Jingus

"Bad" doesn't even begin to describe the scene where the retarded ratcatcher and the midget ride the steam-powered lawnmower through the sewers. Or the curious decision to make the Phantom handsome and not wearing a mask. But I really didn't think any of that was too extraordinary in this movie. Admittedly I only watched it once, almost a decade ago, so my memory isn't photographic on this one. I can remember some individual scenes, and have completely forgotten others. But I clearly recall being very disappointed after all the hype I'd heard about it, and not finding it very entertaining. Yes, I have read it. I also read interviews with Argento where he talked about how he'd prefer to watch a pretty girl get murdered rather than any other type of human being. I know it's an old cliche of all genre fiction and especially horror films. But I'm saying that it felt misogynistic even by the standards of a slasher horror film. I don't think I've ever seen a movie which I considered "too violent" for me. (The opening of Saving Private Ryan came close, admittedly.) And yeah, I kinda realized it wasn't supposed to be realistic in the first scene where the girl was stalked, slashed, had her ribcage sawed open, was stabbed in her exposed heart, and then dropped through a skylight with a noose around her neck. If that wasn't a dead giveaway, then the witchcraft, magic, and demons later on should've clued me in. Don't talk to me like I'm some n00b who just got his first Netflix membership and was shocked to discover the scummy world of giallo. I own a copy of Cannibal Holocaust, fer chrissakes. I kinda sorta consider myself a fan of Lucio Fulci, even though I wouldn't say so too loudly in some social settings. I know the difference between Dawn of the Dead and Zombi. I've even got a couple of older Mario Bava flicks from the 60s. The difference between all of that and Argento is that I do not agree with filmdom's consensus on that one guy. I never liked his shit, and never quite understood why anyone did.

As stupid as the concept of Zohan is, the script was cowritten by Judd Apatow and Robert Smigel. Even the crappiest car might run a little better when you put premium gas in it.

Argento is one of those guys whose popularity mystifies me. I've seen three of his movies, and didn't like any of them, and am not sure why anybody would. A lot of people rate Suspiria, but I just found it to be a mostly average horror movie with an incoherent plot and a mean-spirited attitude towards women. Trauma was boring aside from the fact that the director was so perverted to show his underage daughter topless, I mean dude that's just not right. And his Phantom of the Opera was a sickeningly incompetent waste of film; THE worst adaptation of the Phantom story ever, and oh man does that cover a lot of ground. To me, the only worthwhile things Argento ever did were provide the sperm to make Asia and to be a mentor to Michele Soavi, whose Cemetery Man pissed upon every Dario Argento flick I've ever seen from a very great height.

The ironic part is, if the person in question wasn't pregnant, "he" is one of the more convincing trannies I've seen. If you weren't told you wouldn't know.

Ya know, I'd actually maybe not mind seeing an Awesome Kong vs. Eric Young feud. Eric's over enough that it would have heat, but wimpy enough that nobody would disbelieve Kong beating the shit out of him. Moose Knuckles? Moose Knuckles?! Jesus Fuckpuppies Christ. I guess that was Russo's plan B if they shot down Camel Toe? I understand they have to change the name (well, actually I don't, considering that this isn't the WWE with their guaranteed contracts and full-time schedule and most of these people are still forced to work the indies to make their living and so it's just sadistic to not let them use their own names), but I don't know if you could try to make a worse name than Moose Knuckles. What the hell is TNA's problem with coming up with decent new names? I mean, Brother Runt, "The Punisher" Andrew Martin, Sinshe, Roxxi L'aueveiaough, the five million crappy names of Billy Gunn, god they're terrible at it. How did the women's match go down, exactly? Meltzer's report is pretty vague. I'm wondering why 1.Mickie gets beaten in her very first match, and 2.why the focus of the BP feud seems to have randomly been shifted from Roxxi, who has yet to get the tiniest bit of revenge, to ODB who seems able to squash them every time.

Besides, "he" isn't really a man, so it doesn't count. And whichever plastic surgeon who butchered that breast reduction needs to go back to med school.

I think more people have seen Seal than any of the others. I blame the insidious influence of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.

