Author: Craig

“Rocky” Scores Again

Craig / / 2003, Honors, Rocky

 

From Sports Illustrated Volume 99, NO. 4, August 04, 2003
Illustration by: Richie Fahey

The top 50 Sports movies of all time were covered in the Sports Illustrated issue listed above. Here are the top ten, the comments for “Rocky” and the illustration that accompanied the article.

1: Bull Durham

2: Rocky

“In America‘s bicentennial year Rocky Balboa became the first of the post-Vietnam War heroes, a frenzied expression of old-fashioned individualism. A slow-on-the-uptake palooka who gets a chance to survive a fight with the heavyweight champ (Apollo Creed, played with panache by Weathers), Balboa has a Philadelphia story with heart and purity and just enough cruelty for resonance. Stallone informed his loser with a colossal goofiness that was impossible not to watch. He was so convincingly sincere that audiences actually jumped up and screamed for him to win.

3: Raging Bull
4: Hoop Dreams
5: Slap Shot
6: Hoosiers
7: Olympia
8: Breaking Away
9: Chariots of Fire
10: When We Were Kings


Thanks to Big John Beatty!- Craig Zablo

Suit Settled

Craig / / 2003, Celebs, Rocky Balboa

“Lil’ Marie” Suit Settled

Michael Klein, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, posted in his July 30, 2006 column that Jodi Letiza has agreed to a settlement in her breach-of-contract suit against Sly, MGM, Columbia/Sony and Revolution Studios.Letizia, who played a tough young girl called “Lil’ Marie” made her first appearance in the original Rocky and cameos in some of the sequels. Letizia claimed that she had been told she had a part in “Rocky Balboa” only to find out that another actress, Geraldine Hughes, ended up with the role.In Klein‘s article he reports that now that the suit has been settled “Letizia has moved on.”
For the full report, click HERE. – Craig

“Rocky” and the “Boxing Renaissance of the Eighties”

Craig / / 2003, Honors, Rocky

On July 26, 2006, Michael Katz posted an article at thesweetscience.com titled “Yo, Adrian, Let’s Hail the Spirit of ’76” which explores the factors that led to a boxing “Renaissance of the Eighties.” The great fighters that came out of the 1976 Olympics played a major role, but Katz also credits “Rocky.” Here’s what he had to say:

There was another major factor in producing the Eighties’ ring revival. “The ‘Rocky’ movie,” said [Boxing Promoter Bob] Arum.Sylvester Stallone’s film, based on so many real boxing nuggets – Rocky Balboa, like Joe Frazier, hitting the sides of beef; the instruction to the corner to “cut me,” when he couldn’t see out of a swollen eye – captured the public imagination. It was more real than the reality series, “The Contender,” which Stallone would attempt many years later.“In the movie,” said Arum, “he had more control – he was the writer and the director.”The Spirit of ’76 remains with us. There’s another “Rocky” movie due this year, but more apropos, if one forgets about the heavyweights, the talent level is extraordinarily high in the real thing.

Thirty years later and “Rocky” is still getting props. And rightly so. For the full report, click HERE. – Craig

“Rocky” Still a Great Example

Craig / / 2003, Honors, Rocky

Michael Booth of The Denver Post in his July 27, 2006 column explores the fact that “not all box-office hits had great expectations.” Booth lists eight movies that defied all expectations and “Rocky” makes the cut. Here’s what he says:

“Rocky” cost less than $1 million, was the brainchild of then-nobody Sylvester Stallone and sported an underdog plot considered naive for a troubled year like 1976. It made $117 million and won the best-picture Oscar.Thirty years later and “Rocky” is still getting props. And rightly so.

For the full report, click HERE. – Craig

“Nighthawks” 1st Buddy-Cop Movie

Craig / / 2003, Celebs, Honors, Nighthawks

Phil Villarreal of the Arizona Daily Star takes a look at the genre of Buddy-Cop movies and has this to say about “Nighthawks”:

The movie often credited as being the first buddy-cop film was the solemn “Nighthawks” (1981), which teamed Billy Dee Williams and Sylvester Stallone as two New York City cops who are transferred to an elite anti-terrorism unit.

