, is a bloody, gut-wrenching ordeal as Randy and his opponent go at each other with all kinds of objects including a staple gun – all to satiate the blood lust of the audience. Aronofsky provides fascinating insight into the world of pro wrestling, like how the wrestlers talk over what they are going to do to each other beforehand, the tactics used to draw blood while in the ring, and the use of illegal drugs to fight the ravages of time. While anybody who knows anything knows that wrestling is choreographed and planned out, a wrestler can still get horribly injured. It is also interesting to see some of their trade secrets exposed.

After years spent wasting his talents working in direct-to-video crap or not working at all, Mickey Rourke demonstrates that all he needs is the right material to show how great he can be. Some might call Randy a loser but the actor makes us empathize with this screw-up. He is just trying to eke out a living the only way he knows how. Rourke really lets it all hang out with a brutally honest performance that exposes raw emotions, like when Randy tries to reconcile with his estranged daughter (Wood). He also demonstrates a knack for light comedy as evident in a scene where Randy begins working with customers at the deli counter, or where he plays an old Nintendo wrestling game with a neighbourhood kid that features him as one of the wrestlers. In the latter scene, you can tell that the kid is just humouring Randy and would rather be playing xBox or the Playstation 3.

After the critical lashing he took on the ambitious commercial failure of The Fountain (2006), Aronofsky strips away all of the stylistic excess that have been the hallmarks of his previous works for a simpler approach approximating kitchen sink realism. Instead of showing how clever he can be behind the camera, he lets the actors do their thing and this trust in them pays off in a big way with a beautifully acted character study about damaged people.

Special Features:

“Within the Ring” is a 42-minute look at the making of the film. Aronofsky talks about the challenge of working with a low budget and fighting to cast Rourke in the film. Behind-the-scenes footage shows the no frills approach and the attention to realism. Aronofsky says that the low budget freed him up and he adopted a more spontaneous approach to filming, including refusing to rely on storyboards as he had done in the past. This is an excellent featurette about how The Wrestler came together.

Also included is “The Wrestler Music Video – Written and Performed by Bruce Springsteen,” a haunting tune that the Boss did as a personal favour to Rourke and because he responded strongly to the material. This is a nice video that features Springsteen in a training gym with clips from the film itself.

This is the second volume of Before they were Superstars and features Brock Lesnar, Tazz, Al Snow, Randy Orton, Christopher Nowisnki. Shawn Michaels, John Cena, Chris Jericho, Torrie Wilson and Rob Van Dam, the latter being something of a disappointment. Fans of RVD will know that before he broke through into wrestling he appeared a number of decidedly dodgy martial arts action flicks playing such characters as ‘The Claw’. Van Dam’s film career was then on a par with what I presume Van Damme’s is now. Confused? Indeed I would love to see both Van Dam and Van Damme team up, either in the ring or in some brother in trouble action movie. The potential is huge.

Anyway, back to the DVD. The profile of RVD didn’t even mention his less than successful film appearances, which was the part I was truly waiting for. Instead it covered his school days, holidays and refusal to lose the weight required to make the high school wrestling team. His goal of becoming a pro-wrestler took a turn for the better though when he discovered that the Iron Sheik lived not too far from him. Would you be able to tell from RVD’s style that the Sheik trained him? Me neither.

By the impact that The Next Big Thing made in the WWE you would assume that he’d been winning everything he ever entered in the sport of wrestling. Not so apparently. In fact, Brock was described by his High School coach as ‘nothing special’. He was big, yes. He was strong and aggressive. He also had his fair share of defeats. Brock himself said that if he had achieved his goal and won the state championships he probably wouldn’t be in the WWE now. He had some unfinished business that made want to prove that he could be a winner.

We get treated to some of the footage from Brocks early bouts in High School, and his temper at defeat was clear to see. Thankfully we never see that in the WWE, probably because he hardly ever loses.

The once great wrestler of Tazz takes us back to his high school, where he seems almost proud to boast of its dangerous reputation. There is a sadness in his voice as he sees that the football field has actually been improved, so that no more can players slam each other into exposed manhole covers. Strangely Tazz says that the proudest moment in his career was debuting in the WWE, yet since he arrived his ring status has gone so far down the pecking order that he now doesn’t bother at all. Instead working on his commentary career. Paul Heyman happily takes the plaudits for discovering Tazz and admits to trying to coax the brawler into using the microphone as Tazz refused to speak in public. He’s certainly over that now.

