Kelly's Heroes/Where Eagles Dare (Blu-ray)

When Quentin Tarantino released Inglourious Basterds last year, much was made of his desire to make it fit within a very specific subgenre: the "World War II guys on a mission" movie. It sounds like a strangely esoteric classification, but there were actually quite a number of these films, most of them released on the heels of the phenomenal success of The Dirty Dozen, the standard bearer of the bunch (though it was preceded by The Great Escape, The Guns of Navarone, and others). The late 1960s and 1970s saw such similarly-minded films as The Bridge at Remagen, The Eagle Has Landed, The Inglorious Bastards (the Italian film from which QT "borrowed" his title), and the Clint Eastwood films Kelly's Heroes and Where Eagles Dare, collected in a new Blu-ray double feature.

The two films share a star, a setting, a story type, a director (Brian G. Hutton); they even use the same title font. Kelly's Heroes is the better-known picture today, primarily for its comic overtones--it was released in summer of 1970, just a couple of months after the surprise success of M*A*S*H, and was pitched to audiences as a cross between the standard WWII adventure yarn and the antiauthoritarian irreverence of Altman's comedy (with that film's star, Donald Sutherland, along for the ride). Eastwood plays the title character, a busted-down lieutenant who, while interrogating a German colonel, finds out about a treasure trove of Hitler's gold stashed deep into France, behind enemy lines. Taking advantage of a brief bit of company R&R, Kelly puts together a motley crew of fellow soldiers to swipe the gold. There's Big Joe (Telly Savalas), the resentful master sergeant; opportunistic hustler/supply sergeant "Crapgame" (Don Rickles); Sherman tank commander--and strangely ahead-of-his-time hippie--"Oddball" (Sutherland); and an assortment of platoon members and tank mechanics.

Kelly's Heroes runs a rather bloated 144 minutes, though you can mostly feel it crawling in the first act; it takes too damned long to get cooking. The picture's primary flaw, however, is that director Hutton can't find a consistent tone and sustain it--the serious action and plotting scenes coexist uneasily with the comic ones, leaving the funny stuff to feel like disconnected "comic relief." Mixing comedy and action is harder than it looks, and Hutton's occasional attempts to do so (like the attack on a German camp underscored by Oddball's gang listening to a Hank Williams Jr. song) are too lead-footed to play.

Frankly, the film works best as a straight-forward military adventure, as in the tense minefield scene, or the heist sequence, which is well-constructed and tightly shot. It does conclude with a nice inside joke; as Eastwood goes to face down the German soldier in a tank, Lalo Schifrin's score kicks up a cue that's a dead ringer for Morricone (Savalas and Sutherland join Eastwood shortly, apparently filling the roles of the bad and the ugly). That moment almost makes up for the multiple uses of "Burning Bridges," an anachronistic up-with-people number sung by "The Mike Curb Congregation".

Speaking of anachronistic, what are we to make of Sutherland's hippie soldier turn? It's a clear pander to the lucrative "youth market," but Sutherland managed to play a modern-thinking character in M*A*S*H without resorting to literally sporting long hair and a beard and talking like Dennis Hopper; worse than that, by the end of the picture the sniggering self-indulgence of the performance has made him more irritating than amusing. Savalas and Rickles come off best in the cast--the former finding some nuance in his no-nonsense character, the latter expectedly funny while still restrained and in-character. Caroll O'Connor, a year away from Archie Bunker, doesn't get much to do, while Eastwood ends up playing the straight man, and consequently kind of disappears. What's more, we never really get to know anyone we didn't know beforehand; the platoon all blends together, in spite of the presence of a few recognizable faces (including Harry Dean Stanton, billed only as "Dean Stanton," confirming that he has always looked old, even when he was young)*.

Kelly's Heroes comes to a satisfying conclusion (there is one truly perfect smash cut), but it is a mostly uneven film, struggling mightily to reconcile its old-fashioned storytelling with the more modern sensibilities that were creeping into contemporary cinema. Where Eagles Dare, which director Hutton and star Eastwood made two years previous, isn't burdened with the chore of hipness--it's straightforward yarn, and a pretty good one. Hutton's pacing remains a bit stoic and staid, but it's a smoother fit with this more straight-faced story.