For the full report, click HERE. – Craig

“Rocky” Top 50 Best Endings

Craig / / 2003, Honors, Rocky

Filmritic.com has compiled “The Top 50 Movie Endings of All Time” and of course “Rocky” made the list coming in at #37. Here’s what they had to say:

37. Rocky (1976) – As Bill Conte‘s score soars in the background, a bloodied Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) and a hatless Adrian (Talia Shire) finally proclaim their love for one another. And in the distant background, a ring announcer tells a frenzied crowd that our hero has actually lost the fight that held us captive for an entire final act. In one dramatic move, two shy nobodies find their hearts and nothing else matters. -NS

For the full report, click HERE. – Craig

A Rocky Road

Craig / / 2003, Avenging Angelo, Celebs, Champs, D-Tox, Driven, Eye See You, Family, Get Carter, Rocky, Rocky 6, Shade, Unmade Films

A Rocky Road
Sylvester Stallone is in training for another comeback
BY MARK CARO for the Chicago Tribune
Posted on Tuesday, July 29, 2003

AUSTIN, Texas — Sylvester Stallone is climbing back into the ring, figuratively in “Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over” and literally in a sixth “Rocky” movie.

Yes, he has already written “Rocky VI,” which he’s calling “Puncher’s Chance,” the title referring to the idea that once in the ring, any fighter has a chance to land a knockout punch. Stallone — with “Spy Kids 3-D” the only one of his last four movies to actually make it to theaters — is looking for that shot as well.

“Rocky made his moment when he’s 29 years old,” a fit-looking Stallone, who turned 57 on July 6, said while in Austin for the “Spy Kids” premiere. “Now time has moved on, but how do you participate when your options are pretty limited? It’s not as though he’s a painter or a world traveler. He is a fixture in the neighborhood. The neighborhood is decaying. Do you decay with it? And when you try to fight back, (you’re told), ‘It’s ludicrous. Come on! Move on! Don’t be so vain.’

“It’s not about vanity,” he continued, his familiar gravelly voice turning soft. “It’s about, ‘I know I don’t feel as though I’ve hit the bottom. I haven’t dredged the bottom of my well yet, I don’t think.’ There’s a point when you sit back on your life, and you’re on your final days going, ‘You know? I did it all.’ And I don’t know if I’ve done it all. The character.”

These last two words were said as a reminder that he was talking about Rocky, not himself.

But he knows he can’t escape the parallels. Like his most famous character, Stallone has gone from top-of-the-world star to afterthought — a $20 million-per-movie action hero whose most recent efforts have bombed (“Get Carter,” “Driven,” the latter of which he wrote) or, worse yet, haven’t even received a U.S. theatrical release (“D-Tox,” also known as “Eye See You,” “Avenging Angelo,” “Shade”).

“Spy Kids 3-D,” which opened Friday, at least will get him in front of large audiences again. He plays the comical villain, the Toymaker, who has designed a video game that ultimately imprisons the minds of its players. The character’s goofiness manifests itself in multiple personalities that argue with one another: a bald, professor type, a blustery European military commander (Stallone refers to him as “Gooselini”) and a stringy-haired hippie. For good measure, Stallone also plays a TV reporter.

Like most of the movie, his scenes were shot in front of green screens so that computerized scenery and special effects could be added later. Aside from a climactic confrontation with Ricardo Montalban, who plays the Spy Kids‘ wheelchair-bound grandpa, Stallone is mostly acting with himself.

How did he feel about acting without other actors? “I’ve been doing that for the last 10 years,” he quipped, laughing.

Stallone‘s sense of humor may not be one of his better-known traits, but it’s the key reason “Spy Kids 3-D” director Robert Rodriguez said he cast him.

Stallone compared working with a green screen to “being held face down in a bowl of guacamole for three weeks” (though his part took just five days to shoot).

“Yeah, it’s strange. It’s like working without a net.”

Yet “Spy Kids 3-D” feels like a safe move compared with what Stallone has planned. First up is a ripped-from-the-headlines crime drama called “Thugz Life” (formerly “Rampart Scandal”) that Stallone has written and is preparing to direct in his first stint behind the camera since 1985’s “Rocky IV.” He’ll also star as real-life Los Angeles police detective Russell Poole, whose career crashed as he tried to get to the bottom of the Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls murders.

Then there’s “Puncher’s Chance,” which continues Stallone‘s exploration of counted-out guys who keep forging ahead.

He admits he goofed in giving Rocky brain damage in “Rocky V,” which ended with Rocky brawling with his ungrateful protege on the street rather than in the ring.

“It was a big mistake on my part because nobody wants to see the dark, depressing underbelly of a character they’ve had joy with,” Stallone said.

So Rocky will return to the ring for movie No. 6.

– Craig Zablo