Loki

This is a very boring question probably, and I'm not sure if anyone here can answer it, but I know a few people have worked in and around wrestling tv. Just watching the Netflix series "Wrestlers" and from time to time they use WWF footage but it's clearly ripped from YouTube, often even with the ripper's logo or web address still visible. Surely using any WWF/E content in another show would require permission from WWE, and if obtained you'd get a decent quality copy? Or have Netflix just decided to literally steal stuff off Youtube and hope nobody from WWE comes calling? I've noticed something oddly similar a few times on the BBC, where they appear to have grabbed some low quality footage from Youtube rather than go into the BBC's archive, but at least they own the copyright. Is there some sort of "fair use" policy regarding ripped footage I'm not aware of?

And yet it's become accepted internet fact - it's even on Wikipedia, unsourced of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWE_brand_extension#2002_split I mean, they DID do the match at the end of A Raw, with the Nitro branding but I think that's been expanded into a whole "plan" by Meltzer and other "journalists", I can't see it ever being the actual idea on Vince's part. I'm generally against roster splits, I don't think it works and the WWE ones have derailed more careers than they've made I'd argue. One of the nice things about WCW was the ever-rotating roster which made the shows feel a lot more "international" if you know what I mean, a bit like AEW nowadays except they weren't putting Scott Norton into a feud with Hogan. But WCW could easily have split off an entire WWF roster's worth of talent and made Thunder a completely separate brand at that point they had the bodies.

Yeah, the whole story stinks to me. It's been pointed out by some outlets that there were Jewish protesters marching, who weren't in danger, weren't harassed and weren't singled out by the police. Which kind of suggests that he and his crew were doing something that warranted Inspector Knacker's attention. I can't imagine the stress of having to police these marches, with counter protests and agitators mixed with peaceful marchers, and it sounds like the policeman on the scene had a serious brain fart when it came to his choice of words. Having watched it in context, it doesn't seem deliberately antisemitic as much as stressed and hurried. There's almost certainly been an uptick in antisemitism since the October terrorist attack, and I am sympathetic to people over here feeling the heat for something a foreign government is doing thousands of miles away, but this particular news story feels heavily manufactured and counter productive.

How much stock do we put in the rumour that the original plan for the "brand split" was to give Raw over to be rebranded WCW Nitro? This would be in 2001 during the Invasion storyline, and the story goes this plan was nixed after the Bagwell/Booker match was shite. Does it really sound likely that Vince ever would have given over his flagship show to be rebranded in the colours of his rival? Chinny reck-on. Also, I can't imagine the network having any interest in rebranding its hit wrestling show to a different company.

I dont mind the Broken Matt character, or Matt generally. The issue I have is he looks like he's headed for an early wheelchair, he moves like his entire spine is fused together and might snap at any minute. I wince when watching him wrestle, it's off-putting. Similarly, I cannot believe Tommy Dreamer is still out there wrestling in TNA. That man's brain must be mush.

Jack Swagger surely is worst title holder ever? Won it from Piss Jericho, lost in within 3 months and has never bothered the main event scene since. At least Khali had a few memorable matches and moments like the Punjabi Prison match.

Dune 2 Went to see this yesterday at the Everyman. I know everyone talked about it extensively a month ago, so I'll just say I thought it was better than the first one, absolutely brilliant in places, but I just struggle with the "constant music, now it's briefly quiet, NOW REALLY REALLY LOUD" aesthetic that Villeneuve seems to like. He and Zimmer are made for each other, and on a technical level I admire it but find it a hugely draining experience over 2 1/2 hours. It was so loud, I got curious and got out my SPL meter during the credits - the music on its own during the credits hit 90 dB. That's above the level that's considered harmful over an extended period. Too loud, in my professional opinion. Beautiful film though and I thought Austin Butler and Florence Pugh were good additions to the casting of the story. One thing that did strike me. Dave Batista really is head and shoulders above every other wrestler who's tried to crack the movies, isn't he? The Rock may have made more money but Batista has had the better parts, been in some of the largest franchise films of the last decade, and is a properly good actor. Even in less good films, like Army Of The Dead or Bushwick, he's worth watching. Great rewards for hard work, hats off to him.

