New Figure Skating Drama on Netflix (EDIT: no longer starring Emma Roberts)

Daena said:
I remember some film about single skater who was bullied by her coach, she retired, made comeback and beat her ex-coach's new pupil? It was not romantic and fluffy, I watched it when I was a little girl...

Update: Found it. Canadian made for television film. "Blades of courage" (ugh, what a cheesy title).
Reading its plot on Wikipedia - lol, I didn't remember she was seduced by her creepy coach. Probably my young brain didn't want to process it :yikes:
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Hahahaha, I remember that movie because one of my theatre school drama coaches was in it, playing the overbearing skate mom. Patricia Hamilton, who was well-known for playing Rachel Lynde in the Kevin Sullivan miniseries of Anne of Green Gables and its sequel in the 80s, was also in it as the small-town coach who got screwed over when the main character hit the big time and was sent to an eville big-city coach (played by Colm Feore, a reputed Canadian actor who was on the last two seasons of House of Cards as General Brockhart). It was truly terrible. I think it was released on VHS with a different title (Skate! or something like that) in the U.S.

ETA: LOL, I totally forgot I had a super-old VHS of this movie in my skating movies collection!!!

MacMadame said:
Blades of Glory was both awesome and edgy!
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Ugh, no way. Worst skating movie ever. :p
 
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Blades of Glory holds a special place for me because my friends all took me to see it because they knew what a figure skating nut I was, and when the Michelle Kwan reference occurred they all looked at me and got excited as if they were also Kwan fans.
 
missing said:
I'd say you can't make this stuff up except probably any one of us could.

Created by Mr. Mercedes scribe Samantha Stratton, the project — which Netflix describes as “edgy” — centers on Roberts’ Kat Baker, an “up-and-coming, high-level single skater who’s about to turn in her skates after a disastrous fall took her off the competition track. When Kat seizes an opportunity to continue her career as a pair skater with a talented bad-boy partner, she risks exposing a fiercely kept secret that could unravel her entire life. On and off the ice, Kat and her new partner will face daunting odds, injury to body and soul, financial sacrifice, and even potential mental breakdown on their way to realizing their Olympic dream.”

But this is my favorite part of the article:

Casting for the aforementioned “bad-boy” is underway (if you have suggestions, drop ’em in the comments.)
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How deep do they plan on making those skaters' edges?
 
VIETgrlTerifa said:
Blades of Glory holds a special place for me because my friends all took me to see it because they knew what a figure skating nut I was, and when the Michelle Kwan reference occurred they all looked at me and got excited as if they were also Kwan fans.
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Everyone at the rink and school (well, except the older generation of coaches) were talking about it. It was fun to have people talk skting with me and joke about it.

I think a lot of skating movies are overdramatic and/or too much in the type of drama this movie will be. What sets Blades of Glory apart from other skating movies is the humor: it made skating accessible to a wider, younger audience and made fun of skating in a mostly respectful way that skaters, fans, and non-skating people could enjoy. Stuff like this drama won't do the same.
 
Willin said:
Everyone at the rink and school (well, except the older generation of coaches) were talking about it. It was fun to have people talk skting with me and joke about it.

I think a lot of skating movies are overdramatic and/or too much in the type of drama this movie will be. What sets Blades of Glory apart from other skating movies is the humor: it made skating accessible to a wider, younger audience and made fun of skating in a mostly respectful way that skaters, fans, and non-skating people could enjoy. Stuff like this drama won't do the same.
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Blades of Glory was fun to watch. I also liked the fact that it was aimed at an adult audience instead of teens/kids.
 
jenniferlyon said:
Blades of Glory was fun to watch. I also liked the fact that it was aimed at an adult audience instead of teens/kids.
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And the competitions happened with arena lights and not spotlights!!!

I actually thought it was one of the few skating movies that was somewhat realistic. The only thing that bugged me was when the dude was running around on his skaters with no skate guards and then stepped out on the ice and could skate. IRL his blades would have been totally torn up!
 
MacMadame said:
So she's too injured to skate singles and her answer is to take up the even more dangerous pairs discipline? :rolleyes:
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This was my first thought too. Yes, I'm sure a ladies skater who is too injured to compete in singles will be perfectly able to handle throw triples and quads and lifts and throws and death spirals! Sounds completely fine!

aftershocks said:
Whoa! Where's the real figure skating dramas on screen? There's absolutely a smorgasbord of skaters' life stories and on-ice dramas to choose between:
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The Plushenko and Yagudin rivalry! Come on! The two men who hated each other so much that they drove the sport to technical heights they had never before dreamed of just to beat each other! It's perfect!

