Category: Cop Land

AMC: Top 5 Sly Stallone Movies

Craig / / 2010, Cliffhanger, Cop Land, Demolition Man, Rambo, Rocky

On April 30, 2010, the AMC Movie Blog posted their choices for The Five Best Movies of Sylvester Stallone.  Here are their choices and a little of the rationale for selection:

5.  Demolition Man: …Nothing about this movie should work — dated jokes about Taco Bell, a ridiculous time-travel setup — but it work it does, from start to finish. Credit Stallone’s amusing fish-out-of-water performance…

4. Cliffhanger: …Die Hard on a mountain, Cliffhanger is as cool as it sounds… Stallone reminds us why he’s one of the best action stars ever. He radiates intensity.

3. Copland: …Stallone turned his career around with this serious (and underappreciated) drama…

2. Rambo: No. We’re not talking about the original — that’s First Blood. We’re not even talking about Rambo: First Blood II, the sequel. While we love those both, this bare-bones, bloody action film ranks as one of the best flicks in years..

1. Rocky: Not just Stallone’s best but also one of Hollywood’s best…

If I were making the list Rocky Balboa would have been near the top forcing Demolition Man off the list.  And while it may not be one of Sly’s Top 5 best, Get Carter still is one of my favorites.  To see AMC’s whole post with all of their comments as well as some Stallone movies that nearly made it to the Top 5, then click here.

Chris Moreno’s “Cop Land”

Craig / / 2009, Cop Land, Craig's Sly Art

Chris Moreno worked up this very nice color take on Sly from “Cop Land” for me at a convention last year.  My buddy picked it up when I had to leave the show early and I didn’t end up getting it in my possession until just recently.  Man, I really like Chris’ art and my piece is an excellent example of “why.”  He’s a talented artist with a huge sense of humor.  What a great combination!  You can check out more of Chris’ art here.

Francavilla’s “Cop Land”

Craig / / 2009, Cop Land, Craig's Sly Art

Francesco Francavilla is an extremely talented artist.  His art blog is a regular stop on my internet travels.  I love Francesco’s moody black and white work and was excited to get a copy of his Chiaroscuro sketchbook.  I was even more excited to learn that Francesco draws a free “quick sketch” in every copy ordered through his site.   As you can see from the scan above, he decided to give me his take on Freddy from “Cop Land.”

Chiaroscuro is 70 pages full of Francesco’s black and white work.  It features everything from quick sketches to more detailed work of characters like Hellboy, Batman, Kong, Marv, and so many others.  It arrives securely packaged [which is a major plus knowing my mail carrier] and the last page contains the quick sketch.   Francesco has another sketchbook available.  Schermoscuro is a classic horror movie guide in artbook form.  Francesco is offering the same deal on it and I plan to take him up on it soon.

Sly in Fat Actors Prestige Club

Craig / / 2008, Cop Land
Gawker.com has an article about actors who have gained weight for roles. Included in the list are: Matt Damon, Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Jared Leto, George Clooney, Robert DeNiro, Vincent D’Onofrio and of course Sly. Here’s what they had to say about Sly:

Sylvester Stallone in Copland Rocky Balboa gained about 40lbs to play a sad-sack New Jersey policeman in this quiet thriller that was meant to revive his acting career. While Stallone and the movie were both quite good, they went mostly unnoticed and disappeared into film history. Stallone since bulked back up and recently played a 60-year-old John Rambo.
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Here’s a link to the piece. – Craig

Cop Land One of the Best

Craig / / 2008, Cop Land, Honors
Kevin Williamson of the Ottowa Sun, in the April 6, 2008 edition picks his Top Ten Cop Movies. As you can imagine, it’s a great list since there have been a ton of great cop flicks. Williamson’s list includes: 1] Heat 2] LA Confidential 3] The French Connection 4] Serpico 5] Narc 6] Se7en 7] Bullet 8] Cop Land 9] The Untouchables 10] Dirty Harry and Lethal Weapon. Here’s what he had to say about Cop Land:

8. COPLAND (1997)

Sylvester Stallone may be content to regurgitate his Rambo and Rocky franchises now, but for a fleeting moment in the mid-1990s, he dared to bulk up as a sheriff faced with a town of dirty big-city officers.

