Tag: Sylvester Stallone

‘Creed’ delivers: Michael B. Jordan, Stallone, make great team

December 6, 2015December 6, 2015by Douglas Ernst6 Comments

Creed

Rocky Balboa is back — as a supporting character in a boxing film. While that may sound strange to long-time Italian Stallion fans, they should rest easy: Ryan Coogler’s Creed is a welcome addition to the Rocky universe.

Creed Balboa

For movie fans who have been living under a rock, Michael B. Jordan stars as the illegitimate son of Apollo Creed, Adonis Johnson. The young man never met his father, who died in the ring during Rocky IV at the hands of Ivan Drago. Johnson’s mother also died when he was a boy, but Mary Anne Creed (played by Phylicia Rashad) took him in as her own.

It isn’t surprising to see what kind of themes are explored as Johnson attempts to define himself as a man while working his way out of his father’s shadow (e.g., abandonment, coping with death, letting go of the past, the importance of family). What is surprising is just how well Coogler pulls it all off — not for any lack of talent on his part, but because he is trying to succeed while tinkering with the “Rocky” brand.

Rocky Apollo

Perhaps the easiest way to explain the movie’s worth to the franchise is to rank it in terms of the other films.

A convincing case can be made that Creed is the second-best movie featuring Balboa, if Oscar-contention is used as part of the litmus test. Coogler has given fans a drama. He has given them a tale of two men who slowly realize that if we become a prisoner to the past then we risk losing any number of potentially-beautiful futures.

Rocky Creed

Creed is not a movie for people who want to see larger than life characters like “Clubber Lang” or popcorn-movie gold like Rocky IV. It’s an tale that respects the source material, particularly 1976’s Rocky, but at the same time is very much its own film.

And for those who want to know how Johnson’s love interest, Bianca (played by Tessa Thompson), matches up with Adrian (Talia Shire), the answer is the same: Rest easy. Bianca is a welcome addition the the “Rocky” universe.

In short, everything in Creed feels natural. Nothing seems awkward or forced, which is good because the accomplishment has paved the way for a sequel if the creative team wants it.

The only way Coogler could have done a better job is if he invented a time machine and stopped Rocky V from ever happening, or Michael B. Jordan from signing on for Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four.

California goes full ‘Demolition Man,’ seeks ‘yes means yes’ sexual consent laws for college students

August 12, 2014August 12, 2014by Douglas Ernst13 Comments

Lawmakers in California must love 1993’s Sylvester Stallone flick “Demolition Man,” because they’re now looking into ways to pass “yes means yes” sexual consent laws. For those who are a bit younger, the film includes a scene where Stallone’s John Spartan is awkwardly asked by Sandra Bullock’s Lenina Huxley if he would like to have sex. The two then use a virtual reality headset to refrain from touching during the process. Just give California ten years and the virtual reality technology will be ready for prime time…

The Associated Press reported:

SAN DIEGO (AP) — College students have heard a similar refrain for years in campaigns to stop sexual assault: No means no.

Lawmakers are considering what would be the first-in-the-nation measure requiring all colleges that receive public funds to set a standard for when “yes means yes.” …

Legislation passed by California’s state Senate in May and coming before the Assembly this month would require all schools that receive public funds for student financial assistance to set a so-called “affirmative consent standard” that could be used in investigating and adjudicating sexual assault allegations. That would be defined as “an affirmative, unambiguous and conscious decision” by each party to engage in sexual activity.

Silence or lack of resistance does not constitute consent. The legislation says it’s also not consent if the person is drunk, drugged, unconscious or asleep. …

After some interpreted that as asking people to stop after each kiss to get a verbal agreement before going to the next level, the bill was amended to say consent must be “ongoing” and “can be revoked at any time.”

John F. Banzhaf III, a George Washington University’s Law School professor, rightly says in the piece that the bill, if passed, would “very, very radically change the definition of rape.”

Indeed. We now live in a world where not only do officials believe they should be able to tax you per teaspoon of sugar you consume, but that they should be able to manage your sex life — down to the point where you must get “affirmative, unambiguous” consent while the process is “ongoing.”

At this point it would be easier if California just mandated that everyone have digital “sexual contracts” on hand that could be signed via cell phone apps and revoked by voice command.

The sad thing is, cultural air raid sirens are going off all around us, and the response by politicians is to create more laws.

