Tomorrow is exciting because I’m finally going HD thanks to Sasktel having a special and Jodi wanting the movie channels for summer vacation! The final piece of my home entertainment puzzle is almost in place and soon the world will be mine.
Anyway, on with the mail…
Really, you’d think that a year after the Benoit murders and two weeks after some guy gets killed by a scaffolding in TNA that Vince would know better…but this is wrestling, where nothing changes and no one learns.
And poor JR.
The SmarK 24/7 Rant for WWF RAW is WAR - August 11 1997
- I wasn’t really planning on doing this one, but then I read about George Carlin’s death and got really bummed out, and I just needed something to cheer me up.
- Live from Biloxi, MS
- Your hosts are Jim Ross, Vince McMahon and Jerry Lawler.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25322638/>1=43001
I’m so seriously bummed now. Carlin was probably my favorite comedian of all time and one of my personal heroes. I’ve got no words right now.
The SmarK DVD Rant for Heroes of World Class: The Director’s Cut
- So a couple of days ago I did the WWE-ized version of the Von Erich story, and now here’s a more objective look at it…
Disc One
- We start with an introduction to Fritz and his sons, via Kevin (who looks like HELL without the magic of WWE makeup).
http://www.slate.com/id/2194087/pagenum/all/#page_start
See, and here I thought I was weird for never getting a proper education on the care and feeding of the semi-colon. It’s always been a terrifying punctuation mark for me, and rather than waste time trying to figure out how to shoehorn it into my writing I just tend to use dashes instead, or better yet just start a new sentence. In fact, the weirdest piece of criticism I ever received was from someone who said I had apparently never heard of a semi-colon, as if they were going through my books line-by-line and looking for opportunities to stick them in there. Is there a society of semi-colon enthusiasts who I didn’t know about until now? Are they dangerous?
The SmarK DVD Rant for The Triumph and Tragedy of World Class Championship Wrestling
- Gotta love the overblown titles from the WWE DVD department.
- So as promised, I bought both the WWE version and the Big Vision versions of the World Class DVDs, because I figured that people would want me to do the other one no matter which I picked anyway. Obviously the WWE version holds the advantage in production values and match library, but there’s an irritating problem with the 5.1 mix of this disc, as the mood-setting background music often drowns out the interviews. That’s the kind of sloppy production problems that they never used to make before they started outsourcing their DVDs.
- This is of course the show that eventually morphed into the modern WCW after Vince’s purchase of Georgia Championship Wrestling, and it’s taped in the familiar Techwood Studios. I don’t even know the significance of this episode and how it ties into the Gold Rush theme, but I love random stuff like this anyway.
- Hosted by Bob Caudle and David Crockett.
A hot night of boredom means MOVIES because A/C and popcorn is always a good way to beat the heat. Of course, one was viewed at home on my laptop, but sometimes I just get into a movie-watching mood and can’t be stopped.
The Incredible Hulk. Well, it’s no Iron Man, but few movies are. Lemme tell ya, one thing it did have going for it was that watching it made me realize how much I really loved Iron Man because Iron Man did just about everything this one did, but better. Which is not to say that Hulk was bad by any means, but it lacked a likeable protagonist because Edward Norton just doesn’t strike me as the meek Dr. Bruce Banner type. And FUCK I wanted to punch Liv Tyler in the face every time she wasted my time by appearing on screen. At least Jennifer Connolly brought some meat to the role in the first movie; Liv reduces Betty Ross to Damsel in Distress, always stopping Hulk from smashing things up good. But the CGI was good and Hulk smashed more stuff real good, and I enjoyed all the geeky fanboy callouts, so it was worth my $10 on the night. It was also one of the LOUDEST movies I’ve been to in a long while, really showcasing good old Dolby Digital. I love the shared Marvel universe concept as well — DC is getting smoked by them at this point and I don’t think Batman alone is going to be enough to save the DC franchise from total pwnage at the hands of Avi Arad.
Saw IV. Dear god I don’t know why I keep watching these movies, but I do. And this one was particularly stupid and nasty (what was WITH the autopsy scene at the beginning? Fuck, man…) but that’s always been kind of the charm with them. But it struck me during the 14th plot twist while the dramatic Saw Plot Twist Music was playing at the end, that the first movie was charming because it was built on one big trap where you’re just trying to figure out the villain. Now we’ve progressed to multiple flashbacks, what can only be called excessively complicated traps, whip pans and flash cuts like the editor was high on something while cutting the movie, and a plot so needlessly complicated that you spend more time trying to figure out when each scene is taking place than actually caring who lives or dies. And the final reveal doesn’t even make any sense, although to be fair they’ve killed off every other major character in the franchise so there weren’t many options left. I don’t even know who I’m supposed to be cheering for anymore, because the series has gotten so nihilistic that everyone suddenly has a rotten past in Jigsaw’s world and needs to be punished for it in overly complex ways. I guess if he can’t redeem them, he can at least confuse them.