It's a longer film than Kelly's, but doesn't dither around so much--Hutton gets right down to business, with one of those "righty-o, here's the plan" scenes led by a British officer (which Tarantino was semi-parodying with the Mike Myers bit in Basterds). The mission for the team of British commandos, plus a U.S. Army Ranger (Eastwood), is to penetrate a fortress high in the Alps to retrieve an important brigadier general who has been captured by German forces. But something else is amiss; members of the team start turning up dead, and we begin to suspect that the leader of the mission, Major John Smith (Richard Burton), may be up to more than he's telling.

There's only one major prolem with the film, though it is a whopper. This is one of those movies where everyone speaks English, though the Germans speak English with a German accent. Trouble is, when the British-American team infiltrates the fortress, wearing German uniforms and masquerading as German officers, not only do they not speak German, they... still speak with their English and American accents. Not to sound too literal, but isn't that a bit of a giveaway?

No matter. Again, not much of Clint's personality comes through here--he's fairly bland, allowing Burton and his crisp, engrossing professionalism to take over the movie. That holds particularly true in the lengthy centerpiece scene, in which the two men take over the German interrogation of the general; Burton flips the scene's script several times, shifting allegiances and purposes, the character improvising brilliantly. Poor Clint, on the other hand, suffers the ultimate indignity of getting beat up by a couple of wussy Brits, leaving him passed out while Burton gets the picture's best action sequence--a daring, white-knuckle fight atop an escaping cable car. The writing by Alistair MacLean is sharp and twisty, dense but not confusing. As with Kelly's Heroes, Where Eagles Dare pulls itself together best in its third act, with the thrilling escape sequence--this is where Hutton is doing his best work, building his action beats in a brisk, workmanlike fashion.
THE BLU-RAY DISCS:


I was surprised to find that, unlike some of Warner Blu's other double features, this set puts each title on its own disc. Both are housed in a standard Blu-ray case.
Video:

Both of the 1080p VC-1 transfers are impressive, particularly considering the age of the source materials. Kelly's shows some minor print wear, which mostly shows in the blacks of the nighttime scenes, but the color reproduction is quite good--bold and rich--even if the skin tones occasionally skew a bit orange. The wide shots of the Yugoslavian countryside are quite lovely as well. Where Eagles Dare doesn't sport the most vivid color scheme, but the image is a handsome one, particularly the terrific snow-capped mountains (and, later, the bright red flames on that white landscape). Detail work is good--note the textures of Burton and Eastwood's rough skin in their close-ups--and in fact, the only trouble with the image is that it's so clean, it makes the tepid process shots look even less believable.
Audio:

Both films get the DTS-HD Master Audio treatment, though Kelly's has the weaker mix of the two--dialogue is pretty tinny, and there's not much in the way of separation in the big action sequences, which mostly lay in the front channels. On the other hand, Schifrin's spirited, drum-heavy score rattles the subwoofer nicely, and the bomb blasts are crisp and clean. Eagle's mix seems somehow fuller and more robust--the dialogue sounds more natural, and the track has more overall weight to it. Rear channels also get more play; the film is pretty quiet in the talky opening sections, but once they hit the first action beat (around the hour mark), the surround audio is boisterous and energetic.

The disc also includes French, German, Italian, and Castilian language tracks, in addition to 12 subtitle options.
Extras:

Bonus features are pretty skimpy. Kelly's Heroes only includes the original Theatrical Trailer (2:49), which pushes the picture as a pure, post-M*A*S*H comedy. Where Eagles Dare also comes with a Theatrical Trailer (2:20), boasting that it is "from the company who gave you The Dirty Dozen" (yep, they were using that nonsensical line even back in the 1960s), in addition to the wonderfully retro period featurette "On Location: Where Eagles Dare" (12:36).
FINAL THOUGHTS:

Neither Kelly's Heroes nor Where Eagles Dare represents the best of this very specific type of WWII movie, nor a full realization of Eastwood's particular talents. But both films (particularly the latter) are pretty decent popcorn entertainments--nothing more, nothing less.

See Also :

Eagles Over London

 

Inglorious Bastards

Eagles Over London

The Italian director Enzo G Castellari, a specialist in the war genre dubbed "macaroni combat" by the Japanese, owes his cult status to Quentin Tarantino, a devoted fan ever since his days behind the counter in an LA video store. Tarantino's Oscar-winning Inglourious Basterds was inspired by Castellari's Quel maledetto treno blindato (1978, aka The Inglorious Bastards) and this DVD of the Italian's most celebrated picture, Eagles Over London (aka La battaglia d'Inghilterra), is accompanied by a half-hour conversation between the pair, filmed during a special screening in LA two years ago.

