High Hopes
Okay, before the next ‘cycle’ starts, here are some bullet-point thoughts on tv this week...and other things...
~Last week’s Dexter was great. Really, what I expected to see of Dexter’s grief (I mean that in a complimentary way). Some things I’m not sure of for the course of this season though, are the *very* messy murder from this ep (how is he going to cover that up?) and JULIA STILES. I do not like her. And she is NOT a suitable replacement for Julie Benz. AT ALL.
~Gossip Girl was okay this week, I really liked the resolution of Serena and Blair’s fight, I like this acknowledgment that Blair *has* grown up over the past year.
~I guess Lone Star is already off the reservation. Good luck, AP.
~Hawaii Five-0 continues to rock my socks. And I think I might start shipping Danno and Kona.
~Robin and Stone...Um...Okay, so it was a little clunky, and honestly I think it was too much for one day. Couldn’t they have gotten him for like, a week? There was just too much to get through. The chemistry was great, and I was of course a blubbering mess, but it was just too much for one day.
~Britney/Brittany was a lot of fun. Um...exactly what are they doing to Rachel? Now, she’s never been my favorite, but I don’t hate her *quite* as much as some others do. But still- why would the writers make her even more hateful and selfish, really ooc hateful and selfish? Heather Morris’s numbers were fabulous, and Lea Michele’s was less so. In the beginning of HMB,OMT, I was like, ‘WHY is she making those faces?’ And then I realized...she was actually doing a dead-on Britney impersonation. So good on her. The Paramore number sucked. Sorry but it did. There is more than enough Britney material to have a full ep on her, and this one should have closed out with a fun group number, not a ridiculous Rachel solo, for her ridiculous and unhealthy (on both sides) relationship with Finn.
~I still haven’t been able to make myself watch One Tree Hill, so I guess that sums up how I feel about this season. I think it’s *almost* official- Clay and Quinn have ruined the show for me. Are there any reasons I should tune back?
~I liked Grey’s this week. I like the direction Mark and Lexie are going in, even shipper that I am. Lexie is to Mark like Meredith is to Derek and Izzie is/was to Alex, so I have faith that they’ll be ‘fixed’. And actually watching them go through hard times always makes me ship a couple harder, so...yeah. Ditto Owen and Cristina. I have faith that this will be a rocky year for them, but one that will ultimately make them stronger. And Meredith Grey, I just continue to absolutely love her! Who is this mature, well-adjusted, smart, strong person? Lovely to meet her!
I’m going to work on and hopefully finish my girlsavesboy fic today. I have until Thursday to post it, and I know I’ll get through it but right now I just hate the idea of it. It’s not a bad idea, but writing it is torturous right now. Don’t know why.
Now, for some shit that probably NONE of you are interested in, The lifelong career of Sylvester Stallone. Yes, I’m serious. Shut up.
I watched Rocky Balboa three times this week, once with his director commentary. I love his connection to this character, and how he’s grown with him, and really, Rocky is now an extension of his personality. I believe it’s the best parts of him, and his own ideal of himself. I’ve been watching and reading a lot of interviews with him (watching more of recent years and reading more from the beginning of his career).
I can’t say that I think he’s exactly ‘hot’ (though I would say he definitely was up through, oh, First Blood), but I do think he’s pretty impressive-looking. I mean, say what you will, but the guy is 64 years old!
He broke his neck while filming The Expendables. Yeah, seriously. In a fight scene with [Stone Cold] Steve Austin, Sly broke his neck. Usually, when you break your neck, you, uh, die. He made it through and continued shooting. When he was filming Rocky IV, 25 years ago, Dolph Lundgren hit him so hard that he actually moved his heart around in his chest. Once again made it through (clearly). Just saying- the guy’s a tough bastard.
I didn’t hate Rocky V the way most people did, but I’m glad it flopped because it gave him the impetus to do Rocky Balboa which is just fantastic, and seriously, all three times that I watched it this week (and I’ve seen it before) I’m crying the whole way through. Seriously, it’s like a parallel of his life. In Rocky, he’s a breakthrough kid with guts and feeling, and in general I just love 70’s actors and films. And I feel like there was a different work ethic then too. Like, he made this all happen for himself. I know that there are writer-actor’s now and actor-director’s, but I feel like so many of the success stories I hear out of young Hollywood start with, “I got this call from my agent...”
Then in Rocky II, we see the pitfalls of overnight success. You know what’s really kind of hilarious and very interesting? What was acceptable then vs now and it’s not all that long ago. When Gazzo, Rocky’s former boss tries to give him advice on what to do with his new fortune, he tells him to invest in condominiums. Rocky looks confused for a second and then says that he doesn’t think it’s right because he never uses them. Play on words, condominium=condom, and it’s a joke, but that would be *so* unacceptable now, especially considering that Rocky was supposed to be something of a manwhore before Adrian. And his ‘fortune’! He was paid 37k for his first fight with Apollo Creed, and with that money he bought a house, a car (Iroc-Z!), got married, bought Adrian a fur coat, bought himself a ridiculous and silly leather tiger jacket, and several gold watches. 37k! 1979!
In Rocky III and Rocky IV, you can tell that he’s caught up in the excess of the 80’s, and what a few years in the public eye has done for him. And then, Rocky V...like I said, I don’t hate it (even Sly hates it), but there are a number of problems with it. First of all, he aged Robert from eight to thirteen, and that was a vanity trick to get his own son in the movie. And Sage Stallone didn’t even do a bad job, as far as kids go, and I wouldn’t have minded if he cast him again in Rocky Balboa (I’ll get to that), but it’s kind of a weird trick to play on the audience. I feel like the Duke character was maybe sort of representing Brigitte Nielsen in his life? That’s my own inference, but Sly has definitely used Rocky to express his own emotions, and maybe that’s what she was to him. Flashy, made him lose sight of what was important. And the flashback scenes with Mickey- while it was nice to see Burgess Meredith, it made it seem like Mickey was the central relationship in his life, which he defintely wasn't, though he was important.
Talia Shire is fabulous. She really is, and I love that Sly never glammed her up (she was maybe a little glam in Rocky III, but gosh, early 80’s ‘fashion’ is just horrible).
But yeah, Rocky Balboa is just a masterpiece. Really, from start to finish, and it’s so beautifully shot, you can really feel the labor of love in every frame. The Rocky in III-V is very different from the slurry bruiser in the original and Rocky II, and it’s not hard to figure out why (he got civilized, per Mickey), and he goes back to old-school Rocky in the last one. And I think it makes sense. Rocky had lived the first thirty years of his life, you imagine, in probably a 10-block radius. And then he got out and saw a bit of the world, and it was lavish to him at first but then it spat him back out, nasty, sort of, in a way, telling him he was never good enough and he was foolish to think otherwise. (One of the best and most emotional parts of Rocky V, when he asks Adrian, “Did we ever leave here?”) In RB, he’d been back to where he started for the better part of fifteen years, so he’d very easily slipped back into the old habits.
Oh yeah, you’ve got to wonder why he let Mickey’s gym go- I imagine that it was to help with the medical costs when Adrian was sick, and if it was between selling his business or his wife’s, Rocky was of course going to fall on the sword. I wish I had done my big rewatch of this while I was still doing the shipping meme because Rocky and Adrian are absolutely amazing. Sly has made some HUGE career mistakes (and he’s good-natured enough to joke about it), but when he wants to, he can dig deep and he’s right up there with De Niro. In fact, did you know when Rocky first came out, he was tagged as his generation’s Brando?
And of course, I can’t stop watching The Expendables. Barney Ross is a great character- sort of like the best mix of Rocky and John Rambo and a little bit of Sly playing himself. I know I’m definitely asking for it for Yuletide this year, and I might offer it too, though the thought does scare me.
I’m a little worried about the sequel. First of all....let’s look at Sly again. He’s a tough bastard and pretty much the best thing ever, but how long can he really keep that going? And if we follow the path of Rocky and Rambo...well he’s proven time and again that anything is possible, but if he screws up this next one...I mean, is there any way for him to have another comeback in twenty years?
I won’t think like that. Let’s say the next one comes out next year. One idea that I heard thrown around is that Barney’s daughter is kidnapped and the gang needs to save her. That might sound like a pretty fanfic-y idea (and it probably is) but I think it could be really cool, because I think the ‘moral center’ of the last movie (if you really want to find one) is that whatever they are to the rest of the world, they’re not expendable to each other. And I think Barney’s daughter would be a very interesting character- probably not a full-on Sydney Britstow, but I bet her dad would have taught her a trick or two over the years.
