The Z

Sure, why not. Here's my list. I've bolded every movie that didn't make the cut: Very surprised that I'm the biggest Linklater and Baumbach supporter on the board. A lot of movies on my list I'm very surprised that didn't make the cut (Little Women, Boyhood, Shutter Island, Blindspotting, Dope... to name a few). Judging by the new thread, Frances Ha seems to be the movie with the votes that didn't make the Top 248.

Oh, and while I do understand not having more outsiders in the tournament, I don't understand how a promotion that has Dick Togo on their roster doesn't put him in their Super Juniors tournament and gives us DOUKI instead. ?

Full line-up for this year's BOSJ: Ryusuke Taguchi Master WATO SHO Robbie Eagles Hiromu Takahashi BUSHI El Desperado Yoshinobu Kanemaru DOUKI Taiji Ishimori Only one block, which I expected. The line-up is a bit disappointing with Eagles being the only Gaijin in the tournament, but understandable given the situation. However they also announced a Super J Cup for December 12th with this line-up: El Phantasmo Clark Connors TJP ACH Blake Christian Chris Bey Rey Horus Lio Rush This line-Up is awesome! I don't approve of using the Super J Cup moniker, though. Also, why no Alex Zayne? ? When are they going to announce the Tag League line-up? I'm still holding out hope for a looooooooooong overdue debut there.

Well, I seem to be the one person who's very surprised about this placement. Once upon a Time in Hollywood is so far the first and hopefully only Tarantino I did not like, which is something I never expected to happen, because every other other Tarantino movie is at least a 9/10 in my book. This doesn't even feel like a Tarantino movie. An absolute masterpiece! Inception being #1 on my ballot was the one thing I didn't even have to think about, a foregone conclusion.

These are both from last year and both are hilarious. He had the audience in the palm of his hands. R.I.P.

Well, The Good Dinosaur hasn't dropped, yet. Surely I'm not the only one, who voted.... never mind. ?

There were multiple minor things that were always blown way out of proportion. I think at some point he said something about gay pride parades not being necessary anymore, because they already achieved equality in his mind or something like that. This might have been a bit insensitive to the issue, but they painted him as this massive homophobe, because of this. This was possibly his last tweet before he left wrestling: Fans were also admittedly rightly upset, because he never paid refunds for the last Lucha Forever shows that were cancelled, but as far as I know he was left in massive debt after the promotion closed down.

I hope the woke Twitter mob that bullied him out of wrestling is feeling really good about themselves right about now. I once drove two hours primarily for a match he was booked for. He unfortunately didn't show up, but I was still holding out hope for a comeback and that I would be able to see him live one day. There's no doubt in mind, he would be in NXT UK are some other major place right now, if he didn't quit. Very sad about Karsten as well. Here's a video of his first return to wrestling after his first brain tumor:

That was honestly probably my favorite tournament match, but I thought I might be alone in this. Really glad you enjoyed it as well! Day 5 (9/26) was probably the most skippable show of the tournament so far, with only the main event (Shiozaki/Kitamiya) really worth watching. All the big three matches in today's final tournament show (KENOH/Sugiura, Nakajima/Marufuji and Shiozaki/Kiyomiya) were really good again, but once again I would go with the Nakajima match as my favorite of the day. Can I also just say that I really enjoy this smaller tournament format with only six competitors per block. I love the G1 Climax, have watched all the shows so far and plan to watch all the remaining shows, but 19 tournament shows can be "a bit" overwhelming. If this one was 19 days as well, I don't think I would have checked it out at all.

I liked Midnight in Paris well enough, but this must have been someone else.

Oh man. I just finished watching the brilliant 1988 thriller The Vanishing. So I went on Letterboxd to see what other movies Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu starred in when a movie poster triggered an ancient memory. Somewhere around 10-15 years ago I had invited some friends over and they were pretty late, so I was flipping through TV channels, when I suddenly stumbled upon a woman fucking a chimpanzee. I couldn't believe, what I was seeing. Naturally, I did what everyone in my situation would have done and kept on watching for another 10-15 minutes until I frankly got bored and moved on. Later, when my friends arrived I told them about what I had just seen and they didn't believe me. Ever since then I was wondering what fucked up movie this was and why it aired on free television... and now I know. It was a French movie from 1986 called Max mon amour starring Charlotte Rampling. It seems to be rather obscure with only 905 registered viewings on IMDB. So now you know about this movie as well and here's a clip:

I'm not surprised I'm in the minority of people who liked Prometheus, but I thought the Planet of the Apes trilogy would get more love here. A rare trilogy where all three movies are good and each sequel is better than the previous film, the third one being a near perfect movie in my opinion.

I just posted about watching N-1 Victory in the general thread. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's better than New Japan, but it's great! For the last few years, as with most people I assume, the only Japanese promotion I've watched regularly was NJPW, every other promotion I've only checked out sporadically with a show here and there. But if NOAH is always as good as this, I definitely will follow regularly again. I even want to check out that super-long Fujita/Shiozaki match, that people have been plugging.

Speaking of NOAH, by complete coincidence I took two weeks off from work this week and next week, without even realizing what time it is. (Well, not really by coincidence, I would be at wXw Catch Grand Prix right about now, if it wasn't for Corona.) Long story short, I'm now completely caught up on both G1 Climax and N-1 Victory. N-1 Victory is really good actually. I can't believe there's activity on this part of the board again and I'm the only one who's watching this. NOAH in 2020 seems to be mostly beefy guys and guys who kick each other really hard. Especially the latter is very much to my liking. Katsuhiko Nakajima might be my new favorite wrestler. I mean he's always been great, but now he's just some bastard, who kicks other people's faces off with no remorse. Kazushi Sakuraba and Masaaki Mochizuki are also really good additions in this. When Sakuraba had his last run in New Japan, I didn't think that much of him, but I'm really digging him here. The various tags and six-man tags before and inbetween tournament matches are really good, too, actually. This is the most I've enjoyed NOAH in years. Matches I would highly reccomend so far: Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Kenou (Day 1) Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Masaaki Mochizuki (Day 2) Naomichi Marufuji vs. Takashi Sugiura (Day 3) Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Shuhei Taniguchi (Day 4 Afternoon) Naomichi Marufuji vs. Kenou (Day 4 Evening) Go Shiozaki vs. Masaaki Mochizuki (Day 4 Evening)

Did AEW just plagiarize this small-time British wrestling promotion or is it just me who thinks those two logos look awfully similar?

Yes, wXwNOW, it's €9.99/month. They haven't put anything for free on YouTube in years, so it's either that or "you know what".

Had to collect my thoughts a bit after the last weekend. This was my third year in a row attending 16 Carat Gold. I think the overall match quality was a bit lower this year than the previous two years, there was a lot of stuff that was just mediocre and of course the David Starr thing (though expected) left a bitter taste in everyone's mouth. However the matches that were good, were really REALLY good. So I put everything from the weekend that I consider absolutely must-see in a handy list and ranked them. I'm putting this in spoiler tags for the unrealistic case, that someone's reading this who wants to watch the shows unspoiled.

I assume everyone's already been waiting for my annual 16 Carat Gold post. OK, I Know nobody cares, but here it is anyways. Full line-up of this year's 16 Carat Gold participants: "Speedball" Mike Bailey Chris Ridgeway Shigehiro Irie Black Taurus Puma King Alexander James Daniel Makabe Eddie Kingston Jurn Simmons Cara Noir Marius Al-Ani Lucky Kid Lio Rush The Rotation Julian Pace Bandido Alex Shelley will wrestle as a special attraction on Night 2, WALTER will only appear on the Sunday matinee event. David Starr vs. Bobby Gunns for the wXw World Championship will headline Night 2, where Starr will put his wXw career on the line. And of course Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda at Ambition (as well as Ethan Allen vs. Luke Jacobs). Overall the direction of wXw has been pretty poor lately, but they never disappoint at 16 Carat and I think this line-up is pretty fantastic. I actually don't think you could have put a better line-up together in this current Indie landscape where WWE and AEW have signed up 90% of the wrestlers. So many potentially great first-time match-ups you never would have dreamed of (Makabe/Ridgeway, Rush/Bailey, Taurus/Kingston, Bandido/Irie and many more).

He did say that many many times, but on the other hand money talks. ? For what it's worth he's barely working any Indies anymore, not even the WWE-affiliated ones. He was the head trainer of the wXw Academy and he handed that position over to someone else in January of this year. I also remember a time, when he was only working for wXw and said on podcasts he has no interest in working the Indies, especially talking very negatively about what he called "dream match factories" like PWG and Revolution Pro. A year later he was working for both of those promotions and everywhere else.

...and Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda

Does anyone know what's going on with Astro City? After the Ongoing was finished Busiek announced the series would continue in OGN form, but that was in January of 2018 and I couldn't find any more news since then. With Vertigo no longer being a thing, is it safe to say it's dead? Would be a damn shame...

Surely this has to be amongst the weirdest matches you could book in the year 2019?

I hope someone else wins the title from Amale before then. Bringing Satomura over to wrestle her would be a waste, she's... not good.

Needs more Kanemoto.

They finally completed the line-up for this year's wXw World Tag Team Festival. They changed the tournament from an 8-team round robin tournament (2 blocks of 4) to a 12-team single elimination tournament this year. Mexablood (Bandido & Flamita) Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch WRSTLING (David Starr & Eddie Kingston) Aussie Open (Mark Davis & Kyle Fletcher) WorkHorsemen (Anthony Henry & JD Drake) Anti-Fun Police (Chief Deputy Dunne & Los Federales Santos Jr.) Timothy Thatcher & Veit Müller The Crown (Jurn Simmons & Alexander James) Arrows of Hungary (Icarus & Dover) Jay-AA (Absolute Andy & Jay Skillet) RISE (Ivan Kiev & Pete Bouncer) Vollgasteren (Julian Pace & Leon van Gasteren) The finals will be a four-way with the current tag team champions WALTER & Ilja Dragunov gong directly to the finals. The reason this is happening is because WWE are having NXT:UK tapings on the same days as Day 1 and 2 of the tournament. I don't like the change to the single elimination format and especially not the four-way as the final and overall I don't think the line-up is as strong as last year, but there's still plenty to love here. They also released the line-ups for the Ambition Wildcard and Femmes Fatales tournaments, which are happening as matinee events on Saturday and Sunday. Femmes Fatales: Lufisto, Faye Jackson, Sweet Saraya, Lana Austin, Session Moth Martina, Leyla Hirsch, Sammii Jayne, Amale, Wesna, Baby Allison Ambition: Daniel Makabe, Dominic Garrini, Scotty Davis, Damon Moser, Alexander Dean, Rust Taylor, Kevin Lloyd, James Runyan. Also Timothy Thatcher vs. Oney Lorcan is happening as a superfight on Ambition. Should be a fun weekend.