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You guys, there's something awesome from Dinosaur Comics that is finally available for sale, just in time for Christmas!!
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Page Summary
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It’s funny, Edges of Darkness is a lot like Trick r Treat in that it’s a non-linear horror anthology. That’s the only real thing it has in common. Oh wait, this has some undead in it. Like so many tired movies, video games and book these days, EoD is about an undead apocalypse and we get three non-connected stories about how people are dealing with it. the movie flips back and forth between the stories without rhyme or reason. The three stories are: This isn’t a good movie. It’s a low budget indie piece and the players tyr to act as well as they can, but no one makes it past sub-par. There were some interesting ideas here, but they just didn’t have the writers, actors, or budget to pull it off. Is It Worth Keeping? no Michael's Extreme Review #21 December 1, 2009 Hampton, Virginia -Again, I think I am confused. I sat through the car wreck, known as WWE Raw, last night and thought that DX was going to "little people's court". That would have made sense, but maybe I got confused. I do dig the fact that they have saved Shawn Michaels vs. Big Show and haven't pulled the trigger on that yet. There is potential for a Royal Rumble match right there. Enough of my thoughts, let's get down to the ring....
-Your hosts are Byron Saxton and Josh Matthews. Tonight it's Shelton Benjamin and Christian vs. Ezekial Jackson and Vladimir Kozlov. -Ladies and Gentlemen, it's the Abraham Washington Show, starring Abraham Washington. Tonight Abe welcome Zack Ryder and Rosa Men Dez! And now HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR -We do get a replay from last week and see Kozlov, indeed, shove Yoshi Tatsu's head off the ropes. We see Ezekial lay out Regal, which I could watch 150 times. Now we see Regal in the back apologizing to Jackson. Jackson apologizes as well, but says he refuses to apologize to Kozlov. Why is Regal dressed for action? Oh, bloody hell, he is fighting Goldust next. .24 Karat Productions Presents.... 1. William Regal (With Ezekial Jackson and Vladimir Kozlov) vs. Goldust - Goldust starts hammering away on Regal in the corner and Regal bails. Goldust gets him back in and big atomic drop. Shattered Dreams, maybe? Kozlov lets him loose. Regal attacks and works the arm and neck, now a full nelson. Goldust breaks free, sunset flip attempt and Regal knees him right in the head. Cover gets 2. Back to the chinlock. Regal pulls him up and irish whip into another knee. A couple of covers get 2. Back to the chinlock. Goldust battles out and basement uppercut. Goldust with a bulldog, only 2. Kozlov tries to distract Goldust and Jackson will have none of it. Kozlov and Jackson shove each other on the outside while Regal hits an Exploder Suplex. Regal turns his attention to Jack-Ov and Goldust hits the Schoolboy on Regal for the win @ 4:09. (D-. Nothing more but a hype machine for Kozlov and Jackson for later. Same Regal match. Same Goldust match.) -Backstage Paul and Katie Lea Burchill are stating their case to Tiffany. Tiffany will have none of it. In walk two dickheads named Trent Baretta and Caylen Croft. They call Burchill a pirate and I'm not laughing. They are the newest tag team on ECW and I'm sure their names were on the rejected list for porn star names from Boogie Nights. They will be in action next. 2. Trent Baretta & Caylen Croft vs. Bobby Shields & Tyler Hilton - Hilton and Baretta start with Baretta stomping him in the corner. In comes Croft and double gutbuster. More stomps from Croft. Love the Joey Abs haircut. Baretta back in and jumping knee drop on Hilton. Back in comes Croft with forearms galore. Croft misses a charging elbow and in comes Shields who eats a big clothesline. Baretta comes back in and hits a jumping Big Boot for the win @ 2:23. Love the exploding fist bump and the Rick Rude music. (DUD!!!!!!) -Back on ECW and Vance Archer is with Savanna. Archer recollects on his weekly squashes and video is inserted into each line he says. If I actually cared about Archer, I might have thought that was cool. It gets him over though, so let's move onto the Smackdown Rebound. -Backstage Shelton is playing R vs SD and laughing it up. Christian interrupts and Shelton stops him from talking. They are apparently planning on stealing the show. Christian asks if he can play with Shelton. He turns the game off. OH HELL NO! Shelton is livid. Meanwhile, on the other side of the arena, Kozlov and Jackson make their way to the ring and continue arguing. Hey, somebody put some pants on that Regal!!!!! MAIN EVENT 3. Ezekial Jackson and Vladimir Kozlov (With William Regal) vs. Shelton Benjamin and Christian -Somebody hit my Ramstein music!! Kozlov sporting a nice devil's peak. Out comes a very wet Shelton Benjamin, Finally the ECW Champion talking it up. Please, anyone, can you tell me what this man is saying!? Ring the bell! Christian starts with Jackson and let's stomp our feet and clap our hands. Jackson powers out of the opening lockup. Christian grabs a head lock and hammers away with rights and Jackson has had enough and drops him hard. Christian side steps and Jackson hits the floor. Christian moves quick and tags in Shelton, Shelton heads up top and kicks Kozlov away. Jackson dumps him off the top and WE'LL BE RIGHT BACK!! Back on ECW at the 6:13 mark with Jackson holding onto a waistlock on Shelton. Shelton tries to elbow out and no dice. Shelton escapes and hits a top rope forearm. Christian in and continues to hammer away. Jackson grabs him and slams him with an arm trapped. Jackson won't make the tag. As soon as I say that, in comes Kozlov. Kozlov rams away. Jackson back in and beats on Christian's back. Jackson has him trapped with a hammer lock. Christian escapes and Jackson dumps him outside. Regal posts him on the outside. Jackson comes out and drags Christian back in. Chicken wing applied and Kozlov tags himself in. Cover gets 2. Kozlov continues to ram Christian in the corner. Headbutts a plenty. Christian fends him off and hits a tornado DDT. Kozlov goes for the tag and Jackson decides to end the night a bit early. In comes Shelton and PAY DIRT on Kozlov will finish it at 11:16. (D. Again these matches are kind of lazy tonight.) Final Thoughts.... -Trent Baretta and Caylen Croft? Really. 1. The Gates by John Connolly This was a book I had to review for Amazon and holy shit was it hilarious. Demons are coming to Earth to destroy humanity…but things just don’t seem to go according to plan. One of the best books I’ve read this year. Seriously, pick this up as soon as you can. It’s like Douglas Adams doing the end of the world with demons rather than aliens. PAGE COUNT: 296 2. Fade Out by Rachel Caine. This is the 7th book in the Morganville Vampires series. I don’t know why I keep reading these. probably because they are only seven bucks and I know all the characters. The series turned to shit after the third book but it keeps having some decent moments. Living organic computer goes on a homicidal rampage and crazy goth chick tries to make a vampire reality tv show is not one of them. PAGE COUNT: 239 3. The Merlot Murders by Ellen Crosby The third book in this series, The Bourdeaux Betrayal was one of the first books Amazon had me review for them. I really enjoyed it and I finally had the chance to read the first in this series set in the Virigina Wine Country, which is only an hour so away from where I live. This book is a bit more convoluted and rough than the third but I still enjoyed it and seeing the origins of the characters. The book was about 100 pages too long and things were really drawn out with a lame ending and reason for the murder(s), but the author that would be realized in the third book. Eventually I’ll read the second to see how that fared. Call this a thumbs in the middle here. PAGE COUNT: 340 4. What’s A Ghoul To Do? by Victoria Laurie This was an awful mystery about a chick that can talk to ghosts and help them travel to THE OTHER SIDE. She also ends up solving a murder mystery by talking to the ghosts of dead people. It was like a very crappy Pushing Daisies. The worst part was this awful character who wasn’t from the US who the author decided to give the running gage of using the wrong word in a phrase on nearly every page. God this thing was a grueling mess. PAGE COUNT: 281 Page Count for 11/10: 1156 Barely made it this month, but that was due to a shitload of video games needing to be reviewed, a shitload of freelance writing and a lot of telling kids that Eddie Guerrero is probably in hell due to all that lying and cheating and stealing. I’ll definitely beat the 2006 page count though.  COPY AND PASTE: <a href='http://www.inhislikeness.com'><i Once again you can spread your IHL love with the daily updating ADVENT CALENDAR Post this where ever you want. Not only do you get an image that changes every day, but you get to spread the news of your favorite webcomic - IN HIS LIKENESS... ok, that might be a bit presumptuous, but I'm willing to go on a limb with this. Anyway, thanks guys and happy holidays.