Finally, something we agree on. Kids' cartoons seem like they're really taken a nosedive in quality since the 90s. What new shows do they have today which compare to relatively intelligent stuff like Batman: The Animated Series, Animaniacs, or hell even Eek the Cat or Daria? Cartoon Network occasionally greenlights some non-Adult Swim gems, Courage the Cowardly Dog comes to mind, but they're few and far between.

Really? I've always seen much more hype and Beste Fylm Evah type huzzahs for Seventh Seal than Persona. Plus while it's weird to say that SS is "more normal" than anything, it sure as hell fits that description compared to the other movie. Persona is an aggressively challenging, inaccessibly obscure, and rather unfriendly work. I don't know if I'd come right out and call it "the Ulysses of the cinema" or some other similarly sweeping statement, but it is in that neighborhood.

Huh. I've owned a copy of that movie forever, and have never gotten around to watching it. Weird, cuz I'm a fan of the book. Gotta watch it sometime soon. Oh, and Seventh Seal? Damn you Funk! I wanted something from Bergman on the list, but that was the go-to, and I'm not sure what the #2 pick would be.

In TNA? No, the only blood comes from accidental cuts like Roxxi's in the ladder match. On the indies? There's a reason Mickie is referred to as Queen Of The Deathmatch.

Same here. Except my girlfriend refused to have any sort of sex, period. (Not just with me, she stayed virginal through college and beyond, far as I know.) And nobody bothered to inform us dorks as to who the school prostitutes were, so that avenue was closed as well.

The man has an excellent point.

Why? I've got my high school reunion coming up and was shopping around trying to calculate the cheapest way to get back there, and discovered that Amtrak is actually more expensive than an airline ticket. Plus somehow a train ride from Texas to Tennessee apparently takes two days. And they have bizarre gaps in certain parts of the countries, like how Memphis has the only Amtrak station in the entire state. Do not want.

Huh. Didn't see her, just caught the ending of Santino/Sal, and did that look as horribly blown to everyone else? Now knowing she was there, however, I DEMAND some Santino/Silverman vignettes.

I think they've wrestled at least once on Impact, but it was a three-minute bit of nothing iirc.

dario argento suxx0rs That's kind of how I looked at it. I could make a long list of all the stuff I didn't like about Scream, but most of it boils down to it feeling like a condescending mockery of horror movies than an actual horror flick.

They could've done a lot more. They could've shown him actually standing there when the boat exploded, for one thing. You don't have to actually see his flesh being ripped apart, but it would've been real easy to just throw in a one-second camera shot of the fireball hitting him in a very PG manner. Instead they showed him on the edge of the deck, then a moment was spent looking at other stuff, and then the boat exploded. Like I keep saying, every other main character on this show who died, you either directly saw their death or saw their body afterward. With Jin, it seems like they almost make a conspicuous effort to not show him on the boat when it blew. There was more than enough time for him to have jumped into the water and swam away a bit during the gap between the last time we saw him and when the bomb went off. And even if Cuse said he was dead, it's not the first time the producers have messed with people. I don't even like Jin that much as a character, so I have no emotional investment in this. It's just that they went rather far out of their way to not show us his death, and I find that to be suspicious since they've never done that before with anyone who actually died.

That's not really a spoiler, more like vague rumor. And yeah, probably not much Underbheit. On the commentaries, the writers repeatedly bitch about him and how much they hate writing episodes around him. I was kinda surprised however that in the entire season premier, we didn't even see anyone actually named Venture.

Okay, you were right about the Rhino thing, I'd simply forgotten that. I don't watch the show every week, but I usually watch the show at least once a month. At some point I should've heard the announcers explaining the rest of the stuff above. I haven't. For all of Jim Ross's faults, he finds a way to give the backstory on this kind of thing. When 3D ran in on Christian and Rhino, all they said was that they were on Booker's side; you really need to be more specific than that. And JR usually finds a way to say it in one sentence, unlike Tenay and West's incredibly long-winded exposition which they sometimes spend half the match rambling about.

