Oh man I'm still pissed at Sly for that shitty JUDGE DREDD. Such an awesome comic book, such sad dreck. In ideal, Sly is great casting but man he takes off the helmet more in that movie than the hero has done in all the decades of comic strips.

Also, a good sign your movie sucks is when Rob Schneider is your "comic sidekick."



Sly's admitted more than once that either his ego or taking the biggest paycheck around was why he did so many losers.

Look at the ROCKY series, perfect example. The original had such a good script, Sly gave such a good performance (both got Oscar nods) and of course won the Best Picture Oscar. Probably one of the more beloved American movies from that decade.

Then that franchise goes on and on, the drama quality slips and they become dumber, more economical actioneers. But those pictures kept making money so hey who is to tell Sly he's wrong? Then ROCKY V, which Sly calls now a total piece of shit, which is funny since he scripted and starred.

Sorta the same thing with the RAMBO movies. FIRST BLOOD is a kickass action movie, and Sly's script rewrite turned a gripping not-so-happy drama novel with problematic issues for any cinema adaptation into basically a rousing cheer-for-the-underdog ROCKY meets DELIVERENCE thriller.

RAMBO 2 was stupid, poor production values for what was a super big budget action vehicle at the time (with Sly poorly rewriting a wonderful James Cameron* draft) yet it was pretty popular with President Reagan quoting the movie (he ever received Sly at the White House) and I guess Americans liked having a total ass-kicking machine to represent America's resurgence or whatever.

RAMBO 3 was even dumber, which I suppose audiences finally caught up with this fact. Sly somehow found a way to fuck up a simple good idea: Afghanistan being USSR's Vietnam (or ours now in 2010) and basically idealize the same Mujahadeen rebels who later would become the Taliban. Not good foresight buddy, real GREEN BERETS goofyness there.

It took his career to totally crash for Sly to get his shit together, and what looked like a pathetic cashing in on old turf, he actually delivered a solid movie in ROCKY BALBOA. Not rocket science drama or anything, but quiet, humble, much less egotistical than the other ROCKY sequels had been, fully satisfying as a franchise closer and as a movie in its own right. They moved the statue!!!

Pizzaboy, I don't think RAMBO 3 was beginning of the end for ole Sly. He had a few losers before that, the sort that even you a non-Hollywood/moviephile would see from a mile away that they were gonna fuck up on a major level. Omens really.

OVER THE TOP (1987) - A movie about arm-wrestling, which Sly got $12 million to do. Let me repeat that, a movie about arm wrestling.

RHINESTONE (1985) - Dolly Parton and Sly in a musical comedy, and Sly sings. $4 million to sing.

Some of his other projects aren't bad on paper for why he did them. DEMOLITION MAN was him and Wesley Snipes (two major action stars at the time) in a Joel Silver (DIE HARD, THE MATRIX) production, when Silver movies used to make money. How did those seashells work?

But for every CLIFFHANGER, a hit and a fun one at that, he did nonsense like STOP OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT or ASSASSINS.

Ultimately, its sad but I think Stallone really hurt himself creatively by pigeonholing himself as simply an action hero when in ROCKY he delivered some good acting along with COP LAND, and I know a few people who tell me he did also in F.I.S.T. and PARADISE ALLEY.

But hey, the money was too good right? Good knows he was the only one who apparently thought Brigitte Nielsen was anything beyond future Flavor Flav asstap.

*=Yes, that James Cameron. Back when he could write worth a shit, and not poorly rewrite DANCES WITH WOLVES with $270 something million and blue CGI.

I happened to like Over The Top.

I forgot about Copland. It is probably his best next to Rocky.

What about "Oscar"? I enjoyed that movie with Sly.

While Rocky is probably noted as his best, with Copland and Cliffhanger pretty decent, First Blood is among my favorites.

Some of those that you guys didn't like I actually didn't mind: Tango & Cash, and even Over the Top I see is fun movies. Of course I was a big Sly fan and I'm sure that might make me more tolerable of some of his films.

Besides Judge Dredd, I didn't like Stop or My Mom Will Shoot. I can't think of all his movies off hand, but I'm sure there's a couple more.

