S.K.o.S.

Ah.. so September is still free for a potential King of Trios. Good good.

Jay Lethals!

Jae's 2nd link sez: I get the point, but it's a little overblown. I'm not saying I need to relate to a character to be able to enjoy something, but there are books and movies that I've read or watched that I don't fully appreciate, and then I come back to them a few years later with the benefit of more life experience, and I understand what's going on in a way that I couldn't have before, even if I had taken the time to think reeeally hard about it. I'm struggling to think of a specific example but I know it's happened to me. Like I think an older person could relate to this book far more than a younger person could, and would enjoy it more for that reason. Why is that a bad thing? If someone feels that the more 'relatable' their art is, then the better it becomes, then I can see the problem. If you watch Office Space and go, "Wow, I have a shitty office job too! What a great movie, give it all the Oscars!" then yes, that's kind of lazy. But (and I'm not necessarily talking about this book in particular here) if a book or movie lines up with your life experience in a way that you didn't know was possible, like something you thought very few other people went through, then that can be a lot more valuable. I had never thought of the enjoyment of art as being the pursuit of truth either. I mean, a book with one author can really only be that author's version of "truth".

I saw Locke a couple of nights ago. Knew virtually nothing about it going in other than that the entirety of the movie is Tom Hardy in a car, driving somewhere, making and receiving phone calls for 90 minutes. But by about 5 minutes in, I had a total understanding of what was going on. It's pretty good, maybe like low-end top 15 for the year level - a good deal better than Buried or Phone Booth. Not to take away from Hardy's acting (he's very good, having to flip between emotions as he speaks with different people and hitting notes I've never seen from him before), but I'm pretty sure this could have worked almost as well with no visuals and only the audio. I can't think of another movie that would fit into that category.

Okay, don't laugh. Box office Transformers: Age of Extinction How To Train Your Dragon 2 X-Men: Days of Future Past Maleficent 22 Jump Street A Million Ways To Die In The West Edge of Tomorrow Lucy Expendables 3 Hercules Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Giver The Purge: Anarchy Sin City: A Dame To Kill For Jupiter Ascending Rotten Tomatoes How To Train Your Dragon 2 X-Men: Days of Future Past Godzilla Lucy Maleficent The Giver Edge of Tomorrow Sin City: A Dame To Kill For Expendables 3 A Million Ways To Die In The West Hercules Guardians of the Galaxy Transformers: Age of Extinction The Purge: Anarchy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tiebreak - Transformers: Age of Extinction - $356,428,767 I think a lot of people are going to regret putting Guardians of the Galaxy so high on their RT list. It's James Gunn directing Chris Pratt.

Podcast #1: Apology For Recent Interview Podcast #2: Apology For Podcast #1 Podcast #3: Apology For Podcast #2 and so on.

One does run into the occasional yarmulke or fez.

Right now we have 34 people in the pool, 31 of them put Godzilla on their RT list, and 19 of those people have it in the top 5. So it's going to hurt some people, but most of them are ok. I'm thinking Bryan Cranston has enough of a reputation that it was tough to put it too low.

Chaos, Edge of Tomorrow is on your box office list twice, at 9 and 14.

I'll put something together this week.

Since you mentioned it, I just wanted to point out that that moment was a bit of a turning point for me. Like up until then, it was a good time with the classroom banter, and I was enjoying it and finding it funny. Then a classmate kills himself and they decide to critique his suicide note and speculate on what STDs his girlfriend had, and it was like "Wait, these guys might actually be total dicks."

UPDATE 1 OF 21 - through May 8 Standings 1 MushroomJones - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 2 Ligerbusa - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 3 Super Ape - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 4 Sublime - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 5 Cameron Swift - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 6 The Veeg - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 7 The Natural - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 8 The Z - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 9 SorceressKnight - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 10 Control - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 11 Rippa - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 12 Death From Above - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 13 ivpvideos - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 14 hobo joe - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 15 Dr. Bathroom - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 16 Niners Fan in CT - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 17 JRGoldman - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 18 DreamBroken - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 19 The Damn Yeti - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 20 RossWB - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 21 caley - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 22 jaedmc - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 23 Mike Zeidler - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 24 Ultimo The Great - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 25 Kevin Wilson - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 26 blitzkrieg - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 27 Elsalvajeloco - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 28 CSC - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 29 Raziel403 - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 30 Paco - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 31 pipGofern - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 32 The Erotic Terrorist - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) 33 Hoffman - 0 points (0/0, tiebreak n/a) Box office 1 The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - $110,700,722 (7 days) Rotten Tomatoes 1 The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - 126/230 = 55% (7 days)

I did find Tony relatable, but it reminded me of someone trying to ask a girl to their high school prom, getting rejected, and not knowing how to take no for an answer. He never felt he got closure with Veronica, and when he was given the opportunity to reconnect with her, it was as if he was transported back to that teenage awkward phase that we (hopefully) eventually grow out of as we gain confidence in ourselves. In the late stages of the book, when he was sending Veronica e-mail after e-mail when she clearly wanted to be left alone, I was thinking "For god's sake, cut it out." I wanted him to stop contacting her more than I wanted to find out what was going on with Adrian. I agree that the letter he sent probably didn't have as much of an effect as he thought it did, but he's so isolated, going weeks between talking to anyone, that it leads to narcissism (so that he thinks he bears responsibility) and extreme navel-gazing. That's what I found regrettable.