~Last week’s Dexter was great. Really, what I expected to see of Dexter’s grief (I mean that in a complimentary way). Some things I’m not sure of for the course of this season though, are the *very* messy murder from this ep (how is he going to cover that up?) and JULIA STILES. I do not like her. And she is NOT a suitable replacement for Julie Benz. AT ALL.
~Gossip Girl was okay this week, I really liked the resolution of Serena and Blair’s fight, I like this acknowledgment that Blair *has* grown up over the past year.
~I guess Lone Star is already off the reservation. Good luck, AP.
~Hawaii Five-0 continues to rock my socks. And I think I might start shipping Danno and Kona.
~Robin and Stone...Um...Okay, so it was a little clunky, and honestly I think it was too much for one day. Couldn’t they have gotten him for like, a week? There was just too much to get through. The chemistry was great, and I was of course a blubbering mess, but it was just too much for one day.
~Britney/Brittany was a lot of fun. Um...exactly what are they doing to Rachel? Now, she’s never been my favorite, but I don’t hate her *quite* as much as some others do. But still- why would the writers make her even more hateful and selfish, really ooc hateful and selfish? Heather Morris’s numbers were fabulous, and Lea Michele’s was less so. In the beginning of HMB,OMT, I was like, ‘WHY is she making those faces?’ And then I realized...she was actually doing a dead-on Britney impersonation. So good on her. The Paramore number sucked. Sorry but it did. There is more than enough Britney material to have a full ep on her, and this one should have closed out with a fun group number, not a ridiculous Rachel solo, for her ridiculous and unhealthy (on both sides) relationship with Finn.
~I still haven’t been able to make myself watch One Tree Hill, so I guess that sums up how I feel about this season. I think it’s *almost* official- Clay and Quinn have ruined the show for me. Are there any reasons I should tune back?
~I liked Grey’s this week. I like the direction Mark and Lexie are going in, even shipper that I am. Lexie is to Mark like Meredith is to Derek and Izzie is/was to Alex, so I have faith that they’ll be ‘fixed’. And actually watching them go through hard times always makes me ship a couple harder, so...yeah. Ditto Owen and Cristina. I have faith that this will be a rocky year for them, but one that will ultimately make them stronger. And Meredith Grey, I just continue to absolutely love her! Who is this mature, well-adjusted, smart, strong person? Lovely to meet her!
I’m going to work on and hopefully finish my girlsavesboy fic today. I have until Thursday to post it, and I know I’ll get through it but right now I just hate the idea of it. It’s not a bad idea, but writing it is torturous right now. Don’t know why.
Now, for some shit that probably NONE of you are interested in, The lifelong career of Sylvester Stallone. Yes, I’m serious. Shut up.
I watched Rocky Balboa three times this week, once with his director commentary. I love his connection to this character, and how he’s grown with him, and really, Rocky is now an extension of his personality. I believe it’s the best parts of him, and his own ideal of himself. I’ve been watching and reading a lot of interviews with him (watching more of recent years and reading more from the beginning of his career).
I can’t say that I think he’s exactly ‘hot’ (though I would say he definitely was up through, oh, First Blood), but I do think he’s pretty impressive-looking. I mean, say what you will, but the guy is 64 years old!
He broke his neck while filming The Expendables. Yeah, seriously. In a fight scene with [Stone Cold] Steve Austin, Sly broke his neck. Usually, when you break your neck, you, uh, die. He made it through and continued shooting. When he was filming Rocky IV, 25 years ago, Dolph Lundgren hit him so hard that he actually moved his heart around in his chest. Once again made it through (clearly). Just saying- the guy’s a tough bastard.
I didn’t hate Rocky V the way most people did, but I’m glad it flopped because it gave him the impetus to do Rocky Balboa which is just fantastic, and seriously, all three times that I watched it this week (and I’ve seen it before) I’m crying the whole way through. Seriously, it’s like a parallel of his life. In Rocky, he’s a breakthrough kid with guts and feeling, and in general I just love 70’s actors and films. And I feel like there was a different work ethic then too. Like, he made this all happen for himself. I know that there are writer-actor’s now and actor-director’s, but I feel like so many of the success stories I hear out of young Hollywood start with, “I got this call from my agent...”