Oh,on the plus side, and digging way back, I liked Lords Of Flatbush, and Fist.

TIS

Is LORDS OF FLATBUSH really that good?

I like that story Sly told about how Richard Gere was supposed to be in the movie too but he got fired after the two got into a schuffle because Gere spilled a sandwich on Sly's jeans or something quite petty.

RR,

Honestly, It's been a lot of years since I've seen Flatbush and I only saw it once and liked it. I likely would need to see it again to give you an honest evaluation. I never see that it's on tv. For me, however, it's a sentimental favorite (kind of) because it brings back memories of a very happy time in my life and of course it was the first time I had ever seen Sly. I still remember the the song they sang in the previews on tv. Don't know why, but I do.


TIS

Stallone's best films are probably Paradise Alley and First Blood for me. I really like Lock Up too.

Obama to appear on ABC's 'The View' on Thursday

NEW YORK (AP) -- ABC's "The View" has welcomed many notable guests, but none more prominent than President Barack Obama, who is scheduled to visit for Thursday's edition.

In making the announcement on Monday, executive producers Barbara Walters and Bill Geddie said this marks the first time a sitting U.S. president has visited a daytime talk show

I'll be sure to watch it

Oh I forgot about Paradise Alley. Lock Up also was good.

I'll say one thing though about Sly after seeing Rhinestone....he should NEVER, under any circumstances sing in any of his films ever again. Simply awful!!!!

TIS

Duvall, Nearly 80, Is Still a Darling of Hollywood
By JONAH WEINER

WHEN it came time to fill the lead role in “Get Low” — which embellishes the real-life story of a septuagenarian Tennessee hermit who gave his own “funeral party” in 1938 while still alive — the options weren’t plentiful for the people behind the film. The hermit, Felix Bush, is a worn-out man who has exiled himself to a cabin for four decades, haunted by a youthful trespass. The object of nasty countywide gossip, Felix has a short fuse but comports himself with grizzled dignity. “It’s the kind of role where you want to blur the line between the legend and gravitas of the character and the legend and gravitas of the performer,” the film’s director, Aaron Schneider, said by phone. “Our list of actors was short: Our list was Robert Duvall.”

Next January Mr. Duvall will celebrate his 80th birthday. He has been a Hollywood actor for 48 years, having moved from stage to screen in 1962 as Boo Radley in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” He is among a handful of A-list actors who have neared or reached 80 while suffering little to no career slowdown. Clint Eastwood is 80. Michael Caine is 77. Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins are both in their early 70s. With Gene Hackman, 80, retired, the list pretty much stops there.

Mr. Duvall’s longevity raises two intertwined questions. For one, what has he been doing right all these years? For another, is the end of his laws-of-Hollywood-physics-defying run in sight?

“It’s coming. It’s got to be,” Mr. Duvall said, addressing the second question over an Earl Grey tea at the Four Seasons hotel in Manhattan last Monday. (He’d also spoken by phone a few days earlier.) In town from Virginia, where he shares a 360-acre farm with his wife, two dogs and several horses, he wore black jeans, cowboy boots and a Texas Longhorns track jacket that hewed close to his barrel chest.

But as Mr. Duvall described several would-be projects on his “front burner,” he made clear that he’s in no hurry to bow out. There’s a postwar drama written by Billy Bob Thornton that he adores, a movie he wants to make with his longtime pal James Caan, and a reboot of the star-crossed “Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” in which Terry Gilliam has cast Mr. Duvall as the titular windmill jouster. “These are some terrific roles,” he said. “I want these projects to get off the ground.”

To answer the question of Mr. Duvall’s longevity, a good place to start is the range of characters he’s inhabited over the years. He began acting in the ’50s but was a Hollywood latecomer — he “arrived a fully formed actor,” said the British film critic Tom Shone, the author of “Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer.” Mr. Duvall rose to prominence in the ’70s alongside figures like Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro, who brought a new energy to the movies. They were not simply “movie stars, like Errol Flynn or Clark Gable,” said Bruce Beresford, who directed Mr. Duvall in 1983’s “Tender Mercies,” but also “superlative actors” who “became totally identified with whichever role they were playing.”

