Andrew POE!

Just saw two more movies. I may have found something besides doing Platinum trophy hunting on PlayStation: Carol (Netflix, since it's coming off the service next week) - Great movie and Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara are absolutely gorgeous. American Fiction - Just saw this in theaters. I loved the commentary and what the movie was trying to say. The ending did my head in. It can be compared to a Woody Allen movie minus the main character getting the girl. Jeffrey Wright's character is much better written than any characters from Woody Allen though.

Just saw Drive-Away Dolls.

Just saw The Zone of Interest.

Why would they do that when they can make 'cinema' that people like Hideo Kojima love?

So I watched quite a number of films this week: Dune Part Two - Jesus Christ, this movie was dull. I was looking at my watch about an hour into the film. The Holdovers - '70s style movie with '80s style characters. After seeing Dune Part Two, this hit the spot and was better for me. Story, characters, character motivation, attention. There were moments that weren't that good (middle of the film was a bit ponderous). Anatomy of a Fall - Slower paced movie but really well done. A lot of the complaints I read online were that it was 'boring,' which wasn't the case for me. Mission: Impossible II - Holy shit 2000 was a strange time for movies. Unintentionally hilarious and just bad at times. I loved the first 30 minutes though and it was very stylish. Problem is it turns into "Tom Cruise shoots dudes, you never see him shoot them, you see a cut to them getting shot." And motorcycle jousting made me bust out laughing. Repo Man - Bud wouldn't want Ethan Hunt in his car either. The movie doesn't offer any explanation as to the car or the purpose of it, which is the point.

The Sinking City 2 got announced and Persona 3 Reload will get DLC.

I wonder how things would be different if Mike Santana got out of his own damn way in AEW and patched things up with Ortiz. Maybe they've would had multiple tag title reigns. Well, Mike Santana will do okay for awhile due to AEW connections then languish on the indies.

And mention overpriced tequila that The Rock owns, which if you have to watch Black Adam you'll need it. The Rock is playing chess and Seth Rollins is playing checkers. Friday will be a massacre. Rollins' career will die the same year as CM Punk's did in the main event.

If Eddie Kingston decides to start using "Holy War" as his theme, it wouldn't be a bad idea.

I saw pics of Sting's son in his American Sting gear from the '90s and I was amazed at how much his son looked like him during that time. I wouldn't say no to either of his sons continuing the Sting gimmick (El Hijo del Sting and Sting Jr. if you will) after getting trained somewhere or getting a lot more matches under their belt. If they're decent wrestlers, they would be perfect against Charlie Dempsey and Brogan Finlay in NXT or either of them against Dominik Mysterio in WWE for battle of second generation wrestlers. He'll just do a Coffin Drop off the mountain.

The closest Nintendo has done was reduce working hours and Iwata actually reduced his own salary so employees could keep getting paid during the last economic downturn. Some American CEOs would scoff at having to surrender their pay to help their employees and mumble about communism and refuse to do it.

I also started on Helldivers II with playing with a buddy of mine last night. The game isn't easy at all. I do want to go back and try to Platinum Helldivers on PS4 though.

Yeah, it was in poor taste. Problem is, there wasn't really a way for The Rock to be a heel since he would get cheered anyway. So the old standby of making fun of the town/the people in the town was used. What really got people booing was The Rock saying he's on the TKO board and for Seth Rollins to be careful otherwise 'he'll take the title from him and give it to someone else.' The Rock as Vince McMahon (in terms of the evil corporation, not the weird/gross/sexual shit) would get people to hate him. The Rock saying he runs the WWE, not HHH, really got him booed. He should lean more into that than below the belt comments about the town they're in this week.

I agree. The problem is....building up two of the most over faces in the company this way is almost insurmountable. Even if Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins win at WM40 and Rhodes wins against Reigns, how am I as a fan supposed to buy into it? Even a casual/lapsed fan won't see Rollins/Rhodes on the same level as The Rock. In a few months, The Rock will be away doing whatever and not on TV and it'll be back to Reigns pulling the football away for the next challenger to try to kick it. (Unless Rhodes finally win the titles at WM40, then it'll be something different)

That's my point about it killing Seth Rollins being able to be over. Yes, Rollins is a 'fighting champion,' but as Roman Reigns points out, the title is a second place prize to his titles. The Rock completely destroyed his character last night. All of that should lead to a heel (Reigns/Rock) comeuppance and Rollins getting rewarded, but I'm not holding my breath. What's to stop Rollins from going completely off script next week on Smackdown and say, "You know what? Fck this. Since you (Rock) said you'll give my title to someone else, here take it. I quit. I'll call Dean Ambrose and go to AEW."