You can read the full article here. – Craig


Digital Spy Scores

Craig / / 2008, Cobra, Cop Land, Judge Dredd, Rambo
The Digital Spy has posted up two items of interest to Stallone fans.

In the first, Sly defends the level of violence in “Rambo” saying, “As horrific and bloody as you think the film is, I don’t, because that’s what war is.” He goes on to add, “Gratuitous violence is a guy dressed up in a fright wig with a meat cleaver chasing ten teenagers around the woods for ten hours. That’s gratuitous, this [Rambo] is war. And civil war is by far the most vicious of all wars.” Click HERE to read the full post.

In the second Sly discusses the film that bothered him the most: “I think the biggest mistake I ever made was with the sloppy handling of Judge Dredd. I thought that could have been a fantastic, nihilistic, interesting vision of the future – judge, jury and executioner. That [film] really bothered me a great deal.” Sly goes on to talk about characters that he’d like to re-visit: “I think Cobra could have been kind of interesting on a certain level only because I always saw him as Bruce Springsteen with a badge! That character would’ve been nice to go back to.” Sly also “added that he wouldn’t mind going to see if Sheriff Freddy Heflin, the character he played in James Mangold’s Cop Land, ‘lived happily ever after’.” For the full piece click HERE.

Sly opens the door for some very interesting possibilities. Especially if Mangold joined him. – Craig

Sly Guests on AMC’s “Shootout”

Craig / / 2003, Cop Land, Rocky, Rocky 6, TV

Sylvester Stallone Guest Stars on AMC’s ‘Sunday Morning ShootOut’ on December 7 at 11 AM

for Sun. (Dec. 7) –(BUSINESS WIRE)–

AMC‘s weekly half-hour series, “Sunday Morning ShootOut,” hosted by Peter Guber and Peter Bart, brings the smarts and spin of Sunday morning political shows to the world of entertainment.

THIS WEEK’S GUEST: Actor, writer and director Sylvester Stallone. Since achieving worldwide fame with Rocky, which won an Oscar for Best Picture in 1976, Stallone has acted and co-written such successful films as First Blood, Rambo: First Blood Part II, and Rambo III. His acting credits include Get Carter, Driven, Demolition Man and Copland, which garnered him international critical and audience acclaim. Most recently, Stallone has completed filming Avenging Angelo, co-starring Madeline Stowe.

DISCUSSION TOPICS: 1) The producers of Rocky offered you $150,000 to cast Ryan O’Neal in the title role. What made you turn it down? 2) Why did you agree to take a major pay cut for the film Copland? 3) Lost
Souls Seeking Redemption, Rocky VI — is this a parallel to your own life and life experiences? 4) Your upcoming Rampart Scandal delves into the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. What made you choose this piece and how did it come about?

WHEN: The episode will air on Sunday, December 7 at 11 am ET/PT on the AMC cable network. The episode can also be viewed at http://movies.yahoo.com, beginning at 12 Noon (PT).

BACKGROUND: “Sunday Morning ShootOut” is a new, half-hour weekly series on AMC hosted by entertainment industry veterans, Peter Guber and Peter Bart. Guber is the chairman of Mandalay Pictures, former CEO of Sony Pictures, the producer of dozens of Hollywood‘s most successful movies including Midnight Express, Batman, Rainman, Basic Instinct. Bart is editor-in-chief of Variety, and former Hollywood reporter for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. In his career as an executive at Paramount Pictures and as president of Lorimar, Bart played a major role creating classics like The Godfather, Rosemary’s Baby and The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Like other Sunday morning debate shows, the sparks fly here as prominent producers, directors, writers and stars join the hosts to debate all sides of the week’s biggest stories in the world of movies and entertainment. The experts provide informed and spirited perspectives on the winners and losers at the box-office, the rising and falling fortunes of the stars and studios themselves and the emerging trends that are forever reshaping the business of entertainment.

The pic above comes from an ad in Entertainment Weekly and the text from Business Wire. – Craig Zablo