Tag: sylvester stallone
Academy Selects An All-White Group Of Acting Nominees – Again

Academy Selects An All-White Group Of Acting Nominees – Again

By Rebecca Keegan, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

For the second year in a row, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has nominated an all-white group of acting nominees, passing over popular, well-reviewed performances in Creed and Straight Outta Compton and failing to nominate prominent actors of color in 2015 films, including Idris Elba, Samuel L. Jackson and Will Smith.

The homogeneous group of nominees comes as the academy is in the midst of a major push to diversify its membership, and after academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs in November announced a new initiative — A2020 — designed to promote inclusion within its staff.

When movies driven by black actors and directors were nominated this time around, it was for the work of their white colleagues. Despite Universal Pictures mounting a robust awards campaign for its summer blockbuster Straight Outta Compton, neither that film’s director, F. Gary Gray, nor any of its black lead actors was nominated, though the film’s two white screenwriters were.

Sylvester Stallone was nominated for supporting actor for his performance in Warner Bros.’ Creed, but the film’s black writer-director, Ryan Coogler, and black star, Michael B. Jordan, were not.

The academy also passed over Elba, whom critics had praised for his performance in Netflix’s Beasts of No Nation; Jackson, who had campaigned for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight; and Smith, who fronts the movie Concussion.

Tangerine, an independent film whose transgender actresses of color, Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, are nominated for Independent Spirit Awards, also failed to secure any nominations.

The academy’s failure to nominate a more diverse group of actors has been a sore spot for the institution’s public reputation. Last year, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite began trending on Twitter, and telecast host Neil Patrick Harris opened the show by saying, “Tonight we honor Hollywood’s best and whitest. Sorry, brightest.”

The 88th Oscars ceremony is set for Feb. 28.

©2016 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce Best Actor at the announcement of the 88th Academy Awards nominations during a live news conference on Jan. 14, 2016 at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

Sylvester Stallone Leads Night Of Surprises At Golden Globes

Sylvester Stallone Leads Night Of Surprises At Golden Globes

By Piya Sinha-Roy and Nichola Groom

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (Reuters) – Sylvester Stallone received a standing ovation as he won his first Golden Globe on Sunday, leading a slew of surprise wins as host Ricky Gervais roasted the likes of Jennifer Lawrence, Bill Cosby and Caitlyn Jenner.

Stallone, 69, won best supporting film actor for reprising his iconic role as boxer Rocky Balboa in Creed beating presumed frontrunner Mark Rylance for Bridge of Spies.

“I want to thank the legendary producers who mortgaged their house to take a chance on a mumbling actor and give me the shot of a lifetime,” Stallone said.

“I want to thank my imaginary friend Rocky Balboa for being the best friend I ever had,” he added. The last time Stallone had been nominated at the Globes was 1977 for Rocky.

Matt Damon won best comedy film actor for space adventure The Martian, beating Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Al Pacino and Mark Ruffalo.

“I’ve made a lot of movies that people just didn’t go to see, so to make a movie that people just enjoyed this much … it really came down to (director) Ridley Scott,” Damon said.

Other surprise winners included British actress Kate Winslet for her supporting role in Steve Jobs, and the movie’s screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.

“I thought I had as much chance of winning the screenplay award tonight as I had of winning best actress in a musical,” said Sorkin. Steve Jobs, about the late Apple co-founder, floundered at the box office last year despite winning early critical praise.

Giolden Globe organizers, The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, chose Disney-Pixar’s feel-good movie Inside Out for best animated film, and Hungary’s Holocaust drama Son Of Saul as best foreign language film.

Gervais, returning to host the Globes for the fourth time, riled up the audience with an opening monologue in which he called the A-list audience “disgusting, pill-popping, sexual deviant scum.”

He praised Caitlyn Jenner for being a transgender role model before quickly quipping “She didn’t do a lot for women drivers. But you can’t have everything, can you?” referring to Jenner’s Malibu car crash last year.

And Gervais, swigging from a glass of beer, took a swipe at Lawrence’s essay on why women aren’t being equally paid as men in Hollywood, saying “How the hell can a 25-year-old live on $52 million?”

In the television categories, Jon Hamm won one last award for his role as the troubled womanizing Don Draper on the 1960s advertising drama Mad Men.

“Thank you to Mr. Weiner who wrote this horrible person all the way to the end and picked me to play him,” Hamm said, referring to show creator Matt Weiner.

But other TV awards went largely to newcomers, including Mozart in the Jungle for best TV comedy series and Mr.Robot for best TV drama.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant and Mary Milliken)

Cast members Sylvester Stallone (L) and Michael B. Jordan pose during the premiere of the film “Creed” in Los Angeles, California, in this November 19, 2015 file photo.  REUTERS/Kevork Djansezian

‘Creed’ — A Reminder To ‘Rage Against The Dying Of The Light’

‘Creed’ — A Reminder To ‘Rage Against The Dying Of The Light’

In the new movie Creed, Rocky Balboa once again mounts the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In the original Rocky, the climb up those stairs was the climax of a training montage that has since become iconic. With the gladiatorial horns and sweeping strings of Bill Conti’s soundtrack pumping full out behind him, Rocky takes those stairs at a celebratory run, dancing and shadowboxing when he reaches the top.

But that was 39 years ago.

In Creed, Rocky walks. He needs help. He has to take a breather. It is a soulful juxtaposition to his run up those same stairs when he was young, a moment of almost unbearable tenderness that reminds you just how long — and how short — is 39 years.

