I expected to go all Scrooge on Sylvester Stallone's sixth round as Rocky Balboa, the Italian Stallion from Philly who boxed his way into popular and Oscar glory with the first and best Rocky in 1976. And make no mistake, there is much here to cringe at. Thirty years later, the sixty-year-old Stallone, as writer, director and, has put himself back in the ring with a champ — this time he's played by light-heavyweight Antonio Tarver. It's an exhibition match in Vegas, for charity, and Stallone looks damn fit for a geezer. It's his screenplay that needs major toning. No sappy cliché goes untapped as Rocky runs a restaurant named after his dead wife, Adrian, whose grave he visits daily. He takes guff from pal Paulie (Burt Young) and worries about his son, Robert (Milo Ventimiglia), who helps him prep for the big fight. It's a brutal regimen. But Rocky has "a beast inside him." Just when you're ready to puke, the old Bill Conti theme ("Gonna Fly Now") kicks in — are you feeling it? — Stallone steps in the ring and every day is Christmas. All together now: Rock-ee! Rock-ee!

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."