The Rock's promo essentially killed Seth Rollins and Cody Rhodes as far as being over and giving anyone a reason to want to watch WM40 this year. It came close to killing the always mediocre and boring Roman Reigns from being over too. I halfway expected a response to Reigns' "Rock acknowledge me" to be "Roman Reigns, I acknowledge you....as the biggest piece of monkey crap The Rock has ever seen!"Then The Rock telling Reigns that before Cody Rhodes wanted to 'finish his stupid story,' they were going to fight and The Rock wanted to be "the head of the table." It's fine they went the way they did, but I have a hard time believing that Cody Rhodes & Seth Rollins will win at Night 1, much less Rhodes winning at Night 2.

Yeah, if you look at the release calendar for the rest of this year, we have too many games coming out at once. It's borderline impossible to play them all. Due to the volume of games, some people (including me) are having to play catchup with releases from years ago (stretching back to PS3/Xbox 360/Wii generation and for some further than that to PS2/Xbox/GameCube generation). As a hobbyist, you end up not buying anything or becoming selective on what's bought. Another crash might be the only thing that can slow down the releases.

It sadly just shows that game development (and video games in general) is not sustainable as an industry. Almost every company is poorly managed, poorly run companies. Except for maybe Nintendo at times. Although Nintendo has the bright idea of taking fan hobbyists to court over emulators and never allowing their back catalog to be playable if they have their way.

Yeah, we're going to have a scenario where we are paying $100+ for a single title AND there won't be physical copies. Based on the staff cuts and low operating profit, I think we're going to see Microsoft buying PlayStation + all their studios in the next few years. PlayStation will still make PlayStations, but it'll be under Microsoft's direction. PSN and Xbox Marketplace will still be there....but going into the same bucket at Microsoft. I've been saying that for awhile but it's hard not to read the tea leaves and seeing it happen. The Last of Us Part III will be the last PlayStation Studios published game.

My guess: Anthem is gearing for a tax writeoff of TNA in the next few years. Next year will be 10 years since they purchased the company. They aren't interested in growing TNA as a business or even care about drawing a gate or a buy rate, they just want to maintain a holding pattern until that time comes. Not sure why they are doing this while saying publicly they want to 'bring TNA closer to Anthem.' If that's the case, they'll sell the tape library/brand/company to AEW or WWE/TKO and recoup or take a loss in the sale.

Also keep Tony away from DVDVR and hope he doesn't reactive his account to respond.

Jerry Lynn is flipping out on Twitter about "that's ruining a cliffhanger" to ask if it's an injury or not. I don't get why they're doing that the last Dynamite before the PPV. But whatever, I just caught Dynamite the one week I could watch it on TBS.

It's nuts that this match is being put on a Saturday show a week or so before a PPV. Why Tony Khan didn't decide to pull back on it and save it for the last show before the PPV on Dynamite I don't know. This build up for the AEW PPV hasn't been that enticing to watch.

Yeah, Madison Rayne looked really awful and wrestled like she was underwater. Which caused Purrazzo to have to slow down too.

I missed all but the first 30 minutes. Deonna Purrazzo managed to injure Madison Rayne or come close to it with a dangerous move she shouldn't ever do again. I don't buy Daniel Garcia against Christian. I don't really see Christian as a champion or a wrestler either but more of a manager. I thought he was too broken down to wrestle anymore but I guess not. Orange Cassidy vs Mike Bennett was boring and meander quite a bit as a match. I don't see Orange Cassidy as a champion either, but Tony Khan does, so we get to see it. Wardlow's rant I thought would lead to a wrestler coming out and splashing cold water on it (Miro would have been perfect there for that). Instead, he rants about how he doesn't have the World title (without the Undisputed Kingdom coming out and asking him what's going on), he leaves, and I felt like it was pointless. The main event was decent but a mess. Audrey Edwards manages to hog the spotlight when the World champion Samoa Joe is standing there victorious. Didn't see why Joe didn't start yelling at her to get out of the ring, but whatever. The upper part of the arena was darken and I didn't see that many fans when the camera would cut over to the commentator's side of the arena.