So I actually tried to watch a full episode of Impact. I failed. I fell asleep. I NEVER fall asleep right in the middle of a television show, sitting upright in my chair, but somehow I did here. I've got a whole lot of complaints, no surprise, but for the most part it's less "Robert Roode bores the piss out of me" and "why do people LIKE the Beautiful People?!" type kvetching, and more serious bewilderment at the utter lack of logic in so much of the booking. -First we start off with Booker/Roode vs. Christian/Rhino. Man, Booker sure forgave Roode pretty easily for breaking his wife's jaw just a couple months back. I mean, they didn't even mention the fact that these guys were so recently part of a heated blood feud. Meanwhile, did they ever explain why Christian and Rhino were friends again, after their own battles with Christian taking a bunch of personal cheapshots at Rhino? The match itself is okay, all five minutes of it before the Dudleys run in. And why are they working for Booker T, again? And why didn't their current theoretical feud enemies LAX come out to stop them? It's weird that for a company which spends so much time explaining stuff how much remains inexplicated. AJ Styles runs in to help Even The Odds afterwards; hey, wasn't this guy beaten down into a bloody pulp for the past two shows in a row? Why does he look fresh as a daisy here? And the icing on the cake: they pull out a table, set it up, and then nobody goes through it. Blueballs, man! -Borash did an interview Earlier Today with Joe. It was right after he was "training", but we see none of the training, just Joe all sweaty and wheezing while he talks. Meanwhile some white guy with a Mr T haircut is wandering around in the background, being an overacting extra trying to upstage the frigging world champion. They talk about Kevin Nash, and this brings up another thing I routinely hate about the booking in this company: a dangerous overreliance on Mystery Angles. You know, Tenay says "Why is Person A committing Action B? We have no idea! We'll try to find out!", and the other wrestler says "I don't know what Jabroni A thinks he's doing, but if he sticks his nose in my business, I'm gonna (insert generic threat here)!". Way, way too much time is spent setting up an atmosphere of confusion which deliberately withholds the motivations of the characters from the audience. -Jesus christ Angelina and Velvet cannot fucking talk. I don't comprehend the people who claim that they can. Their promo here was terrible. Not helping matters was the overacting announcer; hey bitch, just stand there and hold the microphone, don't mug like Jim Carrey at every single thing the performers say. At the end, one of them kisses the camera, and leaves a giant lipstick smudge on the lens... which means we can't see the second half of the segment, where Kong and her terrorist friend threaten to beat up more fans. Seriously, it's just one big blur, we can't see the people talking. Brilliant. And Cheerleader Melissa's "Arabian" accent sounds approximately as convincing as the one I enacted playing a sheik in a shitty play back in high school. That is to say, not convincing at all. -As much as I dislike 'em, I gotta admit the BP had a fun little psuedo-handicap hardcore match against ODB. Probably helped that Skye (the more talented one in the ring) did the majority of the work, while the divariffic Love just took some cheap shots and then got thrown around like a ragdoll. Of course, this being TNA, there were still problems. Why does ODB get a match against them while their hated nemesis Roxxi doesn't? Why was it a street fight, anyway? Why does ODB get to beat them while Roxxi has lost every single match since she got her head shaved? How did Gail Kim miraculously go from being crippled on crutches last week to running around just fine now? And... Mickie Knuckles?! I love that they actually made the bizarre decision to bring her in, but having her as part of the BP stable, while still wearing the same indy gear that she's repeatedly bled all over in various national guard armories all over the Midwest... just fuckin' weird, man. -Some clips of Jay Savage's bachelor party. James Storm bellowing like a fratboy and then bumping for no reason was hilarious. The rest of it was meh, but at least it was short. -Eric Young searches for Elvis. WHY. This is the very definition of Waste Of Time and cannot possibly be leading to anything good. The best-case scenario is that he eventually runs into Honkeytonk Man at Jay's wedding and has a wacky misunderstanding. -Sting talks about shit. I don't care. I think he's had more of these sit-down interviews in TNA than he's had actual matches there. They spend most of it talking about Flair's retirement, nice job putting over your competition. -The announce the next PPV card. There's only four matches signed. And the ratings leaders Knockouts are in none of them. Meanwhile, two guys on the injury bench are prominently featured. -And now to make people want to pay for the King Of The Mountain match on PPV... we've got a King Of The Mountain match on free TV. Yep. Have they ever once explained what the hell it means when the MCMGs point to their hand? Considering they do that every single time they walk down the ramp, knowing why would be nice. Johnny Devine does a moonsault off the freaking penalty box. DO SOMETHING with this guy! He's got all kinds of talent, and the only thing they've even attempted to do with him is briefly make him Team 3D's lackey in that godawful "legally owns the belt but still isn't champion" gimmick. Anyway, long story short, this is the first time I fell asleep. -I wake up just in time to see Kong vs. DAFFNEY~! Oh my god do I love me some Daffney. Love her even more after tonight, since she took an absolutely brutal beating like a fucking champion. She also had a mouthpiece and MMA gloves, which I found really funny for some reason. Anywho, predictably she sadly gets destroyed in just a couple of minutes. The way she was used here sorta indicates that she's probably not coming back, which is a crying shame. -Abyss apparently has been literally mailing in some promos. And considering all the visual effects contained within said promo, it looks like a certain psychotic rampaging monster recently went down to Best Buy and bought himself the latest version of Adobe Premiere. Seriously, if they're supposed to be home videos that Abyss himself is shooting and sending in, don't edit them like a goddamn Nine Inch Nails music video. -Here I fell asleep again, this time for good.