You know, I keep calling this game “Let’s Dance” in my head which of course gets the David Bowie song by the same name in my head. Just Dance is the latest in a long line of rhythm and dancing games. The big selling point to this title that makes is stand out if that all you need is a wiimote to play. There’s no dance pad or need for a nunchuk. It’s just shaking your groove thang with a wiimote in hand. With a MSRP of $39.99, it’s a bit cheaper than the average Wii game and much cheaper than Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party 3, which requires a wiimote, dancepad and a nunchuk to get the full value out of it. However, much like the ladies you meet at a rave, just because the game promises to be cheap and easy doesn’t mean it’s any good. Let’s take a look and see if Just Dance deserves a place as a stocking stuffer or if it’s something that makes a lump of coal look good. (I'm pretty sure I've said all this before, but I'm saying it again....) Wow. This was bad. A few days ago I reviewed The Lurking Fear which was so bad it was good. This is a movie that is so bad it’s fucking awful. There needs to start being warnings on horror films where the vast majority of the cast and production team are British. “Caution: The Film Will More Than Likely Sucks.” Sigh, why do I try to give Clive Barker the benefit of the doubt after so many awful books and films. Anyway, this has NOTHING to do with the collection of short stories that used this name. This is just a generic haunted house movie filled with awful acting and a nonsensical story. See, there’s this kid who used to be psychic as a little kid. He ends up going to college and meets a professor of parapsychology. When he appears to have visions of her having a car accident that comes true his gift seems to have returned so she enlists him on the exploration of a haunted house where this got chick had her face ripped off. Strange things start happening, as you might expect. Then it gets stupid. Really fucked up shit happens to the Parapsychologist, but then later on we learn the college student has been faking things. You know, including a foundtain of blood with zombie children dancing around it. Okay then. Then it turns out the house is really haunted…but no, the kid was faking it again. Then it turns out the kid has his psychic abilities back after all, and he goes back to the top of the house to find out what it wants. Then it turns out the parapsychologist is REALLY the true powerful psychic and she just tricked the kid into being eviscerated. See, she’s really evil and greedy. She convinces the kid the only way he can survive is to let ghosts write on his skin for the rest of his life so they can tell their chilling stories of the damned. After a while he runs away so she hires a crazy guy to kill him and skin him. Then the crazy guy drowns in blood that flows from his skin and she comes in to take the skin which ghosts are still writing on. End film. Whew. This film appears to have come out of the Vince Russo school of scriptwriting. The acting is awful, the effects are hilariously bad and it took me three hours to get through this 100 minute film because it was so bad. I had to keep pausing it and sighing. This is bad people. Just think, the sequel gets to be part of Horrorfest IV in Jan 2010. Wheee! Is It Worth Keeping? No So my HDNet free preview ended at midnight, just enough time to record the last available ROH show under the wire, and this was obviously the end of a very long taping cycle. - Eddie Kingston d. Claudio Castinogli by using Chris Hero’s loaded elbowpad. I heart Claudio’s new look and heel charisma and he’s already wrestling WWE style, so I don’t know why they don’t just make him an offer already. He’s doing nothing in ROH at the moment so I guess that’s why he jobs to Kingston to build up the Hero-Kingston feud, but Claudio is clearly going to be the breakout star of this promotion someday. Not counting Davey Richards, who is probably too small to make it big but should. Match was nothing, a Claudio squash with a cheating comeback win from the babyface. Weird seeing this kind of booking on an ROH show. - Briscoes DDQ Dark City Fight Club in another blah match. This was a total style clash, as the Briscoes were trying to do hard-hitting offense and the DCFC were trying to do these lame indy tag team moves (including repeating a blown attempt at a Hart Attack) and it just died on the table. I do appreciate building from TV one week to this match, but the Briscoes-Bucks match was much better. The brawl at the end was good, but the match itself was *1/2 if that. - Steen & Generico d. The Set in the closest thing you’re gonna get to a squash on this show, finishing the super-skinny dork with the swanton/frog splash combo. Another team kind of treading water. - Austin Aries d. Colt Cabana with the Last Chancery in yet another screwy WWE-style finish with a million run-ins. OK match but I just don’t buy Colt’s wacky personality in this quasi-main event role, and the match was another style clash in a series of them tonight. The crowd was totally burned out at this point, too. Apparently next week begins the new taping cycle with the Cornette stuff, but to be honest the show didn’t hold my interest enough as a serial to make it worth my while to order the channel given the cost. It was a nice alternative for a few weeks, but if I get really desperate for wrestling to watch there’s always Impact for free on Spike. Or DVDs. For you non-cfl fans out there the Grey Cup game was played this past Sunday and, depending on who you listen to, it was an exciting game or it was a boring game. Also depending on who is doing the talking, it is a tragic loss or an amazing come-from-behind victory. If you're talking to me, it is the former. However, in this instance, that isn't what concerns me.
