Blue Chips

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Blue Chips examines greed, cheating, and "winning at all costs" in the world of college basketball. Nick Nolte plays the stressed-out coach on the verge of his first losing season, who hits the road in search of new players not already signed by a bigger school. He finds three prospects: a precision Chicago shooter (Anfernee Hardaway), a giant farmboy (Matt Nover), and a talented troublemaker (Shaquille O'Neal). All three, wise to the ways of college basketball recruitment, make excessive financial and lifestyle demands before they can be persuaded to come to the school; the coach, already haunted by accusations of underhanded dealings, doesn't want to dig himself a deeper hole but has no choice. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 (Alternate Wide Screen)
• Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Subtitle: English
• Features:
  • • cc Widescreen version enhanced for 16:9 TVs
    • Dolby Digital: English 5.1 Surround, English 2.0 Surround, French 2.0 Surround
    • English subtitles

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  William Friedkin

• Producer:

  Michelle Rappaport

• Screenwriter:

  Ron Shelton

• Cinematographer:

  Tom Priestley Jr.

• Composer (Music Score):

  Jeff Beck, Nile Rodgers, Jed Leiber

• Editor:

  Robert Lambert, David Rosenbloom

• Production Designer:

  James D. Bissell, Wolfgang Glattes

• Art Director:

  Bill Arnold, Ed Verreaux

• Executive Producer:

  Ron Shelton, Wolfgang Glattes

• Set Designer:

  Lauren Polizzi, Thomas Roysden, John Berger

• Costume Designer:

  Bernie Pollack

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Kirk A. Francis

• Casting:

  Louis Di Giaimo

• Supervising Sound Editor:

  J.Paul Huntsman

REVIEW:

• Spittle flying and veins popping, Nick Nolte's Pete Bell is the prototype of the Bobby Knight-like basketball coach whose play diagramming is exceeded only by his irascible personality. Blue Chips opens with his total verbal castration of a locker room of chastened athletes, then ups the wicked satirical level by having Bell, in full pouting diva mode, punt a ball into the stands during the game. This prepares the viewer for the possibility that the director who achieved widespread acclaim for his atypical cop movie (The French Connection) and horror movie (The Exorcist) might round out his resumé with an atypical sports movie. But William Friedkin's unexpected foray into this genre can't live up to its promising start. It softens Bell into a vacillating pawn with far more bark than bite, diminishing Nolte's wonderfully realized portrayal. The film's recruiting violations and other compromised ethics are well worth examining, but they follow many of the expected avenues of this type of behavior. Blue Chips does create a believable sense of the pressure cooker world that would imperil a ridiculously successful coach after a single losing season. With help from real sports personalities playing both characters and themselves, including Knight offering an uncharacteristically sportsmanlike self-parody, Friedkin and screenwriter/sports enthusiast Ron Shelton score a slam dunk on realism. For viewers entrenched in this world, pointing out the cameos will be just the beginning of the fun. However, the uninitiated may find too few insights to sustain them. ~ Derek Armstrong, Rovi