I just saw a trailer for The Year of the Yao and it looks to be, in the grand tradition of Basketball-related documentaries, incredible. The trailer already had me excited for Yao and I didn't even remember he played over here. I vaguely remember newspaper acrticles but that was only resurrected in my mind once I saw this trailer. It just talks about how much trouble he had when he came here and his philosophy. Of course its fully equipped with tv footage of all the big guys, and one clip has Shaq saying he's not ready for the NBA as he trips over his own feet and falls. Adjusting to the different way basketball is played here. They talk about language and cultural barriers and he speaks about how to pay homage to his roots and his Family back in China. He said something about a blade of grass raising itself to the sun *emotional audiance moment for me already* and how quirky his translater is. This looks like its going to be the top doc of the year, and I would have said Oscar is already written on it except for over at IMDB it has a 2004 date, so must have shown on one screen last year somewhere.

Here is a synopsis from imdb:





I am so excited to see this. April 29th I think it starts a limited opening.

Must say, it got me excited as well. I love the guy a great deal.

And would be interesting to see what Shaq thought of him then, as now atleast there's mutual respect they have for each other.

Trailer link: http://www.apple.com/trailers/fineline/theyearoftheyao/

I dunno, it doesn't look bad, but I'll hold off unless the reviews are really great. Though yeah, a lot of sports, basketball particularly, docs tend to be great (Hoop Dreams is a classic)

I'm calling a 90% fresh on rt right now. It just feels like the kind of movies critics go for. One man stories of overcoming all odd to bridge the gap between two cultures and to become a positive sports role model, etc, etc, etc. Its only about 90 minutes as well, so I doubt its going to be shotty editting. I'll have to wait and see it to say if its spectacular, but I doubt its going to be rotten level for critics. Especially with the doping in baseball right now, I'm pretty sure everyone wants to glamorize the "home boy done good" theme in sports. It dousn't hurt that he's not Black, because Basketball Diaries was criminally overlooked when it came out.

I am counting down towards Apriul 29th. Between Year and Hitchhikers, it's going to be a great movie weekend.

I'm still pretty excited to see this. I haven't seen a good simple documentary in awhile. I think the last good one I saw was Fog of War, and that certainly wasn't uplifting. Though it was excellent.

This is just going to be a nive human interest story, though i'm hoping its as smartly done as I believe it will be.