Last Friday’s feature article “Are These the 10 Worst Musical Numbers of All Time?” generated a great deal of reader response on social media, with multiple people offering suggestions for wonderfully awful musical sequences that deserved to be recognized. Well, in the tradition of movie sequels, here is our follow-up edition with 10 more of the worst musical numbers ever put on film.
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This year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of “3 AM.” What, you never heard of “3 AM”? Well, if you’re an Orson Welles fan, you’ll recall that film was directed by Gary Graver, the cinematographer on Welles’ “The Other Side of the Wind” – Graver needed to take on the skin flick job to because he couldn’t cover his bills working on Welles’ on-again/off-again project. As a favor to Graver, the Big O did uncredited work in editing a steamy masturbatory shower in “3 AM.”
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Now Available from Warner Home Entertainment.
This isn’t the ultimate Rocky Collection. I’m sure Warner is planning a big deluxe set with all the bells and whistles somewhere down the line because, while it is a very good set, it doesn’t have every Rocky chapter. Despite being a spin off, the “Creed” movies are “Rocky” movies to their very soul and should be included in the library. I don’t know if they’re waiting for “Creed III” or some anniversary, but “Creed” deserves its spot in this massive library alongside “Rocky III” and “Rocky.” They’re both wonderful films the same as Stallone’s creations are. Stallone has also expressed big interest in re-cutting “Rocky V” for re-release over the last few years, so if that ever gets off the ground, there’s room for another set down the road.
Nevertheless, for fans that wanted another go at the “Rocky” series, Warner releases an interesting and more thorough (thorougher?) collection.
Sylvester Stallone’s “The Expendables” was a fun novelty. In 2010. It took all of the big action stars from the eighties, striking the pleasure spots of Gen Xers and got by on its gimmick–for a while. It began life as “The giants of action cinema! All here! All kicking ass!” right down to “Well, here are people that have been in a few action movies.” With the series only four movies in, “The Expendables” has cashed in all of its nostalgia points. It’s now ironically transformed from a loving eighties homage to the one of the numerous clumsy, stale, action vehicles that many eighties action stars resorted to headlining in the late nineties and early aughts.
The decision by Warner Bros. Discovery to shelve its feature film “Batgirl” (with a budget somewhere in the $70 million to $100 million-plus range) caught both film industry professionals and casual movie lovers by surprise. Yet there is a precedent in Hollywood for creating a major film release and then yanking it from a release schedule.
For your consideration, here are 10 examples of Hollywood films that got the “Batgirl” treatment.
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Being born in 1983, I grew up around the period where Rocky Balboa was a household name, and the movies were wildly popular. “Rocky” and the sequels are childhood favorites, and I very fondly remember watching the worn VHS copies on our VCR, and catching their airings on my local television station WPIX. With Stallone re-releasing “Rocky IV” this year with a brand new Director’s Cut, I thought it’d be fun to re-visit the original series and rank the entire franchise from best to worst.
Feel free to post your ranking in the comments.
We’re in an age of modern filmmaking where audiences and even directors are demanding that studios allow them to re-cut their past works. In all of the director’s cuts and recuts I’ve seen, “Rocky vs. Drago” is exactly how the Director’s Cut should be done. I say that with immense surprise as I fully expected to dislike “The Ultimate Director’s Cut.” For fans that viewed “Rocky IV” religiously since 1985, when we get down to it, the film is recut to click better with “Creed II.” That’s either great or disappointing, depending on how you value the original 1985 film.