Finished it last night. I'll write more later, but I had actually read one of the author's other books a couple of years ago, a non-fiction one called Nothing To Be Frightened Of which was sort of a memoir, but it focused on growing old and dying. The title had sort of a double meaning; people come to terms with dying and say that it's "nothing to be frightened of", but Julian isn't there yet, and he finds the possibility of oblivion after death, the nothingness, terrifying. So it's "nothing, to be frightened of". I liked this little excerpt from that book enough at the time to copy it down: So anyway, in this book, you do see little reflections of that same obsession with death. There's something early on about "that moment when time itself ceases to exist". And I felt like, if this author has characters kill themselves, given that he hates death so much himself, then it's got to really be for a super serious reason.

Just looking at some numbers here, and people seem REALLY uncertain about how The Giver is going to do with the critics. We have 31 people in the pool right now, including pipGofern. 16 people left The Giver off their RT list entirely, so only 15 people actually even ranked it. Then if you look at the 15 people who ranked it - it shows up at least once on every spot in peoples' RT lists except for last and second last. Like one person ranked it first, one person ranked it second, one person ranked it third, two people ranked it fourth, and it goes on like that. There is virtually no consensus about where it's going to end up.

edit: Never mind, got it.

It's cool. I kind of like how Captain New Japan seems to be mocking me for it. "You ignored the lessons learned from Identity Thief! Ah ha ha ha!"

I'm assuming that Bo Dallas picture was followed by a stiff backhand from a museum security guard.

Hat tip to Alan4L for loudly trumpeting the Dragon Gate Dead or Alive PPV. I've watched up to and including Ricochet vs. YAMATO (I think I've just got the six-way cage match left after that) and it's been very enjoyable. However I do notice that the older guys (Susumu, Mochizuki, Don Fujii) are having a little trouble keeping up with the DG undercard pace. I'm not criticizing the match quality at all, nobody's blowing spots or anything, but you can't help but notice that they're pouring sweat by the end of a match. I guess normally, guys would develop a "work smarter, not harder" mindset as they get older, but in DG you can't really do that because everything has to go so fast.

And ASM 2 made $91.6 million on its opening weekend. The closest recent comparison is Fast & Furious 6 last year, which made $97 million on its opening weekend and ended up 5th on the box office list.

We had a documentary festival here in Toronto that wrapped up yesterday. I saw a bunch of stuff, nothing amazing, but some of it was decent. 112 Weddings - A guy who shoots wedding videos decides to check back in on all the couples to see how they're doing now, and the movie covers about ten couples. Admittedly I was looking for some train wreck stuff, and two of the couples here are no longer together, but I ended up feeling bad for wanting to see it. Pretty painful to watch. I think my favorite segment was this couple where the wife ended up fighting clinical depression and didn't leave the house for over a year, which is obviously really bad, and even here she's still really down on herself, but it's clear that her husband still loves her and wants to make it work. The message that keeps coming up over and over is "we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into," even from the happy couples. Everything Will Be - This was about Vancouver's Chinatown. It focuses on about six or seven people - old woman who sells newspapers out on the street, security guy who shoos away homeless people, white guy who owns a cheese store that's been in his family for two generations, woman who owns a tea store, young artist who's gotten together enough money to be able to rent a store for one year, and a bunch of others. There was this interesting bar where they made drinks incorporating Chinese medicinal principles or something. Like hitting tuning forks and holding them against the glass so the water molecules can "absorb the energy". The whole idea is that this neighborhood is on its way out and condos are on their way in, and in a few decades it might not exist any more, so the movie is kind of a historical document. Meet The Patels - East Indian guy in his early 30s gets out of a relationship and decides to let his parents play matchmaker for him. The movie's shot by his younger sister. The family lives in the U.S., I think it was West Coast somewhere, but he ends up going on dates all over North America. Did you know in the modern Indian culture, they actually have resume-style documents that they pass around for this kind of thing? The guy's actually a comedian, and they don't make the movie into one big stand-up routine or anything, but he has an engaging personality (in spite of not doing too well on most of his dates) and there's a healthy dose of humor. Rich Hill - Won a grand jury prize at Sundance. This is about three kids growing up in a small, poor town. None of them are especially smart (there's some juggalo stuff - sorry to any juggalos who may be reading), their houses are in bad shape, and these kids probably don't have much of a future, but they're clearly good people, have families that love them, and everything is very beautifully shot and scored. Great example of making a potentially ugly, depressing subject into something that's at least a little uplifting. Judgment In Hungary - About the murder trial of four neo-Nazis accused of killing a bunch of Romanian gypsies in Hungary, including children. The judicial system is such that one judge hears everything and makes the final decision on his own, same as the Oscar Pistorius trial. The hook is that some of the authorities seem to feel the same way as the accused, so there are police reports that are incomplete or very poorly filled out (there's one where the cause of death is listed as "smoke inhalation" for someone who had a bullet wound in their head) and the camera even catches people sharing smiles with the defendants when they're supposed to be impartial. To be honest, though, I found it pretty slow.

I was confused by the Air Jordan logos on Batista's boots. Not sure if Nike actually makes wrestling boots or if he was wearing sneakers with some kind of leather slip-on over top of them.

Couple of things on the camera work in the 6-man: Liked that they didn't show Rollins setting up his dives, so he seemed to fly in from out of nowhere both times. Did not like that they cut back to the ring for a bit during the crowd brawl, which reminded us that Batista and Reigns were lying there doing nothing for a very, very long time.

Next month at Payback, Cena vs. Little Johnny. "Cena is literally beating sense into this child!"

Spoilering just in case: