Cyanide

After a generally depressing last few months, hearing that this fucker is dropping in March (of 2017! THIS YEAR!) made me more irrationally happy than anything in a long time. Also: Team PS4.

I finally went through and made a concerted effort to sort out the real contenders for my list... and got a count of like 185. Then I went and did the most brutal cut possible (with the intention of adding a lot back in)... and got 95. I'm committed to keeping my list at 100, but boy is it just going to be a firing squad of darlings in the process.

Unpimped so far (/also maybe just some fucked up movies I still want to talk about?): The Man from Nowhere (Lee, 2010) I Saw the Devil (Jee-woon, 2010) Winter's Bone (Granik, 2010) Kill List (Wheatly, 2011) In Darkness (Holland, 2011) The Hunter (Nettheim, 2011) Bellflower (Glodell, 2011) The Skin I Live In (Almodóvar, 2011) The Raid: Redemption (Evans, 2011) The Cabin In The Woods (Goddard, 2012) The Hunt (Vinterberg, 2012) Blue Ruin (Saulnier, 2013) Dallas Buyers Club (Vallée, 2013) The Raid 2 (Evans, 2014) Whiplash (Chazelle, 2014) Birdman (Iñárritu, 2014) Finding Dory (Stanton, 2016) The Nice Guys (Black, 2016)

Unpimped so far: American Psycho (Harron, 2000) Battle Royale (Fukasaku, 2000) Donnie Darko (Kelly, 2001) Training Day (Fuqua, 2001) Gangs of New York (Scorsese, 2002) Catch Me If You Can (Spielberg, 2002) Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (Tarantino, 2003) Oldboy (Park, 2003) District 13/District B13 (Morel, 2004) The Aviator (Scorsese, 2004) Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (Tarantino, 2004) Primer (Carruth, 2004) Layer Cake (Vaughn, 2004) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Black, 2005) Jarhead (Mendes, 2005) Syriana (Gaghan, 2005) The Prestige (Nolan, 2006) Pan's Labyrinth (del Toro, 2006) Michael Clayton (Gilroy, 2007) Zodiac (Fincher, 2007) American Gangster (Scott, 2007) Sunshine (Boyle, 2007) Hellboy II: The Golden Army (del Toro, 2008) In Bruges (McDonagh, 2008) Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino, 2009)

Unpimped so far: Miller's Crossing (Coen, 1990) The Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991) Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino, 1992) Glengarry Glen Ross (Foley, 1992) True Romance (Scott, 1993) The Shawshank Redemption (Darabont, 1994) Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994) Natural Born Killers (Stone, 1994) Se7en (Fincher, 1995) Apollo 13 (Howard, 1995) Casino (Scorsese, 1995) Trainspotting (Boyle, 1996) Fargo (Coen, 1996) Good Will Hunting (Van Sant, 1997) L.A. Confidential (Hanson, 1997) Boogie Nights (Anderson, 1997) The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999)

Unpimped so far: The Shining (Kubrick, 1980) Blade Runner (Scott, 1982) Blood Simple (Coen, 1984) The Killer (Woo, 1989)

Unpimped so far: The Conversation (Coppola, 1974) The Deer Hunter (Cimino, 1978) And double pimping Badlands because I almost forgot about it and fuck what a movie.

Unpimped so far: The Bad Sleep Well (Kurosawa, 1960) Inherit The Wind (Kramer, 1960) Harakiri (Kobayashi, 1962) Sanjuro (Kurosawa, 1962) High and Low (Kurosawa, 1963) The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1966) Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, 1967) Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969) The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Hill, 1969)

That bleary-eyed moment when you're all "goddammit, I think District 13 is a better movie than Paths of Glory, and I don't care who knows it!" This is gonna be something.

Unfortunately, NJPW World isn't the best resource when it comes to archives, and is nowhere near WWE Network in that regard. Pre-2012, there's no more than a couple dozen matches for each year (with most videos being individual matches, aside from the Dome shows). Going back to the 70s, 1979 has the most matches tagged at 11, and 1989 leads the 80s with 34...

Woof. Full disclosure: I go to the dealer for almost everything with my car because I'm an idiot and paranoid, so I'm not one to get on someone's case for ending up paying too much for service. But I got an alignment with a set of four new tires from Sears over the past spring and that ran $89.99. Double checking now, that's their bottom of the barrel "6 month" service, with a 1 year alignment running $114.99 and lifetime with free re-alignment clocking in at $189.99. So I really don't know where Goodyear is coming up with THAT sort of premium. =/

That's so awesome. Enjoy! I had forgotten about the whole Cody Rhodes angle - that does seem like something they could transition into pretty easily now, for better or worse. Not since the Destruction shows, I don't think, but Naito's got a mystery partner for the World Tag League, so we'll see.

My kneejerk response to Shibata dropping the NEVER belt to EVIL was he finally actually needed rest and/or surgery for all the shit that's fucked up with him (why else sink a potential marquee singles bout for the title at WK?). But he's Shibata and they're burning the rematch at the Singapore show next week and he's doing Tag League with Nagata. I doubt he takes the title right back, so maybe they have other things in mind for him (unless he does, and then the rubber match is at WK. SPECULATION~). Given the fallout from the NOAH match I'd assume Shibata/Shiozaki II is still viable, but all the NOAH sale stuff is probably a huge monkey wrench right now. Speaking of World Tag League, I'd love to see that Shibata/Nagata team take it all, but really it's hard to see anyone but Goto/Ishii coming out on top, and I'd say there's a pretty good chance they take the titles off GoD at WK. Other than that, maybe an LIJ challenge for the six-man titles? If EVIL is still wearing gold come January, maybe they could do SANADA/BUSHI/whoever the new member is.