Or Plushenko's story in general. It's got everything: the underdog child from an impoverished background who went on his own to a new city to train in, who had to collect bottles just to eat, and was bullied and abused by the older kids, who was taken in by the father-figure-like coach, and eventually rose up and became one of the greatest figure skaters of all time. Hollywood normally eats that shit up!

A Julian Yee biopic! The young boy from a tropical country who trains on ice rinks with limited funds and limited opportunity but persists and fulfils his Olympic dream as Malaysia's first Olympic figure skater! The feel-good story of the year they'd call it!

hanca said:
Oh come on, guys, someone is making a ten part drama and you are complaining?
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Yes, because it's more of the same stereotypical shit that does nothing for the sport's image and contributes heavily to the lack of people taking the sport seriously in general.

MacMadame said:
Blades of Glory was both awesome and edgy!
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Willin said:
What sets Blades of Glory apart from other skating movies is the humor: it made skating accessible to a wider, younger audience and made fun of skating in a mostly respectful way that skaters, fans, and non-skating people could enjoy. Stuff like this drama won't do the same.
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Blades of Glory is to me pretty much the only acceptable mainstream movie to come out about skating, largely because it doesn't take itself seriously as a skating movie. It's openly a parody. It's not trying to be serious. It's funny because it's not serious.

Plus, it had the competitions taking place under a full-lit rink like they would in real life. When does that usually happen?
 
Yep @mag, like I said, a veritable smorgasbord of untapped dramatic figure skating storylines await a bold and talented screenwriter. :)
 
I would not be much interested in a fictionalized dramatization of real-life skater's life. Then we'd just spend too much time picking apart what they got wrong compared to the real story I as we understand it based on articles etc. about that skater).

What I would like is to see movies or series about skating written by people who were already familiar with the sport before they came up with the idea for the story, so the plotlines would be rooted in how skating really works. A series could probably draw on dramatic things that really did happen to real elite (or not-so-elite) skaters but mix and match the details. That way they could craft storylines that are more coherent than the mess of real life and we wouldn't have to worry about whether it was accurate to what really happened. Just whether it was plausible that this could happen.
 
aftershocks said:
Yep @mag, like I said, a veritable smorgasbord of untapped dramatic figure skating storylines await a bold and talented screenwriter. :)
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I've been playing around with a new skating novel, but I haven't yet figured out the ending. It's a family drama, not a romance, although the main character does have an ex-boyfriend and a newer love interest. She's 24, which means she is supposed to be an adult. But so far, she doesn't act much like one.
 
jenniferlyon said:
I've been playing around with a new skating novel, but I haven't yet figured out the ending. It's a family drama, not a romance, although the main character does have an ex-boyfriend and a newer love interest. She's 24, which means she is supposed to be an adult. But so far, she doesn't act much like one.
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Maybe she decides to move to Boston and embrace all the twists and turns her life has taken. ;) She finally grows up perhaps by making peace with her past... Just an idea as I have no idea about your plot and the family-related interactions. :)
 
gkelly said:
I would not be much interested in a fictionalized dramatization of real-life skater's life. Then we'd just spend too much time picking apart what they got wrong compared to the real story I as we understand it based on articles etc. about that skater).
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It has been done several times in TV movie form and they were all terrible. There was a super cheesy dramatization of Oksana Baiul's life, a soap opera-esque movie about the Duchesnays that mostly seemed to be about her romance with Christopher Dean, the schmaltzy "docudrama" version of My Sergei with Elena and Anton skating the roles of G&G, various Nancy-and-Tonya TV dramatizations prior to I, Tonya and I'm sure there are one or two "real life" skating dramatizations that I've forgotten about (thankfully).

I, Tonya only stands apart from the rest because a) there was an actual budget involved in making it, so obviously all the production values are way better than most skating TV or even Hollywood movies, b) it is meant to be satirical and c) Allison Janney.
 
