{"id":7333,"date":"2007-12-06T08:46:28","date_gmt":"2007-12-06T13:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7333"},"modified":"2021-07-27T21:29:49","modified_gmt":"2021-07-28T01:29:49","slug":"pumpgirl-and-rocky-balboa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7333","title":{"rendered":"Pumpgirl and Rocky Balboa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Review of a play <a href=\"http:\/\/theater2.nytimes.com\/2007\/12\/05\/theater\/reviews\/05pump.html\">I really want to see<\/a>.  Its reputation precedes it.  Interesting comments there about Ireland, and also what is going on over there right now, in terms of plays, and playwrights.  It&#8217;s no secret that Ireland is, once again, ruling the roost theatrically &#8211; and have been for the last 10 years or so. <i>Beauty Queen<\/i> was the start of it &#8211; although Brian Friel, of course, has been a huge success here and elsewhere forever. Conor McPherson, Martin McDonough &#8211; these guys are awesome.  It&#8217;s nice to see a female playwright getting her due as well, in the midst of that macho atmosphere.  Additionally: <a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/name\/nm0400625\/\">Geraldine Hughes<\/a> &#8211; a wonderful actress, with a round gleaming-eyed face &#8211; a face you just LOVE &#8211; is getting marvelous reviews.  She played the woman in <i>Rocky Balboa<\/i> &#8211; not really a love interest, but a friend, someone who befriends Rocky &#8230; I didn&#8217;t even know she was Irish then, her American accent was so good.  And the casting of her was perfect &#8211; it was wonderful that Stallone hadn&#8217;t cast a &#8220;name&#8221; in that part.  I think some of it had to do with budget, that film was made on shoestrings, and they probably couldn&#8217;t afford anyone bigger &#8230; but because of that, because she was a new face &#8211; with no associations attached to it &#8211; we could just focus on the story and the performances.  My thoughts on that film are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5905\">here<\/a>.  Loved every second of it.  And a big part of the appeal was in Hughes&#8217; performance &#8211; and also the performance of the kid who played her son (<a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/name\/nm2162794\/\">what a face<\/a>!!).  Best scene in the movie was when Rocky takes the sullen kid out &#8211; and they go to the dog pound to pick up a new dog for Rocky.  The thing about Stallone is &#8211; he&#8217;s so good at this acting thing that it&#8217;s not commented on much.  I don&#8217;t know, I think people think he&#8217;s just &#8220;being himself&#8221;.  Which is malarkey.  If you&#8217;ve ever seen an interview with Stallone, then you know how articulate he is, how almost &#8230; elegant he is, in his manners and demeanor.  So no.  Dude is NOT Rocky Balboa.  It does him a GREAT disservice to dismiss him as just &#8220;playing himself&#8221;.  The dynamic between Stallone and Hughes is subtle, kind, and open.  In true Stallone fashion, he sets her up powerfully for the audience.  We LOVE her.  It&#8217;s NOT just about Stallone, and his performance &#8211; he has always surrounded himself with powerful secondary characters, who can raise him up, and add to the reality of the movies.  Anyway, I loved <i>Rocky Balboa<\/i>, as you can see.  I&#8217;m eager to see <i>Pumpgirl<\/i>, and to watch the beautiful Geraldine Hughes at work again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Review of a play I really want to see. Its reputation precedes it. Interesting comments there about Ireland, and also what is going on over there right now, in terms of plays, and playwrights. It&#8217;s no secret that Ireland is, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7333\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,16],"tags":[35,64,2384],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7333"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7333"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169685,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7333\/revisions\/169685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}