It definitely looks like a different type of humor. The clip didn’t really say too much about the show overall (although it’s got Tony Almeida going for it), so for now we’ll agree that Kayfabe is still superior. I have Google Wave now.. and I feel I'm not alone when I ask, 'So what do I do with it?' I ended up watching this off of streaming Netflix. Guin didn’t want to watch it with me as she was afraid it would be mean-spirited. Monster Camp is a documentary on NERO (Now Alliance) Seattle. NERO is the world’s most famous fantasy LARP (Live Action Role Playing) game and I’ve always been morbidly curious about it ever since it was profiled in an issue of Dragon Magazine I purchased in 7th or 8th grade. I actually still have that issue somewhere… Now I’ve watched mockumentaries on gaming like Gamers and Dorkness Rising, both of which are a lot of fun, but they were fictional. I’ve also seen Darkon which is a look at a local DC Metro area LARP, but that focused more on nerd in-fighting and politics rather than why people do this and what makes LARP’ing appealing to them. So when I saw this as an option on Netflix, I decided to try it out to sate my 17 year curiosity about NERO (Which does have two chapters around me, one in Arlington and one in Annandale of all places) and also get a look a yet another documentary on gaming. This documentary takes us through a full year of Nero, although the bulk of time is spent on the Winter campaign. We see couples form, relationships end and eventually, the owner of NERO seattle burn out and pull the plug on his creation. It seems like there are about 60 people playing it at one time, which is pretty neat, but a far cry from the original NERO games, where over 1,000 people could be found playing at any one time. I do like that the documentary covers a wide range of people who play NERO. You had people like coders for Xerox or an elderly woman who is confined to a wheelchair who plays it with her caregiver as something fun for them to do. On the other hand you also had two uber nerds that didn’t even finish high school that do nothing but play video games and LARP. Seriously, they made me uncomfortable with their levels of nerdiness. Also, why is it that every person in this documentary, whether a likeable person or not is a total slob. Is that some inherent trait that comes with really being into fantasy? Anyway, for the most part you had some really far out people and some pretty normal people who are just curious about LARP’ing. My favourite guy was a newcomer named Matt Yeager who is at NERO for the first time and is just trying it as a change of pace from all his video gaming. No, he’s not the Matt Yeager I hung out with back in MSP or that I still write with, but he does look a lot like him which threw me for a bit. I was like, “MATT??? WTF, YO? You’re an undead lizardman.” Anyway, this was a lot of fun and it really treated everyone involved fairly and was a nice look the LARP’ing subculture. It didn’t make me want to go out and do this myself (IN fact, more the opposite), but you get a really good look at who plays these type of games and why. Is It Worth Keeping? I’m considering buying it actually Yeah. I spent a week in a phlegm-laden coma. It took me about a week longer to write this than I expected. Background/catch-up links: Current Mood:
 tired
The thing is, the damage was done. There was nothing they were going to be able to do that was going to undo what happened in 1999, and by the end of the year the company was dead no matter what anyway, so it’s all rather pointless to speculate about. Benoit in a promotion with Kevin Sullivan as booker was never going to get a fair chance as champion. Frankly at that point it wouldn’t have been fair to him to put that on his shoulders anyway.
I was a really big fan of the original FoA when it aired. It was Alton Brown taking us across the country looking at the evolution of food on the interstate. Of course, Alton was also far more of a dick to people he encountered than I expected, which is unusual because he’s just so damn likeable in Good Eats. I eventually watched the second season with heather and Vlad when we lived with them, but we both agreed it was missing something compared to his usual work. I did eventually buy the cookbook though because there was some yummy food in there. A few weeks ago, Food Network’s website offered a special deal: Get both the River Run season and the River Run cookbook for $14.95. Well, as Heather and Vlad accidentally ended up with my cookbook in the moving process and this set is usually about thirty dollars, I decided to hunker down and buy it. Besides, maybe it would have aged better upon a second viewing. After all, the cookbook was quite good. Well, the series was a little bit better than I remembered, but it still wasn’t as good as the original. Out of the six episodes, three deal with the south and the other three deal with the midwest. Now, not to disparage the Wisconsinites and Minnesotans that read this, but the Midwest episodes flat out suck. This is because Alton is more trying to find the worst of the worst cooking in these areas and makes fun of things like Lutefisk and Russian beet salad and the like. Now, I’m not a fan of these foods either, but the dick level is pretty high up in this season and he’s very condesending to a lot of these people, some of which are first generation immigrants and he’s mocking their cultural hertiage. Far be it from me to disparage a person for making fun of Minnesota, but at least when I do it I do over the top generalizations rather than specific ethnic remarks. Besides these issues with Alton (that really only crop up in this series. I’m not sure if he was suffering from burnout or what, but this is totally outside his usual personality), I really liked seeing all these old time mom and pop eating places that have survived for a while. It’s great to see these places that are ignored by the majority of Americans and their love for chain dining to proudly promote their classic recipes that have been handed down for generations. This is what eating out should be about. I’ll keep this, but it really is on the cusp. However, it stays if only because the set is hard to find and I got it during a crazy deal. Is It Worth Keeping? Barely
The Captain Hindsight Retro Review of WWF Invasion 2001 By red29 (redw29@gmail.com) With the decade nearing a close and since I have been collecting wrestling DVDs at a pace like the movie 2012 is real and it is my job to archive professional wrestling for all of mankind, I wanted to take a look back and re-watch the pay-per-views of arguably the biggest storyline flop this decade– the Invasion. So I fired up the Amazon Marketplace and found new original copies of the Invasion (very easy actually), Summerslam, Unforgiven, No Mercy and Rebellion (hey, why not?) shows. I’m still shopping for Survivor Series 2001 and may have to settle for the future Anthology version much to my chagrin (the extras and non blurring may change my mind though).
Since we just had Survivor Series, a full eight years has passed. This got me thinking; a lot of readers in their early twenties probably don’t remember much about this. Heck, with five TV shows a week and sometimes two ppvs a month, can any of us really recall exactly how everything went down eight years ago? I am not going to pretend to be an expert on this subject. I recommend everyone read Scott Keith’s books as he details this pretty extensively. Here’s a brief overview leading up to this show: On March 26th, 2001 Shane McMahon announced on the last Nitro he had bought WCW out from under his father’s nose. This worked pretty well on paper since Shane and Vince had a match days away at Wrestlemania X-Seven (17 for those non-edgy). The internet was abuzz with what could possibly come out of this. Wrestlemania X-Seven had a less then inspiring WCW appearance. They showed Shane’s new troops sitting in a skybox, looking bored and not very intimidating. The roster didn’t set the world on fire either. Guaranteed contracts are the suck. There was no Goldberg in the skybox, only a Chuck Palumbo for example. The cast of WCW guys was underwhelming to say the least. Two months go by and WWF.com has polls up on what to name the new WCW show (they could not find a station to take it). Everyone is excited at the long term possibilities of intra-brand feuds and storylines. No one wanted the Monday Night Wars to go away. There was little