Most sports movies will try to convince you that it’s not about winning, it’s about how you play the game. Not DOWNHILL RACER (1969). In fact, one of the primary reasons Robert Redford struggled to get this film made was because no one had made a sports movie with a protagonist whose amorality and arrogance had no effect on his winning streak. He chose to center the narrative around downhill racing pretty much because baseball and football were already taken.

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Jay Smooth, who created the hip hop music blog and founded NYC’s hip-hop radio show, WBAI’s Underground Railroad, recently took on Roman Polanski on his blog. Roman Polanski on a hip-hop blog? Ok, I’ll listen.

The rant, clocking in at over seven minutes, is hard to look away from. He presents his case against Polanski, and Polanski supporters, in smart intense ramblings. And while most talking heads on TV leave me dizzy and unimpressed something is really engaging about this guy. Why is he on the radio and not TV?  The whole Polanski debate is quite something. As many members of the film community have come out in support of Polanski, this charged rant takes the other side.

The first of Polanski’s “Apartment Trilogy” (ROSEMARY’S BABY, THE TENANT), REPULSION remains one of the scariest movies I have ever seen. The new Criterion release, out July 28th, includes a funny, candid, and refreshingly unpolished 1964 French TV on-set documentary along with the Polanski-approved hi-def digital transfer.

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“I guess, I’m a people person,” jokes Marina Zenovich trying to explain why she makes films that focus on complex, fascinating individuals. Her documentary ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED [www.sundance.org] is not exactly a bio-doc, but rather an attempt to understand a particular historical moment, in this case, the 1977 arrest of Polanski for sexual assault, and his subsequent flight from the United States…

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