Lorne Malvo

Wade Barrett used to be really good at shutting the 'What' chants down. He'd just structure his sentences in such a way that there was nowhere for the crowd to interject.

Anyway, as you were.

I really miss the 'Road to Dynamite' videos they used to do on Youtube. They did a brilliant job at getting people hyped for the weekly shows. 

Tony Schiavone running down the cards in his Control Center is fine, but give me the 'Road To...' anyday. 

I really enjoyed that Collision too. To be fair, AEW have been ticking all the boxes for me since the start of the year. I can see that it might be a bit too 'in-ring' heavy for some but it seems the focus at the moment is on simple storylines with characters you can get behind, and it's working for me.

The Patriarchy vs FTR & Garcia was a perfect TV main event. Brilliant stuff.

Daniel Garcia cut a promo after the show (it's on their Youtube) basically confirming he wants a TNT title shot. Yes please!

Good Dynamite lineup this week too!

19 hours ago, JLM said:

Happy to see Mark Briscoe getting some promo time and some direction. I'll take an ongoing HOB feud over the Hardys team up all day.

 

The commentary team have bought up his team/friendship with the Hardys a few times the past week, so my fear is that it could be HOB vs Briscoe & The Hardys in a Trios feud.

Migration - I'm not a fan of Illumination at all so thought this was quite a pleasant surprise. Some decent gags and an inspired choice of having the villain based on Salt Bae puts this in the upper midcard of American animation of the past few years.

The Beekeeper - The whole bee stuff is laboured and makes no sense, but outside of that this is a perfectly decent actioner with Statham in top arse-kicking mode. It doesn't reach the heights of Nobody or John Wick but not much does.

I also went along to a screening of Days Of Heaven at an arts centre near me. First time ever watching it and I'm not sure why it's held in such high acclaim. It was... okay? It looks nice but not much happens and it feels about half hour longer than it is.

3 minutes ago, Kfogg1991 said:

 

He becomes the only person to win back to back rumble's

Me and a few mates formed a band when we were around 14/15. It lasted about two weeks, none of us could play an instrument or had any musical talent whatsoever, but that didn't stop us coming up with a name complete with a band logo and full of ideas that we were going to take over the world.

We were called The Charm Offensive.

It makes me smile a little everytime I think back to it. What the fuck were we thinking.

On 1/28/2024 at 12:53 PM, Lorne Malvo said:

Cody Rhodes is The Guy going forwards, he's just phenomenal. Please, please don't fuck him again.

Less than a week  

19 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

The worst "banter" though was the managing director who was a huge Wolves fan, so would just send "Shit on the Baggies!!!" to 5,000 people whenever he saw a computer free.

 

Yeah, sorry about that.

Quite the double bill....

The Color Purple - Who thought this would be a good idea?! 'You know what a story featuring incest, domestic violence, poverty and abuse needs? Show tunes!' To be fair, some of the songs are actually quite decent but tonally it doesn't work at all. Even outside of the songs, it feels so sanitised given the subject matter. Not a patch on the Spielberg film, which I have an admittedly soft spot for given my Mom loves it. (By the way, it did get released in the UK with that spelling. That's Broken Britain for ya, you're welcome to it.)

Night Swim - It was doomed from the start really. When I first heard the premise 'haunted swimming pool' I thought it was ridiculously stupid, and the film confirmed my suspicions. It's like a Stephen King short story, if Stephen King was stupid. Which I guess makes it like Dean Koontz?

1 hour ago, SuperBacon said:

Might even fire off an anonymous grievance to HR about it. Fuck em. 

Unfortunately I work for a very small company (only ever 5-7 employees at any one time) so there's no HR department and to make matters worse, said colleague is the owners son. So any complaints would fall on deaf ears.

I'll just continue getting my own back by taking in tinned fish everyday which they both hate the smell of. 

One of my colleagues (who annoys me anyway owing to the fact he never shuts up, and constantly shows me shit Tiktoks every fucking day despite me never having laughed at one) has replaced his office keyboard with a really noisy gaming keyboard, so not only do I have to listen to him drone on in minute detail about what he had for tea last night or how bad the traffic was this morning, I also have to spend all day listening to CLACKA-CLACKA-CLACKA like some idiot kid playing armies while I'm trying to work.

I've been watching Succession recently and everytime the theme song plays I always think it would make cracking heel entrance music. It would be perfect for a Robert Roode-esque heel. The part where the strings kick in is (ahem) glorious.

It was between Branquey and 'Dad?' for me, but I went with the latter in the end because it was such a pitch-perfect retort.

The best surprise return of Rumble season - @Fatty Facesitter thumbs up/thumbs down reviews! God I've missed them.

Chelsea Green reminds a little of Billie Kay's run a few years back - just utterly commited to the role and not afraid to show arse at all. She's great.

The main event was great but suffered from what all escape the cage tag matches suffer from, they're just not logical at all. Escaping the cage to allow your partner to be double-teamed just doesn't work as a concept. All 6 men put on a top showing in spite of those rules though and Mark Briscoe getting the last laugh was a proper feel-good moment.

Danielson vs Nagata was brilliant. There's been a fair few of these 'AEW bring in Japanese legends' matches that have failed to live up to the hype but this was great. Danielson showing everybody respect except for Kingston is a great touch.

