SylvesterStallone Tagged Articles at Cinematical
'The Cove' Writer Mark Monroe to Document Formula One Racing
Filed under: Documentary », Sports », Cinematical Indie »
Part of what makes the Oscar-nominated documentary The Cove so riveting is that the film is treated like an espionage thriller. And we can probably thank screenwriter Mark Monroe for much of its exciting narrative. Whether as a writer, director or producer, Monroe tends to work on documentaries with a sporting or adventuring edge. Prior to The Cove, he'd been involved with docs and series about soccer teams, boxing, basketball and sailing. His most recent film, Amir Bar-Lev's Sundance hit The Tillman Story, tackles the story of a pro football player turned tragic war hero. Monroe's next sport to document is Formula One racing, according to Variety. He'll write the currently untitled project for occasional collaborator Paul Crowder, a filmmaker who also has a background in sports documentaries, having co-directed Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos and edited Stacy Peralta's Riding Giants and Dogtown and Z-Boys and Monroe's own Morning Light. The duo doesn't solely film sports movies, though. Monroe and Crowder just recently worked together, for instance, on a documentary about Silicon Valley pioneers William Shockley and Robert Noyce (titled The Real Revolutionaries).
Making The (Up) Grade: Cliffhanger
Filed under: Fandom », Home Entertainment », Columns »
The release of catalogue or older titles is always a mixed bag of anticipation and fear: depending on how many versions of a film were already released, studios may only pour so much money into a re-release, even for an upgrade, and that's assuming there is room for improvement over the content and bonus materials on earlier discs or even in box sets. Meanwhile, of course, there's the whole question of how much you'll still like something that you haven't seen in a year or five, which prompts a little bit of that fear once you pop in a movie again and find the viewing experience different than you remember. (Which is also the reason for my "Shelf Life" column.)
Cliffhanger is a film I remember best as Sylvester Stallone's first major comeback after floundering through a series of mediocre sequels, crappy comedies and stillborn franchise-launchers (gloriously homoerotic though Tango & Cash remains). Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the film on Blu-ray last week, and although I was curious how well it held up as a film -- notwithstanding its awesome opening sequence -- I elected to choose 8 ½ as this week's "Shelf Life" subject, instead picking Cliffhanger as my "Making the (Up) Grade" target.
Making The (Up) Grade: Rocky
Filed under: United Artists », Fandom », 20th Century Fox », Home Entertainment »
While new Blu-rays of old movies are sometimes dubious replacements for prior editions (hence the need for this column), box sets released in the high-definition format have thus far been fairly helpful, at least in terms of shelf space: many or most of them forego a lot of the frills and flourishes of their standard-definition iterations in favor of more streamlined packaging. Unfortunately, that's also sometimes extended to their extras, thanks in no small part to the legal entanglements of transferring commentaries and bonus content from one format to another.
Both Warner Brothers and Fox have faced this challenge a couple of times thanks to their ownership/ adoption of the libraries of MGM and United Artists, which until a few years ago issued their own releases. Rocky, which is one of United Artists' premier franchises, was recently released on Blu-ray in The Undisputed Collection, a set that contains all six of the films in the series, but it remains to be seen whether complete also means comprehensive in this particular case.
What's Already Available:
UPDATE: 'Rocky 7'? Really, Sly?
Filed under: Action », Drama », Sports », RumorMonger », Remakes and Sequels »
Take this with a huge grain of salt -- make that smelling salts. Sylvester Stallone has told Tele5 Germany that he wants to make Rocky 7, even though it might embarrass his family and himself. A German-language transcript of the interview is available at the site; translated by Babel Fish, my interpretation is: 'I know people would laugh at it, as I would if someone were making The Godfather Part 10. Enough! But I also know that if I succeed, it will be because this is a film about aging, not about boxing. I know it will provoke criticism. Even my wife said to me, Leave it. You'll embarrass the children. But I said, if I do not try, I an a very unfortunate man. One must do it. Artists must go again and again through the dark.' On the one hand, Rocky Balboa and whoever else he wants to keep alive from that universe are Stallone's characters -- he created them and has the right to do what he wants to with them. On the other hand ... c'mon, Sly! Wasn't Rocky Balboa all about aging and the character, rather than boxing itself? Admittedly, that turned out better than most of us thought it would. But if you really want to tackle the issue of aging, especially from your perspective of a 63-year-old man, why not dream big and create a new character who's not a boxer or a weary war vet or a mountain climber or an updated Charles Bronson? After all, originality is what brought us Rocky.