drama without competition. Lance Storm shows up on RAW, followed by others in the next couple weeks. Things finally kick off almost three months after the last Nitro when Booker T interferes in the main event at the King of the Ring, breaking bones in Steve Austin’s hand (for real) when he slammed Austin through the announce table. Booker T would attack Vince the next night and the Invasion was on. This brings us to the infamous Tacoma shows. On July 2nd, the WWF decides to give the last 20 minutes of RAW to WCW. They had their own announcers, ring aprons, everything. They even trotted out Buff Bagwell to challenge for Booker T’s title. I asked the renowned Inside Pulse and The Wrestling Press writer Charlie Reneke, who attended both the RAW and the Smackdown taping the following day, to add a little perspective to what he witnessed live: “On Monday for RAW, the crowd was incredibly hostile all night. There were dozens of signs all over the Tacoma Dome that said "WCW Sucks!" and various other things. The fans booed everything related to WCW. When they started to change the apron around for the WCW match, the fans completely, universally started to boo everything, and many fans just outright decided to walk out before the match started. During the Booker/Buff match, the fans hate-hooed everything, then started to break out in chants. "BORING!" became "THIS MATCH SUCKS!" and finally "RIOT! RIOT!" I've experienced playful jeering during wrestling shows before. That's not what this was. Even after the show the fans were agitated in the parking lot, and it got a bit intense. The next night they taped Smackdown in the same venue. As the fans filed in, the anti-WCW signs were even more dense. About twenty minutes before the show started, it got quiet enough in the arena that some guy was able to scream "WCW SUCKS!" loud enough for everyone on our side of the building to hear it. Believe me when I say, that guy got the pop of the night. The fans were equally hostile towards all the matches. When Billy Kidman beat Shane Helms for the Cruiserweight title, it was the first semblance of a pop the whole angle had up to that point, but then the fans remembered to boo and did so. I still don't know what they were thinking. For years the WWE had trained its fans to believe that WCW was the bad guy in the Monday Night War. Why would they then put them over as the babyface faction during the Invasion? The fans didn't buy it one bit. Still, it was nice to be a part of history and watch the biggest wrestling angle ever get blown in person. Blown opportunities seem to be my thing at live shows. I was there when Brock botched the shooting star press at Wrestlemania. But it pales in comparison to watching the WCW Invasion get blown right out of the starting gate.” Two weeks before the Invasion pay-per-view, ECW came into the fold and teamed up with the WCW unit to form the Alliance (or Coalition – they had a bunch of names until after this show). The theme for the weekly shows before the ppv was which Steve Austin would show up? The old one or the cool heel who sang songs and tried to cheer Vince up. That leads us up to the show. July 22nd, 2001 From Cleveland, OH. Also the same arena where the WWF was for the last Nitro and Shane’s announcement. Continuity! This PPV features the ugliest ego-centric DVD cover of all time. I mean, you have potentially the biggest professional wrestling angle of all-time and the cover is a split face of the owner and his son? Ah, to be a McMahon I guess. This features one of the better PPV intros with FDR’s speech from WWII: “I have seen war and I hate war”. The set here is your normal Titantron and a gigantic V ramp as both sides come out different entrance areas to reach the ring. Cue the WWF scratch logo. Cue the camera pan of the slobs at WWF New York. JR and Michael Cole are your hosts, giving WCW/ECW (technically not called the “Alliance” until after this PPV) no support from the commentator booth. Would it have killed them to let Paul Heyman do a little bit of color? Sure his shtick would have been over the top, but the alternative was a lot of Michael Cole as Jerry Lawler was on hiatus again. I really loathe Michael Cole. Match 1 Lance Storm and Mike Awesome vs. Edge and Christian Lance does his “If I could be serious for a minute” shtick, which I always enjoyed. Edge is the 2001 King of the Ring. Awesome was the first invader to win a belt, taking the hardcore belt from Perry Saturn weeks back. He is not the champ here though. Awesome and Christian start things off as Awesome works him over from corner to corner until Christian takes control with a drop toe-hold and tags in Edge. Irish whip is reversed into a clothesline for Awesome and he tags in Storm. Shoot-off leads to a big headscissors takedown for Edge on Storm. Edge follows with a dropkick off the top rope. Edge gives Awesome a dropkick off the apron as well. Storm charges and Edge dumps him over the top rope onto the waiting Mike Awesome, and then gets on all fours so Christian can launch himself over, except Christian clips the top rope and bites it outside. You know Christian, Undertaker can do that with no hands. He is taller though I guess. Edge brings Storm back in and gets a backbreaker for a one count. Tag to Christian and we get a double team hip toss for another one count. Christian charges and Storm puts him on the top rope but Storm gets pushed off, leading to Mike Awesome crotching Christian and then Christian falls outside. Awesome works over Christian now with whips into the barricade and ring. Good heel work. Back in, Lance Storm whips Christian baseball slide style into the ring post. Cool spot, read about the same move in Bret Hart’s book. Tag to Mike Awesome who begins Christian’s face in peril heat segment. Nice standing splash for two. Storm in now and the heels get a double forearm on Christian coming off the ropes. Christian gets a big crossbody on Storm off the ropes and tries for the tag but Storm gets his tag first and Awesome cuts him off. Awesome slings Christian down over his shoulders hard and bridges for two as Edge saves. Irish whip into a big diving clothesline gets two. Storm back in and he works Christian over. Backbreaker and then a tag to Awesome, who climbs. He hits the Awesome Splash (frog splash) as Edge breaks the count. Whip to the corner and Awesome climbs up and brings Christian with him to set up the top rope powerbomb but sadly he is back body-dropped out of it. Crowd was gasping as Awesome pulled him up too. Double KO as both go men go for tags. Hot tags made as Edge takes Storm down with clotheslines and a spin kick to Awesome. Dropkick to Awesome and an Edge-O-Matic on Storm gets two. Sunset flip attempt for Edge as Storm grabs Awesome for leverage but Christian breaks it up, leading to Edge rolling Storm up for two. Storm gets a small package but the ref is distracted so Christian comes in and rolls them over, putting Edge on top. This gets a close two count. Tag made now to Awesome and they try for a double backdrop but Edge flips out and Christian dives off the top rope for a double clothesline. Action is super fast now. Edge goes for a spear and Storm leapfrogs him but Awesome eats it. Then Storm goes for a Superkick, but Christian ducks and Edge takes it. Christian takes Storm over the top rope and Awesome goes for the pin off the Superkick and gets two. He calls for the Awesome Bomb and goes for it but Christian comes back in and spears him and Edge lands on top for the three count. (10:10) **** Wow, this really heated up with a very fast final couple of minutes. Very entertaining. Awesome was really game here but this would be his last PPV appearance. I always liked his talent and was hoping he got a decent push with the Invasion angle. Funny backstage bit where Vince explains to Regal how he needs to be like George Washington vs. King George’s redcoats and smear Raven out later tonight. Prior to every match, there is a clip of Vince and Shane talking to their guys. I didn’t include each of these for redundancy purposes. Video package for the ref match “highlights” the WCW guys refusing to count pins and submissions leading up to the ppv. For those wondering, a coin toss was used to determine which refs worked each match for the show. Match 2 Nick Patrick vs. Earl Hebner Mick Foley is the referee here. Both guys have a team of fellow referees with them. Hey, it’s Teddy Long. I guess they need to get this logistical issue out