Indiana Jones Tops Hero Poll
Actors Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford have been voted the greatest ever action heroes. Around a quarter of the 3,000 people polled remembered Ford fondly as Han Solo in Star Wars and swashbuckling archaeologist Indiana Jones, a role he takes up again later on this year - for the fourth time.
Willis also set the standard in the 1980s, as John McClane in Die Hard, a role he reprised for the fourth time last year.
Third place was taken by Last Action Hero star Arnold Schwarzenegger, with 15 per cent of the vote.
Newer breeds of action hero Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, and Daniel Craig as James Bond, achieved fourth and fifth-equal places in the poll.
Craig tied with Sylvester Stallone, Steven Seagal and Mel Gibson in joint fifth place with 5 per cent each. Read the rest of this entry
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‘Rambo’ At Your Local Odeon…Think Again!
The UK’s largest cinema chain has refused to show Sylvester Stallone’s new Rambo movie.Odeon has confirmed that it will not show the latest instalment in the franchise in its venues across the UK.
It blamed the decision on “commercial reasons” but reports suggest that the film fell victim to Odeon’s feud with distributors Sony.
Insiders also put the “very, very rare” move down to a belief that the latest outing will not perform well at the box office.
A spokesman for the chain said: “Owing to commercial reasons, Odeon has made the decision not to screen the film Rambo across its cinemas in the UK”.
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Stallone: no more Rambo or Rocky
Sylvester Stallone has bid sweet adieu to his two most memorable cinematic creations, Rambo and Rocky, despite the successful launch of Rambo in the US last weekend
The ageing action hero defied a mauling from the critics when his fourth, eponymously titled Rambo instalment debuted in second place in the US charts with a decent haul of a little over $18m (£9.1m).
“This is the last Rambo just as Rocky Balboa is the last Rocky,” Stallone told reporters. “I can’t go any further. It was a miracle that it even got done.”
Stallone’s comments may come as a surprise to Harvey Weinstein, however, who said on Sunday that he expected the series to continue after the film’s auspicious release.
The Rambo and Rocky films have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars around the world and are an immensely appealing prospect to the pack of executives like Weinstein that like to surround money-making ventures.
Stallone produced, directed and starred in Rambo, in which the famously monosyllabic former Green Beret dons the face paint one more time for a hostage rescue mission in Burma.
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Sylvester Stallone Defends Using HGH
Sylvester Stallone says he used human growth hormone to get buff for the new “Rambo” movie, and defends its use. “HGH (human growth hormone) is nothing,” the 61-year-old actor tells Time magazine in its Feb. 4 issue.
“Anyone who calls it a steroid is grossly misinformed.” Because it is nearly undetectable, HGH has become a substance of great concern in major league baseball and other sports battling allegations of rampant doping. “Testosterone to me is so important for a sense of well-being when you get older,” he says. “Everyone over 40 years old would be wise to investigate it because it increases the quality of your life. Mark my words. In 10 years it will be over the counter.”
Stallone directed and co-wrote the new “Rambo” movie, which arrived in theaters Friday.
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All blood, no guts for ‘Rambo’
As he did with Rocky Balboa in 2006, Sylvester Stallone has resurrected his dejected Vietnam vet John Rambo for one final screen adventure. But where Rambo was once a macho symbol of 1980s excess, mowing down bad dudes in an over-the-top, comic book fashion, this Rambo — paunchy, sullen and prone to uttering fatalist statements like “(bleep) the world” — bares little resemblance to the sweat-drenched, shirtless superhero of yore. This Rambo — he introduces himself as “John” — is a hulking mass of once-toned muscle hiding beneath an oversize T-shirt, his face an aging, sorrowful slab of melting clay.
And once the violence starts — oh yes, there will be blood, as well as severed limbs, spilled guts and grisly decapitations — there’s no sheath of patriotism for the audience to hide behind. It’s brutal, unsettling and appalling.
“Rambo” opens in Thailand, with Rambo collecting cobras for an underground snake-fighting ring. (That can’t pay well.) He’s hired to guide a group of American missionaries to Burma, where they’ll bring aid to the citizens of the war-torn country. But when they’re captured by soldiers and held captive, it’s up to you-know-who to bring them back.
Stallone co-wrote and directed “Rambo,” and its early scenes pick up where 1982’s “First Blood” left off. Rambo is more of a character here than he was in “First Blood’s” bloated sequels, and the years of wear on his used tire of a mug speak volumes about Rambo’s life since we last left him 20 years ago.
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New “Rambo” Interesting Stats
“Rambo”, the upcoming fourth film in the Sylvester Stallone-led action series, has the biggest body count by far of the series according to The Los Angeles Times.
Film writer John Mueller made a comparison list of the body counts in the previous films. The biggest difference is that Rambo keeps his shirt on throughout, Rambo is barely shot at, and there’s actually less torture scenes than both the sequels. Here’s the comparison of most stats:
“First Blood” (1982)
Total Body Count: 1
Kill Count Per Minute: 0.01
Torture Scenes: 2
Time of First Death In Film: 29min 31sec
Good Guys Killed: 0
Bad Guys Killed By Rambo: 0
Bad Guys Killed By Supporting Characters: 0
“Rambo: First Blood Part II” (1985)
Total Body Count: 69
Kill Count Per Minute: 0.72
Torture Scenes: 5
Time of First Death In Film: 33min 34sec
Good Guys Killed: 1
Bad Guys Killed By Rambo: 58
Bad Guys Killed By Supporting Characters: 10
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Stallone feared for ‘Rambo’ crew’s safety
Sylvester Stallone has revealed that he feared for the safety of his crew while shooting the new Rambo movie in Thailand.
The 61-year-old explained that he had decided to set the film in the Asian country rather than Afghanistan or Iraq, saying: “I thought it would be an insult to the men who are fighting, to think that a fictional character could come and change everything.”
However, he said shooting in Thailand had been a sometimes frightening experience, telling The Sun: “The ongoing threat of the Burmese was the biggest danger. There were a lot of secret police and they knew exactly what was going on.
“Life is very cheap over there, you can get shot and nobody will ever find you. I didn’t worry about me but I really felt bad for the crew because I thought that’s how it would start, with the intimidation of the crew.
“And they did intimidate them. For a while we could not get any Burmese to work for us at all, until one man stepped up and it opened the floodgates.”
Stallone is both star and director of the third Rambo sequel, which is released in the UK on February 22.
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