and its my own damn fault

back in the olden days of b&w TVs, Friday night was fight night.  thus,

Yo, Adrian! It's me, Rocky.

Rocky was a labor of love, the little movie that did, a personal tale that became a multimillion dollar enterprise. it is also the movie that has spanned the most sequels (Rocky II, III, IV, V, VI aka "Rocky Balboa"). what's the name for this? a hexology?

the taglines for the movie are interesting, if a bit confusing.

You have a ringside seat for the bloodiest bicentennial in history! *

A Philadelphia fighter who never made the big time...He showed he could take on a challenge...and won something bigger than a championship bout.

Meet the "Italian Stallion": a small-time guy with big-time guts who yearns to be a hero...just once!**

He's a has-been battler with one dream left...and one last chance.

His whole life was a million-to-one shot.

* Rocky was released in 1976.  references to the American Revolution of 1776 Bicentennial are everywhere.

** a small-time guy with big-time guts.   I'm a 12-year-old at heart. I won't tell you what I thought it read.

Silvester Stallone gets mucho credit for writing the movie (in a 3½-day bender as legend has it) and more so for refusing to sell it to several studios that were interested in the story but wanted to cast their own choices (including Robert Redford. Robert fracking Redford. damn), but Stallone stood firm on his demand to himself play the role of Rocky Balboa.

no doubt Stallone was Rocky, but much of the movie's success was due to the fine supporting cast. Mickey, Adrian, Paulie. Apollo Creed

check the patch on Paulie's shoulder on the third pic.  Philadelphia represent, yo.

(damn. for the second day in a row I can't embed from YT.  is not just me, teh SO had the same problem)

here be the links to watch:

Trailer:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8DlBN_LLiA

Cut me Mick  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpYosdIQ9JA&feature=related

Gonna fly now (theme from Rocky)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioE_O7Lm0I4  

                          

and because is not something I expected to find while searching for Rocky pictures:

oh weels.  I found the trailer and a couple more clips from  Babe in YT, but VOX won't let me add them or even search for them.  something about "life being cruel sometimes".  whatevs.

ahem.  Babe is a tale of a little orphan pig who looks for and eventually finds his life's role. not as the centerpiece of a holiday dinner, he hopes.

cute.  but there's been talking animals in movies before.  but not like this one, where each animal lips were synchronized with the audio, even when dubbed in other-than-English languages.  that's some serious effort.
another bit of trivia:  Babe, the pig himself was played by 58 genuine Staffordshire piglets in various stages of development.

Babe the pig isn't the only one who speaks:  everyone speaks, Ferdinand the paranoid duck, Fly, the sheperd dog who becomes a mother-of-sorts to Babe much to the displeasure of her mate Rex, the house cat, the sheep, the barn mice... they all have more lines than the laconic Farmer Hoggett and his wife ("the Boss" to the animals).

it is possible I'd seen stand-up before watching Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip, but if so, Richard made me forget about it.  RPLotSS was one of the first shows that incorporated performance into stand-up

Richard covered a lot of ground in 80 minutes. a meditation on love, loss and the difference between men and women:

Walt Kelly and his friends Pogo and Porkypine still say it best:

 

"Y'know, it seems to be me this is all backwards....

We, Ever'body, ought to keep our big mouths shut all the

whole year long so's we'd have time to think of two minutes worth of

somethin' to say on the eleventh day of November."

 

 

 

 to all veterans and their families, thank you.

before he became a caricature in Meet the parents and Meet the parents II, Robert DeNiro was actually very funny in the 'comedic thriller' Midnight Run.  (NOTE: how do you know you are old? old old? when a movie you watched when first released is touted as a classic. teh ouch.  if Midnight Run were a college students it'd be finally drinking legally)

whatever a 'comedic thriller' is supposed to be, this movie was it. cant' think of any other movie that qualifies.

and to think it almost became a-for-sure-train-wreck.  check it

"one of the studio (Paramount)  proposals for the role of Jonathan Mardukas was Robin Williams*, who agreed to audition  <shudders> meanwhile, the director, Martin Brest, had auditioned and cast Charles Grodin in the role, which lead Paramount to drop out of the production and sell the rights to Universal."

a lot can go down between thursday and saturday..

the first time I saw Friday, one of the reasons it made me laugh is because Ice Cube's character, Craig, looked and had expressions exactly like my brother.  by now neither mr. Cube nor more brother look much like each other or their younger selves.
set in one of the same neighborhoods that three years earlier had been the site of riots made this light coming-of-age comedy feel hopeful.

the characters of  Friday :Craig, Smokey, Deebo, Debbie, are the best thing about it.  as memorable, as, say,those of  Fast Times at...

the time frame of the movie is the "Friday" of the title. Craig, who still lives at home (much to the dismay of his parents), has just lost his job. as he figures what comes next he becomes involved with his friend Smokey's schemes and troubles.  most of the action takes place in and about the front porch of Craig's home

trailer

"you are fuckin' the rotation!"  Smokey schools Craig on the etiquette of joint-sharing

Friday's soundtrack feature the biggest hip-hop starts of the mid-1990s.  the 'theme' song by Ice Cube

the outstanding track, Dr Dre's Keep their heads ringin

'

there are two movies follow up to Friday:  Next Friday, with most of the same actors and crew, and Friday After Next, without.  I haven't seen either, but I've heard that Friday After Next is worth watching.

 

English title: Grand Illusion

part two of a doubleheader. part one was yesterday, and today is Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion: a war movie with no battle scenes, where friendships go across enemy sides, where the futility of war (any war) is noted, and the coming social changes in all of Europe are presaged.

is going to sound awfully familiar if you've been following this series-of-movies-I-like, but whatevs. 'tis all true

“

For many years, the original nitrate film negative was thought to have been lost in an Allied air raid in 1942 that destroyed a leading laboratory outside Paris.  Prints of the film were rediscovered in 1958 and restored and re-released during the early 1960s. Then, it was revealed that the original negative had been shipped back to Berlin by Dr. Frank Hensel to be stored in the Reichsfilmarchiv vaults. In the Allied occupation of Berlin in 1945, the Reichsfilmarchiv by chance was in the Russian zone and consequently shipped along with many other films back to be the basis of the Soviet Gosfilmofond film archive in Moscow. The negative was returned to France in the 1960s, but sat unidentified in storage in Toulouse Cinémathèque for over 30 years, as no one suspected it had survived. It was rediscovered in the early 1990s as the Cinémathèque's nitrate collection was slowly being transferred to the French Film Archives at Bois d'Arcy. It was restored and released as the inaugural DVD of the Criterion Collection. 

“

from the always helpful wiki , full of details, linkage, synopsa, and I hope you already knew, *spoilers*. so be careful

I can talk about the movie, but rather do so after y'all watch it. I am unable to discuss a plot without giving the movie away; the secret of being a good writer-about-films.  but I will mention some movies you may have watched that are very influenced by  La Grande Illusion:

- The Great Escape
- Casablanca
- Stalag Seven

clipparinos:

this first one is Renoir himself introducing the Criterion Collection DVD.

Renoir is adorable, self-effacing, and I want to hug him.  he also reminds me of someone...

in this scene, POWs of several nationalities come together during a talent show in a German camp