of the way right now, otherwise the refs could conceivably just mess with every match the rest of the way. Bell rings and Patrick gets a nice girly slap to Hebner’s face. Hebner attempts to stomp a mudhole in the corner. He drags Patrick out of the corner and gets a two count. More old man punches and knee strikes as the action spills outside and the groups of refs almost converge. Mick breaks it up and sends them back into the ring. Earl gets more offense in and gets a ten-punch in the corner. Low blow by Patrick and a baseball slide sends Hebner outside. This leads to a brief skirmish and Mick throws the WCW refs out of the match. Back in and Hebner gets a pseudo spear/shoulderblock combo thingy for the pin (2:50) After the match, Patrick gets in Mick’s face and gets knocked down for his WCW loyalty. Mr. Socko makes an appearance. The crowd revels. DUD – More of an angle then a match obviously. But at least they got it out of the way so all the refs could go back to being easily distracted and easily knocked out by the softest of splashes the rest of the night. Recap of Debra being abducted by DDP on Smackdown and the “old” Stone Cold giving chase. Now we go to Debra who is in the back with Undertaker’s wife Sara, who, um… :thinksofsomethingnicetosay: seems really nice. Woof. Match 3 Sean O’Haire and Chuck Palumbo vs. the APA Both teams are tag team champs but the belts are not on the line here. Video recap of them firing up the jobbers over the last couple weeks and hey, its K-Kwik! Future TNA Champion. Match starts quickly as the heels rush to the ring. Inside the APA get a double team slam on Palumbo. Suplex by Bradshaw and O’Haire charges in to break a count. This results in Bradshaw getting trapped in the heel corner and O’Haire is in to slug away. O’Haire hits a big clothesline off a shoot-off, but Bradshaw is up with a big back suplex and a tag to Faarooq. Irish whip into a back-elbow gets a one count on O’Haire. O’Haire takes control with a low blow and they slug it out and Palumbo is in. Shoot-off and Faarooq hits a big shoulderblock and makes a tag. Bradshaw lays out punches and I’ll give the WCW guys credit, they are selling really well. Charge into a corner by Palumbo but Bradshaw catches him and turns it into a fallaway slam. He goes for powerbomb but O’Haire breaks with a big kick. O’Haire hits an overhead suplex after he distracts the ref and then Palumbo is back in. Heel psychology! Although to be fair, O’Haire told the very easily distracted Teddy Long that Faarooq was up to no good so he ran over to him minding his own business on the apron. Someone missed a cue. Back to the action and a big DDT by Bradshaw on Palumbo. This knocks both men out of course and we have a crawl to the corners. Lukewarm tag to Faarooq as Palumbo moves him to the heel corner and O’Haire clotheslines him out of his boots from the apron. Outside the beating continues and Faarooq is rolled back in for a two count. Tag to O’Haire and the heels hit a double back-elbow. Big knee smash into the face of Faarooq gets two. O’Haire off the ropes is countered into a big spine buster by Faarooq and it’s a double KO and crawl to the corners again. Slightly warmer hot tag and Bradshaw hits a big powerslam off the ropes for two. Shoot-off and Bradshaw goes for another fallaway slam but is kicked in the face by O’Haire. This gets two as Faarooq breaks and all four guys are in the ring. O’Haire gets a dropkick to the back of Bradshaw, who was in a bearhug. Faarooq dumps O’Haire but walks into a Superkick from Palumbo but Bradshaw is right there off the ropes for a stiff Clothesline from Hell, and it gets three. (7:17) **1/2 Perfectly acceptable tag team wrestling. The WCW guys bounced around like crazy, while pulling off some nice heel maneuvers. The APA was certainly pretty stiff in there but these guys held their own. Better then I expected. Match 4 Billy Kidman vs. X-Pac In a backstage bit, Kidman gets a pop for saying X-Pac sucks. Oof, this could get ugly. X-Pac gets a very mellow reaction. Maybe if the beginning of the X-Factor music didn’t suck so hard, people would be more excited. Kidman gets the better pop. This is also champion vs. champion as X-Pac is the light heavyweight champion and Kidman the cruiserweight champ. The announcers make sure to note that usually X-Pac would be booed out of the building at this point but the crowd is pro-WWF. We’ll see. X-Pac sucks chants come out early and the crowd just turns on Waltman before they even exchange two moves. As Charlie puts it – a lot of hate-hooing for him. Lock-up and a push off. Another lockup and they trade wrist locks and X-Pac wins out. He mugs for the crowd who hate-hoo him again. Shoot-off and X-Pac get s a shoulderblock and they trade hip toss attempts before Kidman dumps him, spins around his back and slaps the back of his head. Drop toe-hold by Kidman into a rest spot. Really, two minutes in and we grab a headlock? Ok, they’re calling moves. Off a shoot-off, X-Pac presses Kidman who turns it into a big headscissors. Enziguri follows as X-Pac is booted outside. Kidman slides out and catches X-Pac into a pseudo bulldog to the floor. Back in an Irish whip and another headscissors by Kidman but he charges and the veteran X-Pac (quote JR) tosses him over the top rope in a big spill. Springboard splash to the outside by X-Pac. He mugs for more booing. Back in a nice spinning heel kick gets two. Crowd boos a freaking extended sleeper sequence next. It’s a veteran move per JR. Then they do another standing sleeper spot off a whip. Sheesh guys, you are cruiserweights. Kidman hulks up and grabs X-Pac off the ropes into his own sleeper but X-Pac counters into a sideslam. X-Pac goes up and tries a somersault splash which Kidman moves out of the way from. Now a slug-off and Kidman gets a spinning elbow and a big dropkick. Off the ropes Kidman gets a sit-down powerbomb. Into the corner for a 10-punch for Kidman. X-Pac pushes him off and rolls him up, using the ropes for leverage. Uh, you’re the good guy Pac. Just terrible. YOU CANT POWERBOMB Kidman sequence is countered into an X-Factor. That gets two. Kidman goes up and dives but X-Pac counters into his own X-Factor midair, which gets a close two. That was interesting. Bronco buster is countered with a foot in the crotch by Kidman. Crowd gets on their feet for the Shooting Star Press and pop huge for the pin. Uh, I thought the WWF were the good guys? (7:12) ** Pretty average cruiserweight match. X-Pac acted like a complete doosh for most of the match. Some okay spots but could have been much more. Backstage we get Torrie and Stacey putting down the WWF women. Torrie grabs and rubs her breasts to show what the crowd will miss out on. Ah the WWF in 2001. Match 5 Raven vs. William Regal Lock-up and a slug-out in the corner. Irish whip gets a pushdown from Regal and then a double underhook suplex. Raven briefly bails but comes back in for more Regal offense. A European uppercut gets a one count and then a couple subsequent two counts. That spot has been overdone at this point and come on, it’s a freakin’ uppercut. Regal continues the assault outside and on the apron. Back in, Regal is tossed over the top rope and Raven gets a baseball slide kick to the face. Side Russian leg sweep onto the barricade by Raven. Nice spot. Back inside Raven hits some shoulders to the gut in the corner and then goes for a clothesline off the ropes after sending Regal into the corner. Regal forgot to bounce there and it looked bad. Back up, Regal gets a vertical suplex and Raven goes back to the ribs. Forearm off the top rope for Raven and he goes back up again but this time Regal slaps his stomach as he comes down. Okay, then. Small package out of nowhere gets two for Raven. Nice running bulldog by Raven gets two. Full-nelson suplex is reversed and Raven goes for a sunset flip which is rolled through. They trade rollups and then Regal gets a back-elbow for two. Even flow DDT is reversed into a northern lights suplex. Another DDT attempt but Raven is driven into the turnbuckle. Whip into a shoulderblock by Regal leads to a double KO as Raven crawls to the floor which results in the ref leaving the ring to tell him to get back in. Why not count him out? While Raven is tended to by the blind ref, Tazz scurries down the huge entrance ramp, hits a Tazz-plex on Regal and then leaves. Raven comes back in with the Raven Effect (Even flow DDT) for the pin. (6:34) * This was pretty dull outside of the leg sweep. Match 6 Shawn Stasiak, Chris Kanyon, and Hugh Morrus vs. Big Show, “The One” Billy Gunn, and Albert Albert is the IC champ here. Billy Gunn is the motivational partner of the Big Show apparently. I don’t remember his “1” phase or his rip-off of The Who as his entrance theme. WCW guys get one combined entrance. Bell rings and all three WWF guys get a gorilla press slam in a neat spot that heats the crowd up. We start with Chris Kanyon and Billy Gunn. Gunn gets a nice electric chair spot out of the corner. Gunn has his working shoes on tonight as he bridges up off a pin attempt and gets a backslide. Tag to Stasiak and the crowd chants “MEAT”. Kudos to Cleveland for that. Back-elbow by Gunn in the corner sends Stasiak off of him, leading to a neckbreaker for Gunn. Both guys are spent and go for slow tags and Albert is in first. He destroys Stasiak and all six guys get in the ring and the action goes outside. Camera completely misses a Big Show leap over the guardrail. I’m guessing it missed Morrus since the three WCW guys are back in the ring shortly for Albert. Baldo Bomb on Stasiak is broken up. Kanyon distracts the ref in the corner, as Morrus gets a big DDT. Lukewarm tag to “The One” Billy Gunn now and he gets the Fame-Ass-er on Morrus. Gunn goes for another move but Stasiak is in and hits a reverse DDT on Gunn. Morrus covers up for the three. After the bell Big Show comes in and sucks all the heat out of the heels by chokeslamming everyone and then hitting the Alley Oop on Kanyon. (4:23) ¾* No replay of Show’s big dive at all. This was short and forgettable. Why couldn’t WCW lose here and in turn have O’Haire and Palumbo go over earlier? Apparently on Sunday Night Heat, Chavo Guerrero beat Scotty 2 Hotty so WCW is up 4-3 now. We hear this backstage from Shane for the first time all ppv. Where is this match on the DVD? Match 7 Tazz vs. Tajiri Tajiri is still WWF here. These guys fought for the ECW title in 1999. Tajiri rushes the ring and gets a spin kick and a back flip splash for two. Hard chops in the corner but Tazz catches Tajiri in a release suplex. Tazz takes over but Tajiri flips out of a suplex and fires off more chops and kicks. Off the ropes, Tazz hits a big clothesline. Shoot-off into a kick from Tajiri but Tazz hits a snapmare to keep control. More brawling and Tazz locks on an armbreaker, but Tajiri gets the ropes. Whip to the corner with Tajiri leaping but Tazz grabs his legs on his shoulders and slams him down hard. Shoot-off and Tajiri gets the springboard back –elbow for a big pop. He looks to dive outside but stops and Tazz just grabs his leg and pulls him to the floor. Tajiri goes shoulder first into the stairs. Back in and a whip in the corner turns into the Tarantula on the ropes, which Tajiri has to break. With Tazz on his knees, Tajiri comes off the ropes with a big dropkick right to the face. This gets two as the crowd bought it as the finish. Back up, more stiff kicks but Tazz catches him in a hooked leg overhead suplex. Tazz bends over to pick him up but it’s the MIST! Buzz saw kick finishes for Tajiri. (5:43) **3/4 Good stuff for five minutes. Backstage Rob Van Dam interrupts the Hardy boys and cracks Matt with a chair. Then we go to WWF New York where Hardcore Holly rips a WCW shirt off a fan in the autograph line. I actually have two signed autographs somewhere on the same kind of glossy photos for Kane and Chris Jericho. If I remember correctly, they showed up at some store opening of a friend’s relative. Those things are worth dollars today I bet. Match 8 Rob Van Dam vs. Jeff Hardy © Hardcore Championship Match This is the only belt on the line for this pay-per-view. Crowd is pretty split at the start as Jeff gets a nice pop. Jeff charges the ring and misses a leg drop off a shoot-off as RVD misses a splash. Crowd chants for RVD very loudly. Stalemate after all that tumbling gets a cheer. Jeff gets a dropkick on RVD as he poses. Whip to the corner but Jeff leaps behind RVD and hits another dropkick, this time to the back of the head. It gets two. Shoot-off, leapfrog by RVD and Hardy gets a compactor for two. Back up Hardy gets an atomic drop. Jeff charges but RVD ducks and hits a back splash for two. Double underhook front suplex, head first by RVD. Rolling Thunder follows for two. Reversed Irish whip sees RVD jump to the top turnbuckle but Hardy pushes him off and he sails into the barricade. Most of the crowd is standing for this one. Big baseball slide by Jeff to the recovered RVD. Jeff does his barricade run but he loses his balance quickly and RVD tries to run as well and they just kind of stumble into each other and to the ground. Now we brawl into the crowd and RVD hops up on one of the boards separating the seating areas, gets his balance by grabbing a terrified four year old’s head and hits a back flip onto Hardy. Poor kid was scared as soon as they hit the crowd. That gets two. RVD milks it for the crowd and puts Hardy back over the barricade. Still outside he hits a suplex to the barricade, followed by a spinning heel kick onto the dangling Hardy from the apron. This gets two. Outside the ring still RVD actually bows to the chanting fans. Ugh, YOU ARE THE HEEL. RVD gets hung on the apron and Hardy flips over him and hits the MDK bomb for a ‘Holy Shit’ chant. I’d second that emotion. Big ladder out now and Hardy climbs but RVD pushes it over so Hardy does the delayed jump onto the ramp way. RVD grabs a chair as this is still a hardcore match but Hardy punches the ladder into his face. He chairs RVD on the back as they climb towards the gap in the entrance way for their big spot. Hardy goes for another chair shot but RVD hits the Van Daminator sending Hardy sprawling off the staging in a nice spot. It was made better by a little ramp that the camera barely caught, which broke Jeff’s fall nicely. RVD fetches Jeff and hits a spinning leg drop for two. Back in the ring, RVD hits a running Van Daminator with the chair. He goes for the split leg moonsault but Hardy gets his legs up. Hardy up with a huge DDT as RVD bounces off his head. This gets two two counts. Hardy grabs the belt and hits a back suplex onto RVD’s neck for two. RVD blocks him initially from climbing but Hardy hits a jawbreaker and climbs. RVD rolls out of the Swanton Bomb attempt, puts the belt on Hardy’s chest and hits the Five Star Frog Splash for the title (12:24) **** Great hardcore match without any wussy weapon shots. Little sloppy at points but the crowd ate this up. RVD was borderline annoying with getting himself over though. This ended up being face vs. face essentially and at times it made Hardy look terrible. Match 9 Torrie Wilson and Stacey Kiebler vs. Lita and Trish Stratus FIRST EVER Bra & Panties Tag Team match It’s evolution baby. This is the natural progression of the Bra & Panties match. Mick Foley is again our guest referee. He is mesmerized by Torrie coming to the ring. Lita is really over here. The heels get some of the saddest slaps I’ve ever seen in before the bell rings. Trish and Torrie start and Torrie gets a dropkick and then a real slap on Trish in the corner. Trish with a big clothesline from the corner on Torrie and then a vertical suplex. Near “fall” attempt as Stacey breaks up Trish trying to take Torrie’s shirt off. Heel psychology! Lita in now and none of the WCW gals want to face her so they argue about it on the apron. Stacey in and Lita just rips her shirt off. Shoot-off and Stacey bails outside and Lita chases her around the ring, but Torrie kicks Lita down from the apron and the heels take over. This leads to Lita losing her shirt. Snapmare by Lita on Stacey now. Lita goes up top and misses a splash and Torrie tags in. Trish in now too and she gets a couple of boob clotheslines. Torrie steps on Trish hair and rips off her shirt. Torrie goes for Trish’s pants too but it’s a BRA & PANTIES reversal as Trish flips her into a normal pinning spot and rips Torrie’s pants off. Trish whips Torrie into the corner and Lita hits Poetry in Motion, then rips off Torrie’s shirt and she’s eliminated. Trish hits a running bulldog on Stacey and they rip her pants off and its over. (5:04) ***** Best Bra & Panties tag team match ever at this point. Although there was some pretty spotty selling from Stacey. First she covers up embarrassed when her top is off, then she has no problem with her minor cleavage and runs around, and then after she loses the pants she covers up top again. In all seriousness, this was entertaining for 