The plot turns on disguised German soldiers infiltrating the British evacuation at Dunkirk in May 1940 and proceeding to plan the destruction of radar stations around London. A celebrated Buñuel actor, Francisco Rabal, plays the Nazi leader, the stiff Czech actor Frederick Stafford is the British soldier who twigs the German plot and Van Johnson plays a senior RAF officer. The action is nonstop, the special effects are all pre-CGI and the movie is wild, touchingly pro-British and sometimes unintentionally comic. Tarantino overdoes it when claiming Castellari's Dunkirk sequence "makes Atonement look like a piece of shit".

 

neobux

neobux

Kristy Mcnichol

“Bowflex Boy” and Kristy McNichol: of celebrity, reality, sexiness and desire (reprint)

There’s been an interesting discussion going on beneath this post at Feministe. As part of a riposte to some rather silly criticism of Third Wave, sex-positive feminism, Jill last week put up a number of pictures of hot shirtless men. (It’s reasonably work-safe to visit.)

Some commenters (both men and women) criticized the decision to put up the photos. They asked the usual questions: isn’t it reflective of a double standard if we denounce men for objectifying a narrow range of beautiful women, while celebrating when a feminist woman posts pictures of handsome, ripped, relatively young men? Isn’t it problematic to celebrate a narrow ideal when we live in a culture in which body dysmorphia and self-loathing is rising dramatically in the male population?

Jill responds to the criticism in this comment. When the question of poor male self-image is raised, some commenters leap in to make the perfectly legitimate case that all things considered, women today suffer far more from a culture that fetishizes a very narrow notion of perfection. That’s true enough, but the damage done to young men by our contemporary ideal of the “cut, be-sixpacked” physique is very real.

But this post is not an attempt to revive some sort of suffering Olympics discussion about male v. female body image issues. Rather, I’ve been thinking about something I learned twenty years ago about desire, the ideal, and insecurity. In college, I lived for a while in a co-op on the northside of the Berkeley campus. There were 37 of us in the house, nearly as many women as men. One of my best female friends in the house lived in a “single”, and I often visited with her in her room. (I had a triple for most of my time in the co-op). Debbie had a huge poster on her wall — an ad for the “Bowflex Man.” If you remember the ’80s, you remember the ad. I’ve done a Google image search, and can’t find it, but the picture is indelibly carved on my brain. A young, dark-haired man is pulling off his shirt, lifting his arms over his shoulders. His body beneath is tanned and spectacularly toned. A Bowflex machine is in the background. Half the dorm rooms on campus seemed to have this picture up; it was more popular than that college staple, Robert Doisneau’s kissing Parisian street couple.Here’s the picture:

 Anyhow, Debbie had this picture in her room, over her bed. At one point, Debbie and I made a brief attempt at a romantic relationship. It lasted only a few weeks before we realized we were better off as friends. But I remember that when I was naked in her bed the first time, I couldn’t stop thinking about the image of masculine perfection just inches away. I was not terribly out of shape in college, but in both color and texture was a bit doughy around my middle. I certainly wasn’t “Bow-flex boy”. And after we had finished fooling around, as we lay in her very narrow single bed, I made a rather joking, obviously insecure remark. It’s been more than twenty years, so I don’t remember exactly how I put it, but it was something like “I can’t believe you want to be with me when you’ve got this guy to look at.”

Debbie sat up in bed, incredulous. She said — more or less: “For real, Hugo? That picture upsets you?” I told her no, not really, but it did make me feel, well a bit inadequate. Debbie laughed, not in a cruel way, and said something important: “Hugo, I like looking at beautiful bodies. He’s a gorgeous guy. But the fact that I think it’s beautiful, even the fact that I am attracted to the image, doesn’t mean that that is the only kind of man I can be attracted to.” I lay there for a moment, trying to figure out if I ought to be insulted, and she said something I do remember very clearly: “I can appreciate perfection without expecting it, and I can really be just as attracted to a normal body as to a perfect one.” I certainly knew I didn’t have a perfect body, and I didn’t expect her to tell me something ridiculous to the effect that I was just as sculpted as Bowflex Boy. What I wanted to hear was that i could “fall short of the mark” and still be wanted. And Debbie made it clear to me that an imperfect, human, “normal guy’s body” could still be very attractive to her.