Yeah, it was about him being a glorified stuntman - something I think Flair actually said, but Hogan's memory is shot (see thread title). He's stopped drinking got married, got baptised and got himself in shape. Maybe there's something in the waccy baccy after all!

Hogan is a lifelong toker. I forget who said it, but it's been remarked that had he not become a wrestler he'd just have been one of those stoners lounging about on a beach in Miami in board shorts for his entire life. Speaking of.. did anyone see the video with him and Foley chatting about their careers? It was a very different Hogan, very apologetic to Foley for dissing him earlier in his career, seemingly very self-aware and, for him, humble. I saw a similar interview with him about 6 months ago where he seemed so much chiller than when he was active. I know he got remarried recently and turned 70, it seems to have changed him.

Ah, youth hostelling.

Knight and Styles really do work nicely together, although the finish felt a little rushed. I’m all for Knight going to Raw to be World Champion, that opens up a bunch of pretty tasty matches. Plus the salty tears from the boo boys would be entertaining. Nice Strictly Business reference from Barrett. WWE seem really happy with Aldis as GM but there’s still a bit of me that wants to see both him and Barrett back in the ring even for a cameo. I keep hoping Barrett is going to do the Lawler spot in a Royal Rumble, leave the announce booth, enter the Rumble, get thrown out and return to commentary.

Network is great too unless you’re as mad as hell.

Totally. And the only thing I'd change about your plan is keeping Joe in the title scene for a bit after he loses to Hangman - possibly a three-way or something so that they prolong Swerve's agony a little longer. Joe is essentially a face, so having him lose to Hangman rather than Swerve makes better sense anyway. I do wish there was a way for Joe to have a substantially longer reign, if only because he feels like the most "legit" world champion they've had in a long time. By which I mean that MJF, as entertaining as he was, often didn't feel like the star of the show and his reign ended up getting lost in the complications of the whole Adam Cole soap opera. Plus you had all the Punk/alternate belt bullshit. Whereas Joe is presented as THE MAN. And he's healthy and in probably as good a shape as he's been in for years, and who knows how long that will last.

She should be the female Ultimate Warrior - big entrance, no-sell, a few power moves and blam! They seem to be headed there, she had tassles the last time I saw her. Incidentally are WWE going to rename Cora Jade? They don't usually have two people with the same name.

I've just seen a suggestion on Reddit that McIntyre and Punk be forced into a tag team for a bit when Punk returns and I love that. I know it's a much used gimmick but the two of them coming out in their shirts dissing each other and then arguing on the apron would be fantastic. And then you can decide who to turn and how in a nice dramatic fashion during a match. It also allows Punk a soft re-entry to save his feeble body another immediate injury.

They may not be what gets people joining, but they are usually the most streamed shows and what gets people to stick around. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-04-07/these-are-the-most-popular-tv-shows-of-the-streaming-era Shows like NCIS, Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds, get way more streams than most original shows on these platforms. Only Stranger Things breaks the Top 10 Most Streamed since 2021. That's why there's suddenly been a glut of these old shows appearing on streaming - Criminal Minds, Law and Order, Monk, CSI have all appeared in the last 6 months. Sometimes the deals are odd too - CSI Las Vegas is Season 10 onwards! It's cheap obviously but it's also a strategy to keep people on the platform for longer periods and counter the join/leave cycle that some viewers are trying out. If I was Netflix I'd be working on producing some long-series, episodical tv shows of that nature to accompany their marquee drama shows. Is that The World Beyond? Those teen dramas can be REALLY horny for obvious reasons.

It was worse than that. He went out at the top of the show and cut the impassioned new babyface champ promo about how it had taken him 5 years of blood and sweat to achieve this most prestigious title, and how that was what AEW was all about. Except it wasn't the AEW World Title he was talking about. It wasn't even one of the myriad titles AEW promotes, it was someone else's title, won on someone else's show that AEW fans can't even watch through AEW. It was the climax to a storyline we haven't seen. Having cross-promotion stuff is fun to a point, but this seemed nuts to me, having your biggest star put over another company and title as his main goal.

It really is, we're binging that at the moment. The lost art of making 20 45-minute episodes that don't cost millions of dollars each. These old shows are often way more popular on streaming than the enormously expensive "event" shows they make.

"Who's that gutlord marching, you should cut down on your porklife mate, get some exercise!"

