Category: Celebs

Sly in Total Film

Craig / / 2001, Avenging Angelo, Celebs, D-Tox, Driven, First Blood, FIST, Get Carter, Unmade Films

Ernest “Jazzman” Resendes sent in the pic and quotes from:

TOTAL FILM [August 2001/issue 55]

— “Ask him which movies he rates from the past, and he’ll list First Blood, Nighthawks, F.I.S.T.and Cop Land. Ask about the choices he’s likely to make in the future, and he’ll stress that he’s looking for more ensemble pieces, more character work. ”

— “There’s a kind of thrill at seeing something that came off the page being enacted before your very eyes as opposed to just being an actor for hire.”

— “Next up he’s acting opposite MADELINE STOWE as a mafia bodyguard wanting payback for his boss’ murder in Avenging Angelo, before carrying on down the revenge trail as a widower out for justice in Dolan’s Cadillac. “

— “In fact neither the remake of Get Carter nor cop thriller Eye See You (aka Detox) look likely to get theatrical release over here (UK ).”

— “His career did perk up momentarily , however, when racing movie Driven thrust him onto the winners podium as it took the number one spot at the US box office in April.”

Thanks to Jazz for sharing!

– Craig Zablo

Sly and Mr. Perfect

Craig / / 2001, Celebs

“Mr. Perfect” is the title of an article (by Joyce Maynard) about celebrity trainer Bill Phillips. It appears in the August 6, 2001 issue of US Weekly. Bill Phillips wrote the bestseller Body for Life and is a personal trainer who has worked with Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood and others. Sly is pictured with Bill Phillips and is quoted as saying, “Bill is at the top of his field… Bill is a fantastically gifted communicator who has a devout passion when it comes to training and creating a mindset.”- Craig Zablo (July 31, 2001)

Sly and Mr. Perfect

Craig / / 2001, Celebs, Training

“Mr. Perfect” is the title of an article [by Joyce Maynard] about celebrity trainer BILL PHILLIPS. It appears in the August 6, 2001 issue of US Weekly. BILL PHILLIPS wrote the bestseller Body for Life and is a personal trainer who has worked with SYLVESTER STALLONE, MEL GIBSON, CLINT EASTWOODand others. SLY is pictured with BILL PHILLIPS and is quoted as saying, “BILL is at the top of his field… BILL is a fantastically gifted communicator who has a devout passion when it comes to training and creating a mindset.”

– Craig Zablo 
[July 28, 2001]

Sylvester Stallone Fights for a Parking Garage

Craig / / 2001, Celebs, Get Carter

by Tony Eufinger ABCNEWS.com

SYLVESTER STALLONE is on a new mission: to save a British parking garage from impending disaster.

Although a far cry from an action-packed Rambo plot, The Mirror reports the Hollywood tough guy is keen to stop the Gateshead Borough Council from tearing down the garage because it’s the setting for one of Britain’s cult classic gangster films.

The scene from the original “Get Carter,” released in 1971, features British actor MICHAEL CAINE tossing a local bad guy off the five-story building to his death. According to the tabloid, fans still flock to the site for photographs.

But not everyone wants STALLONE to come to the rescue.

“Instead of trying to save it he should put on his Rambo gear and blast it into oblivion,” suggests one observer who thinks the garage is an eyesore.

STALLONE starred in an American remake of “Get Carter” last year.

– Craig Zablo 
[July 28, 2001]

Danish Interview with Sly

Craig / / 2001, Celebs, Driven

By: Jeremy Hart and Kim Kastrup Translated by Steen Ulrich

London [Ekstra Bladet]

“As Rocky I’ve had MUHAMMAD ALI and JOE FRAZIER as sparring partners, and that went well. But to race against a legend like MICHAEL SCHUMACHER, that can’t be fun,” says SYLVESTER STALLONE.

In his new movie “Driven”, he plays the tough race driver Joe Tanto in the special American kind of racing called Cart series. A race that looks like formula one, except that it’s often faster and driven in the so-called champ cars on specially built tracks all over the world.

SLY toyed with death as the hard hitting boxer Rocky Balboa and as the Viet Nam veteran John Rambo. And as Joe Tanto he flirts with death in the fast champ cars, that can drive as fast as 400 km/h, and where even the smallest mistake, can mean the difference between life and death.

“I practiced at the Derek Daly Academy racetrack in Las Vegas – I started out in smaller cars. It was really crazy. The fastest I’ve driven in a champ car, was 325 km/h,” SLY proudly said during the interview in London. “I was very nervous. And the heat is almost unbearable in a champ car from shear concentration and fear. But then your inner speed demon gets the better of you, and you push the car, as much as you can. I’ve probably raced off the track 50 times during practice and while shooting. But luckily I never got hurt,” says SLY, who during filming made his insurance people bite their nails furiously.

Death Race

“You can’t escape the fear, but you can learn how to use it, before it eats you up. Unlike other sports, you can meet other cart racers at breakfast, and then only hope you see them again at lunch,” said STALLONE, who is the writer, producer and the star of “Driven” which opens in Danish theaters on July 13th
.
The movie is about the young race driver Jimmy Bly [KIP PARDUE]. His ambitious brother De Mille [ROBERT SEAB LEONARD] has pushed him so hard the results are starting to fail. Jimmy’s boss, Carl Henry [BURT REYNOLDS] hires ex-cart star Joe Tanto [STALLONE] to get Jimmy‘s tactics back in order. Tanto was once on top, but a terrible accident put a stop to his career, and now Tanto has to once and for all make up with all the demons from his past, to help Jimmy. Of course there’s also a love story between Joe Tanto and journalist Lucretia [STACY EDWARDS].

