Distilled Awesomeness of Sly

I was very enthused to watch "Paradise Alley" starring Sylvester Stallone. My anticipation only heightened when I had to wait an extra few days because it wasn't available at my nearest netflix shipping facility.

Why was I excited? Because the netflix teaser says this:

Stallone makes his directorial debut and even sings the theme song.

Was it sufficiently awesome? I'll let you decide





Other brief points of note:
- Dennis and Sweet Dee's mom plays one of the female leads.
- There are two climactic physical scenes, one is an arm wrestling match that seriously lasts for about three minutes, the other is a body wrestling match in an outdoor ring so everytime someone gets slammed (which is frequently) there's a great splash effect.
- Largely forgettable plot aside I was actually pretty impressed with what a good job Young Sly did at creating a very genuine 1940s Hells Kitchen atmosphere. Not that I was ever a working class dago in the 40s, but it didn't feel like 1978 either so congrats, Sly.
- I'm beginning to think Sly might have some weird repressed sexuality. There's a throwaway gag in Paradise Alley where the villain is revealed to be wearing a thong and stockings. Couple that with the Nighthawks drag-fest and I'm on the edge of being weirded out. If there's drag in The Expendables I may have to walk out.

You Can Change Your Face, But You Can't Change Your Evil

HERE'S THE SKINNY ON THIS PHAT BLOG: The Good and Jay!!! enjoy regular communication via email. Through this electronic mail they've discussed the ending of LOST (which was good--haters), the Wire (which was awesome--haters), and the need for cheap Mexican robot labor (just kidding).  Below are excerpts from that communication focusing on Sylvester Stallone's 1981 classic, "Nighthawks."  

The Goob: I'm going to lay it out there right away: my favorite thing, retrospectively, was that the opening scene featured Sly in drag conducting a sting operation.


Jay!!!: My favorite part about the opening drag sting operation is that it actually paid off in the end. I would have never guessed that such a throwaway scene would ultimately end up helping Sly stop terror. I also love that the movie had a really dark late 70s feel, yet Sly dressed as a woman twice. Good for him.  You know what else this movie made me miss? When the go to terrorists in movies were the IRA or knock offs of the IRA. Why did we ever fear the Irish or anyone from Britain?