5 minutes of women’s wrestling. I don’t really have an abacus for Bra & Panties Tag Team matches so lets call it pass or fail. This passes. Match 10 The Dudley Boys, Rhyno, Booker T and D.D.P. (w/ Shane McMahon, Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley, and Paul Heyman) vs. Kane, The Undertaker, Chris Jericho, Kurt Angle and Stone Cold Steve Austin (w/ Vince McMahon) The Inaugural Brawl Stephanie McMahon is arguably at her all-time most annoying here as the owner of ECW. The predator-type hair, the shrieking, and the awful puss face while dancing to Booker T’s entrance music. This would make Vicki Guerrero blush. Intros alternate between teams so to not give anyone an advantage pre-match. DDP is out last for team WCW. The brawl starts before Stone Cold even comes out. His pop is HUGE. The action starts with 5 on 5 outside the ring. Austin brings Rhyno into the ring and the bell rings. Austin quickly low blows Rhyno (um, heel?) and hits a running knee. Shoot-off and a Lou Thesz press. Diving elbow gets two for Austin. Austin puts Rhyno on the top turnbuckle and chops him four times. Stone Cold climbs and hits a superplex. That may be the quickest superplex in wrestling history. What the fuck were the WCW/ECW guys doing while this was happening? It was in the corner closest to theirs! This get a two count as D-Von breaks the count. Jim Ross comments that that was the match there, and it was over if not for that. Man, that sure makes Rhyno seems like a pussy, no? Jericho in now and he chops at Rhyno and hits a flying forearm. Rhyno finally takes over and clotheslines Jericho and gets him isolated in the heel corner. Booker T in now and he chops at Jericho. Jericho with chops of his own. He REALLY liked to chop in 2001 and into his title reign. Running bulldog gets two as Rhyno breaks and hits his own man. Jericho hits a springboard dropkick to send Rhyno out and then a dropkick off the top to Booker T for two. Angle is tagged in and he slugs away on Booker T. Crowd is really into him at this point. Irish whip leads to a spin kick from Booker T and he tags in D-Von. Spinning back-elbow from D-Von but he misses a splash in the corner and Angle tags Kane in. Sidewalk slam to D-Von gets two with DDP breaking it up. Bubba saves D-Von from a Chokeslam but then Kane hits a big back suplex. Shoot-off and Bubba runs back in and they hit a tag-team neckbreaker. Now Bubba gets an actual tag and they slug it out. Kane hits a flying clothesline off the top and tags in the Undertaker. Taker punches Bubba around but Bubba gets a back-elbow off a charge and tries to take over. It lasts about one more move before Undertaker gets a big leg drop for two. Taker goes old school as again apparently none of the heels want to run to the next corner and throw him off. Sheesh. Taker cleans out the heels but DDP hits a hotshot on Taker. Rhyno in and he takes it to Taker in the corner. Now a tag to DDP who does more of the same. Boy they are tagging briskly tonight. Clothesline gets a two count. Shoot-off and DDP gets a big DDT for two. Wow, DDP getting some good offense in here. Booker T is tagged back in and hits a spin kick on Taker. Jim Ross then mocks the Spinarooni as a “devastating move”. Spin kick gets two. Both guys up and off the ropes Taker and hits his big flowing DDT, a move that pretty much everybody has as a running grapple in the Smackdown vs. Raw videogame series. Rhyno breaks up the pinfall. Stone Cold finally back in and Austin gets an eye poke on Booker and stomps a mudhole in the corner. They save a botched grapple with Stone Cold bouncing back off the turnbuckle with a big clothesline. Stunner is countered and Austin throws Booker outside the ring and into the crowd. Austin then suplexes him back to ringside and rolls him back in the ring. Quickest crowd brawling ever. That was literally the extent of the spot. Jericho in now for slaps of course. Walls of Jericho attempt but DDP runs in so Jericho puts the move on him. Lionsault is avoided by Booker and he ends up hot shotting Jericho off the ropes and tags D-Von in. Bubba in for more slaps on Jericho. Both Dudleys in and they try for a tag team Irish whip but Jericho gets a clothesline and spin kick for our first double KO. Crowd claps and cheers on the WWF as Angle gets tagged in and hits a belly-to-belly on both Dudleys. Bubba Bomb off of DDP interference and D-Von is back in for a leg drop. Taker breaks the cover. “Paul E. sucks” chant from the crowd. Well, a couple vocal guys in the front row at least. Rhyno in and he hits a big belly-to-belly on Angle. Austin breaks the count and flips off the ref to a big pop. Angle is your WWF Superstar in peril as the Dudleys work him over. Booker T in and he gets the Axe kick and Spinarooni for two. DDP tagged in and hits a spinning powerbomb(!) for two. Holy moveset, Batman. Austin broke up that pinfall attempt and stalks around the ring while the crowd chants for him. In the ring, Whazzup drop from D-Von. DDP in for more and hits a facelock slam and then continues to work the front facelock on Angle. Angle moves DDP towards the WWF corner while still in the facelock for a big hot tag to Austin but the ref didn’t see the tag. The heels drag Angle back to their corner. Diamond Cutter by DDP is called a neckbreaker by Cole. Ok Cole, that was fucking terrible. JR saves it somewhat by calling the move correctly then. The action breaks down now as Rhyno mistakenly goars Booker T. Action spills outside the ring leaving Undertaker and DDP. Chokeslam to DDP and Taker calls for the Last Ride. Charles Robinson (WCW ref on the outside for those reading this in the year 2025) breaks this up as Taker is not the legal man and Robinson ends up taking the Last Ride. DDP bails on the match and Undertaker follows him through the crowd. Austin is being looked at by the medical staff outside for his knee. They don’t really follow up on this. The Dudley Boys double-team Kane and just idle around for a bit before they grab a table and set it up against the barricade. Kane fights back and chokeslams D-Von through the announcer’s table. It’s 3 on 1 here with Rhyno and the Dudleys taking control over Kane. They double suplex Kane through the OTHER announce table. Rhyno wanders by the regular table on the barricade (from five minutes before) and Jericho reappears and spears him off the apron through that table. That looked like it hurt. Angle and Booker T are the legal men apparently and both are down in the ring. Bubba back in the ring and both Booker T and him double team Angle before Kurt comes alive with a German suplex to Booker T, Angle Slam to Bubba and then the Ankle lock on Booker but he kicks out of it and bumps the ref. Vince tosses the championship belt in to Angle but Shane jumps in and grabs it and kills Vince with it. Angle clotheslines Shane out of the ring and then tosses Bubba. Angle Slam to Booker T and the straps come down and Booker T taps to the Ankle lock, but there is no ref. Stone Cold revives the ref with Booker still in the hold but Austin kicks Angle in the head, then hits the Stunner and puts Booker on top for the pin. Crowd is NOT pleased there. Afterwards Stone Cold, of course, poses in each corner with the belt and beats down Angle a bit more. Austin poses with the WCW/ECW owners and calls for beers to celebrate. Um, you’re the heel remember? He did this same shit at the previous Wrestlemania. It confused the crowd more at WM17 then it did here. Well, at least he then flips the crowd off at the end as they booed him. (29:03) ***3/4 It’s pretty hard to mess up a 5 on 5 match with such star power and this did not disappoint. No rest holds and very few dead spots until everything spilled outside. Not enough Austin though. The heels did a very good job of keeping a brisk pace, tagging in and out quite frequently. Couple of bonehead logic miscues by them but hey, its wrestling logic. All the tagging made the review read kind of crappy but I wanted to capture everything. Extras: Rob Van Dam Invades: Kayfabe interview and backstage bits from the ppv with RVD. He talks about being overly confident and does a lot of his catchphrases. I was hoping for highlights of when he first showed up in the WWF or something. Silly me. Prepare for Battle!: Just clips of multiple wrestlers looking in the mirror, checking makeup, warming up and getting ready for their entrance music to hit. Parting Words: Well not really words. Just very short clips (I’m talking 5 seconds) of