MORE ON THE UPCOMING PARIS SUMMER OLYMPICS

Before I update you about the upcoming Paris Olympics, a quick movie review of films I've recently watched.  On Juneteenth, I saw Car Wash.

• Why?  My annual viewing of a film focusing on African Americans.
• Released almost half a century ago, this is a weak film following the daily workers of a car wash.
• The "stars" were Richard Pryor and George Carlin.  However, they were mere cameos.

• 
  Rotten Tomatoes reviewers actually liked it, with a rating of 86%.
• The sound track featured 16 songs largely written by Norman Whitfield that became a double album by Rose Royce.  Won a 1977 Grammy Award.  Provided three R&B Top Ten Singles:  Car Wash, I Wanna Get Next to You and I'm Going Down.  However, if this film used the American Graffiti technique of the best disco songs of those days featuring the actual performers, who knows what eminence was missed.
• Not exactly in the spirit of Juneteenth.  All in all, I give the film a C rating.
• Maybe next year I'll go to something like Rotten Tomatoes Ten Best to watch on Juneteenth.

I would not have seen I.S.S. had I known that Rotten Tomatoes gave this 2023 film 60/43 scores. 

• Released earlier this year, it's R-rated with no stars.  

• 
  Basically, three Americans and three Russians are on the International Space Station (I.S.S.) when a serious nuclear war breaks out between the two countries.  
• The plot follows the intrigue from rivalry and murders to rapprochement...then an empty ending.
• Yet there was sufficient intrigue and twists that made for an entertaining movie.  I gave it a B rating.

The best of the three was the 2023 Hit Man, directed by Richard Linklater, with an unknown cast.  

• Rotten Tomatoes loved it, with 96/91 scores.  
• It's a romantic black comedy which had nothing to do with Juneteenth.  
• You can watch this film on Netflix.  
• In a nutshell, this youngish and boring college professor somehow gets linked to the police department to become a fake hitman to arrest people.  He becomes spectacular with disguises, and incurs the wrath of another fake hitman he replaced.  In any case, the ending is maybe too Hollywoodish, and a by-product is that his professorial reputation shifts from nothing to kind of hot.  My grade?  A-

The 2024 Paris Summer Olympics begins only a little more than a month away with soccer and rugby sevens on July 24.  The Opening Ceremony of the XXXIII Olympiad will begin at 7:30AM ET on July 26.  For the first time, it won't occur in a stadium.  Instead, there will be a parade of flotilla boats down the Seine.  10,500 athletes from over 200 national committees, as well as a refugee team, will compete in 329 events.

• Archery: July 25 to August 4
• Artistic gymnastics: July 27 to August 5 
• Artistic swimming: August 5 to 10
• Athletics: August 1 to 11
• Badminton: July 27 to August 5
• Basketball: July 27 to August 11
• Basketball 3x3: July 30 to August 5
• Beach volleyball: July 27 to August 10
• Boxing: July 27 to August 10
• Breaking: August 9 to 10
• Canoe slalom: July 27 to August 5
• Canoe sprint: August 6 to 10
• Cycling BMX freestyle: July 30 to 31
• Cycling BMX racing: August 1 to 2
• Cycling mountain bike: July 28 to 29
• Cycling road: July 27 to August 4
• Cycling track: August 5 to 11
• Diving: July 27 to August 10
• Equestrian: July 27 to August 6
• Fencing: July 27 to August 4
• Football (Soccer): July 24 to August 10
• Golf: August 1 to 10
• Handball: July 25 to August 11
• Hockey: July 27 to August 9
• Judo: July 27 to August 3
• Marathon swimming: August 8 to 9
• Modern pentathlon: August 8 to 11
• Rhythmic gymnastics: August 8 to 10
• Rowing: July 27 to August 3
• Rugby sevens: July 24 to 30
• Sailing: July 28 to August 8
• Shooting: July 27 to August 5
• Skateboarding: July 27 to August 7
• Sport climbing: August 5 to 10
• Surfing: July 27 to 31 (pending weather conditions)
• Swimming: July 27 to August 4
• Table tennis: July 27 to August 10
• Taekwondo: August 7 to 10
• Tennis: July 27 to August 4
• Trampoline: August 2
• Triathlon: July 30 to August 5
• Volleyball: July 27 to August 11
• Water polo: July 27 to August 11
• Weightlifting: August 7 to 11
• Wrestling: August 5 to 11

For more details, click here.  Most—but not all—of the Summer Games will be played within or in the outskirts of the city of Paris. Ten of the 35 official venues are outside the host metro area, including in the French cities of Nice, Marseille, and Bordeaux. Meanwhile, the surfing competition will take place 10,000 miles away on the waves off the French Polynesian island of Tahiti.

