Stallone Week at Trailers from Hell

Go visit my buds over at Trailers from Hell this week as they go all Stallone us as they go over First Blood, Rambo: First Blood Part II, and Rocky Balboa.  That seems pretty fitting for the Fourth of the July week, enjoy!

Rambo 5 Update

It has been awhile since we have heard any Rambo news.  Sly has been busy with other projects but some news has been making the rounds this week.  From Dark Horizons:

At last report, a fifth "Rambo" film was on hold while eOne and NuImage were working together on a TV series reboot of the franchise with a younger actor taking on Sylvester Stallone's iconic role of John Rambo.
Plans seem to have changed with an announcement today that Splendid Media has acquired the rights to "Rambo V" and will bring him back to the big screen with Stallone returning as the character.
Stallone penned the script which reportedly sees the character going up against a Mexican cartel. Avi Lerner will produce.

I love the idea of Rambo going to kick some Mexican Cartel ass.  Hopefully we will hear form Sly or the studio soon.

New Release Tuesday

A movie about a 'typical' day in the life of the Beatles which includes many of their famous songs and is from director Richard Lester of Superman II fame.  This movie was made with a final cost of about $500,000 and a box office take of about $8,000,000 in the first week, and is still among the most profitable (percentage-wise) films of all time.  This is from Criterion so it will be packed with goodies and will also look and sound fabulous.  It will be well worth the extra price.

Greek general Themistokles leads the charge against invading Persian forces led by mortal-turned-god Xerxes and Artemisia, vengeful commander of the Persian navy.  I read it does not quite stack up to the original but it has kept the same visual look and hey what’s wrong dudes beating each other up?  

FX is putting some of the best TV shows out right now.  I caught the pilot of this and it was pretty good as someone leaves a body on a U.S/ Mexico bridge and makes it to where half the body is on the U.S. side and the other half on ol’ Mexico.  Pretty clever stuff there as it gets both sides involved.  The question is which side really cares?  Watch and find out.

Top Ten- Movies on a Train

I have never taken the train for a long trip just trains in the city for local stuff.  I think it makes a great setting for a movie because you are locked down in a location which limits what you can do on board.  Basically you are stuck in a moving can on wheels that serves drinks.    Here are some of the best.

In New York, armed men hijack a subway car and demand a ransom for the passengers. Even if it's paid, how could they get away? Awesome cast with Robert Shaw as the lead bad guy and everyman guy Walter Mathua as the negotiator.

With an unmanned, half-mile-long freight train heading toward a city, a veteran engineer and a young conductor race against the clock to prevent a catastrophe.  Denzel is great in anything and the late, great director Tony Scott did a fantastic job of keeping you on the edge of your seat while these guys try to corral this runaway locomotive.

Two escaped convicts and a female railway worker find themselves trapped on a train with no brakes and nobody driving.  This is probably is the best critically received movie Cannon Productions ever released as it was quite different compared to all their Norris and Bronson movies.  

A woman secretly witnesses the murder of her blind date for the evening by a top Mafia boss. She immediately goes into hiding without informing the authorities. When they finally catch up with her, she is unwilling to testify to what she has seen, but the Mafia is on her trail. Accompanied by a deputy district attorney, the woman boards a train traveling through a remote part of Canada. The Mafia knows him but they have never seen her.  Come back Gene Hackman!  

This is 007’s second movie and it is not on the train long but all these scenes are pivotal to the plot.  Bad guy Robert Shaw leads Sean Connery’s Bond to believe he is a fellow agent but 007 is way too smart for that and this leads to a great confrontation on the train.

Mercenaries travel to the Congo across deadly terrain and battle arch enemies in route to rescue $25 million in uncut diamonds.  Rod Taylor and Jim Brown make a great team in this action flick from 1968.  These two get a little more than they bargained for in the end.  Love that poster!

An anthropologist discovers a frozen monster in Manchuria and puts it on board a Trans-Siberian train to get it to Europe.  Unfortunately the train does not have freezer cars and the monster thaws out and wreaks havoc on the train.  Great cast with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee working together in this movie and then Telly Savalas hopes on board later to help out.  This is a Spanish production so this just has that whole spaghetti western feel to it.  Yes, I know spaghetti is Italian.  This horror movie is a lot of fun.

Ex-Navy Seal and current cook Casey Ryback(Steven Seagal) is on vacation with his niece and takes the train to reach his destination.  Unfortunately for him or luckily for us there are terrorists on board to use the train as a mobile headquarters to hijack a top secret satellite that has destructive capabilities.  A very fun action movie as Seagal makes his way all over the train and takes out the terrorists one by one.  Some cool trivia here is that Gary Busey was a villain in the first movie and was set to return to the sequel but he and Seagal did not get along so bye-bye Busey.

On a long distance train trip, a man finds romance but also finds himself in danger of being killed, or at least thrown off the train.  This is a great action comedy with a terrific cast of Gene Wilder, the late Richard Pryor, and the late Jill Clayburgh.  Also be on the lookout for henchman Richard Kiel (Jaws from the Bond series).

A masked killer targets college kids responsible for a prank that wrong years earlier.  He gets them all isolated on a train while they celebrate New Year’s Eve with a costume party so this lets the killer move around easier and change costumes. Not the best among the 80s slasher movies but not bad either.