There are so many things to like about it. It looks gorgeous most of the time, good sound and voice acting. And I genuinely love zipping to and fro in the universe, the space craft handling and all that is lovely, and the space craft construction is fun. Despite the moaning on Reddit, there's a huge variation in worlds to see and visit, although it's also realistically full of barren rocks. But the combat is really boring and samey, and as you say the actual gameplay mechanics are so clunky and old - from loading screens to fetch-and-carry quests. And there are so many truncated game mechanics where clearly they ran out of time or decided to cut at the last minute. I think it fails in all the places Bethesda games have always failed which is frustrating. If it had been a much slimmer game, if they'd tried to do less, I think it would have been better. I've talked extensively on here about how I feel open world games have got too big to really work any more anyway. One or two games in any generation seem to nail it, everyone else falls at a hurdle. I spent a large part of my teenage years playing Elite, Elite Frontier and FFE. I am still holding out hope for a console game which gives me that experience. All I really want to do is whizz around a galaxy in a variety of spacecraft, trading and shooting. I don't even need to get out and walk around. I bought Elite Dangerous but it stopped getting updates on my Mac and I couldn't bring myself to start again on Xbox.

Roadhouse (2024) This didn't disappoint, great popcorn movie. Gyllenhaal is such a weirdo but it kind of worked here even though he doesn't strike me as a natural action star. I personally loved Conor McGregor in this, his walk was hilarious and the main fight scenes were really great. I'm a fan of Doug Liman's work - he seems to continually evolve his style and try stuff out, the camera angles in the fights felt really fresh. He's come a long way from Swingers! They almost certainly won't but there's mileage in Gyllenhaal's Dalton character, you could do a few more in the style of the episodic Reacher films. I always like the "drifter" mythos, I appreciated the fact that the script acknowledged that the story is basically a classic Western. Edit: oh and the music was great with some fantastic bands playing at the Road House.

I feel similarly about Starfield. I love the aesthetic, I love the openness of the universe and the variety of missions but have struggled to push on with it past a certain point. It's the investment in time it takes to move through missions, too much back and forth. I like playing it but don't feel compelled to go play it, if you know what I mean. On the other hand I've been playing Diablo 4 co-op with my mate, and really enjoying it. I love the old-school isometric look, reminds me of games from my youth (Immortal, Lords Of Chaos, through to Baldur's Gate) but it's absolutely gorgeous. Something about simple dungeon delving, very atmospheric. And the gameplay is kept pretty simple hack-and-slash, although there's depth in there if you want to get into crafting and the like. The sound isn't great but if you're chatting online at the same time, it doesn't matter. I think my tastes are definitely different from the mainstream now though. Yes, I want an interesting explorable world and characters but I also want to be able to play in 1-2 hour slices and move relatively quickly through the whole experience - I reckon 20-30 hours is perfect for me. Whereas of course online people are complaining about games that "only" take 150 hours of gameplay.

Cracking album though. This one always amuses me when I pull it out of the rack - The epitome of 70s soul covers.

@The Gaffer Yeah - I just mean a backlash against the generally socially progressive trend of the last few decades. And you're absolutely right about parents/relatives - even my folks, as liberal as they come, have weird red lines that seem to anger them. Gay marriage was a big one - despite having had gay friends all their lives, the access to the institution of marriage was the point at which they balked. I think a lot of that is natural inertia as you approach old age, where you become more and more disconnected from the bleeding edge of social discourse and more and more set in your ways. In that respect the older generation not understanding the younger generation is a constant throughout history, but we're definitely seeing a worldwide rise in backlash against the prevailing direction of travel. We should probably just delete the internet, it's not been a force for good.

I do wonder where this backlash against modernity will end. As easy as it is to laugh at the weirdos online, or have a chuckle at anti-vax literature, a lot of this stuff has gone from fringe conspiracy groups to mainstream political parties in probably less than a decade. And as you can see in the US it doesn't take that long to infect mainstream politics - the GOP has become the party of QAnon and anti-science, anti-woke in really only two election cycles. With the rise of far-right politics in the US and across Europe, it will surely arrive here soon in terms of mainstream political discourse - I don't mean the Lee Andersons of the world but probably the opposition Conservative party/leader post the next election. And it will bring with it other elements like anti-abortion etc. I think the next election after this will be fought on the stuff in this thread.