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Sylvester Stallone Doesn’t Think Audiences Ever Understood Rambo Ted Kotcheff’s 1982 film “First Blood” may be noted for how downbeat it is. The lead character, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is a tragic figure, a Vietnam veteran who finds that another one of his friends has died, and, on the way out of town, is accosted by a cruel sheriff (Brian Dennehy) who threatens him with charges of vagrancy. That he is eventually badgered back into trauma-induced “war mode” is presented as a tragedy in “First Blood,” and while John Rambo was described as an ultra-efficient killing machine for the government, the audience’s ambivalence about the Vietnam War made his soldierly skill seem like a useless vestige of an ill-advised conflict....

Sylvester Stallone Reportedly Wants To Play ‘Dapper Don’ John Gotti Every once in a while we hear aboutSylvester Stalloneworking on a pretty serious project that goes beyond aRambosequel (the last one was plenty serious!) or an idea likeThe Expendables. With the lingering Oscar shadow ofRockyand the pleasure ofCoplandI get interested. Last time Serious Sly started talking it was aboutRampart Scandal, a film about the LAPD division of the same name and the killings of Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur....

The CW’s Wonder Woman Prequel Series ‘Amazon’ Begins Casting For whatever reason, Hollywood’s had a hell of a time trying to bring Wonder Woman to life. Over the past decade or so, we’ve seen her DC colleagues Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and Green Arrow get live-action movie franchises and/or TV series built around them. Meanwhile, Joss Whedon, Joel Silver, and David E. Kelley have each taken a crack at the iconic superheroine, to little avail....

The Morning Watch: VFX Artists React To Back To The Future, Making Of Marvel’s Hit-Monkey & More (The Morning Watchis a recurring feature that highlights a handful of noteworthy videos from around the web. They could be video essays, fan-made productions, featurettes, short films, hilarious sketches, or just anything that has to do with our favorite movies and TV shows.) In this edition, hear what visual effects artist have to say about the work done in the classic time travel adventure “Back to the Future” and more....

The Quarantine Stream: ‘Song Exploder’ Takes You Inside The Creation Of Catchy Tunes (Welcome toThe Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)The Show:Song ExploderWhere You Can Stream It: NetflixThe Pitch: Ever wonder howR.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” was made? How aboutLin-Manuel Miranda’s “Wait For It,” arguably the best song inHamilton? Based on the popular podcast,Song Exploderfollows hostHrishikesh Hirwaythrough a series of interviews with bands or singer/songwriters, tracking the origin, production, and reception of one of their most popular or interesting songs....

This Week In Trailers: Pulp, The Riot Club, Land Ho!, Jake, 16 Acres Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: What better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? This week we revisit a blast from our past, think about what we’re going to do with Ground Zero, watch millionaires behaving badly, catch up withJarvis Cocker, and spend time with a retiree who’s on the prowl....

TV Bits: ‘Girls’, ‘Downton Abbey’, ‘How I Met Your Mother’, ‘Happy Endings’, ‘Don’t Trust The B–’, ‘Archer’, ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Mockingbird Lane’, ‘The Office’ While we’ve been running around preparing for and celebrating the holidays, a few interesting bits of TV news have broken over the past few days. After the jump: ABC’s already declined to order more666 Park Avenue, and now it’s pulling the supernatural drama off its Sunday 10 PM slot altogether....

Video Blog: Tron Legacy Movie Trailer Premiere In Los Angeles I just returned home from the Tron Legacy event in Los Angeles, held at The Bridge IMAX Theatre. The event was actually to premiere the firstTron Legacymovie trailer, which will be attached to Alice in Wonderland next week. After the jump you can watch a short 10-minute video blog I recorded with Alex ofFirstShowingafter the screening. We talk about the viral that led to this event, the event itself and peoples reactions....

Watch The First Trailer For AMC’s ‘Preacher’ And Hope God Doesn’t Strike You Dead Preacherhas been battling to reach the screen in some form since the late ’90s, whenGarth EnnisandSteve Dillon’s controversial, critically praised comic series was still a new kid on the block. Now, years after Kevin Smith and Sam Mendes and Mark Steven Johnson tried and failed to produce big screen and small screen versions, theinfamous series is finally arriving as a show onAMC....

What Is The Worst MCU Phase 1 Movie? (Welcome toSurvey Says, a feature where we conduct a movie-related survey for a random group of people and explain why they’re completely right, completely wrong, or somewhere in-between.) We now find ourselves at the start of Phase 4 of theMarvel Cinematic Universe. But let’s jump into the Wayback Machine and reminisce about Phase 1, shall we? The MCU has definitely changed over the years, but once upon a time, it was a franchise slowly putting itself together....

Why Kevin Feige Thinks Batman & Robin Is One Of The Most Important Comic Book Movies Ever Made 25 years on, “Batman & Robin” remains as maligned as when it debuted. Even asrankings of Batmanmovies grow longer and longer, it stays near the bottom. DirectorJoel Schumacher,screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, andstar George Clooneyhave all disparaged the film since. But one of the most insightful observations of “Batman & Robin” and its rotten legacy came from someone not involved in the production: Kevin Feige, the current president of Marvel Studios and architect of the Marvel Cinematic Universe....

‘Ant-Man’ Confirms Yellowjacket And Hope Van Dyne; Watch The Full Panel Now [Comic-Con 2014] Two years ago in Hall H, wegot our first peekat some test footage fromAnt-Man. This year, we finally got a taste of the real thing.Kevin Feige,Peyton Reed,Paul Rudd,Michael Douglas,Corey Stoll, andEvangeline Lillytook the stage to promote their new film, dishing up new details and footage. Among other things, we finally got confirmation that Stoll would be playing Darren Cross a....

‘Art Of The Steal’ Trailer: Kurt Russell Masterminds An ‘Ocean’s’-Style Heist Kurt Russell’s been laying pretty low as of late, making just one movie in the past five years. But as his character says in the trailer forJonathan Sobol’sThe Art of the Steal, now he’s ready to go back to work. The caper comedy is one of two that Russell has due out next year, the other beingFast & Furious 7(well, at least until Universal gets around to changing that release date)....