Mr. Duvall stood out in Robert Altman’s “Countdown” (1968) and George Lucas’s “THX 1138” (1971), but it was in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather” (1972), playing cool-headed Corleone consigliere Tom Hagen, that he gave his first indelible performance. In 1979 he took a 180-degree turn and won raves playing two military men whose heads were about as cool as napalm: Bull Meechum in “The Great Santini” and Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in “Apocalypse Now.” In “Apocalypse” Mr. Duvall’s performance “upset the moral tidiness of the film,” Mr. Shone said, complicating the “peacenik” proceedings “with this charismatic, full-throated, fantastic hawk.”

Downshifting in “Tender Mercies,” Mr. Duvall won the best actor Oscar for his restrained portrayal of Mac Sledge, a down-and-out country singer whose inner storms roil beneath but never quite break through his wistful surface. In the years since, Mr. Duvall has played a hardboiled detective, a Texas preacher, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Stalin. What unites these performances, he said, is that, “Within each character, I like to find the contradictions. Even when I played Stalin, I tried to find a vulnerable point for that guy.”

Sissy Spacek said, “He embodies the character,” describing the experience of watching Mr. Duvall at work on “Get Low,” which opens Friday, and in which she has a supporting role. (Bill Murray co-stars as an undertaker.) “Every actor has their own process, but his is seamless. He just becomes.”

That aura of seamlessness results from a technique that balances intense preparation and spontaneity. After taking a role, Mr. Duvall does his homework. To play Mac Sledge he frequented honky-tonk bars and even sang with a makeshift country band. To inhabit Euliss Dewey, a Pentecostal preacher and heartfelt ham in “The Apostle” (1997), which Mr. Duvall also wrote and directed, he spent years visiting black churches. He marinates in such research but makes no firm decisions about how to play a part until cameras roll. Mr. Beresford recalled that, during rehearsals for “Tender Mercies,” Mr. Duvall’s readings were curiously “flat and unemotional,” but that he bloomed when filming began.

cont...
Sunday NYT Article

Ellen DeGeneres leaving 'Idol' July 29, 2010, 8:11 PM EST By Brent Lang
TheWrap.com

The search for Simon Cowell's replacement has consumed "American Idol" producers for months. Now the showrunners are left with another high-profile seat at the judge's table to fill.

Ellen DeGeneres is bailing as a judge of the hit talent competition after one season, Fox and the comedian announced on Thursday.

"A couple months ago, I let Fox and the 'American Idol' producers know that this didn't feel like the right fit for me," DeGeneres said. "I told them I wouldn't leave them in a bind and that I would hold off on doing anything until they were able to figure out where they wanted to take the panel next.

There is a Philly radio station that does a daily feature called "Rewind" where they do a this-day-in-history for showbiz. July 30, 1969, "Midnight Cowboy" was officially released in LA, (it had an earlier premiere in NYC) and 1972, "Deliverance". Coincidentally both starred Jon Voight. Two of my favorite all-time movies; great acting, great stories. Probably Burt Reynolds best acting. Voight was "discovered" in Midnight Cowboy and solidified his place in acting with Deliverance. Midnight Cowboy showed Hoffman's versatility after "The Graduate".

Thursday’s broadcast of “The View,” featuring President Barack Obama, qualified as the series’ most-watched broadcast ever in Total Viewers (6.59 million), exceeding its previous peak delivery achieved the day after the 2008 Presidential Election (6.17 million, 11/05/08).

Will they do a day-in-history for Voight's ANACONDA?

The Associated Press, August 2, 2010

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Lindsay Lohan has been released from jail, but she's not exactly a free woman.

The actress was discharged at 1:35 a.m. Monday after serving 14 days of a 90-day sentence for violating her probation in a 2007 drug case, a sheriff's spokesman said. She is now required to begin a three-month stint in rehab.

A prosecutor has said that Lohan cannot be released early and will have to spend the entire time in treatment.

Did he play the snake?

No but his snake is to blame for Jolie.

