ROCKY ANTHOLOGY

Buy at Amazon USA Buy at Amazon Canada or Compare Prices December 6, 2004|At the risk of hyperbole, MGM's "Rocky Anthology" is the most aggravating box set I've ever encountered. The five films are more uniformly presented than they were the last time around, with each instalment receiving a HiDef-sourced upgrade to anamorphic video and a 5.1 Dolby Digital remix. And yet there remain nagging inconsistencies--only Rockys III through V sport double-sided platters to accommodate alternate fullscreen transfers, for instance. Though finally enhanced for widescreen displays, Rocky IV suffers from the same over-sharp appearance it always has; compare the flashback to the match with Drago that opens Rocky V to Rocky IV proper and you'll see how good the film had the potential to look. (Good news is they've restored the subtitles translating the Russian dialogue in the final fight--as burn-ins to boot.) Meanwhile, because they've replaced the supplements of the Rocky Special Edition with a (flat-sounding) DTS track (not an audio selection on any of the titles that were actually mixed for multichannel exhibition), what are owners of the not-quite-obsolete previous collection supposed to do? (Trailers are the extent of bonus material.*) Individually, the two sets are now about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. As you can somewhat tell from this comparison between the two versions of Rocky, there are trade-offs that will probably come down to a question of personal taste. While the top image is free of pinholes and excessive grain (something that's difficult to judge at this reduced size, alas), there's no denying that it looks a little oversaturated, or that the cropping on all four sides approaches excessive. For what it's worth, I found it unavoidable to reassess the films in the course of evaluating these remasters, hence the omission of my **1/2 capsule review of Rocky III from 2001: somehow the movie's pleasures/virtues eluded me up 'til now. If Rocky was an analogy for Sylvester Stallone's life as a struggling actor, then Rocky III allegorizes his life as a superstar. The thin line separating the myths of Rocky and Stallone is all but erased in an opening montage that summarizes the pop-cultural baptism of the former in part through clips of the latter doing his own media song-and-dance, and the meta aspects of this second sequel only deepen from there. Consider that when the marching band at the unveiling of Rocky's statue breaks into "Gonna Fly Now," they're playing music that's never been heard in the series diegetically--and yet instead of sloppy (see: Star Trek films trying to pass off whole sequences from prior entries as security footage), it feels whimsically post-modern: this is a Big Mac that knows it's a Big Mac; Stallone doesn't kill the conversation with Rocky III, he starts a fulsome one about commodification. Not that he's doing satire (the picture is nothing if not emotionally sincere), but the plot practically constitutes a rationale for Stallone's attempts to test his limits as a performer and a box-office draw post-Rocky in such films as F.I.S.T. and Victory: Rocky has an epiphany that success is meaningless if you're earning it by shooting fish in a barrel and thus decides to get in the ring with malevolent Clubber Lang (Mr. T, complementing his mohawk with a punk attitude for a change). After Rocky loses his initial bout with Lang, the Count of Monte Fisto himself Apollo Creed tells him that he needs to recapture the oft-invoked "eye of the tiger." Failure ultimately galvanizes Rocky and Stallone as well, because somewhere along the line it occurs to both Superman and Clark Kent that they're on the verge of losing their meal ticket. The idea that fear breeds spirited conformity isn't much of a moral, but it makes for a double-edged apologia (behold the crux of Stallone's sell-out phase (i.e. the decade that followed)) and a rejuvenated franchise, too: this is purer cinema than the likeable yet staid Rocky II, and it's marked by a terseness that would do Hemingway, himself no stranger to pugilism, proud. "I love you. It hurts me," Mickey tells Rocky as he takes his dying breath. Goddamn.-Bill Chambers *According to print ads, the Rocky Anthology contains an A&E "Biography" of Sylvester Stallone that was not packaged with our review copy, a Canadian retail pull. ROCKY ANTHOLOGY - Overall: B+ | ROCKY. MPAA: PG. 120 mins.; 1.85:1 (16x9); English DD 5.1, English DTS 5.1, English Mono; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9. DVD - Image: B+; Sound: B+ | ROCKY II. MPAA: PG. 119 mins.; 1.85:1 (16x9); English DD 5.1, French Dolby Surround, Spanish Mono; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9. DVD - Image: A-; Sound: B | ROCKY III. MPAA: PG. 100 mins.; 1.85:1 (16x9)/1.33:1; English DD 5.1, French Dolby Surround, Spanish Mono; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-10. DVD - Image: B+; Sound: B | ROCKY IV. MPAA: PG. 91 mins.; 1.85:1 (16x9)/1.33:1; English DD 5.1, French Dolby Surround, Spanish Mono; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-10. DVD - Image: C+; Sound: B+ | ROCKY V. MPAA: PG-13. 111 mins.; 1.85:1 (16x9)/1.33:1; English DD 5.1, French Dolby Surround, Spanish Mono; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-10. DVD - Image: A-; Sound: A-

In 1976's Oscar winner for Best Picture Rocky, Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa is plucked from obscurity to become a national inspiration. (Doubtless that then-unknown Stallone was aiming for a self-fulfilling prophecy while writing the film.) When his original opponent for a Bicentennial match in Philadelphia drops out, visiting prizefighter Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) looks locally for a replacement. He picks Rocky out of a directory, because he likes the marquee potential: "Apollo Creed versus The Italian Stallion--sounds like a damn monster movie!"

"There are certain parallels between Rocky and me. Rocky had drive and intelligence and the talent to be a fighter, but nobody noticed him. The second ingredient had to be me, my particular inability to be recognized. I felt Rocky to be the perfect vehicle for that kind of sensibility. So I took my story and injected it into the body of Rocky Balboa because no one, I felt, would be interested in listening to or watching or reading a story about a down-and-out, struggling actor/writer."

This is what Stallone told PLAYBOY MAGAZINE a few years after the fact. (See? I do read it for the articles.) Yet his metaphors also seem like valid observations of the sport. As Rocky enters the arena to face Apollo, the sequence is fraught with dread. His skulk from backstage to ringside suggests the last mile on death row, which is another valuable prison metaphor at work in Rocky: boxer as dead-man-walking. This is certainly apropos to Mickey, the frail ghost of glories past who mentors Rocky for that vicarious thrill.

While the sequels linger as much as the original does on the build-up to the main event, there's less at stake for all involved, both on- and off-camera. Moreover, as successive Rockys adopted a formula of fight-train-fight, Stallone began to hang his narratives on progressively cheaper hooks (e.g., beloved characters dying). Simultaneously, the movies became slick tournaments of their own, defined less by Rocky than by Rocky's competitors. (See Rocky fight Mr. T! See Rocky fight a Commie!)

The twenty-fifth anniversary of Rocky "I" occasions a revisit and might surprise you with its mix of low-key gentility, supple grit, and Darwinian themes of incarceration (exploited visually by way of dingy, concrete settings and recurring parallel lines; a steel birdcage eclipses our view of Adrian in an early encounter, to cite one instance) that could only have come from a fledgling artiste. "I'm gonna know for the first time in my life that I weren't just another bum from the neighbourhood," put Stallone, waiving a scripting fee to star in the production, into the mouth of alter ego Rocky Balboa. Rocky is the escapist ideal: it has one foot in our world and the other in the dreamland of opportunity.

Replacing MGM's bare-bones DVD of Rocky is a Special Edition strategically-timed to the release of Stallone's latest comeback vehicle, Driven. Boasting of a brand new 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, the disc's source print could be in better shape, but the crisp image detail enthuses. Colours, drab though they are, remain stable, while contrast varies from good to excellent. (Admire the rich shadows in the scene where Mickey pays Rocky's apartment a visit in chapter 13.) The 5.1 Dolby Digital remix is mostly superfluous, as the soundtrack still lacks bass and noticeable usage of the split-surrounds. Bill Conti's famous "Gonna Fly Now" gains texture, but that's about it for improvements to the 1976 mono track (also included, for posterity).

The studio has finally scored with non-"Bond" bonus material. For starters, supplemental creators Three-Legged Cat weave an insightful commentary--moderated by sporadic contributor Burt "Pauly" Young--from individually recorded accounts made by Avildsen, Shire, Weathers (unlisted, like Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown, on the packaging), and producers Irwin Winkler & Robert Chartoff (ultimately and ironically also responsible for Raging Bull and its box-office opponent Rocky II). It's the aural equivalent of the indispensable tome The Official Rocky Scrapbook: listen to it and you'll glean tidbits regarding the Avildsen-directed Rocky V (he thinks it's too brightly lit), Weathers' concerns about "reverse whiteface," and much, much more. We rarely get an ensemble commentary this deftly edited outside of Criterion.