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I love skating but I think it does have an inherently over-the-top quality even at its best and most artistic that makes it hard to do a 'serious' drama set in the skating world. I think that is part of its appeal! But it may be a reason why I, Tonya (I haven't seen it personally) is really the only critically-acclaimed movie/tv that I can think of set in the skating world, because it sounds like it worked with that tendency rather than fighting it.
 
aftershocks said:
Maybe she decides to move to Boston and embrace all the twists and turns her life has taken. ;) She finally grows up perhaps by making peace with her past... Just an idea as I have no idea about your plot and the family-related interactions. :)
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LOL, not Boston! As for the family-related interactions, the main character is the daughter of an Olympic gold medalist who alienated the entire skating world several years earlier by writing a tell-all book.
 
dramagrrl said:
It has been done several times in TV movie form and they were all terrible. There was a super cheesy dramatization of Oksana Baiul's life, a soap opera-esque movie about the Duchesnays that mostly seemed to be about her romance with Christopher Dean, the schmaltzy "docudrama" version of My Sergei with Elena and Anton skating the roles of G&G, various Nancy-and-Tonya TV dramatizations prior to I, Tonya and I'm sure there are one or two "real life" skating dramatizations that I've forgotten about (thankfully).

I, Tonya only stands apart from the rest because a) there was an actual budget involved in making it, so obviously all the production values are way better than most skating TV or even Hollywood movies, b) it is meant to be satirical and c) Allison Janney.
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Sigh... sadly your observations seem to suggest that crafting a workable screenplay centered around figure skating is more complicated and near impossible than figure skating itself actually is in the first place. :COP: I'm not saying you're wrong. It's just one more depressing thing to think there's no possible way to translate the beauty and essence of what the sport is about into an effective and successful fictional drama.
 
aftershocks said:
Sigh... sadly your observations seem to suggest that crafting a workable screenplay centered around figure skating is more complicated and near impossible than figure skating itself actually is in the first place. :COP:
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Crafting a workable screenplay is arguably more complicated that figure skating itself. Certainly no less complicated.
But not impossible.

I'm not saying you're wrong. It's just one more depressing thing to think there's no possible way to translate the beauty and essence of what the sport is about into an effective and successful fictional drama.
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The thing is: most people who watch movies about figure skaters are not figure skating fans and need something other than the sport itself to draw them in - a good story, usually one with a romance, or an individual facing and overcoming adversity.

Most films about skaters show only snippets of programs, not whole programs, because the general audience might not be able to focus on a full program.

At the end of "I, Tonya", a full program was shown during or after the credits rolled. I (and the two people waiting for me) was the only the person in the theater, or one of only a few people, who stayed to watch the program. Most of the audience was preparing to leave or leaving.
 
Tom Wilson from the Capitals is out on suspension for clobbering one too many opponents. Maybe he'd be interested in a side gig.
 
If the show lasts long enough, that can happen.

Not sure why the doom and gloom. I will watch it. Everyone else can watch the Chicago shows.
 
Japanfan said:
Most films about skaters show only snippets of programs, not whole programs...
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I totally would never expect a fictional film to show a whole fs program! That is counterproductive and ineffective for plot development and length of film restrictions. That's why in the editing process of filmmaking there are often a number of scenes that are cut (it's usually not about the quality of a scene, but that the scene may be superfluous to character and plot development, or the scene is repetitive or problematic in telling the story, i.e., it takes something away from forward movement rather than enhancing the storyline).

Japanfan said:
At the end of "I, Tonya", a full program was shown during or after the credits rolled.
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Wowza. I didn't know that so I missed out. It's very true that audiences are supposed to sit through the entire credits and actually read the credits in order to gain a full understanding and appreciation of a film. And of course, there's also a number of instances where filmmakers add additional footage after the credits which those who have left the theater or who exit playback on Netflix will completely miss. :duh:

What program did they show in full anyway? It's probably available on Youtube, unless it was done with Margot Robbie's face fused over Tonya's. :p
 
peibeck said:
"Spinning Out" as the title? I guess that means she's supposed to be a drug addict or alcoholic? That's the "hip lingo" for that phrase (though it could also include having mental issues). Yeah, that should draw in fans to skating. :p
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Goodness! Well, then I would say it's appropriate if the theme song from the sound track be this song:

Spinning Wheel by Blood, Sweat & Tears.
 
aftershocks said:
What program did they show in full anyway? It's probably available on Youtube, unless it was done with Margot Robbie's face fused over Tonya's. :p
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I don't remember, and was never familiar with Tonya's program by name.

But I'm sure it was one in which she landed the 3A.
 
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