1. Debbie had items to donate to St. Vincent de Paul's and there's more cardboard and some trash I wanted to take out of the house and the garage. We also had a lamp, headboard, mirror, and some wood for Paul to pick up and take to his and Carol's house. It makes me very happy to move things along, to keep clearing things we no longer want or need out of our house, especially today, when a new bed frame arrived for the upstairs. I really like it when we move things out when new things come in.
2. With the beginning of each new month, the Criterion Channel introduces new collections of movies. This month, one of the collections is entitled, In the Ring and feature sixteen boxing movies.
I enjoy boxing movies a lot and so I jumped right on this collection to see what titles were included. Wow! Raging Bull, Requiem for a Heavyweight, Fat City, The Harder They Fall and more.
Immediately, I decided to watch one of my favorite movies of all time, boxing or otherwise, and relaxed in the Vizio room to watch When We Were Kings. It's a documentary covering the stunning Ali/Foreman match held in Kinshasa, Zaire in 1974. The movie explores not only the two boxers and the match itself, but also the music festival that happened at the same time, the repressive regime of Zaire's dictator, Mobutu Sese Soko, and the great popularity of Ali among the citizens of Zaire.
3. Upon completing When We Were Kings, I watched a second boxing documentary, Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story. Griffith was an accomplished boxer, having won championships in three different divisions. Most followers of boxing know him because of his match on March 24, 1962 when he knocked out Benny "The Kid" Paret in the 12th round. Paret left the ring in a coma and died ten days later.
The movie gives a lot of attention to this tragic match and the tension between the two fighters that had developed over their previous two matches and on the eve of the third one. The movie also explores Emile Griffth as gay. Or does it examine him as bisexual? Sexually, whatever he was, it played a central factor in Emile Griffith's story and is indispensable in understanding the tensions between Griffith and Paret.
We see in this movie how having killed Paret haunted Griffith for the rest of his boxing career and beyond. Did the ending scenes of this movie alleviate some of Griffith's suffering? I really don't know. I only know that this movie left me moved and shaken. That's what I experienced.
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