S.K.o.S.

There hasn't been any talk yet here of what this does to the indies. The EVOLVE iPPV that I watched last night cost $15, which is a perfectly reasonable price, and I personally would pay it again in the future, but it starts to seem like a lot less of a bargain now. And maybe it's not even a matter of value for money. Maybe some people will be much less interested in seeing what's out there on the indies when they're already full up on wrestling from the all-you-can-eat buffet that the network is gonna be. Whoever writes EVOLVE's e-mail updates (Gabe? I dunno) had a few paragraphs on this the other day, comparing WWE to Wal-Mart. And that's not to demonize them, but they're a huge company who has decided to throw their weight around and change the price points on things in a significant way. It's a very apt comparison. They recognize that the reason WWE is doing this is to make themselves money on the TV rights, not to put the indies out of business, but it's still going to have a big effect. In the end, they said "We've just got to be that much better now." Hopefully, competition will be a positive thing for as many people as possible. It did make me feel like I have more of a responsibility to keep supporting their product (and if I got worked, so be it).

Re the EVOLVE iPPV: Watched it as well. Felt much the same as you guys. Baretta-Nese was my MOTN, which surprised me because I wasn't expecting much from them. Hero-Ricochet had a kind of Malenko-Mysterio at Halloween Havoc feel to me, in the sense that Hero didn't really let Ricochet up to do much flying. Ricochet did seem very comfortable with mat wrestling, and he did get some flying in, but I wanted something more like Ricochet-Claudio at BOLA from a couple years back, where Ricochet is either flying or being obliterated. That was my first time seeing Uhaa Nation. A guy that size doing a standing SSP... damn. But yeah, it was a very good show, no bad matches. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, they have two more iPPVs tonight and tomorrow. For me personally, there's no way I'd pay for more than one show in a weekend, but it's good that we at least have the option to watch them live if we want. Editing to add: YES. That was one of the first things I noticed. I was feeling bad for them because there were so many empty seats. Then they go on commentary "We've got a jam-packed crowd here tonight" and it's like "Uh, really?"

I wanted to suggest this but I was hoping you'd all wait until Canada got on board. I'm wondering if there might be ways to get around the no-Canada thing. There are certainly ways to get at the Netflix USA video library from a Canadian computer.

It's at 3% now. Village Voice gave it a positive review for having lots of shirtless guys. I'm not kidding.

I was gonna ask which of their weekend Florida shows are on iPPV, and then I checked, and all three of them are. Oy! But yeah, I'm thinking the Tampa one looks like the best of the bunch.

I love the show, but that third episode where they're keeping the basketball player in the hotel room may be the single worst episode in the entire series.

Just heard an interview with Kevin Weekes where he must've said "except Rick Nash" three or four times. "Everyone on this team is a great player having a great year... with the exception of Rick Nash."

I didn't think I'd seen a whole lot this year, but I've watched 21 of those 100, so I should be able to put something together. The Crash Reel is not on that list and is well worth seeing. It's a different spin on the "head trauma in sports" debate - what if you were on the short list for the best in the world at your sport (snowboarding), and then nearly killed yourself doing it? Would you be able to go back? It'll be out on dvd in early February and still has a chance at a Best Documentary Oscar nomination.

To add to what's already been said, I thought the Bucks 4-way opener was perfectly good and the Makabe match was at least decent. Man that undercard was a slog to get through though.

Oh man. Just the way they planned it

Experienced my first "frost quakes" last night. I didn't know there was such a thing, but... Felt the house shaking once, and there was definitely a loud boom one other time. Right now it's -23C, -32 with the wind.

Bad News Barrett aside. Mine are: - No more Starbucks. I started out getting mochas at Starbucks, then switched to Americanos in the name of calorie-cutting, but there's no need to be paying Starbucks prices for black coffee when there's a coffee machine right there at work. So I'll still be drinking coffee, just paying much less for it. - Less restaurants, more cooking for myself. Again, this is an effort to save money. I'm not going to be winning any awards with my cooking, just trying to make it so that I'm not eating the exact same thing every night when I stay in. - No more playing Candy Crush. My shameful addiction must end. I've actually already broken this one and amended it to "No more playing Candy Crush in my home." - Watch more wrestling. Aiming to watch 50 full shows in 2014, not including weekly tv.

Something I've never heard of called BlackBook Magazine has a list of the 30 most anticipated movies of 2014. The 30 titles are in the spoiler, details on each are at the link. Biggest news to me is that the guy who did Snowtown is directing Fassbender in a Shakespeare adaptation. Still looking forward to how the masses will react to Enemy. http://www.bbook.com/30-anticipated-films-2014/

Saw it back in the spring when it came out. I'm typing on some kind of suboptimal tablet thing here so I don't want to make this real long, but I saw it as being about scientists playing God or trying to copy what nature does, along with the idea that what we see as love, even what we feel for a person we see as our soulmate, is really just chemical reactions and pheromones and whatever. That "those are just words, they don't mean anything" scene still stays with me months later. Shane Carruth was relatively open about discussing it, I think, and there are interviews with him out there if you want to go looking for them.

Tell me more. http://ca.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405188006.html It sorta looks like a film school textbook.

It's pretty fun. Seems like everyone's a bit uncomfortable with the whole improvised dialogue thing early on, but they settle down and get into it. Never thought I'd see Ti West and Olivia Wilde sharing a scene, but it's in there. And watch for the Swanberg cameo. On topic, my family doesn't exchange gifts, but my girlfriend got me a dvd of A Late Quartet and a book on Michael Haneke.