Then in Rocky II, we see the pitfalls of overnight success. You know what’s really kind of hilarious and very interesting? What was acceptable then vs now and it’s not all that long ago. When Gazzo, Rocky’s former boss tries to give him advice on what to do with his new fortune, he tells him to invest in condominiums. Rocky looks confused for a second and then says that he doesn’t think it’s right because he never uses them. Play on words, condominium=condom, and it’s a joke, but that would be *so* unacceptable now, especially considering that Rocky was supposed to be something of a manwhore before Adrian. And his ‘fortune’! He was paid 37k for his first fight with Apollo Creed, and with that money he bought a house, a car (Iroc-Z!), got married, bought Adrian a fur coat, bought himself a ridiculous and silly leather tiger jacket, and several gold watches. 37k! 1979!
In Rocky III and Rocky IV, you can tell that he’s caught up in the excess of the 80’s, and what a few years in the public eye has done for him. And then, Rocky V...like I said, I don’t hate it (even Sly hates it), but there are a number of problems with it. First of all, he aged Robert from eight to thirteen, and that was a vanity trick to get his own son in the movie. And Sage Stallone didn’t even do a bad job, as far as kids go, and I wouldn’t have minded if he cast him again in Rocky Balboa (I’ll get to that), but it’s kind of a weird trick to play on the audience. I feel like the Duke character was maybe sort of representing Brigitte Nielsen in his life? That’s my own inference, but Sly has definitely used Rocky to express his own emotions, and maybe that’s what she was to him. Flashy, made him lose sight of what was important. And the flashback scenes with Mickey- while it was nice to see Burgess Meredith, it made it seem like Mickey was the central relationship in his life, which he defintely wasn't, though he was important.
Talia Shire is fabulous. She really is, and I love that Sly never glammed her up (she was maybe a little glam in Rocky III, but gosh, early 80’s ‘fashion’ is just horrible).
But yeah, Rocky Balboa is just a masterpiece. Really, from start to finish, and it’s so beautifully shot, you can really feel the labor of love in every frame. The Rocky in III-V is very different from the slurry bruiser in the original and Rocky II, and it’s not hard to figure out why (he got civilized, per Mickey), and he goes back to old-school Rocky in the last one. And I think it makes sense. Rocky had lived the first thirty years of his life, you imagine, in probably a 10-block radius. And then he got out and saw a bit of the world, and it was lavish to him at first but then it spat him back out, nasty, sort of, in a way, telling him he was never good enough and he was foolish to think otherwise. (One of the best and most emotional parts of Rocky V, when he asks Adrian, “Did we ever leave here?”) In RB, he’d been back to where he started for the better part of fifteen years, so he’d very easily slipped back into the old habits.
Oh yeah, you’ve got to wonder why he let Mickey’s gym go- I imagine that it was to help with the medical costs when Adrian was sick, and if it was between selling his business or his wife’s, Rocky was of course going to fall on the sword. I wish I had done my big rewatch of this while I was still doing the shipping meme because Rocky and Adrian are absolutely amazing. Sly has made some HUGE career mistakes (and he’s good-natured enough to joke about it), but when he wants to, he can dig deep and he’s right up there with De Niro. In fact, did you know when Rocky first came out, he was tagged as his generation’s Brando?
And of course, I can’t stop watching The Expendables. Barney Ross is a great character- sort of like the best mix of Rocky and John Rambo and a little bit of Sly playing himself. I know I’m definitely asking for it for Yuletide this year, and I might offer it too, though the thought does scare me.
I’m a little worried about the sequel. First of all....let’s look at Sly again. He’s a tough bastard and pretty much the best thing ever, but how long can he really keep that going? And if we follow the path of Rocky and Rambo...well he’s proven time and again that anything is possible, but if he screws up this next one...I mean, is there any way for him to have another comeback in twenty years?
I won’t think like that. Let’s say the next one comes out next year. One idea that I heard thrown around is that Barney’s daughter is kidnapped and the gang needs to save her. That might sound like a pretty fanfic-y idea (and it probably is) but I think it could be really cool, because I think the ‘moral center’ of the last movie (if you really want to find one) is that whatever they are to the rest of the world, they’re not expendable to each other. And I think Barney’s daughter would be a very interesting character- probably not a full-on Sydney Britstow, but I bet her dad would have taught her a trick or two over the years.