I remember Midnight Cowboy very well. Although a dark depressing story, Voight was great but I thought Hoffman was wonderful (I'm walking here") If I'm not mistaken it was (at first anyway) going to receive an "X" rating which was pretty strong, even during that time. Believe it or not, I've never seen the entirety of Deliverance. I've seen bits & pieces of it, and heard all about it from way back when.

I have a favorite radio station that is much the same with music "rewinds". I enjoy those kind of flashbacks.

TIS

BTW, Midnight Cowboy was the only "X" movie to win the Best Picture Oscar.

Of course this was back when theatre chains weren't necessarily squeamish about showing a X movie, unlike most American chains today who refuse to screen a NC-17 on principle.

Pussies.

My father got so mad when Dustin Hoffman didn't win the Oscar. He felt that the difference between Hoffman's characters in "The Graduate" and "Midnight Cowboy" displayed an enormous breadth of talent.

I never saw Midnight Cowboy but I did see and like Straw Dogs.

I swear every time I see "The Dark Knight" is playing on HBO, I simply can't resist tuning in. Even if it's while I'm doing other things, or even if it's to watch only certain scenes. I am not a Batman fan (never have been) but Ledger's wonderful performance of the joker makes the entire movie IMHO. He is deliciously evil and made the part his own. I never tire of it. Has to be one of the best villains ever as far as I'm concerned.

I heard they are making another Batman (or considering it anyway) and will eliminate a "joker" because it's hard to top Ledger. I agree.

Btw, I never understood why Cristian Bale used the Batman "voice" that he did. That was annoying.

TIS

On another note, Michael Imperioli is set to star in a new police drama, called Detroit 187. I don't know too much about it, but assuming it's filmed in Detroit (the article says he's moving there, so I assume it will be), hopefully something like that will help the badly hit economy in Detroit.

I am sure I'll tune in not only cause I love cop shows, but I don't recall any tv show being filmed in Michigan my Michigan.

TIS


http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/story/imperioli-preparing-for-detroit-move_1156215

You need to see it Ratso. It is sooooo good!

•Real Vice Cops (2008) – TV series with episodes shot in Detroit. The show airs on SPIKE.
•The Saint (2009) – An action TV series directed by Barry Levinson.

I'll put it on the list.
Evidently the line "I'm walking here!!!" is from that movie. I use that line a lot..

updated 8/13/2010 11:38:38 AM ET
Talk radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger has issued an apology for saying the N-word several times in an on-air conversation with a caller that she said was "hypersensitive" to racism.

Schlessinger said on her website Wednesday that she was wrong in using the word for what she called an attempt to make a philosophical point.

"I articulated the N-word all the way out — more than one time," Schlessinger said in comments from the opening of her radio show that she posted on her site. "And that was wrong. I'll say it again — that was wrong."

She said she "realized I had made a horrible mistake, and was so upset, I could not finish the show."

Schlessinger said she pulled herself off the air at the end of the hour.

During the exchange on Tuesday's show, Schlessinger said the woman who called herself Jade was too sensitive for complaining that her husband's friends made racist comments about her in their home. ( Listen to the audio on MediaMatters.org.)

When the woman asked if the N-word was offensive, Dr. Laura said "black guys say it all the time," then went on to repeat it several times.

Schlessinger did not direct the epithet at the woman, but said she used it to suggest how often she hears it, and that it should not automatically be cause for offense.

When the caller objected, Schlessinger replied: "Oh, then I guess you don't watch HBO or listen to any black comedians."

Schlessinger also said that if the caller did not have a sense of humor about race, she shouldn't have entered into an interracial marriage.

Ouch. I work part time in the radio business and I can tell you that this is a BIG "Uh-Oh". Depending on the markets and the stations involved, I can tell you that some affiliates will drop her syndicated program. "Slipping" on the air is not good. If/when you do, the phones start ringing immediately at the station. After the program directors and managers say their fiftieth apology to offended listener(s), you better pack your bags. Radio on air talent is a dime a dozen industry. That's why it doesn't pay well until you ascend to the ranks of Dr. Laura, et all. However, she is very popular and might get a small slap on her boney wrist after she publicly apologizes. Personally, I despise that word and can't think of any filthier derogatory term. It should never be uttered from one's lips no matter what context. She should be ashamed.