“Driven” was filmed over a period of eight months during nine real races in five different countries. The plot and the characters blend in perfectly with the real intensity on the tracks, and hundreds of thousands of real cart fans serve as very realistic extras. In the movie there are also real race drivers like Dario Franchitty and Juan Pablo Montoya.

No to Formula One

SYLVESTER STALLONE, who has been a huge fan of racing for many years, originally set out to do a movie based on Formula One. And he spent two years studying various races and negotiating with Formula One king Bernie Ecclestone. “Bernie was actually interested, but he demanded these unrealistic amounts of money for the rights, even though I told him, that in Hollywood, you usually only pay 1 million dollars for the rights to for example a best seller book.”

He doesn’t regret though, that it ended up being champ car races, because on the screen it works much better. In a 180 minute champ car race the lead can change 124 times between 10 different drivers, whereas in Formula One it’s usually much less. STALLONE says he hasn’t made a super realistic race movie. There are some very realistic scenes, but of course I’ve also taken some liberties to intensify the action. Just as it’s interesting to see King Kong running around New York, we also took two champ cars to Chicago, where they end up racing in the streets, explains STALLONE.

He thinks that there are three elements that add to the fascination of extreme racing: “First of all the driver is almost on his back while driving, only a few centimeters off the ground, while he’s doing almost 400 kilometers per hour. Then there’s the intense sound and the fact that you have 900 horsepower behind your back. And last, when you accelerate, and your vision is reduced to blurry shadows, your adrenalin kicks in and makes the drivers one with their cars.”

– Craig Zablo

“ROCKY” SPECIAL EDITION DVD REVIEW

Craig / / 2001, Celebs, Rocky

Ernest “Jazzman” Resendes returns with yet another SZ NEWS item. The pics and text can be found in the June issue of TOTAL FILM.

ROCKY: SPECIAL EDITION

The Film: The only real knockout in the Rocky series has aged pretty well. Grittier and nastier (well, relatively) than the four sequels, the dingy look, solid performances and triumphantly teary ending make it easy to understand how this bagged itself nine Oscar nominations and three statuettes (including Best Film).

The extras: Audio commentary with cast and crew, video commentary with Sylvester Stallone, behind the scenes featurette with director John Alvidsen, tribute to Burgess Meredith, tribute to James Crabe, trailers.

The verdict: Not exactly championship material but still able to go the distance,
this is an enjoyable, well-assembled package. The video commentary
(basically a glorified interview with
Mr. Sly) is entertaining stuff, especially if you never realized just how

much of a shoestring affair making the film was (dodging
in and around Philadelphia
trying not to get nabbed by
the authorities, grabbing shots wherever they could ). Also
look out for John Alvidsen‘s
8 mm behind – the – scenes footage (an amusing peek at how the fight was assembled) and the genuinely touching tributes to Burgess Meredith and James Crabe. Completists will be glad to know that the Special Edition is also available as part of the Rocky Anthology box set, but, let’s face it, this is the only one worth owning.

Cerl Thomas
Film: ****
Disc: ****

During rehearsals Rocky director John Alvidsen shot cheap 8mm films of his stars prancing around the ring. He talks us through it on the Special Edition disc…

“When the time came to rehearse, what I wanted to rehearse more than anything was the fighting ‘cos I knew that the film wasn’t going to look good unless the fighting looked good. A couple of weeks before we started shooting I got Sylvester and Carl Weathers into the ring to see what it was going to look like. Well they got into the ring and one guy said: “I’m gonna do this” and the other guy said: “I’m gonna do that!” I realized that we weren’t gonna get anywhere.So I suggested to Sylvester: “Why don’t you go home and write this thing out? A left and a right, an uppercut, you fall down, he falls down. Whatever you want, write it out and bring it back and we’ll learn it like a ballet. It’ll be choreographed and we’ll do the same thing in the ring day after day until we really get it down. So when you do this, he does that and we put a big whack on the soundtrack and people will believe it.

So Sylvester liked the idea and the next day he came back with 32 pages of lefts and rights and that’s what we learned.”

Thanks, Jazz!  – Craig Zablo  (June 21, 2001)

Sly and Anthony The Last Pic

Craig / / 2001, Avenging Angelo, Celebs

Ernest “Jazzman” Resendes sent in the following report: “The June 19, 2001 of the Enquirerhas a reportedly ” last photo” of ANTHONY QUINN and SLY on the set of “Avenging Angelo.”

Excerpt: ” I’m in a state of shock, ” STALLONE told the Enquirer in an exclusive interview. “His death scene is brilliant ! He was a wonderful talent and had a wonderful presence. I fell grateful for the chance to have worked with him. “

CO-STARS SLY STALLONEand ANTHONY QUINN are all smiles on the set of their movie “Avenging Angelo.”

Thanks to Jazz for the tip! – Craig Zablo