We had a wonderful conversation that night. We each told the other what we found attractive in the other, and we confessed our particular insecurities and received some much-needed reassurance. I’d been sexually active since high school, but this was the first time I had talked openly with a lover about the difference between the attraction to an idol and the attraction to a real person. At one point, I said to Debbie something like, “So you’re telling me that you can have an aesthetic appreciation for a handsome model or actor but your real attraction is to something more real?” She snorted. “It’s more than ‘aesthetic appreciation’, Hugo. I can be sexually attracted to someone like Michael Biehn (”Aliens” star and Debbie’s favorite ‘crush’). I can think about having sex with him. But the fantasy about Michael Biehn or Bowflex man doesn’t mean that I expect to have that in real life. I’m not shocked when a guy I’m with isn’t like that, and I’m not disappointed.”

I’ve written about the problem of objectification before in various places. I take a fairly strong anti-porn line. I do believe that prolonged exposure to pornography can rob us of the capacity to be intimate. But at the same time, while I am certain that porn has a deleterious effect, I don’t think it shapes our libidos so completely as to render us incapable of responding to someone with a non porn-star body. Porn makes it easier for us to dehumanize each other, but it doesn’t cause someone to “only” be attracted to women with, say, 40DD breasts and a 26-inch waist. We are malleable, yes, but we’re not robots.

It is nearly impossible for any of us to disengage completely from the culture. In watching movies or television shows, we’re going to be exposed to celebrities whom we find very attractive. We know, of course, that their sexiness is carefully honed and cultivated; we know that the pictures we look at are airbrushed and retouched. From a critical justice standpoint, we ought to be asking questions out loud about how these images are selected and about the messages they send to all of us, young people in particular. We ought to push for more inclusiveness in every form — greater ethnic diversity as well as greater body-size and age diversity. But as we do this work, we’re still going to encounter men and women whose image we find satisfying, aesthetically pleasing, perhaps exciting, perhaps arousing. We were given eyes with which to delight, after all. Trying to avoid that pleasure is both impossible and silly.

The first pin-up I ever put on my wall was of Kristy McNichol. I had quite a thing for her when I was thirteen, and was able to find on the ‘net at least part of the picture I had up. (As best as I can remember after nearly thirty years.) I loved looking at McNichol’s picture. I did think about her sexually, of course, even though I had a rather inchoate and confused understanding of what that meant when I was thirteen. But more than anything else, I wanted an ideal on which to focus. She struck a chord with me when I was young, and I grasped on to that. Other stars would later strike the same chord, and though I never put posters on my wall of female stars after I left junior high school, I still had my “celebrity crushes.” But the point is simple: as powerful as these crushes were, like Debbie’s Bowflex fantasies, they never proved an obstacle to connecting with real women.

When I had my first sexual relationship in high school, I wasn’t horrified or alienated by the reality of my girlfriend’s body; I was awed by it in all of its uniqueness and complexity and wonder. Perfection would have been disappointing by comparison. A few years later, my friend Debbie reassured me that I was not the only one who could mark a distinction between a strong response to a beautiful image and the very real desire that could blossom for a very real person. Over the years, I’ve dated (and married) women who’ve had “things” for celebrities with gorgeous bodies; I’ve dated women whose exes have been professional athletes with physiques far more sculpted than mine. Whenever my own insecurities flared up — and they did continue to flare up into my early thirties — I reminded myself of Debbie and Bowflex Boy. We can admire perfection, we can eroticize an ideal image — and, at the same time, respond with great excitement to a flesh and blood person whose imperfections are often part of what enhances rather than suppresses our desire.

A month ago, I put up Jeanetta Calhoun’s “Mapping Desire” as a Thursday Short Poem. It’s worth concluding this post with that poem again, as it captures what it is I am trying to say here far better than I can in prose.

“i look like a roadmap,” he says,
intending, i suppose, to deflect
any unrealistic expectations of
the power of passing time on
a face i haven’t touched in years
but he is forgetting
how i love a road trip
sometimes screaming down the freeway
at 2 am, the bass thumping in the speakers
like the pounding of my heart
most often, though, i like to
take the side roads
roll the windows down
inhale the sweet smells
sheltered under the arching
bowers of trees linked
together like fingers of two hands
spanning what separates them
i like to slide into
a roadhouse on the county line
have a beer, some barbecue and
a slowdance to the blues
then unfold my beloved roadmap
run my finger along a chosen course
imagine all the s-turns and heaves
glory in the forgotten lanes
and remember that the end
of one journey is the
beginning of another.

