On July 6, 2014, Entertainment Tonight recognized Sly’s birthday and posted The 12 Craziest Character Names Created by Sylvester Stallone.
Category: Rocky 4
Steve Holland’s Limited Edition Sly Autographed Rocky Prints
Steve Holland is the artist who created the very cool painting above.
Mr. Holland is widely known for painting athletes and celebrity icons. His paintings and prints are highly sought out by collector’s and the limited edition Rocky prints will be no exception, especially since they will be signed by Sylvester Stallone!
The Top Ten Sylvester Stallone Movies
On July 5, 2014, The Celebrity Cafe, posted their choices for The Top Ten Sylvester Stallone Movies. Click over for full details, but for the record their choices were…- Rocky
- Assassins
- Demolition Man
- The Expendables
- Rocky IV
- Rocky V
- Rocky Balboa
- Grudge Match
- Oscar
- Expendables 2
It’s their list, but how could you not include at least one of the Rambo movies or Cop Land or Nighthawks… and Rocky didn’t make the cut??
The Greatest Movie Anthems of the 80’s
On June 20, 2014, Kevin Polowy of Yahoo! Movies posted The Greatest Movie Anthems of the 80’s. Sly had two songs that made the cut…
1. Survivor, “Eye of the Tiger” (Rocky III, 1983)
For the third Rocky film — a.k.a. “the one with Mr. T and Hulk Hogan” —Sylvester Stallone commissioned Survivor to write and record “Eye of the Tiger” after failing to get the rights to Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.” Training rooms haven’t been the same since.
9. Robert Tepper, “No Easy Way Out” (Rocky IV, 1985)
Sly strikes again. Like Footloose, Rocky IV was another all-around formidable soundtrack, with tunes like Survivor’s “Burning Heart” and James Brown’s “Living in America.” But the song that instantly takes us back in time is Tepper’s gun-ho anthem, which set up Rock’s climactic bout with Ivan Drago.
Rocky and Rambo PodCasts
Earlier this week, I received the following e-mail:
Hi Mr. Zablo,I’m Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, Producer of the Sequelcast, a podcast looking at movie franchises. I’d thought you and your StalloneZone readers would be interested in checking out the podcasts we did of the Rocky films this past month. We also covered the Rambo films a few years ago. The podcasts might contain brief moments of explicit language.Here are the links:ROCKY III (Guest Paul Goebel of Beat The Geeks): http://traffic.libsyn.com/sequelcast/sequelcast170.mp3ROCKY IV (Guest Eric Lichtenfeld of The Ultimate Stallone Reader): http://traffic.libsyn.com/sequelcast/sequelcast171.mp3ROCKY V (Guest Ryan Hoss of the Super Mario Bros. The Movie Archive): http://traffic.libsyn.com/sequelcast/sequelcast172.mp3ROCKY BALBOA (Guest West Anthony of The Auteurcast): http://traffic.libsyn.com/sequelcast/sequelcast173.mp3FIRST BLOOD (Guest David Morrell [author of the original First Blood novel]): http://traffic.libsyn.com/sequelcast/sequelcast31.mp3RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II: http://traffic.libsyn.com/sequelcast/sequelcast32.mp3RAMBO (Guest Eric Lichtenfeld [author of Action Speaks Louder]): http://traffic.libsyn.com/sequelcast/sequelcast34.mp3Keep up the good work with StalloneZone. The Expendables 3 looks to have a mightier cast than the second. I’m just wondering where Barney’s goatee went in all the promo shots for the film.Thanks,Mat Bradley-Tschirgi
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Thanks Mat for the kind words and the links to the Stallone-related podcasts! – Craig
Crowining Mr. Sports Movies
On April 9, 2014, Yahoo! Movies took a look at which actor had played the most sports roles in their piece Crowining Mr. Sports Movies by Brian Enk.
Had they counted each Rocky movie individually (as I think they should have) then Sly would have easily come in first. At any rate, here’s what the said about him…
—Sylvester Stallone: If we were to tally sports movies as a whole, including sequels, the Italian Stallion would be our champ, with six entries as boxer Rocky Balboa in the “Rocky” movies. Sly’s other sports movie credits include “Death Race 2000” (1975), in which he played deadly cross country racer Machine Gun Joe Viterbo; “Paradise Alley” (1978), in which he played Cosmo Corboni, one of three brothers trying to play the wrestling game in 1940s NYC; “Victory” (1981), in which he played a soccer goalie for the Allied forces as they face off against a German team at a WWII prison camp; “Over the Top” (1986), the greatest arm-wrestling movie ever made; “Driven” (2001), in which he plays former CART champion and car racing mentor Joe Tanto; and “Grudge Match” (2013), in which he plays former boxing champ Henry “Razor” Sharp.
Every “Rocky” Movie Deconstructed
On December 11, 2013, FastCoDesign posted The Plot of Every Rocky Movie Deconstructed by Mark Wilson.
Once you’ve read Wilson’s piece you should click over to Rocky Morphology. Rocky Morphology is a very cool interactive site that allows you to slide along a timeline and see stills from each of the Rocky movies and what category it was in at the time. – Craig
Rocky vs Clubber & Drago in Stop-Motion Action!
SZoner, Gino created two cool stop motion battles between Rocky and Clubber Lang and Rocky and Drago. Well done, Gino! – Craig
Rare “Rocky IV” Clip
SZoner, Didier Vandewalle sent in the link to the rare behind-the-scenes Rocky IV clip below. – Craig
Sylvester Stallone: 5 Awesome Performances and 5 That Sucked.
On February 1, 2013, WhatCulture! posted Sylvester Stallone: 5 Awesome Performances and 5 That Sucked.
- According to WhatCulture! 5 that were Awesome: Rambo [First Blood and sequels], John Spartan [Demolition Man], Gabe Walker [Cliffhanger], Freddy Heflin [Cop Land], and Rocky Balboa [Rocky and sequels].
- Their Choices for Not-So-Awesome: Judge Dredd [same name], Ray Quick [The Specialist], Marion Cobretti [Cobra], Jack Carter [Get Carter], and Joe Bomoski [Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!].
To Awesome I would delete Spartan and Walker to make room for Jack Carter and Deke Dasilva [Nighthawks]. To Not-So-Awesome I would delete Carter and add Nick from Rhinestone. – Craig