English Log 2, Rocky Balboa

This picture is from: http://www.rockybalboaassets.com/RBB/pictures/DF-01624_rv1_wtm.jpg


Listening, week-end 10-11.3.07


To enhance my listening comprehension skills I thought that going to the cinema would be an appropriate comfortable way of exposing myself and in particular my ears to the sound of the English language. Unfortunately Rocky 6 is not played at the Royal English Cinema therefore I had to go and watch it in German... Luckily I found another possibility to train my ears. As I had never seen any Rocky film actively I decided to watch at least one of the 5 precedent episodes on DVD.

After discussing the main plot of Rocky 1-5 with a friend and calculating how much time there was until we had to leave for the cinema, we decided on watching episode 2. The reasons were simple: Rocky wins his fight (he does not at the end of the first episode, which makes you want to look at the second one immediatly afterwards - but we didn't have time for that), it is shorter than some of the others, number 3 isn't a typicall Rocky because he is rich and famous all the time (his social background isn't described that good in this episode I was told), 4 and 5 are late Rockies and not very well suited to get to know what the movie is all about. So, we chose number 2.

Indeed looking at is now I think it was a great decision. Not only does Rocky win in the end, to get there but he has to work hard and make his private life work in one way or another to achieve his doal. I was very astonished by the quality and somehow also depth of this boxing film (same for part 6, although the German dub is not what you want to hear after the English original). Never had I thought that Silvester Stalone's Rocky was more than action and hard fighting but now the fever caught me and I'll have to watch the other 4 episodes very soon!

For those of you who don't know anything about Rocky or those of you who are fans or anyhow interested in this kind of film, check out the Rocky website (http://www.rocky.com/) or the Rocky Blog (http://rockybalboablog.blogspot.com/).

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the music!! How dareI. "The Eye of the Tiger" is a fantastic theme song and also other musical inputs are fantastic - just the best for Rocky Balboa!
Rafael

Well,... I think there's only one thing to add:

"It ain't about how hard you hit it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward."