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By admin, December 9, 2009 11:09 am

Sorry about the time between posts. My connection has been funky. Comcast sucks.

10. 300

Although a poor translation of the comic book, they got enough right about a fantastic comic book to deserve listing. Just skip the pointless scenes with the Queen and this movie will be great. I had long said that all Hollywood needed to do was make a movie about a single battle. Unfortunately someone decided that the movie needed a strong female lead for the ladies who watched the movie. No offense, but the strong silent queen was much better in the comic.

9. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The only “serious” Carey film worth watching this decade. One of the issues for me is my love of Montauk LI, which plays a key part in the movie. I also always tend to think the grass is greener on the other side and screwing up relationships. I could see this happening to me too. Also, Elijah Wood is great in one of his many small quirky roles outside of the LoTR Trilogy.

8. Pirates of the Caribbean

The first one was an instant classic. If/When I do a ten worst movies the other two deserve to be on that list. Its amazing that Disney allowed the movie to be lead by a Homoerotic pirate. Unfortunately had this movie not had a scene stealing Johnny Depp we wouldn’t have to be tortured in other movies by the amazingly dull Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom.

7. The Motorcycle Diaries

A must see movie and a must read book. The early life of Che as he takes a trip around South America with a close friend. He could have lived the rest of his life as a doctor in the middle/upper class of South America. Instead this journey opened his eyes to all that was wrong in South America and the differences between the haves and have nots. Gael Bernal also turned in an incredible performance.

6. Shaun Of The Dead

For a Zombie Comedy movie, it has a large number of touching moments and some of the best characters in a zombie movie since Night Of The Dead. In all the Zombie movies there always seems to be a character that is dumb as shit but no one will admit it or say anything. In this movie everyone fucks up and people will call them on it. I also love when Ed asks for a Quid (basically a quarter in the US) while in the bar and no one asks him what its for.

5. There Will Be Blood

Originally based on Upton Sinclair’s “Oil”, Paul Thomas Anderson ended up taking it in a different direction. Paul Dano and Daniel Day Lewis give two of the most powerful performances and play great off of each other. The great line of “I Drink Your Milkshake” is from this movie.

4. The Departed

This was a close toss up between The Departed and There Will Be Blood. Departed just has too many great showings from great actors for this to be ranked much lower. After I saw Being Gilbert Grape and Romeo + Juliet I told my friends that Leo would be the next great actor. Then thanks to Titanic I got ridiculed to no end. Mark Wahlberg also needs to do more movies like this, smaller more intense parts, instead of his wooden emotionless starring roles.

3. The Wrestler

This movie was robbed at the Academy Awards. If anyone but Mickey Rourke had given the same performance they would have won. But the Academy feared letting Mickey near a mic. That this wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Song (as much as I hate Springsteen) was a complete mockery. It also helps that one of the wrestlers is a personal favorite of mine, Necro Butcher. This movie is so true of these older stars, the only thing is reality is sadder. Most of them are showing up in Gyms that can hold 100-200 people and have only 20-30 people in the crowd.

2. Fahrenheit 9/11

Micheal Moore’s best documentary of the decade. I believe it actually set records for profit. That Bush is not under trial for war crimes or murder is a joke. In the leadup to this movie the NY Post and Fox News went insane trying to discredit Moore to the point of calling him a Nazi. In a great example of irony Fox News and the NY Post called him a modern day Joseph Goebbels, who is famous for being the head of propaganda of the Nazi State. It still amazes me that after so many people saw this movie, Bush got re-elected.

1. Sin City

This is how you convert a comic to a movie. You take the comic and make it the story board. As great as “That Yellow Bastard” and “The Big Fat Kill” are, its “The Hard Goodbye” with Mickey Rourke as Marv that takes the cake. Almost perfectly translated from comic to movie, and there’s no one but Mickey that could have played Marv. THG also has the best line of the movie,

Most people think Marv is crazy. He just had the rotten luck of being born in the wrong century. He’d be right at home on some ancient battlefield swinging an axe into somebody’s face. Or in a Roman arena, taking his sword to other gladiators like him. They would’ve tossed him girls like Nancy back then.

That line resonates with too many people I know. Also kudos to Bruce Willis, who continues taking roles of older characters and playing them with quite a high level of dignity.  The best I can say about The Big Fat Kill (since I’m not a Clive Owen fan) is that Miho steals the story without saying a word.

Honorable Mention

In No Particular Order

The Hangover: A Classic comedy that just makes you laugh. Hollywood can’t manage that too often

District 9: Its between this and Serenity for best Sci-Fi space film. I can’t recommend it enough after seeing it a few days ago.

Return Of The King: Finally the LoTR film that stops talking and just has battles. After sitting through far too much BS in Fellowship and only one great scene in The Two Towers (Last March of The Ents) this was what we were waiting for.

Borat: People were actually rolling in the rows laughing when I saw this in theaters. Although it ends up here cause you don’t know what was scripted and edited and what wasn’t.

I might follow this up with the ten worst films.

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By Mark D, March 5, 2009 3:37 pm

When I was young, I was a huge fan of Mick Foley (aka Cactus Jack, Mankind, Dude Love) as he always seemed to give it his all. It also helped that he didn’t look like a steriod freak of nature. One of my moms friends that knew I was upset that Cactus had left WCW gave her the King of the Death Match tape from Japan where he beats Terry Funk in the finals. I wound up getting back into wrestling when we were taping a PPV for my cousin and the main event was a masked Cactus Jack fighting Undertaker. I followed WWE up till Mick was dropped as comissioner, although I did watch it on and off untill they screwed RVD and didn’t give him the Title Win over the horrible Undertaker American Bad Ass angle on a Monday Night Raw.

I’ve tried not to watch that much Foley in his comebacks. I don’t want to see an Old Tired Foley putting over pieces of shit like Randy Orton. I’ve got the best of Cactus Jack from ECW on DVD, so whenever I want to relive the best of Mick Foley its right there. Nothing can beat his infamous Non-Hardcore Hardcore gimmick and his wearing of a Bischoff T-Shirt to ECW Arena.

But someone has attracted me back, via youtube and EWR. It just happened I was flipping around through wrestlers on Extreme Warfare Revenge and the name Necro Butcher jumped out at me for just being a cool name. Well I evantully searched to see if it was a real wrestler and found out it was. I have watched just a ton of his matches on Youtube and he easily has to be the closest thing to another Foley there is out there. In the past Death matches were Barb Wire, an exploding spot, maybe a little bit of fire and thats it. The CZW (and for that matter IWA-MS) Death Matches are absolutely brutal. Between the Light Tubes, Barb Wire, Tables stacked with Barb Wire and Glass, Fire, Staplers, Cactus, among any item you can think of. They have gone far beyond anything ECW was willing to go.

There are those that mock CZW and the death match fans for liking what is little more then “garbage wrestling” and wrestlers who aren’t exactly trained. Let me say something here. Wrestling is staged for the most part. The endings are known before the match, and depending on who it is they might have even scripted everything beforehand. So if you are watching wrestling for a “technical” display then why not watch Greco Wrestling or Amateur Wrestling? Why watch professional wrestling for technical wrestling? Does it matter how cleanly someone can execute a snap suplex? When people pretend to fight, would you rather see a half assed punch, or a full punch? Would you rather someone get hit by a chair while covering their head, or see them get nailed by light tubes which you can’t fake. If its going to be fake, it might as well hurt.

Necro Butcher is someone who whenever you see him, you know he’s going to put on a show worth your money. That was one of the running themes of Foley’s first book, if the fans paid, give them a reason to have paid. As you watch him brawl, not only can he take a beating but he can give it. The masters of pain match between Brain Damage and Necro Butcher is a perfect example. Both of them are able to give it and take it like no one else. The video I’m adding to this post is the perfect example, as at the end is Necro Butcher walking back to the ring after losing a death match tournament. I’ve never seen someone with a back that looked like that still be alive.  In the end you can say what you want and what you believe, if you think that he’s out there cause he’s just some kind of pain freak, but it looks for all intents and purposes that he is out there to entertain the fans. Be it 100 or 1,000 fans he seems to give his all. What more can you ask for in a wrestler? That he know how to give a perfect suplex? Whats that matter?