Take the case of University of California at Berkeley student Meghan Warner, from the AP piece, for instance. She supports the legislation:

She said she was sexually assaulted during her freshman year by two men at a fraternity but didn’t report it because she believed “that unless it was a stranger at night with a weapon who attacked you when you were walking home, that it wasn’t rape. It’s just a crappy thing that happened.” She now runs campus workshops to teach students what constitutes consent.

“Most students don’t know what consent is,” she said. “I’ve asked at the workshops how many people think if a girl is blacked out drunk that it’s OK to have sex with her. The amount of people who raised their hands was just startling.”

If what Ms. Warner says is true, and a “startling” amount of kids on the Progressive UC Berkeley campus think it’s okay to have sex with a woman who blacks out during a party, then that is a problem that can not be adequately addressed by writing “yes means yes” laws; that is a cultural implosion, which requires the kind of spiritual training that is mocked and ridiculed on college campuses.

As G.K. Chesterton wrote in “Orthodoxy”:

“Not only is faith the mother of all worldly energies, but its foes are the fathers of worldly confusion. The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world.”

Perhaps one day California will come to its senses. If not, they will have only themselves to blame for the creation of a cultural wasteland littered with laws that fail them.

Stallone, Barack Obama, Marvel Comics and the Very Real Secret War.

June 5, 2010June 11, 2014by Douglas ErnstLeave a comment

Do I write a post about Stallone’s new flick The Expendables, or do I cover the Obama administration’s Secret War tactics in the War on Terror? How about…both!

In the new trailer The Expendables, Stallone’s voiceover begins:

“We are the shadows…and the smoke in your eyes. We are the ghosts…that hide in the night.”

What does this mean? It means that the world is a dangerous place, and sometimes we need people to go in an clean up messes the civilized world would like to pretend don’t exist. Think the BP oil spill is a threat to humanity? Okay. But oily terrorists operating in lawless regions around the world can also cause messy explosions, gushers (of blood) on city streets, and black-charred coatings where beautiful things used to stand…

Sometimes, someone like George Bush comes around and is willing to openly talk

about the world’s scum buckets and dirt bags who’d like nothing better than to make Americans take dirt naps in densely populated urban areas. And people get angry, because if you acknowledge how susceptible free societies are to jihad nuts with a desire to return to the dark ages…it means you have a lot of tough decisions to make.

Even liberal writers like Brian Michael Bendis seem to know (really, really, deep down) that we live in a world where a Secret War or two or three or more…is being waged between competing visions for humanity’s future. The only problem is, when guys like George W. Bush are in office, liberal comic book writers come up with weird Bush-Gitmo allegories that inadvertently make the case for conservatism!

Can someone tell me when Brian Michael Bendis is going to lampoon Barack Obama in the comics for the very real “Secret War” that he’s apparently taken to another level? Don’t hold your breath:

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials..Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed “things that the previous administration did not.”

How many young voters pulled the lever for Barack Obama under the liberal auspices that we can live in harmony with jihadi head choppers if we just try really hard to “understand” and “reach” them? (My favorite is Richard Gere’s infamous post-9/11 suggestion that guys like Osama Bin Laden just need to be loved.)

It’s all a lie. The world is a dangerous place. Evil exists, despite what the Neal Gabler moral relativist Mole Men tell you. And it’s better to be honest and frank about that, because otherwise you create bizarre realities where “peace activists” (who try to slice through your liver with gigantor-knives when their cargo is about to be inspected) can play the victim-card. You also have scenarios play out where young people say, “Umm…what happened to all that hopeandchange?” (Yes, that’s one word):

The Obama administration has rejected the constitutional executive authority claimed by Bush and has based its lethal operations on the authority Congress gave the president in 2001 to use “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons” he determines “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the Sept. 11 attacks.

Many of those currently being targeted, Bellinger said, “particularly in places outside Afghanistan,” had nothing to do with the 2001 attacks.

Weren’t there a lot of Democrats that voted for that? Hmmm. Nevermind.

The hopeandchange never materialized because it was never there. I bet the kiddies are feeling pretty numb, right now. It’s okay Thunder Kiss, conservatism will welcome you with open arms when the reality hits that it’s a strange, strange world (incompatible with “planned” economies and Youtube Diplomacy).

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Stallone trailer to watch.