There's a handful of other stuff I'd risk putting in here, but I've watched Fury Road four times now and holy shit is basically everything about it perfect and I could watch it forever. I'll feel dirty foisting something that's less than 18 months old so high up, but I'd be shocked if it fell out of my top 20 or so at this point.

Because I get hung up on these things, I'm curious where people come down on greatest vs best vs favorite. Like, if we're doing film-as-art, Seven Samurai isn't getting far away from the top, but doing gun-to-your-head-desert-island-picks, I might actually scrounge up 100 flicks I'd watch before it again. (Seven Samurai would probably end up in there either way, but I'm going with the Kurosawa example because I had a summer where I burned through most of his filmography and dug a lot of stuff but remember very little and where the fuck would I actually shoehorn in High and Low or Drunken Angel or The Bad Sleep Well when this is all said and done)

Road to Power Struggle Day 1 Not much here besides the junior stuff. Ospreay/Finlay was fun but nothing outstanding, and I'm a big fan of both at this point. Roppongi Voice/Team CMLL was good, if a bit hamstrung by the need to keep teasing Beretta's continuing tension with Rocky. But what you're really here for is Young Bucks/ACH and Ishimori, and it is every bit of the glorious junior team spotfest you want it to be, assuming you get down with that sort of thing. Maybe a bit overlong, and freighted with near falls as you may expect, but it delivers what you think it would and then some.

That seems a little harsh. He's definitely not the guy you're going to for high-level story telling, but I can understand the appreciation of him as a big, loud brawler with an almost cartoonish sensibility (complete with prototype supervillain laugh) to working a match. It works for where he's at now, or at the very least doesn't really hinder anyone else by letting him do his thing and pop the crowd and be a different flavor among the Third Generation/gatekeeper types.

Matt Sydal being well and truly dead in Japan for the time being reminded me, hey, King of Pro Wrestling was a thing I watched! Also I'm making this the NJPW events topic through the end of the year (to hit the sweet spot between worrying about cluttering the puro catchall thread and making a bunch of sparse topics for stuff) unless overruled! Back on topic, the junior tag stuck with me most from KoPW. Just a ton of fun with a bunch of near falls I totally bit on, great heeling by the Young Bucks, and David Finlay is a revelation now that they're letting him live a little with this Ricochet team and the six-man run. I feel like he should be a favorite here, and I don't know what I want more: a glorious, hairy, hyperkinetic tag team or match with Finlay and Trevor Lee. The mains were good but holy shit did they rack up the snowflakes. Shibata/O'Reilly was very good but exactly what you'd expect, Omega/Goto didn't do anything for me the G1 Final didn't, and the main was great but also I watched it after work on Tuesday and was fading in and out by the end. So - whatever rating that translates to!

"Passport trouble." Matt Sydal arrested in Japan for possession of cannabis

Such a fun show. I was on the lower level, and it basically seemed like almost all "in" fans - tons of Nakamura/Asuka/Roode/NXT shirts, people with New Japan/indy gear, the Delete chants - with families scattered in. Awesome venue for a card too (aside from an inability to handle parking and being scheduled against a homecoming across the street and having to drive through dark ass farm roads and holy shit do I need a headlight restoration), with what seemed like an intimate environment anywhere in the house. The openers were exactly perfect for what they had to do, TM61 got to look legit while keeping AOP dominant, and No Way Jose's entrance got like a per capita Hogan in '85 pop (the Drifter still being a heat magnet didn't hurt). Roode/Cedric was a really goddamn great match. Holy shit is that entrance over, and watching Cedric basically blossom into a superstar through his WWE exposure is awesome. Asuka got to do Asuka things, and the main was a ton of fun. There is something surreal about watching Nakamura, Joe, and Aries headline a card for a WWE brand (sidebar: holy shit I saw Shinsuke Nakamura in person in goddamn Bel Air what the actual fuck), and face Perfect 10 Tye is something to behold in his element. So, so good across the board.

I checked earlier and Itami was gone in addition to the Revival getting axed some time back (but at least The Drifter will be in the building!), so I'm very much hopeful this is how it'll work out.

Well, I've got good news and bad news! Oh wait, no only bad news.

Couple thoughts on the other main cards. Hiroshima: Kobe:

In a world where the WWE gave a shit about him, I was thinking you could use someone like Sami Zayn to go over him as a never-say-die underdog by working a Villanova in '85 type angle where he's completely physically overmatched, but works as perfect a match as he possibly can to take the win in the end. He hits another opening match Helluva Kick, gets lucky with the ropes and being able to break a hold or get to the outside when he needs to, utilizes his springboard offense and stuff like that torpedo swinging DDT on the outside, uses Brock's momentum against him to get him into the Koji Clutch, all that. Between Zayn's big match A-game and an increasingly frustrated and disoriented Brock, it wouldn't be the most outlandish result.

Anyone keeping up with this tour? Tokyo was pretty skippable aside from the mains, I thought. Shibata/Fish: KUSHIDA/BUSHI: Also, any scuttlebutt on the new LIJ member?