See Also :

Dream 14 

Hiroyuki Takaya scores Dream 14 knockout of Joachim 'Hellboy' Hansen 

 

 

Hiroyuki Takaya scores Dream 14 knockout of Joachim 'Hellboy' Hansen

Hiroyuki Takaya scored the most significant win of his career by breaking new ground.

Takaya (13-8-1) snapped a two-fight losing streak by knocking out former lightweight champion Joachim "Hellboy" Hansen (19-10-1) with 28 seconds left in the first round of their bout today at Dream 14 in Saitama, Japan. It was the first knockout defeat in the 10 1/2-year career of Hansen, who lost his second fight in a row since dropping to featherweight earlier this year.

Hansen was doing well in the early going. Takaya circled and tried to land flurries, Hansen was blocking almost everything and landing a few jabs of his own.

But Takaya connected with a right hand on the button that put Hansen on rubber legs. Takaya followed with a right hook that dropped Hansen and landed one more right hand on the ground that left him glassy-eyed.

None of Takaya's previous victories were over men as well-regarded at the time as Hansen, who is the No. 18 featherweight in the USA TODAY/SB Nation consensus rankings and was a top-10 lightweight as recently as four months ago.

Beating Hansen could put Takaya in position for a rematch with Bibiano Fernandes, who won Dream's 143-pound championship by taking a decision over Takaya in October, during the final of the Dream Featherweight Grand Prix.

See Also :

DREAM.14 recap: Diaz submits Sakurai in first; Gracie decisions Sakuraba

 

Dream 14

DREAM.14 recap: Diaz submits Sakurai in first; Gracie decisions Sakuraba

While Strikeforce welterweight champion Nick Diaz may soon find himself facing disciplinary sanctions in the U.S. for his role in April's "Strikeforce: Nashville" post-fight melee, the hot-tempered Cesar Gracie fighter isn't waiting on the sidelines in the interim.

To the contrary, Diaz continued his recent dominant ways with a first-round finish of Japanese legend Hayato "Mach" Sakurai in the main event of DREAM.14.

DREAM.14 took place Saturday at the Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan. The broadcast aired live in North American on HDNet early Saturday morning.

Sakurai looked effective early while remaining active from his back in an early takedown and quickly working back to his feet. A right hand then scored for Sakurai, but it would one of his final highlights.

After Diaz began to open up on the feet, Sakurai shot in for a successful takedown but immediately found himself trapped in a fight-ending armbar.

Diaz (22-7 MMA, 2-0 DREAM) has now won seven-straight fights and 11 of his past 12 official contests. He'll wait on word from the Tennessee Athletic Commission to determine when he can fight again in the U.S. Meanwhile, the once-dominant Sakurai (35-11-2 MMA, 3-3 DREAM) has now dropped three-straight fights for the first time in his career.

While Japanese MMA legend Kazushi Sakuraba earned his moniker of "The Gracie Hunter" through a series of four wins over the esteemed Brazilian family, the near-41-year-old is now 0-2 in his past two attempts to add another buck to the mantle.

Fighting for the first time in two years, 24-year-old Ralek Gracie frequently worked the aged Sakuraba to the canvas and dominated from top position. Sakuraba, as always, proved his heart by continuing to press forward and counter, but his efforts paled in comparison to Gracie's attack. Gracie fell short of finishing the contest, but when the final bell sounded, it was obvious Sakuraba had lost a unanimous decision.

With the result, Gracie (3-0 MMA, 1-0 DREAM) remains undefeated through the first three bouts of his MMA career, while Sakuraba (26-13-1 MMA, 3-2 DREAM) sees a two-fight win streak come to a halt.

With both Hiroyuki Takaya and Joachim Hansen in desperate need of a win, it was the "Streetfight Bancho" who was able to deliver.

Takaya opened up with the first effective strike, but Hansen immediately adjusted and fired back a few shots of his own. But after both fighters traded missed takedown opportunities, a Takaya right hand left Hansen wobbly. Takaya sensed the finish and pounced on his wounded prey. A second right sent Hansen to the canvas, and Takaya sealed the result with a few more punches on the floor.

Takaya (13-8-1 MMA, 4-2 DREAM) halts a two-fight slide, while Hansen (19-10-1 MMA, 3-4 DREAM) has now dropped three-straight contests and is just 2-4 in his past six fights.

In a bout that was originally scheduled under the Strikeforce banner, Japanese superstar Norifumi "Kid" Yamamoto secured a much-needed result against an obviously overmatched opponent.

