Mecha Mummy

I've never really had a problem with Smith as a director, though yeah, I didn't really consider the writer/director distinction (which was why I'm ultimately passing on Michel Gondry, who was another one I considered; his best film was more because of Charlie Kaufman, who isn't worth drafting because the only film he's ever directed hasn't even come out yet).

... shit, right. Hi guys, how's it going. Sidney Lumet Directed some of my favorite movies of all time (12 Angry Men, Network) and I want one awesome American director of drama/crime stuff before it's too late. Aaaaand... Kevin Smith He's got flaws, but he's never made a movie I outright disliked (though Jersey Girl I was just barely above indifferent on, which is still probably better than most felt about it), and I'd like to get someone who can do comedy before I probably focus on actors for my next two picks.

Dammit, my odds of getting him just went down from 1% to 0%.

So basically if we get to the actual "pitch a movie" stage I have no clue what I'm going to do here, but I gotta. I just gotta. Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune My favorite director of all time and my favorite actor of all time. I'll figure something out.

... yeah, I'm wondering about the serpentine rules. I've got my picks lined up if so, because that means I'd be going twice, right?

If Bruce Springsteen did professional wrestling, The Brian Kendrick wouldn't be here.

Stealing mellow's idea because it's really useful as a visual reference and just a cool idea in general. Except mine has crappier formatting due to doing it in class. Gosunkugi Studios Directors: Akira Kurosawa Sidney Lumet Kevin Smith Michael Mann Wes Anderson Actors/Actresses: Toshiro Mifune Philip Seymour Hoffman Natalie Portman Steve Buscemi Benicio Del Toro Amy Ryan Takashi Shimura James Franco Peter Lorre Stanley Tucci Ben Affleck Woody Harrelson Mos Def Michael Douglas Daniel Dae Kim Michael K. Williams Tilda Swinton Mark Ruffalo Jason Lee Janeane Garofalo Jason Schwartzman Takeshi Kitano J.K. Simmons Caroline Dhavernas Joseph Cotten Lew Ayres Owen Wilson Keiko Awaji Chiaki Kuriyama

And then outright gave up the pretense of subtlety just now on commentary with "flip-flopping like Barack Obama."

"Evan Bourne has never been pinned since coming to ECW." Mike Knox called. Wonderful match, though.

Except now Punk's the one in WWE.

God, I smirked at that a little. I kind of dig the Grisham/Striker team. More Striker than Grish, but I think they have potential. Also the "omg omg it's a reference" dweeb in me enjoyed the Dragon Gate namedrop.

No doubt. Deuce pretty much only has greater size and the fact that he's Jimmy Snuka's son going for him. I thought Domino had by far better charisma and far more potential; he actually made something really fun out of the Kozlov squash he was in by selling like a motherfucker and trash talking even after he'd already been schooled in the early goings.

Yeah, Harris' brief ECW run was just... baffling to watch. How could a guy who was so good at what he was doing back in 2002/2003 when he and Storm were making TNA's tag division must-watch stuff become that abysmally bad? Good riddance, honestly.

Okay, now you can give up on Bleach. The sad thing is that there's no way anything could ever get as insane as Szayel's stuff did, so this stuff is really a step down on the batshit crack Bleach villain scale. What's really sad is that Kishimoto has introduced an equally shitty opponent for Sasuke in Naruto: a rappin' black ninja from the Cloud Country. Sigh... Fuck that shit, he's the most entertaining character Kishimoto has introduced since the Hidan/Kakuzu team. It helps that I've stopped taking Naruto seriously after how abysmally bad it's been for the past year, Sasuke vs. Itachi notwithstanding (and even that had prime "Kishimoto what the fuck" unintentional (?) humor in Orochimaru), but at least he's not as completely dull and dreary as Pain is and actually has a discernible personality.

I like that Mark Henry opted to attempt to talk trash to the fake Matt Hardy on the TitanTron.

Okay, now you can give up on Bleach. The sad thing is that there's no way anything could ever get as insane as Szayel's stuff did, so this stuff is really a step down on the batshit crack Bleach villain scale.

Weird, I feel it's the opposite. Morrison gets all the good lines, but due to his horrible monotone his lines come out as if he's the straight man and that makes Miz even more enjoyable. Fuck that, his monotone is what makes those lines work. He's finally caught on on how to speak in a near-monotone and still inflect, as opposed to how completely unintentionally bored he sounded trying to do it last year when he was the ECW Champion.

Eh, well. Trigun I needed something more action-y and while I was hoping for live action, pretty much everything I would want there was already gone. Aaaaand finally let's go with something nobody else will have ever heard of, hence why it's pick #20: Almost Live! I am a lifelong Seattle native, and so even if I don't think the show was actually exceptionally funny or anything, it's still fifteen years worth of a Seattle-based sketch comedy program that had its moments and will constantly remind me of home, via telegraphed jokes about how damn bland Bellevue really, truly is.

Boston Legal I'm still perplexed as to why the Emmy's love it so much since from my experience watching the first season and a little bit of the second it's an incredibly flawed show, but fuck it. It has Denny Crane, and Denny Crane is fantastic.

I'm still indecisive over one of my two allotted picks, but much to my surprise I'm going right on back to the Nickelodeon vault for the next one. The Angry Beavers Possibly the most underrated Nicktoon of all time. It was one of the last ones during the classic period to have the sort of humor that could appeal to a wide age range, and whilst I was tempted to go with Invader ZIM to fill the role the Beavers are filling, there's way more material here and the humor's a lot less "hey let's be random for the sake of being random."

I liked the Death Note English cast. I mean, honestly, it was Miyano Mamoru and Kappei Yamaguchi as Light and L in the original, wasn't it? Considering that the two of them are incredibly good at what they do (especially Yamaguchi, who has amazing range), it would be hard to match up, but I thought Brad Swaile did a good job playing Light even if he didn't quite sound as slick as I would have liked (he did nail the overdramatic EPIC nutjob that Light is internally, though), and I loved L's dub voice. It was a surprising take on it but I think it worked perfectly.

I currently have The Way of the Gun, the second disc of the first season of Dexter, and the first disc of Freaks and Geeks out. I'm sort of a patternwhore so what I do is I get a movie, a disc of a comedy series, and a disc of a drama series in some sort of recurring order (it changes sometimes, like when I grew obsessed with watching the fourth season of The Wire as quick as possible so I had that at the top of my queue list every time). So up next is mostly more Dexter and Freaks and Geeks, and since I'm lazy and on a university computer I can't recall what the movies coming up are. I think Scarface is in there somewhere.

... ah, why the hell not. Avatar: the Last Airbender With the exceptions of the already-taken Timm DC Universe cartoons, I cannot think of a single American action cartoon that hit the level of pure quality that Avatar somehow managed, despite the limitations of being on Nickelodeon in the present decade and having to deal with the knee-jerk "pseudo-anime" reaction that pretty much any Western series taking inspiration from that style has to suffer from. Plus, the voice cast is fucking amazing, with the likes of Jason Isaacs and Daniel Dae Kim in minor roles. Really, it's infinitely better than it probably should seemingly have any right to be, and even though nobody else would probably ever pick it I still pretty much have to get it for my island.

I thought it was sort of in that "show people liked but didn't quite remember" gap that would have made it last at least one more round. Ah well.