UPDATE: Apparently all the hype is over nothing as Sly's comments here were in the past tense and about Rocky Balboa, not any new Rocky film. That's not to say he won't decide to make another one for the hell of it, but for now that franchise remains closed.
Nerdgasm! The First 'Expendables' Trailer Is Online
Filed under: Action », Movie Marketing », Trailers and Clips »
Aww, yeah! Millenium Films and Lionsgate have debuted the first full trailer for Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables – you know, the movie starring just about EVERY awesome action star of the last few decades in some plot about overthrowing some dictator or another while amassing the biggest body count imaginable . In short: pure awesomeness captured on celluloid. What's that noise, you ask? Why yes, it is the sound of the entire internet experiencing what is known as a collective nerdgasm.
Now hurry up and watch the trailer so you can start integrating "Bring it, Happy Feet!" into your daily lexicon.
VIDEO REMOVED AT REQUEST OF STUDIO
[Update: Sorry, folks. We removed the video at the studio's request, but read on for a detailed description of the awesomeness that the Expendables trailer contains!]
Fantastic Fest Interview: Dolph Lundgren from 'Universal Soldier: A New Beginning'
Filed under: Fantastic Fest », Interviews »
Dolph Lundgren with the Alamo Drafthouse's Lyrae Anderson
Dolph Lundgren isn't the first name that springs to mind when you think "chemical engineer," is it? You might be surprised to know that the guy who has made a career out of playing muscular bad dudes in movies has a masters in that field from the University of Sydney, and he was also a Fulbright scholar to MIT. However, he dropped out after two weeks to pursue acting full time, and that's left us with his performances in everything from Rocky IV to The Punisher to Universal Soldier.
He'll also be going toe to toe with Sylvester Stallone once more in The Expendables, but we found him returning to his Universal Soldier roots at Fantastic Fest in Austin with a sneak peek at Universal Soldier: A New Beginning. Read on beyond the break for the full interview, including an homage to Rocky IV that you'll see in onscreen.
Familiar Hero to Kill Numerous Villains in 'Rambo 5'
Filed under: Action », Independent », Thrillers », Deals », Lionsgate Films », DIY/Filmmaking », Newsstand », Remakes and Sequels »
You can't keep a good Sylvester Stallone hero down, even if they should have been dead ten or twenty times over through the course of their 1980s careers. John Rambo is set to take another step towards complete and utter immortality as Variety reports that Stallone is officially putting a fifth Rambo film into production. Stallone has been avidly talking about a fifth Rambo for nearly two years, and last anyone heard, was debating whether to set it in Austria or America. But seeing as there's not a ton of John Rambo-esque conflict in Austria at the moment, and Rambo did show him back on U.S. soil, he's opted for the latter. The storyline finds our hero on the U.S.-Mexican border, fighting through human traffickers and drug lords in order to rescue a young kidnapped girl. (Actually, I can see the exact same movie set in Austria, but Stallone & Company probably realized it would be too close to the story of Taken. Or maybe they really did opt in favor of geographical continuity.)
Lest you think this is just talk, Nu Image / Millennium Films have officially green-lit the film, and it's set to begin production in the spring. I know I should be really critical of this and roll my eyes, but I can't help it. There's something very comforting in seeing an old warhorse continue to unleash semi-automatic hell on those most deserving of it.
