ALI: THE MOVIE AND THE MAN (2001)

At last -- the laundry list of Mario Van Peebles' acting credits and the life story of Muhammad Ali, both in a single volume. Such rare alchemy indicates there's a film to sell. But while this pictorial movie book works as Cliffs Notes for a meatier Ali bio, the pictures of Smith, the glancing look behind the scenes, and the broad-strokes script don't add much to Ali or Ali. The real champion here is Norman Mailer, one of many quoted from previous writings. His excerpts from The Fight bust through the book's press-release prose like the single perfect punch that Ali KO'd Foreman with in 1974.