Necro showed up in “The Wrestler” which tells you something. When even mainstream wants the most hardcore wrestler in America, its Necro Butcher. In the end it’ll probably be the highlight of his career to have been in such a prestigous movie. And to spend most of the movie with a dollar bill stapled to his forehead. But in this general downperiod for professional wrestling, its tough to find whose going to be the next big thing or the next this or that. But in Necro Butcher we might have more then just the next Mick Foley, but Possibly the next Terry Funk. A maniac who will wrestle far into his 50s, and maybe while he’s in his older days he can like The Funker get tied into an up and coming ECW like promotion and be able to catch a new wave of gratitude and fans.

For all those that mock the wrestling style of Necro and of CZW, just look at the fact that following the CZW Vs ROH angle Necro has managed to catch on with ROH. ROH is easily considered the third promotion in America behind TNA and among the Smart Marks its held in high regard. At a later point I’ll have to remark on the stupidity of a term like Smart Mark, but thats for another day. For today spend the time to search Youtube for videos of Necro Butcher, and let me leave you with one that I like.

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By , February 14, 2009 2:57 pm

“If you’ve ever seen a one trick poney, you’ve seen me”

And so goes the only Bruce Springsteen song I’ll ever like. If you saw “Beyond The Mat” a few years ago, then you’ll like The Wrestler and get where its coming from. The Ram seems to be a combined potrait of three of the stars from BYM. Mick Foley was a main eventer for BYM, and so thats his past, his present is Terry Funk willing to do anything in the ring and still out there wrestling with kids young enough to be his kids and finally his future is Jack The Snake Roberts out there wrestling for that one more chance to capture the magic again with nothing existing outside the ring for him.

It should come as no surprise that Vince tried to minimalize any attention to The Wrestler. There are a million Rams out there. Just go to youtube and type in Jake The Snake Roberts and you’ll probably find an interview of a high Roberts rambling about the good old times. Type in “Iron Sheik” on youtube and you’ll probably find an interview with a drunk Sheik who appears to have lost any line between reality and wrestling. Also add in that the Sheik can barely walk anymore due to his injuries in the ring. Any number of wrestlers bodies have fallen apart, BTM opens with Funk, who at a doctors office is informed that his “Good Knee” is so bad he shouldn’t be able to walk on it anymore. Just as the NFL is having to deal with these vetreans of the league who built it up, the last thing Vince wants is a revolt of old wrestlers. Old men who were once heroes to hundreds of thousands of people in the old days are unable to stand, walk, even sometimes to think clearly. Yet without a wrestlers union, there is no voice for these old wrestlers.

Theres really not much to the plot that you haven’t heard. The story picks up twenty years after the high point of Ram’s (Mickey Rourke’s) career. He’s down to living in a trailer, working at an Acme and doing small shows on the side. Thats really all I want to get into without ruining more of the plot. Basically if you’ve never seen BTM think of the Ram as Hulk Hogan if he had slowly died off after leaving WWF instead of re-inventing himself. The Movie is well worth watching if you can catch it, and I can’t say enough good about it.

There is one downside to the movie, or at the very least something they missed. Although for two of the matches Ram is in front of major crowds for major independents (ROH and CZW) in which it is believable for the fans to get behind him, the matches in the Gymnasium for what is little more then an independent show is not only too packed for an indy show, but the fans are too responsive. They should have had at least one show at a half filled high school gym with disintrested fans who heckle the wrestlers. Anyone thats been to one of those smaller shows knows exactly what I’m talking about. It would have perfected just how far the Ram had fallen.

My other minor complaint is that this is called “The Ressurection of Mickey Rourke”. Well maybe I haven’t watched it a million times since it came out on DVD, but wasn’t he Marv in Sin City? To me the Marv section of Sin City easily carried the rest of the movie. Not only that, but Mickey comes off almost as a somewhat more Human verison of Marv. Considering the director Fought to have Mickey as the Ram, and gave up budget money from Fox to have Mickey, I think its not too much of a stress to say that he had seen Mickey as Marv and thought that would work for the Ram Charector.