Rollerball

[Dominic Wade]

Great review, why not pop on the executive party track that everyone goes on about.

[Joe Stalin]

This is a 70's classic that I love.  I lump it in with Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man and Mad Max.  Awsome ending, what with the carnage all over the track.  

[Alain]

This movie rox..and if the tv's of the future are laughable , what about the John travolta pants (it was very 1975 style)..lol

[Goldenarrow]

World domination by International Banks is coming together very, very nicely. JPMorgan/Chase and Goldman Sachs getting all those juicy assets from the so-called "housing crises" for 10 cents on the dollar. Heh, heh. What they don't know is that there are not JUST $700 billion of derivatives to bailout. There is a pool of $600 TRILLION dollars of off-balance-sheet derivatives tied to car loans, student loans, GE and GM financing, credit cards, etc., etc.  Quite a neat and tidy way of making the masses dependent on serial bailouts until nothing is left of the currency.  Then, TOTAL CONTROL!  This movie is more prophetic than people realize. Get ready for a malevolent one-world government in our lifetime!!! (By the way, just as the Bible predicted 2000 years ago).

[Brett Miller]

The original Rollerball (1975) is one of my absolute favorites. I have owned the LP Soundtrack, the VHS and now the DVD. The DVD needs more extras on it, though.

LOST PROMO CLIP
In 1975, there was a 15-minute promotional clip that ABC played at 10:45 PM at the end of a Movie of the Week. It was really good and it made me make the trek by bus to downtown Seattle to see the movie where I knew I could get in even though I was 15 at the time. (Did the same thing to see Blazing Saddles, 3 Days of the Condor,  and a movie call Lipstick with the Hemingway sisters which really had a Joe Eszterhas feel to it.)

Perhaps, this is the "From Rome to Rollerball: The Full Circle" 8 minute clip that is mentioned at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0322340/ .

I'm also seeing a 2000 documentary called "Return to the Arena: The Making of 'Rollerball'" that I've never seen at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0310066/

To have James Caan and Norman Jewison do a commentary while they're still able to would be priceless.

ROLLERBALL & WONKA: FILMED IN MUNICH
Interestingly enough, Munich was futuristic enough for Rollerball to be filmed there and "classic" enough for Willie Wonka to be filmed there a few years earlier giving it a Grimms Fairy Tales kind of feel.

GREAT POLITICAL DRAMAS OF THE 70s
I always think that the greatest film era of my lifetime was the 1968-1975 era that started with Bonnie & Clyde and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and ended with Jaws. This movie, along with 3 Days of the Condor, The Parallax View, Executive Action, and Soylent Green painted a look into dark forces at the levers of power that have made me a more conscientious seeker of information and perhaps less trusting of what I'm being spoon-fed.

TRUE WORDS
Now, as an adult with my responsibilites and obligations, I think of John Houseman's words (as quoted here) of: "You know what those executives dream about, out there, behind their desks? They dream they're great Rollerballers. They dream they're Jonathan. They have muscles. They bash in faces!" Very true.

[lilnitenurse]

This movie would've been alright if James Caan would've SPOKEN his lines instead of mumbling them!