Really Big Shoe

Cheers for that Kaz. You can buy Paul's book here for Kindle

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0165PQPKW/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

It also got reprinted too.

I recommend the Inside the Actors Studio episode with Bryan Cranston. He talks about the Walter character and the scene with Jesses girlfriend. Has any other on screen character ever did the same baby face to super heel turn that Walter White does?. 

Funskool were made in India for their market. They made only a certain amount of characters from the Hasbro line. You can identify them as the paint job isn't as good and the plastic isnt very high quality. Essentially they are lower quality Hasbros instead of being knock offs like the Mannix line.

Great fight, Bellator could slowly pick up steam if they have fights like that across the board. Could that have been their Bonner/Griffin?. That was a massive game changer for the UFC. Bellator needs something to get away from being the WCW of MMA image. Their iPPV with Fedor, Wandy et al was a really good to great show with some fun moments. Maybe putting that show on free during prime time would have gained them new fans.

It's more like a cartoony Andre from the Legends Of WrestleMania game but that being said, it's really well done. A minor critique but the chin is a bit too pronounced as Andres was not too out of proportion and his eyes were set further back. 

Interesting but sad Andre article here

http://nypost.com/2015/04/02/legendary-drinking-constant-stares-andre-the-giants-tortured-life/

Likely posted before but article about the WWE tape library

http://www.wwe.com/classics/inside-video-vault

They keep their tapes climately controlled and have an automated archiving process.

“This is the digital archive robot,” Staffaroni told us as we were led into a climate-controlled room housing a state-of-the-art and highly complicated large machine. “It has more than 4,000 slots inside with data tapes that we use to store footage. These tapes can hold approximately 24 hours of footage and that’s just one physical tape.”

We did get the opportunity to see the robot in action. Arms slid back and forth, grabbing tapes and moving them backwards. In the back, green lights indicated the drives that read the tapes.

“When media managers go to archive the high-resolution version of any type of content, it grabs one of these blank tapes, puts it in the drive and records high-res,” Staffaroni explained.

3 minutes ago, WyattSheepMask said:

Theyve definately got some WCW Thunder footage, it's been used on DVDs over the years and there were matches from in the Goldberg collection that's on the network. Whether they've got it as a complete run or not is another question because, as has been said, some of the library was in a right state when they bought it. If they can source it from somewhere else and then cleanup the footage as best they can it could maybe get added, but it depends against how much they already have available vs how much they may need to acquire and if they feel that it is worth the time, effort and money to do so.

Id like for it to be added for completely sake, but I wouldn't be suprised if it was to never appear

Yep the WCW library was poorly labelled and some stuff is lost/missing. Wouldn't TBS have backup masters of Thunder or at least S-VHS high grade copies. I know the BBC got home recorded tapes for some Steptoe and Son shows and others but for the Network that is HD if they put up fan recorded tapes they'd look bad. Kinda like if Apple Music had to put up a bootleg recording because a record label lost a master tape. Wouldn't be so bad if it was a 50s/60s wrestling show but one from the 90s you'd think the complete run would be available in very good quality.

14 hours ago, Uncle Zeb said:

Hold on there, back the fuck up. What jiggery pokery is this?

Did they just give up adding new episodes because no one was watching them, and deleted the first ones to pretend they never started? Was it a licencing issue? What's going on?

Adding stuff and then removing it later really undermines confidence in what they're trying to achieve and what customers think they're getting when they buy in.

As its been said they took it off because of the Hulk scandal. However other things have been removed like either last year IIRC they had some rare matches up for Black History month that disappeared. Some docs have gone although in fairness brought back like Superstars and I think Pipers. I don't think Foleys stand up show is on there now but I think it was licensing related.

8 hours ago, WyattSheepMask said:

That's a common thing on the network where a section has a lot of content within it. The menus can only show a certain number of things and users haven't got a 'display all' functional sometimes you have to do a bit of digging if you're looking for something in particular

Thanks the search could be improved too. I was searching for Superstar to find the doc and the search only brought up a list of matches. Had to find it by searching through the years under Beyond the Ring. But that's only a minor inconvenience as there's so much to watch on there. Apart from taking off Rock and Wrestling do they ever remove things to make way for new content or is more added on top. If that's the case will be good when they manage to complete all the Prime Time, TNT etc and start adding WCW Thunder, Saturday Night etc and shows like Wrestling Challenge etc.

Watched the Dusty Rhodes story. Dustin looked in a bad way in the "talking head" segments. Fast forward to now it's like a night and day difference. In hindsight it made no real sense to put Dusty in polka dots since arguably he could have been the 3rd top baby face behind Hulk and Warrior.

An angle vs the Million $ Man where he could have cut a "Hard Times" 2.0 promo would have been money. Yet they put a comedy gimmick but they were speculating it was all a rib on Dust. They seemed to drop it overtime when he started tagging up with Dustin.