If you plan to go and have not yet bought tickets, they are available for a wide variety of events.  Click here.

Let me provide details for only one of the above, golf, for there is considerable controversy on the men's side about who will participate because those who left the PGA tour for the Saudi Arabian LIV Golf group will be missing.  

• 
  Golf returned to the Olympics in 2016 Rio after a 112-year absence but the Zika virus caused many players to withdraw.  The 2021 Tokyo was impacted by Covid.
• Gold medalists in Tokyo were Nelly Korda and Xander Schauffele of the USA.
• Gaze down the list of 60 qualifiers representing 32 countries to play at Le Golf National on August 1-4, and you won't see Bryson DeChambeau, who just won the U.S. Open Championship and is the #10 golfer in the world.  Four other Americans have been selected:  Scottie Scheffler, 2020 gold medalist Xander Schuffele, Windham Clark and Collin Morikawa, with Patrick Cantlay as the one alternate.  Most qualifying countries will have two representatives.
• How were the 60 selected?

Or.

Olympic Golf Ranking	Official World Golf Ranking	Golfer	Nation
1	1	Scottie Scheffler	USA
2	2	Xander Schauffele	USA
3	3	Rory McIlroy	IRL
4	4	Wyndham Clark	USA
5	5	Viktor Hovland	NOR
6	6	Ludvig Åberg	SWE
7	7	Collin Morikawa	USA
8	8	Jon Rahm	ESP
9	13	Tommy Fleetwood	GBR
10	14	Matsuyama Hideki	JPN
11	16	Matt Fitzpatrick	GBR
12	18	Sepp Straka	AUT
13	21	Jason Day	AUS
14	22	Kim Joo-hyung (Tom Kim)	KOR
15	23	An Byeonghun	KOR
16	24	Matthieu Pavon	FRA
17	32	Nick Taylor	CAN
18	33	Shane Lowry	IRL
19	35	Adam Hadwin	CAN
20	36	Min Woo Lee	AUS
21	40	Christiaan Bezuidenhout	RSA
22	42	Nicolai Højgaard	DEN
23	44	Stephan Jäger	GER
24	52	Alex Noren	SWE
25	55	Thomas Detry	BEL
26	56	Emiliano Grillo	ARG
27	60	Ryan Fox	NZL
28	67	Erik van Rooyen	RSA
29	71	Adrian Meronk	POL
30	78	Victor Perez	FRA
31	81	Thorbjørn Olesen	DEN
32	83	Nakajima Keita	JPN
33	98	Joaquín Niemann	CHI
34	99	Sami Valimaki	FIN
35	100	Alejandro Tosti	ARG
36	110	Yu Chun-An (Kevin Yu)	TPE
37	116	Jorge Campillo	ESP
38	131	Matti Schmid	GER
39	136	Pan Cheng-Tsung (C.T. Pan)	TPE
40	143	Joost Luiten	NED
41	153	Yuan Yechun (Carl Yuan)	CHN
42	175	Camilo Villegas	COL
43	178	Matteo Manassero	ITA
44	185	Adrien Dumont de Chassart	BEL
45	189	Daniel Hillier	NZL
46	194	Guido Migliozzi	ITA
47	196	Cristóbal Del Solar	CHI
48	222	Shubshankar Sharma	IND
49	225	Rafael Campos	PUR
50	234	Darius van Driel	NED
51	237	Carlos Ortiz	MEX
52	240	Kiradech Aphibarnrat	THA
53	254	Gavin Green	MAS
54	256	Gaganjeet Bhullar	IND
55	279	Phachara Khongwatmai	THA
56	290	Nico Echevarría	COL
57	303	Abraham Ancer	MEX
58	305	Kris Ventura	NOR
59	326	Dou Zecheng	CHN
60	328	Fabrizio Zanotti	PAR

The women-60 will be finalized on June 24 after the KPMG Women's PGA Championship.  This was the ranking two weeks ago.

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