After an early low blow stunned Lopez, Yamamoto attacked on the restart and a combination sent "Kiko" crashing to the canvas. Yamamoto pounced with a series of hammerfists that ended Lopez's night in just 1:41.

The win was the first for Yamamoto (18-3 MMA, 1-2 DREAM) since December 2007 and ended a two-fight losing streak. France (4-3 MMA, 0-1 DREAM) has now dropped three-straight fights after opening his career 4-0.

Despite entering the contest as a slight underdog, 26-year-old Japanese product "Wicky Akiyo" Nishiura used a devastating striking attack to fell near-50-fight veteran Hideo Tokoro.

Nishiura took to the attack from the opening bell, and an early right hand stunned Tokoro. Additional shots dropped Tokoro on two different occasions, and Nishiura smartly pressed until earning the stoppage with a ground-and-pound attack just 2:51 into the first frame.

Nishiura (11-5-1 MMA, 1-1 DREAM) improves to 2-3 in his past five bouts with an impressive performance, while Tokoro (26-22-1 MMA, 4-4 DREAM) falls to just 2-5 in his past seven fights.

Japanese countrymen Kazuyuki Miyata and Takafumi Otsuka engaged in a rousing 15-minute affair, and in the end, the victory was awarded by the slimmest of margins.

Despite appearing to trail early, Miyata battled back to land a few impressive strikes that left his opponent's nose bleeding while also taking charge of the grappling department with a kimura attempt in the second and an arm-triangle try in the third. Otsuka continued to make his case for the win with a few devastating knees and a powerful right hand, but it was Miyata who was awarded the split-decision result.

Miyata (9-7 MMA, 2-1 DREAM) earns his fourth-straight win overall, while Otsuka (10-5-1 MMA, 0-2 DREAM) falls to 2-2 in his past four and remains winless under the DREAM banner.

In a bantamweight affair, four-time WEC veteran Kenji Osawa used a potent striking attack and excellent takedown defense to earn a tight split-decision win over his countryman, Yoshiro Maeda.

After an entertaining exchange in the opening round, the pace settled in for the final two, but it was Osawa who remained one step ahead of his foe throughout. Osawa finished rounds two and three on the attack, and the effort appeared to net him the upset victory.

With a win in his first bout since being released by the WEC, Osawa (16-9-2, 1-0 DREAM) is now 3-1 in his past four outings. Maeda (26-9-2 MMA, 2-3 DREAM), a three-time WEC veteran, has now lost two-straight fights.

The evening's opening contest featured the ever-popular 193-pound "Super Hulk" champion Ikuhisa Minowa facing 330-pound giant Imani Lee. While Lee reigned supreme in the girth category, Minowa was unquestionably the more skilled athlete.

After Lee threatened with an early combination, Minowa was able to press his opponent against the cage and onto the floor. From there, Minowa moved to mount, delivered ground-and-pound blows and forced Lee to expose his back. Minowa needed just the one chance and immediately secured a fight-ending rear-naked choke with 45 seconds remaining on the opening frame.

Minowa (46-30-8 MMA, 6-3 DREAM) has now won five-straight contests, while Lee (1-3 MMA, 0-1 DREAM) has dropped two-consecutive bouts since registering the lone win of his career.
 

Nate Robinson and Boston Celtics beat Dwight Howard and Orlando Magic in Game 6, 55-42

Back-up point guard Nate Robinson has been quiet through the series but he led the No. 4-ranked Boston Celtics past Dwight Howard and the No. 2-placers Orlando Magic, 55-42 in Game Six on Friday in Boston for the Eastern Conference finals of the NBA Playoffs 2010.

Robinson garnered 13 points for Boston, astounding fans at the TD Garden. He has been a one-man wrecking crew and Orlando has had no answers, and the feisty player even drew the third foul on the Magic’s Howard (13 points) on a drive to the hoop.

Somewhat banged-up Rajon Rondo also has done good work, scoring 12 points, followed by Paul Pierce with 12 points and Ray Allen with eight.

Robinson played about 8 1/2-minutes while Rondo rested and stretched out along the sideline in the period.

The Celtics opened up their largest lead of the half (21 points) with about seven minutes left in the half. They currently lead the series, 3-2.

See Also :

Nate Robinson

City musicians are launching websites to promote their music 

Gary Coleman death: What is an intracranial hemorrhage?