Fucking outstanding! I would have paid cash money to see the crew's reaction to that little gem.

What I mean is, the last time around, with the Rocky questions, Stallone didn't just answer questions, he looked through the talkbacks and would respond to things from the talkback during each round of questions. This time around he just seems to be answering the questions sent, sometimes not even answering the actual question but instead trying to come up with an anecdote, which while cool, leaves the asker of the question still waiting for an answer.

Don't get me wrong, it's cool to have Stallone doing this, but he seems less personal and appoachable than last time.

I guess thats why we're seeing another Rambo movie and not another "Howie Long Fights Fires" sequel.

Classic scene: Banderas typing F-Bombs on his laptop. That was funny.

That's what Stallone needs to do in my opinion, realise that he's not a young turk action hero anymore and look for films that allow him to work his age and experience and filmic history into his characters. I mean it's no coincidence that the likes of Eastwood and Lee Marvin did some of their most interesting work later in life, Stallone should take a note of that and do likewise. If he did then I think there's still a lot of interesting filmic life in the guy yet.

And I actually think that Rocky and now Rambo will hopefully mark not only a return to quality for Stallone, but a turning point for the guy. He's always been a better actor than he's usually credited with being, largely because he's so easy to caricature - just as Eastwood was earlier in his career, as were the likes of John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart - so it'd be nice to see him bring some more memorable characters to the screen now he's at this stage of his life, where the ego seems to have melted away, and the craft is well and truly under his belt.

As much as I'm no fan of the remake phenomenon, Death Wish actually has quite an interesting hook, the cold hard killer that has reformed, only to be driven back to unleashing the animal that was always lurking just below the surface, so if he can make that work then I think there's definitely potential there, and I say this as someone who loves Bronson's Death Wish (though Red Sun is still my fave Bronson as star film). This is the way to make a worthy remake in my books, take the core basic concept, but then go in your own distinct direction with it, and if you look at the great remakes of our time, The Thing, The Fly, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, et al, then you see that's exactly what each of those films did. They didn't recreate the original films, they took the concept and then ran in their own direction with it, and that's the way to go in my books.

As for The Mechanic, again, one of Bronson's very best, but I wouldn't be totally against a Stallone led remake, just so long as he keeps it gritty and doesn't turn it into Assassins 2. I mean I like Assassins well enough, but it was very much a popcorn flick, The Mechanic should be more a gritty and dark character piece.

Anyway it's great to see Rambo getting such positive buzz, gonna be another month until it opens down here unfortunately...damn, gonna be a long friggin wait. Worth it though I hope.

and no matter how many praises have gone towards 'mystic river' and 'letters from iwo jima', i think they're DULL DULL DULL, visually and naratively. in fact, i think his 'direction' is one of the most pedestrian and boring of all the big name directors working today.

before you all say i should stick to michael bay, let me assure you that i love kurosawa, fellini, truffaut(hated godard though!), wong kar wai, etc. and having loved these guys' films, i can say without pretension i absolutely loath eastwood's films.

and no matter how many praises have gone towards 'mystic river' and 'letters from iwo jima', i think they're DULL DULL DULL, visually and naratively. in fact, i think his 'direction' is one of the most pedestrian and boring of all the big name directors working today.

before you all say i should stick to michael bay, let me assure you that i love kurosawa, fellini, truffaut(hated godard though!), wong kar wai, etc. and having loved these guys' films, i can say without pretension i absolutely loath eastwood's (directed)films.

Empire is a complete tossrag without a clue as to how to rate a movie properly.