Here's the one I attended. The show live was WORSE than it sounds on paper. It all sucked. Especially the main event. Kevin Nash had just become the commissioner, and before the match starts he declares the figure-4 leglock is banned. The match: Nash (who didn't take a single bump) slowly kicks Flair's ass for about five minutes. Flair makes an outta-nowhere comeback and slaps on the figure-4. Referee (Charles Robinson, making it make even less sense) disqualifies Flair. Nash and Jarrett stomp on Flair for a minute, celebrate, and leave. Flair eventually gets up and just walks to the back. That's it. The heel defeated the babyface, and also kicked his ass afterwards, all in the laziest manner possible. SHOW OVER. "Good night folks! Make sure to watch Monday Nitro!" And people wonder why I hate Nash so much. EDIT: and oh yeah, that attendence figure is worked, there were maybe a thousand people there at best.

All of Grindhouse, both Hostel, The Devil's Rejects, both Hills Have Eyes, Sin City, and the entire Saw series all managed to get R ratings. Why not this one? All they have to do is chicken out a little bit on the rape scenes and not make them as lengthy and in-your-face as they were in the original, and hey presto, R-worthy. It's funny how the movie is controversial, because I've never been able to make up my mind on it. On one hand, it's an utterly repellent piece of exploitive trash in which we literally watch a woman get raped for half an hour straight. That alone should be enough to permanently disqualify it from "Good Movie?" debates forever. On the other, she gets her uncompromisng revenge and then some, without relying on a man to fight for her honor or any bullshit like that. It's almost admirable in its merciless simplicity.

True dat, yo. I was there live for Superbrawl Revenge, and it was a shockingly good show. By WCW standards. It had nothing on what the WWF was doing around the same time, but still, considering that it was a dying company on its last legs, that was a good show. Hugh/Wall and Dustin/RSteiner were worthless, but aside from that everything on the show was enjoyable in some fashion. And this includes matches with Kevin Nash, Ernest Miller, and Kronik. Now, the WCW house show I went to about a year before that... deserves to be mentioned in this thread. The highpoint of the show was seeing Daffney live for the first time. Everything else was horrible beyond belief.

Generally agree with everything Lenny said. Except this bit: No. No it was not. Despite having one of the most awesome dream casts in recent memory, the acting in this film was almost universally horrible and pretty much everyone involved thoroughly embarassed themselves. Even guys like Jon Lovitz and Wallace Shawn completely failed at trying to make their godawful dialogue work, just standing there looking uncomfortable in their dumbass costumes and ugly wigs. I'm not kidding when I say that Stiffler might've turned in the best serious performance here. The very worst thing about this movie is that, every rare once in a while, I could see the potential for it having been better. Like, the weirdo Star Spangled Banner remix, I thought that was fairly inspired. But then we'd cut back to bullshit like Christopher Lambert driving around in an ice cream truck full of guns, and no, it's nowhere near as cool as it sounds.