Where's Stallone in that group, you ask? Well, he gets a 28-minute piece to himself, a featurette whose "video commentary" label is misleading. It's an intimate, motivational interview that basically expands on the aforementioned PLAYBOY quote. At the end of the piece, he admits that he's been chasing Rocky's overall high since. (Art imitates life imitates art.) Stallone shows up again in the 8-minute "A Tribute to Burgess Meredith", as do the disembodied voices of select colleagues (plus Lee Grant?!). (Aside: Weathers' impersonations of Stallone and Meredith here are disquieting in their accuracy.) A second homage, "A Tribute to James Crabe" (3 mins.), is Avildsen's moving hat-tip to the late cinematographer of Rocky. Avildsen, a dead-ringer for Ernest Borgnine, also hosts never-before-seen super8 footage of Stallone and Weathers rehearsing/choreographing their duel. (These reels are otherwise accompanied by clickety-clack projector noise, to nostalgic effect.) "Round"ing out this collectible are trailers for all V Rockys, Rocky TV spots, and a booklet. Collect all five in a shiny red box. Yo!

TV in Rocky movies

Watching an entire franchise of films back to back, you begin to notice motifs. Apart from the Rocky series' obvious trends (the horizontal scrolling of the opening title, for instance), I began to realize that the only thing they ever show on TV in Rock's Philadelphia is news pertaining to The Italian Stallion himself or his next sparring partner. Even Apollo Creed is only made aware of Ivan Drago when the channel he's watching out by the pool happens to switch to a live press conference about the Commie beefcake's arrival--as well as his desire to meet Rocky in the ring, natch.

"I was wondering if you wouldn't mind marrying me too much." With The Italian Stallion's unique proposal to Adrian begins Rocky II, regarded by some as superior to its predecessor. I feel it's a good follow-up undermined by television dramaturgy and--shallow as it sounds--ugly colours (as opposed to Rocky's merely dingy ones), not to mention a questionable motive for a rematch between Balboa and Creed. (Creed's pride is hurt by the folk worship of Rocky, who technically lost their first fight.) Meredith and composer Conti are in fine form, though, expanding on their earlier work in unexpected ways. Contributing a certain pall to MGM's gift-set incarnation of Rocky II is its lack of anamorphic encoding--this is the original DVD, right down to the flipside full-frame presentation, repackaged. Luckily, the print used to strike the 1.85:1 and 1.33:1 transfers was in great shape. The Dolby Surround audio brings spark to the music. Extra: trailer.

If there's a defininitive cinematic portrait of the 1980s, Rocky IV might be it, filled to the brim as it is with MTV flashback montages (Rocky's training sequence is a full-blown music video this time out), the iconography of excess (a Short Circuit-style robot that waits on visitors to the Balboa estate), and Cold War paranoia (it isn't enough for well-oiled Russian monster Ivan Drago to clean Apollo's clock: he has to kill him). This ain't a good film, per se, but it's a valuable cultural artifact--and Apollo's premature victory dance around Drago as James Brown performs "Living in America" is a sequence worthy of Eisenstein in its assembly, no joke. If anything, the dated elements are easier to overlook than are Rocky's personality transplant (he's suddenly sombre and purposefully wise) and Drago's impossible strength. Like Rocky II, the '98 edition Rocky IV DVD gets recycled in this collection; it, too, contains (overly edgy) 1.85:1 non-anamorphic and fullscreen options. (What it does not contain, further aggravating purists, is the occasional English subtitle translating the Russkie-speak during the climax.) Unlike Rocky II, Rocky IV is in DD 5.1, and the LFE actually has something to do, albeit insubstantially compared to today's sports films. Extra: trailer.

Rocky V represents what is sometimes called "the fallacy of the sequel," in that it invalidates the previous film's happy ending. Here, Rocky is introduced alone in a locker room right after defeating Drago, shivering from the onset of irreversible brain damage. It's a sad, dark moment, and the only thing more painful to watch is the unintentional humour that follows: Rocky returns home from the former Soviet Union to find his son (now played by Stallone's real-life offspring, Sage) significantly older than Rocky left him; Mickey, seen in fabricated flashbacks, also looks wrinklier than he should and has a newly sentimental disposition; and Rocky's bankruptcy inspires him to pull fifteen-year-old outfits out of mothballs and Adrian to reclaim her job at the pet store. (Aside: this is Shire's best turn in the role.) For nostalgia's sake, Stallone even retained the services of Rocky's John G. Avildsen, from whom he took the directorial reins on numbers two through four, yet it all reeks of bullshit, with Burt Young's Paulie finally crossing the line into repugnance. Additionally, the caricature of Don King types as Rocky takes an untamed boxer under his wing goes over like a lead balloon--and borders on racist. As anticipated, Rocky V is the best-looking DVD of the bunch (again, 1.85:1 and 16x9-enhanced), despite Avildsen's minimum-focus shooting style. At loud volume, the Dolby Surround soundtrack gets bass-heavy, if never very enveloping. Extra: trailer.-Bill Chambers

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