I occasionally find myself wishing I could see Rocky again for the first time. I wish I could experience again that first surge of “Wow!” and “can do!” that came when Rocky Balboa, this unheralded club fighter nobody ever heard of, tagged preening champion Apollo Creed with an up-from-nowhere left that dropped him like an ex-boyfriend. People in the theater were yanked to their feet, cheering. I was one of them.

It is axiomatic that there are moments when art imitates life. But there are also moments, rare though they are, when art impinges life, when it affects you and you find yourself different after the experience than you were before. Rocky was one of those moments for me.

It was a battle cry for underdogs, losers and misfits, a Bronx cheer to conventional wisdom and long odds. It was a reminder that the secret of success is ultimately pretty simple: Get knocked down, but keep getting up.

Creed is all those things, too. But it is also, subtly, something more: a reminder to “rage against the dying of the light.”

You sometimes hear athletes and TV commentators speak of how Father Time is undefeated — and he is. You need only look at 37-year-old Kobe Bryant struggling through his final season of professional basketball to know how true that is. You need only note how abruptly mediocrity landed on Bryant, the fieriest combination of will and skill this side of Michael Jordan, to understand that time is a thief.

Yes, it steals your legs and stamina, your quickness and strength. But that’s just physicality. Time takes more. It takes the places you used to go and things you you used to do. It takes memory. It takes loved ones. Eventually, it takes you.

Life — and Creed — are about how you respond as time does those things. When Rocky was released, writer and star Sylvester Stallone was 30 years old. Almost 40 years later, Creed finds Stallone’s signature character aged, ailing and alone. Adrian, the wife who loved him, Mickey, the manager who trained him, Apollo, the opponent who befriended him, Paulie, the brother-in-law who exasperated him, all are gone.

And on some level, Rocky is simply marking time until he joins them. Enter Adonis Johnson, the out-of-wedlock son of his old opponent. Unheralded like Rocky was, underdog like Rocky was, fighting for respect as Rocky did, he cajoles the old pug into training him. In the process, he also cajoles him back into life.

It’s not simply that Rocky finds a surrogate son or even renewed purpose in readying Adonis for the ring. Rather, it’s that he rediscovers the thing that made him, him.

So much of what time steals, we have no choice about. Your legs are going to go, your loves are going to go, whether you acquiesce to it or not. But to watch Rocky struggle up those steps he once conquered by leaps and bounds is to know that the thing inside that makes you get up from every knockdown is different. Its loss is not predetermined by age. Rather, it’s a choice. You decide to let time take that thing away from you.

Or not.

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.) (c) 2015 THE MIAMI HERALD DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Image: Sylvester Stallone and Michael B. Jordan in Creed. (Warner Bros. Entertainment)

Movie Review: Rousing ‘Creed’ Goes The Distance

Movie Review: Rousing ‘Creed’ Goes The Distance

By Cary Darling, Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TNS)

Creed, the latest installment in the Rocky saga, is like that aging fighter on the undercard who you hope can just hold his own and escape the ring with his life but you fear will get his lights knocked out. After all, this is the seventh film in a franchise that seemed to have run its course.

It doesn’t matter that it’s directed and co-written by Ryan Coogler, whose 2013 feature debut, Fruitvale Station, was one of the best films of that year. He wouldn’t be the first celebrated indie director to slip and fall off the Hollywood ladder when reaching for the mainstream.

But Creed, much like Rocky himself, leaves all doubts flat on the mat. It’s a rousing, crowd-pleasing blast of entertainment that is not only a well-made sports movie but is also a soulful, cinematic love letter to Philadelphia, the city that has become synonymous with Rocky Balboa.

A bulked-up Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station, the Friday Night Lights TV series) is Adonis Johnson, a self-taught, wanna-be fighter in L.A. who has a white-collar job by day but boxes in underground brawls in Tijuana by night.

Raised in foster homes and then adopted by a well-heeled woman (Phylicia Rashad) who had an affair with his father, he has never come to terms with the fact that he’s the son of the late, great boxer Apollo Creed. He doesn’t even want to use his last name.

But he respects his dad’s legacy and shares his passion for the sport. So Johnson quits his job and moves to Philly, determined to track down a retired Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) and use him to get in real fighting shape. Then, as movie luck would have it, Johnson ends up being offered the chance to take on the light heavyweight champ, the invincible “Pretty” Ricky Conlan (real-life British fighter Tony Bellew).

If that all seems contrived, the plot machinations matter less than the convincing performances and Coogler’s style. This is Jordan’s best work by far (his appearance in one of the year’s worst movies, Fantastic Four, is now officially forgiven) and Stallone is tough yet surprisingly nuanced as a man in his twilight years.

Of course, Johnson has his version of Rocky’s Adrian in Bianca (an impressive Tessa Thompson, Dear White People), a singer who is facing a twilight of her own that will cut short her career.

Coogler shoots the fight scenes in tight close-up, lending them an intensity that puts viewers right in the middle of the action. The climactic battle is a real knockdown head-ringer.

Yet he balances this aggression with a celebratory sense of the city that inspired Balboa. The cheese steaks, the long-running music club the Electric Factory, classic Philly soul (Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ sweeping “Wake Up, Everybody”) and, of course, those famous steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art all root the story with a sense of place.

It all makes for a film that will please longtime Rocky fans and newcomers to the story line. Creed doesn’t just go the distance, it’s a surprising and stunning TKO.
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‘CREED’
4 out of 5 stars
Director: Ryan Coogler
Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone
Rated: PG-13 (violence, strong language and some sensuality)
Running time: 132 min.
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(c)2015 Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.