Al Snow was a tale of dedication and belief if ever there was one. He’d been wrestling for 15 years before he finally made the breakthrough into the big time. He actually debuted in the WWE as ‘Avatar’, a character based on a Power Ranger, but Vince wasn’t impressed and sent Al Snow packing back to whence he came. Al was distraught by this at having waited so long for his break only for it to end after one performance. The discovery of a mannequin head gave Al the character angle he was looking for and it wasn’t long before Vince called him back.

It’s strange for Randy Orton to be featured on this series, as there was never really a time before he was a Superstar. The second third generation Superstar in the WWE (the other being The Rock) Randy was destined for greatness from the star. Other than interviewing his father and grandfather there wasn’t much they could show. Maybe in a few years he’ll have some highlights, but for now you may as well skip this one.

Christopher Nowinski’s arrival in the WWE was well publiscised. Losing at the last hurdle to Maven in Tough Enough he went back to the indy circuit in the hope that six months down the line he could try again. As he said himself, there was no way the WWE would invest so much time and money in making him into the bad guy to just let him go away. According to Nowinski’s football coach, he was a lazy player and needed a kick up the ass to get him motivated. I guess that’s what the WWE gave him as well.

Shawn Michaels was actually fired by Vince McMahon?!? It’s true, HBK was dismissed for a ‘bar incident’ that he denies. Still, it gave Shawn a chance to hone his skills and come back to the WWE some time later the Heartbreak Kid.

All of Michaels’ friends were jealous of his good looks and his way with the women, yet for some reason Shawn would always deny it. He was very shy apparently, we’d have never guessed. Shawn dropped out of college to become a pro-wrestler, after convincing his dad that it was the right thing to do.

The pioneer of ruthless aggression, John Cena has made one of the biggest impacts in the WWE. Not bad for someone who just likes getting naked a lot and doesn’t take himself seriously at all. An exhibitionist inside and outside of the ring John loves to show off his body. That’s about all of the background you get on Cena, need we any more? One of the special features on the DVD is Cena’s debut match against Kurt Angle though, and that is definitely worth watching a few times.

On the Chris Jericho section we get to find out what Y2J is all aboot. Chris met up with Lance Storm when they were both trying out to be pro-wrestlers, and Lance said he was relieved to see Chris because everyone else had no chance of making it. That’s why the two of them latched onto each other; they were both natural athletes. OK Lance.

Some of Chris’ early work on the indy circuit and in WCW is mightily impressive. Of all the Superstars featured Chris is the one you see as a child and say ‘yeah, he’s gonna make it.’ Of course another aspect to Y2J is his musical ‘talent’. He could have been a rock star, or a wrestler. I think he made the right choice. Still, there are plenty of opportunities for fans of Jericho’s vocal abilities to see how that all started.

I’ve saved the best to last, the delectable Torrie Wilson, surprise surprise had trouble with her weight. Not surprising actually when you learn that she was told, as a 14 year old, to lose 5 lbs by a modelling agency. If girls are told this by people they look up to, can we complain when so many develop anorexia or bulimia? Thankfully sh overcame her weight problem when she realised that athletic body building women looked better than thin unhealthy women. Being told not to lose any more weight by her modelling agency also hammered home the fact that she was too thin.

Torrie, like so many attractive girls, had an army of brothers watching her every step. They’re together again for this film telling how difficult it is to see Torrie in matches, and bikini contests when she’s their little sister. Tough break guys.

Special Features

This DVD also features a selection of bonus moments, among them is an interesting tale of pain and dedication from Al Snow about he spent all of his money to compete with some wrestlers. It sounded like a con to be honest, as he didn’t actually get anything out of it apart from bruises and pain.

HBK’s debut as one half of the tag team ‘The Rockers’ is also featured, with Vince commentating. I found the commentary more interested to be honest. He’s speaking like a commentator but you know he’s actually evaluating new talent like this, and if they don’t impress they won’t compete again.

One of the best debuts of all time is featured when Chris Jericho entered WCW in 1996. His match against Alex Wright was a classic.

We also get to see RVD’s dedication, or is it desperation, in full when as a teenager he accepts the Million Dollar Man’s challenge to kiss his feet in the ring after a match. Disgusting.

There are also two Easter Eggs on this DVD on John Cena and Chris Jericho, highlight their names on the right of the screen and press right.

There’s a lot of information on this DVD but also a lot more that has been left out. It would be nice too if just once when people were interviewed about celebrities whom they knew as kids would come out and say that they hated them. Still, what is here is great for the fans.