Rocky Craze

Rocky
yes, im talking about the original Part 1 Sylvester Stallone's "Rocky" back in 1976. before you dissed me for watching such a show, you must read on to find out why its gonna worth every mins of your time!

for, "Rocky" ROCKS! lolz! im not so sure about Rocky II to V but I is really really good. pretty amazed to find out that its written by the italian stallone, no less! Remember in my last post, my review on "Taxi Driver" by Robert De Niro getting nominated for Oscars best picture? Why, Best Picture was nabbed by "Rocky" for that year! and stallone was nominated for best actor alongside with De Niro for his rocky balboa role! *wowwee*

so that really says something about this film. it was really good. 1st of all, there is only like 5-8 mins of "action" scenes (aka ring scenes) in the show. which means the rest of the show is about solid character development, good pacing plot & witty dialouge rolled together! stallone really shines as the painfully endearing protaganist who "go the distance" to have new found respect for himself. as Rocky's mantra is:"you never start living till you start believing in yourself"! the show is really inspiring.

plot is simple: rocky is a "bum" who took up boxing matches with equally "bum" opponents for some measy money & collects money for "loan sharks" on the side line. he's in love with his best buddy's sis who is very shy and all of his cheesy jokes are lost on her. somehow, luck comes along his way when the heavyweight champion, Apollo Creed, choose him as a opponent to contest for the title again as Creed thought it would be entertaining for a novice to be against him. Also, rocky's itallian roots will make a good backdrop for the match is scheduled on 4th of july (bcos america is supposed to be discovered by an italian..ha). so rocky has 5 weeks to train up & Creed is confident that he'll knock out Rocky by Round 3 (max rounds in Boxing is ard 15-18, i think). so naturally, rocky has no chance of winning but he never stop believing himself that he can "last the distance".

so we follow him in his now famous routine - hitting the pork, running up the flight of stairs at the museum of philadephia & that song "Gonna Fly now"! very very inspiring! & we learnt along the way that he knew that he cant win but he just want to last more than that 3 rounds.

and he did! he lasted till the very last round. the show has a very nice climatic ending where u cant help rooting for rocky the underdog. even though he eventually did not emerge as the winner (yes, creed retained the title despite rocky lasting till the end), we feel that he's one nevertheless. :)

gosh, all the above for Rocky. i must be mad.

whatever. and no one is gonna stop me from catching the 6th installment "Rocky Balboa"!

What's eating gilbert grape?
yes! finally i managed to get a copy of the very scarce very scarce DVD of "what's eating gilbert grape"!! its a 1993 classic starring my all time fav - johnny depp & Leo diCaprio! i like to think of it as a sleeper hit. and its drama/comedy/coming-of-age all rolled into one. cool!
its depp & Di Caprio at their very best, i would say.
now, only left the part to watch it with hubbi to convince him of that. *evil smile*

Goodfellas
yes, and i managed to get my hands on "Goodfellas", one of the films with De Niro & Scorsese partnership! im gonna watch it tonight!

okie, zap back to the real world. BYEEEEE!