James McTeigue Wants to Quoth 'The Raven'
Filed under: Classics », Horror », Thrillers », Scripts »
Edgar Allan Poe died almost 160 years ago, but his life and death is still surrounded with enough mystery and spooky theories to make the old 'scaremaster' proud. A few years back, there had been talk of a Poe biography from Sylvester Stallone (with Robert Downey Jr. allegedly circling the role) but it looks like Sly's not the only one with Poe on the brain. /Film recently got the chance to speak with James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) about his latest, Ninja Assassin, and he told them that he has also started working on a Poe-inspired thriller, titled after the famous poem, The Raven. If you happened to have skipped high school English, The Raven was Poe's poem about a man haunted by his lost love (and, if you need a quick refresher, just watch The Simpson's classic Treehouse of Horror episode). But McTeigue isn't interested in trying to improve upon previous Poe films (like Roger Corman's classics) and instead, his film will be a fictional take on Poe's final days, and put the author smack dab in the middle of a murder investigation.
Hannah Shakespeare and Ben Livingston have already completed a script about Poe on the trail of a murderer who's using his literary works as a source of inspiration. It sounds pretty clever on paper, and McTeigue told /Film, "It's like the poem, The Raven, itself, crossed with Se7en. It should be pretty cool. The script is really good and everyone responds to it really well. I'm in the middle of casting."
Maybe if Stallone's project doesn't make it out of development hell alive, Downey could play Poe for McTeigue instead, what do you think?
'The Zookeeper' Snares a Slew of Big Voices
Filed under: Comedy », Casting »
In February, Kevin James signed on to play The Zookeeper in MGM's upcoming live action comedy. At the time, the plot was described as the story of a zookeeper who decides to leave the zoo because he's having trouble meeting a girl ... but the animals intervene. Now we know what that intervention is. The guy wants to win back the woman of his dreams, so the animals teach him their methods of dating and mating. I hate to say it, but this sounds cute.The instructors of ze love, according to Variety, will be Adam Sandler as a capuchin monkey, Cher as a giraffe, Jon Favreau as a bear, Sylvester Stallone as a lion, and Judd Apatow as an elephant. I think they missed an opportunity by not making Sly a stallion, but otherwise, those voices could make for an interesting set of mating rituals.
Jim Breuer, Faizon Love, and Bas Rutten are rounding out the voice cast, but there's also one other name on the roster -- Rosario Dawson. Yes, she will play the woman of his dreams. Oh, men must love the fantasies that Hollywood provides.
The idea of anthropomorphized animals teaching a lonely sap mating rituals could make for a lot of comedy -- if they're allowed to really dip into the mating rituals. Do you think this James laffer will live up to the promise, or pale in comparison to projects like Green Porno?
Quick List: Worst Musical Moments
Filed under: Music & Musicals », Fandom », Trailers and Clips »
One of my favorite things in the world is a musical gone wrong. I don't know, there's just something particularly funny about watching a musical number go down in flames -- and the more awkward the better. Well, at least I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, because Over at Den of Geek they have compiled a list of the Top 10 Worst Musical Moments in Movies. Now, they didn't just limit themselves to straight musicals, but the results are a trip down memory lane for me and a nightmare for most people. Taking the number one spot was a pretty obscure moment starring Hollywood Legend Mae West and Timothy Dalton (the much-maligned Bond) in the 1978 musical, Sextette. There are plenty of cringe-worthy moments in this film, but the highlight is Geek's selection: Dalton and West singing (and I use the term loosely) Love Will Keep Us Together. There's really nothing more to say, mainly because I seem to have lost the power of comprehension after watching that clip.
So who else managed to make the list? Well, we've got Vanilla Ice in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, Pierce Brosnan ruining ABBA songs in Mamma Mia, Neil Diamond in black face for The Jazz Singer, and my personal favorite -- a clip from Rhinestone starring Sylvester Stallone as a NYC cabbie turned country singer. But, after looking at Geek's list, I noticed a few omissions (at least in my opinion) so I decided to do a little listing of my own.
After the jump: my top 5 worst moments in Musical history...
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