guys walking out to the backstage area after their match. No commentary or parting words. Bait and switch! Aftermath Interviews: Post match comments from a bunch of guys. Interestingly enough, the Kurt Angle one wouldn’t load and gave me the XBOX 360 screen. Typical ten second interviews about how the guys should have won or how they did win. Boring. Bottom Line: I’d like to give Cleveland their props for putting on a good show. They were really into it and that helped a lot. You don’t see that kind of sustained heat nowadays. Three matches are ***1/2 or better and worth checking out. The rest is RAW or Smackdown filler that was pretty lame. The extras on the DVD are awful – would it have killed them to have the match from Heat? I’m going thumbs in the middle but leaning up. For $10 you can get it new in all its non-blurred WWF graphic glory. For archiving purposes, it’s a recommendation to check out and add to your collection. Up next: Summerslam 2001 The SmarK DVD Rant - Dangerous Comedy! "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard." - The Joker I think that one of the reasons that safe and predictable pop culture junk like the Night At The Museum movies or the (Noun) Movie series keep getting made is that truly cutting-edge comedy isn't always funny. Yes, Monty Python was routinely brilliant, but for every Dead Parrot Sketch there are a million misses within the same show. I personally find it easier to deal with a swing for the fences that misses rather than a tepid ground out to first, because at least there was the potential for gold in one of them. Sandra Bullock mugging for the camera makes $100 million because you know exactly what you're getting and it doesn't scare people off. The Hangover made nearly $300 million domestically because it was an easy-to-understand concept pulled off spectacularly well. And then there's Bruno and Funny People, released around the same time earlier this year…
Bruno I was a big fan of Borat until it became a kind of ubiquitous Austin Powers-like source of annoying quotes for hipster douchebags everywhere. Repeated viewings haven't held up as well as I'd hoped, mainly because the shocking stuff pulled off by Sacha Baron Cohen isn't particularly shocking any longer. However, at heart it's still a movie with something to say about stereotyping different cultures and making assumptions about foreigners, even if the message sometimes gets lost in the child pornography and poop jokes. Bruno, however, was a different animal entirely. Whereas I got Borat and kind of understood the message being imparted, Bruno just left me feeling confused about what I was supposed to be getting out of it. The setups are mostly the same, as Cohen has perfected "ambush comedy" by trapping people in a room with him and then forcing them to react to whatever antics he comes up with. The best examples come when he simply provides the straight role (pardon the irony) and lets the stupidity of his targets act as the punchline. In Bruno, Cohen's eponymous fashion reporter loses his job and decides to travel to LA to become "uber-famous", giving him an excuse to run into a variety of celebrities along the way. His "interview" with Harrison Ford is classic, for instance. Others felt more like comedic entrapment than legitimate criticism, however. Interviewing politician Ron Paul and then setting up a situation where Bruno comes onto him to provoke a "homophobic" reaction is more unsettling than hilarious, as there's no "right" answer for what behavior would have been acceptable. Paul is presumably not gay, so he had every right to storm out of the room when a gay man was making unwanted sexual advances towards him. It's basic human rights! Ditto for the hunting scene, where Cohen is so desperate to provoke a reaction from a group of redneck hunters that he strips naked and throws himself at one of the group at 4 AM. Was the guy SUPPOSED to let this weirdo into his tent? I think that's the nature of being on the edge like Cohen is, however. Sometimes the reason for your actions isn't entirely apparent, and there's going to be some bits that offend people. That relative minor criticism is balanced out, I think, by how fucking hilarious the rest of the movie is. Yeah, there's more misses than Borat featured, but the sheer brilliance of his TMZ-style celebrity show pilot justifies its own existence without any problem. Similarly, the series of interviews with parents desperate to make their babies into celebrities, while only having a slight connection to the rest of the movie, is jaw-droppingly great and provides some of the movie's best lines. Really, the biggest problem I had with the movie is that it's more like 20 little awesomely funny character skits attached together with a rivet gun and kinda-sorta formed into a cohesive movie. There's really no other way to move between ideas like Bruno interviewing a terrorist (and barely making it out alive) and Bruno terrorizing a black talk show audience. It's blunt force comedy at its best, and when it works it really works. When it doesn't (like the surprisingly misfiring adventure with the military), at least it's never boring. I don't think Bruno will have the cultural impact that Borat did, but it was a worthwhile attempt, even if I have to wonder how long he can fool people until everyone knows who he is. Funny People From the hilarious cutting-edge we go to…Adam Sandler. But at least this movie is self-aware enough to know that Sandler is the kind of guy whose career has descended into making easily-digested box office garbage like "Merman" or "Redo". Sandler's melancholy portrayal of a formerly-edgy comedian who now lives alone in his giant mansion longing for human companionship might be a bit too close to home for some Hollywood bigshots. In fact the movie was apparently inspired by a meeting that director Judd Apatow had with Steve Martin, so take what you will from that. This of course is a much different movie than Apatow's two previous directorial efforts (The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up), veering more into the Punch Drunk Love side of Sandler's acting experiences than the hacky comedies parodied within the movie. And I guess that's immediately part of the problem, because you see Apatow and Sandler together and you're thinking "wacky bromantic comedy" and that's not what you're getting at all. Seth Rogen is Ira Wright, a struggling comedian who makes jokes at the expense of George Simmons (Sandler) one night at a comedy club and finds himself bonding with the millionaire comedian as a result. From working as his assistant, Ira finds himself working up the ladder of comedy, opening for Simmons on tour and writing jokes for him, but sometimes getting too close of a look at the darker side of Simmons' life. There's actually a ton of different subplots running at once here, from Simmons' apparently fatal disease to Ira's roommates (Jonah Hill as another struggling writer and Jason Schwartzman as the star of an NBC-style sitcom called "Yo, Teach!") to the girl down the hall who Ira has a crush on but is unable to ask out. There's a lot of funny stuff going on, but this is definitely a movie that could have used some editing down. Most notably, the second half of the lengthy movie screeches to an unfunny halt when George decides to reconnect with his lost love, putting the characters (and us) in an awkward stretch of more than a hour where they're all cooped up in the house together as George tries to live a life of domestic bliss that he could never have before. It's a weird choice and seems like it belongs in a different movie. However, while it's not the comedy that it was made out to be by the trailers, it's still a very good movie. Dramatic Sandler can be very effective, and the love story with Leslie Mann is very well acted by everyone involved, including the underrated Eric Bana as the jerkass Australian husband who turns out to be a really decent guy. I just wish that they would have cut out a bunch of the extra stuff and just focused on ”The Wrestler for Comedians" aspect of the story. But hey, sometimes you take chances and they don't work. It happens. Hopefully Judd will go back to the wacky comedies next time out, at least. Recommendations: Probably rent both of them before buying. Both are very worthwhile for different reasons, though. |
Just Dance
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Wow, that’s a long title for a DVD, isn’t it?