I thought the womens Rumble was excellent. Their womens division is so good with so much depth. Jade Cargill looked like an absolute megastar out there. And just to jump on D-Mal and JLMs recent posts, Katana Chance! Bonk, as SuperBacon would say. It's a massive shame nobody seems to care about Tegan Nox. Never been huge on Bayley but she looked great here and judging by the reaction it was the right winner.

The Reigns match happened and Logan/Owens was good although big matches ending in a DQ finish to prolong the feud is a WWE trope that needs to fuck right off. It's been a storyline prop they've used for decades and 99% of the time it's a cop-out.

The Mens Rumble was decent, but nowhere near the quality of the Womens. Absolutely the right wnner though. Cody Rhodes is The Guy going forwards, he's just phenomenal. Please, please don't fuck him again.

I know it's a subject that's been done to death on here, but we need to talk about Punk. Like the rest of Punks WWE appearances (and the second half of his AEW run), he just seems to have lost that spark or connection he had previously. So much of what he is doing is falling flat or isn't hitting like it should, and I've no idea why. I wonder if it's because a lot of people watching during the Pipebomb era just arn't watching anymore, and the landscape of the audience has changed so much in the 10 years since he left. I hope his run starts to heat up going into Mania with a clear focus on a single opponent.

40 minutes ago, JLM said:

 

Loved Daddy Magic being the only guy on the desk who likes Don Callis. 
 

Daddy Magic saying he liked Don Callis and Christian Cage then going 'eh...' when asked if he liked Nigel McGuiness popped me. 

One Life - Seen a lot of strong reviews for this but it just felt like a completely ordinary Oscar-bait movie to me. The 'Thats Life' scene is obviously very moving but you'd be better off just watching the actual viral clip than bothering with this, I reckon. I want Johnny Flynn to start picking more interesting stuff too. Disclaimer - I watched it on about 4 hours sleep which may explain why I wasn't as high on it as everyone else.

Good Grief - A lovely little first-time directorial effort from Dan Levy. Good performances all round with Himesh Patel the standout. Never knew Ruth Negga was Irish!

The Disappearance Of Shere Hite - A strong documentary about one of the eminent feminist writers of the 70s and 80s and the circumstances that lead to her disappearing from public life. Engaging viewing with some horrible parallels to the political climate today.

The Boys In The Boat -  A period sports movie directed by George Clooney, you know exactly what you're getting with this. The definition of 'solid'. I enjoyed it but ymmv depending on how much you like the genre. Joel Edgerton is always great too.

The Kitchen - Was really impressed by this. I don't think it all completely hangs together in the end, but the world-building is fantastic and shows that Kaluuya and Tavares have a very promising future. Ian Wright (yes, that one) is great!

The Holdovers - As fantastic as everyone is saying. One of those films that just feels lived-in, there's no artifice here at all. Can see it becoming a staple Christmas film in the future.

Lift - I finished it! It's shit.

Also, for those of you who liked Still, the Michael J Fox movie. I'd recommend David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived which is a similarly uplifting 'triumph over adversity' documentary.

4 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

Isn't it just a basic "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" type deal? Not that I want to see them together because it's shit, but I almost get the logic to a point.

I've probably not worded my original post very well but the inconsistency is that Acclaimed initially wanted to join forces with Bullet Club so they could get back at the Undisputed Kingdom. But both Acclaimed and Bullet Club over the past three weeks have seemingly forgot that they want revenge. They may revisit it going forwards but it's just odd that the Undisputed Kingdom element of the story has seemingly been dropped.

While I've been really enjoying AEW the past few weeks, it's frustrating that Acclaimed and Bullet Club Gold joined forces because both were victims of Undisputed Kingdom and both groups have seemingly forgot about their issues? There's just little frustrating storyline inconsistencies that pop up in AEW quite often and even when the shows are hot it can lead to a feeling of 'well that's a missed opportunity'.

May be a minor point in the grand scheme of things, but a lot of this abuse happened inbetween March and August 2020 when the vast majority of the USA was subject to lockdowns and social distancing measures due to covid. While most of the population can't see loved ones or leave their houses, these pricks are acting like that. Another example of how these cunts just live in their own worlds, completely untouchable, not beholden to the same rules and laws that the rest of us are.

Hook coming out the week after a star-making performance to absolute crickets set the tone for what was a pretty good episode of Dyno with an all-time bad crowd.

If they booked smaller, unique, intimate venues and packed them out it would look so much better than generic arenas being 75% empty and all the lights being turned down to hide the low attendance.

I wasn't a fan of Mac's dance either but Charlie in Ireland broke me. Incredible performance.

Favourite episodes are either the 'Wildcard' episode, the high school reunion, the musical/gang turns black episode or the 'who did the shit?' episode. But season 2-10 are filled with so many strong episodes. The Gang Broke Dee and the waterpark episode up there too.

I've also got a soft spot for season 14. The zoo episode, the film noir episode and laser tag episode are all great at a time when they could be forgiven for phoning it in.

Favourite blooper is 'Stop Charlie! This game has gone on long enough!' which has worked it's way into my common vocabulary. Special mention to 'He doesn't even get us, man' 'We were talking about you!' which is an incredible bit of improv.