The Beyond the Ring doc list is misleading as you have to go through the years to get them all to appear otherwise it's only some of them appearing at first glance. Seems the Superstar one is back now as IIRC they took some down. Is the new ECW one been shown before as I think I've already seen it? Same as the Bischoff one. 

The black card LJN Hogan was featured on one of the Toy Hunter episodes. He buys it and sells it to one of the Black Eyed Peas who's a wrestling fan and collects retro toys.

As for the bendie LJNs I could never find Hulk. They had a 1985 production date on them IIRC so there was characters which weren't available in the Hasbro line like JYD, Big John, Animal Steele et al. They had bendie managers too like Capt Lou and Bobby The Brain. Did the whole lot get a UK release or just selected ones?. I had JYD, Andre, Hot Rod, Studd, Orndorff and Steele. 

It's something like when you choose a team you pick the letter J, usually when starting in the second division. There's a very detailed walkthrough here

http://walkthrough.freeola.com/game/4694/snes/kevin-keegans-player-manager.html

I think cup games loaded a little bit quicker than league games. I don't know if it was possible to progress to manage the England international team. Would have been a good way to complete the game if you won the World Cup.

I don't know how far the game goes but on Ultimate Soccer Manager 2 on PC the game breaks the further you get into it, just churns out garbled player names. 

The management aspect of the game is good, there's a cheat (which I only found out about years later) to get a team full of star players. I think if the game done away with the player mode and went abit deeper by adding a fourth division and maybe the Serie A, La Liga, Bundesliga (it was also released in Germany but used Karl-Heinz Rummenigge instead of Kev) etc it could have had a bit more depth, or more customisation. Faster loading times would have been good too.

The theme was catchy and you could mute it by pressing select IIRC. 

The player manager mode on Kevin Keegan's player manager is terrible no playability whatsoever. Its the Kick Off engine but theyve seemed to have not been adapted it to a joy pad. With a joystick it might have been OK but otherwise you have to like launch yourself into the ball, passes go astray and most "shots" go of target. The AI of course look like Barca in comparison and its no doubt the worse football game for me, much more than Kick Off 3. The management bit is actually alright but playing the games is best avoided. 

Most likely they cut out the video packages for time constraints.

You're welcome and I think the fourth part might be on YouTube too. The other parts I haven't come across yet and there's a total of 9 episodes fittingly titled Innings. You can buy it on DVD and I think it maybe on the MLB Network.

Just noticed today there was another Ken Burns doc on PBSAmerica about Jackie Robinson which I missed as it was on Sunday and Monday morning. I'm assuming they will show it again. Its on YouTube too but has audio issues. 

YouTube has other docs too about Babe Ruth and one of the movie channels showed Pride of the Yankees recently the story of Lou Gehrig who sadly had to retire because of ALS/MND.

Just noticed a few pages back about a 20 hour doc. I assume it's the PBS one from 1994 called "Baseball"  or Ken Burns:Baseball

You can watch parts 1-3 on YouTube here

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=crsH6XMzaQI

The Creations - You Mean So Much to Me

Some rare soul on the Philadelphia based Virtue label. Only a few single releases from this group. Lead singer sounds a bit like Eddie Kendricks I think.

If you like the 5D then you might have heard of the Friends of Distinction

Also like the Dynamic Superiors, they were on Motown but aren't a stereotypical Motown group like the Four Tops, Temps et al. There was a plethora of great soul vocal groups and solo singers in the 70s, most didn't really last beyond the Disco trend unfortunately.

On 20/06/2017 at 3:52 PM, Sergio Mendacious said:

Listening to "The Essential Fifth Dimension" right now — haven't delved into the albums too much, but there isn't a truly bad track on this retrospective, although the long medley of the constitution is a bit ripe.

The 5th Dimension were more on the pop side of Soul music but they have some great tracks, Jimmy Webb wrote "Up Up and Away" their most famous tune. They joined Motown in the 70s for a couple of LPs and Billy Davis and Marilyn McCoo released a few duet albums together also. They aren't must haves but I'd recommend them if you like the 5D.

If you have Sky apparently the new ONO is on the Spike/Spike HD on demand. Xplosion is now a my5 online exclusive. Still no news on when they'll broadcast No Surrender on the Spike channel itself.

Had a look via the search but couldn't find the list of all the UK Silvervision releases. If anyone has the complete list could they add it, thanks

Was there an Xplosion this week? Not listed on the TV Guide so I assume it wasn't on. ONO No Surrender is on tonight at 10pm on Spike.

Lords of the Ring came out originally in like 1985/86 IIRC and videos were highly priced back then. Plus something like wrestling would be premium priced too. Even Mania IV was listed as 59.99 to buy and that would have been 1988, 89 time frame.

Found this which has an overview about how VHS were priced back in the day.

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/archive/t-407404.html

Lords of the Ring came out originally in like 1985/86 IIRC and videos were highly priced back then. Plus something like wrestling would be premium priced too. Even Mania IV was listed as 59.99 to buy and that would have been 1988, 89 time frame.

Found this which has an overview about how VHS were priced back in the day.

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/archive/t-407404.html