Eenteresting stuff on Grantland about the NBA considering a fixed draft cycle. http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/86940/the-nbas-possible-solution-for-tanking-good-bye-to-the-lottery-hello-to-the-wheel

As a person experiencing Red Zone for the first time today, I'm having the "it's really difficult to make myself step away for bathroom breaks" moment.

Steelers block a GB field goal attempt. After one Steeler player laterals the ball backwards (which should mean he had possession), another Steeler player knocks it out of bounds, and it's ruled that he batted the ball forwards, which gives GB the ball back and a first down. Tomlin tries to challenge the ruling but it's not a challengeable play. GB scores a td on the next play.

Can't be challenged. Laugh away

This batted ball thing in Pitt-GB seems like it could be pivotal.

GERMANY VS. SOUTH KOREA In Mother, a female high school student is found dead on a rooftop. Evidence points to a young man named Do-joon, who is somewhat mentally disabled, and he's arrested for murder. But an early incident involving a hit-and-run shows that Do-joon's memory is unreliable and he'll admit to things he didn't actually do. His mother (who is nameless - she's just listed as "Mother" in the credits) takes up his cause, trying to find the real killer on his behalf. This was directed by the same guy who did The Host and Memories of Murder, and it's actually expanding on one part of Memories for Murder - while the actors are different, there's a scene in that movie where cops consider pinning a killing on a mentally disabled man but run into problems with his mother. While I'm on the subject of police, by the way - after the whole deal with me finding the cops in The Chaser way too incompetent, I did notice that policemen in other Korean movies (like 4-Iron) aren't the greatest either. The ones in this movie, while far from perfect, are actually pretty darn good in comparison. There are very few characters, so there can't be too many possibilities for the culprit, yet there are still surprises. The movie's good at fake-outs; there are subtle touches, not for the purposes of symbolism, but to advance the plot and characterization, and also to mislead. And while I was misled, I also felt like I was picking up on everything I was supposed to, and being suckered in exactly like the movie wanted me to be. Everything made sense to me; for instance, the first person the mother suspects is exactly who I would have first suspected. There is actually one detail that I didn't understand, but I'm willing to believe that it was just something I missed and I'd catch it on a rewatch, because everything else was handled so well. I didn't go back to fully confirm this, but I believe a certain group of shots is used twice in the movie, right at the beginning with the mother watching her son across the street, and then again near the end when she has an unexpected visitor. They didn't exactly do anything revolutionary with it here, but the idea of using the same shots to represent two different moments in two different contexts in the same movie is just really appealing to me for some reason. For that matter, there's a scene at the very beginning over the opening credits of the mother dancing, and when you realize where that actually fits into the story, it's pretty great too. In Requiem, a girl named Michaela leaves her parents' home to go to college. It's pretty much the typical college experience, pulling all-nighters to finish essays, finding new and unusual ways to dress, and hitting dark, dingy clubs. But Michaela's also taking medication for some sort of condition, and there's talk of her missing a year of high school for health reasons. We eventually find out that she's epileptic, but this may be more than epilepsy, since she seems to have an extreme aversion to religious items. Or is this just her way of acting out against her strict religious parents? So yeah, the suggestion here is that Michaela's been possessed, but this isn't a horror movie; though it had its intense moments, I didn't find it frightening at all, and there are no special effects. It's sort of shot in documentary style, with the camera bobbing around enough to suggest it's handheld, and shots not always staying in focus. Immediately before particularly violent seizures (or possessions) the camera seems to sort of gather itself and move at a weird angle, letting you know that something isn't right. Obviously there's the question of whether Michaela is really possessed or not. They do a good job of keeping things ambiguous. Everything that Michaela does in the movie has a simple explanation, and a lot of what happens just seems like a teenager throwing a tantrum, so you'll probably lean towards her faking it... but her body contorts violently enough, and her unwillingness to touch religious symbols is just weird enough, that you wonder a little. Everyone around her suggests that she see a doctor or a psychiatrist at first, which makes sense, and I'm glad no one went straight to the possession theory. Part of Michaela's college experience is the beginning of a relationship with a young man named Stefan. One of the best parts in the movie is when Michaela is showing signs of being in poor health, Stefan brings her to her parents' house, her parents call in the priests, and they start straight in on an exorcism. The great part is that Stefan's sitting in the next room listening to Michaela shriek and howl, and you can tell he's thinking "I really need to do a better job of choosing my girlfriends." The ending, however, leaves a lot to be desired. After what feels like the setup to the ending, we just fade to black, and a written message tells us what happened. I would've much preferred to actually see the end of the story rather than being told about it. It has a very "we ran out of money, sorry" feel. And this might be nothing, but the dvd case says the movie is 93 minutes long, and by the time the credits finish rolling we're at 88 minutes. So, I don't know, maybe a closing scene got edited out. That's certainly what it feels like. South Korea's the easy winner here - Requiem wasn't bad, but not even close to being as good as Mother. SK got a little lucky with the ordering by having their last three movies be their three best, but I'm just glad that at least one of the movies in the finals turned out to be good. WINNER: SOUTH KOREA

I still think Germany was lucky to get by Belgium. (No question that I liked The Tunnel better than Pauline & Paulette, but if I'd drawn a different Belgian movie, who knows.) Yep, I've seen The Lives of Others. It's excellent, of course.

And of course I'm hearing this in the "Vince McMahon announces the Royal Rumble participants" voice.

LOOK OUT IT'S THE FINALS GERMANY: Requiem [schmid, 2006] vs. SOUTH KOREA: Mother [bong, 2009]