People of a certain age (i.e. “Old”) will remember when in the early days of HBO, a weird ,wild animated film called Twice Upon a Time made the rounds. Many paid it heed because it was executive produced by George Lucas, currently in the process of imprinting our childhoods with a new mythology. But except for a laserdisc and VHS release, the film rather fell off the table, save for dedicated maniacs who remembered it fondly.
Warner Archives, print-on-demand masters of unearthing lost bits of cinema and making them available to the masses, have achieved the impossible and presented the world with a brand new release of the film, unearthing both audio tracks, and getting many of the animators together for a commentary track, including Henry Selick, who has gone on to great things like Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, and in that order.
Botch (Marshall Efron) presents a perfectly reasonable plan; Mum entreats his cohorts this is not the case
The film tells the tale of two magical lands; Frivoli and The Murkworks, who create the happy dreams and horrid nightmares, respectively, for The Rushers of Din, a land that looks suspiciously like San Francisco. The head of The Murkworks, Synonymess Botch (voiced by former Sunday School teacher Marshall Efron) hatches a plan to plunge Din into eternal nightmares, and cons our heroes Ralph the All-Purpose Animal (Lorenzo Music) and his cohort Mum (who…remains so) into stealing the main spring from The Cosmic Clock, which will freeze time and allow Botch to set his plan into motion. They attempt to undo their blunder with the help of their (and everyone’s) Fairy Godmother (Judith Kahan Kampmann) and Rod Rescueman (James Cranna) a superhero in training.
The animation style of the film is a unique delight, a process called Lumage, that uses colored paper and fabric cutouts to create the characters, a process that inspired the creators of South Park decades later. Animator John Korty used the process for a number of shorts for Sesame Street, most notably “The Adventures of Thelma Thumb” (starring Kahan and Cranna), which amazingly is not available on the web anywhere or I’d have linked to it just there.
The tale of the two audio tracks is somewhat of a confusing tale. There’s a more raunchy version of the dialogue that features a number of curse words – it’s been long assumed that was the original version of the film, but that’s not the case. As Korty explains in the commentary, they were contractually obligated to deliver a family-friendly film, and so they did. But when sneak previews proved unsuccessful, Korty’s producer Bill Couturié (Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt) took it on himself to re-record many of the lines with more salty language, to attempt to make the film more accessible to an older audience. It had the opposite reaction – the film’s limited release resulted in numerous walkouts and demands for refunds, and the wide release was cancelled. The second version is the one that was (accidentally, it’s believed) to HBO, and when it was replaced with the “clean” version for later showings and the video release, the belief arose that the film had been censored – indeed, it had been returned to its original form. Interestingly, even Warner Archives mixes this up – They describe the dirty version as the “Director’s Original Version”, when in fact it’s the PG version that was Korty wanted and delivered.
The print is in widescreen for the first time on video, and bright and pristine, the sound (both versions) is clear and clean. The songs by Bruce Hornsby and Maureen McDonald are pleasant, and don’t litter the cinematic landscape like so many kids’ movies. It’s truly a forgotten classic, one that deserves a new generation of eyes on it.
“If someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you, and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives…could you then kill that child?”
It’s a classic philosophical question, one that the average person would never truly have to face. Of course, The Doctor is not the average person, and as such, has to face it nearly constantly. But never so personally, and so literally as when a young boy calls for help…and The Doctor walks away.
THE MAGICIAN’S APPRENTICE / THE WITCH’S FAMILIAR Written by Steven Moffat Directed by Hettie MacDonald
The Doctor lands on a planet torn asunder by war, a war going on so long that it’s using progressively declining technology – space fighters are being shot at with bows and arrows. When a young boy is trapped in a mine field, The Doctor tries to cheer him up by asking his name. The boy says his name is Davros, and The Doctor suddenly realizes where he is: Skaro, decades before the creation of the Daleks…by the boy whose life is in his hands.
Meanwhile (well, I say “meanwhile”…) on Earth, Missy has returned (and rudely, won’t explain how) and is asking to talk to Clara. She’s been given The Doctor’s Confession Dial, effectively his will and testament, which means he’s expecting to (or planning to) die. Missy asks Clara for help in finding him, “asks” meaning “kidnaps her”.
After finding him by looking for the biggest party they could find, The Doctor and his friends (more on this later) end up on Skaro, rebuilt from the ashes of the Time War. Davros is dying at last, and wants The Doctor there, to make him suffer a final defeat at the man he could have saved so many years ago, but didn’t.
Anyone who still claims that Steven Moffat can no longer write a solid episode of Doctor Who now has the credibility of Donald Trump. From a truly scream-inducing pre-credits sequence to a corker of a cliffhanger, to a perfectly touching ending, with some of the biggest laughs in years peppered in between. A great deal of growth in the relationship between The Doctor and both of his greatest enemies, and a harrowing climax, all playing perfectly against past events that get called back in the most amazing ways.
The story bookends two important Dalek stories of the past: Terry Nation’s [[[Genesis of the Daleks]]], which brought us the introduction of Davros, and Moffat’s own Asylum of the Daleks which introduced us to Jenna Coleman, and at least one aspect of Clara Oswald. Steven Moffat has elevated the narrative callback to an art form – he’s pulling details from past stories to give them new meaning, as well as the simple practice of Chekhov’s Gun – introducing a seemingly throwaway point early in the story, only to have it come back with a surprise importance at the end.
GUEST STAR REPORT
Michelle Gomez (Missy) makes a surprising but not entirely unexpected return to the series as The Master, much sooner than anyone expected. She was recently featured in the HBO comedy series The Brink. Before Missy, she was best known in the UK for Green Wing, a comedy about a local hospital, and The Book Group, a comedy drama about a curcle of folks who get together more just to find friendship than to actually discuss the books they’ve been assigned to read.
Julian Bleach (Davros) has made several appearances on the various Who-niverse shows. First appearing on Torchwood as The Ghostmaker, he appeared as Davros in the David Tennant adventures The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End. He also played the eponymous monster in the Sarah Jane Adventures tale The Nightmare Man. He played Machiavelli in The BorgiasTV series, and played the ballet instructor in [[[Avengers: Age of Ultron]]].
THE MONSTER FILES –
You could easily argue that The Daleks are more responsible for the success of Doctor Who than anything. After producer Sydney Newman decreed there would be “no bug-eyed monsters” on the series, the team struggled to come up with a truly unique and innovative design for the first alien race for the series. To say they succeeded is an understatement. Terry Nation’s description of the creatures in his script was simple:
Hideous machine-like creatures, they are legless, moving on a round base. They have no human features. A lens on a flexible shaft acts as an eye. Arms with mechanical grips for hands
The Daleks were almost designed by Ridley Scott, who would go on to other triumphs in directing both in and out of science fiction. It was eventually designed by Raymond Cusick, passing the basic plans to Shawcraft Models. After the broadcast, Dalek-Mania hit Britain, and Doctor Who became must-see television.
The basics of the origins of the Daleks were there in that first story – an interminable war between the Daleks and the Dals, the Daleks holed up in their city, their endless hate for everything non-Dalek. But it was years later in Genesis of the Daleks that Terry Nation introduced us to their creator, Davros. Horribly disfigured in an enemy bombardment, when we first meet him, he is literally half a man, his lower extremities gone, attached permanently in a traveling wheelchair and life-support system that greatly resembled his eventual creations. His idea for the eventual triumph in the war against the (now called) Thals was twofold – through experimentation, he developed what he theorized was the final form of their race, the Kaleds – a mutated tentacled monstrosity, almost incapable of surviving on its own. The second step was to build a housing for the creature – a portable tank, both medical and military. He went further – manipulating the DNA of the Kaled mutants further, breeding out “useless” emotions like love and pity, and building a computer system that would weed out any stray benevolent thoughts. The result – a nearly indestructible warrior that cares only about the destruction of anything and everything that isn’t like itself.
Davros has appeared multiple times since Genesis – usually using the same exact makeup, which showed extreme signs of wear over the years. The majority of what has been revealed about his younger life was told in a series of audio plays from Big Finish.
Colony Sarff is the latest in a series of being that Davros and the Daleks have used as mercenary might over the years. Their most often seen were the Ogrons, simian aliens with limited intelligence – perfect grunt soldiers.
BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and Production details
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION – Spain played the role of two locations in the adventure – a national park near a dormant volcano in Tenerife stood in for Skaro, and the “hot country” Missy waited to speak to Clara in was Garachico, just a bit South.
The Maldovarium is the black market and bar founded and run by Dorium Maldovar, at least until he was decapitated by The Headless Monks.
The Shadow Proclamation makes a return to the series as the interstellar police force. Kelly Hunter also returns as the Shadow Architect, last appearing in The Stolen Earth.
The Planet Karn is the home of the Sisters of Karn, home of the Elixir of Life, used by Time Lords in cases of emergency when regeneration fails. They first appeared in The Brain of Morbius, and most recently in the mini-episode Night of the Doctor.
“Don’t send a helicopter – I can get through” Clara is once again driving the Triumph motorcycle she had in The Day of the Doctor, the one The Doctor drove up the side of The Shard in The Bells of Saint John. She is heading for the Tower of London, secret home of UNIT.
“Not dead, back – big surprise, never mind” – In a recent interview, Steven Moffat went on about how much he loved how The Master, particularly in the Anthony Ainley years, would return from a sure and certain demise, with no more of an explanation than “I escaped at the last moment”. As such, I fully expected to get no solid explanation for Missy’s survival at all. After all, this is the man who presented several fan theories as to how Sherlock survived his plummet from a hospital on Sherlock, and confirmed none. In this case, though, he went with an obvious explanation, indeed, the one that just about everyone had guessed, and good on him for it.
“I’m his friend, you’re just…” The relationship of The Doctor and The Master has been the subject of so many Clever Theories, and only a handful of actual statements on screen. In Death in heaven we got the line “I had a friend once…we ran together when I was little”, so the idea of them being best friends is not far from a lie.
“You’re the puppy” – This whole scene is about exactly how far beyond Human understanding the Time Lords truly are. They attempt to destroy civilizations as a practical joke. They steal moons the way frat boys steal mascots. And as far as Missy is concerned, there’s a reason some Earthlings refer to their pets as “companions”.
“We’re looking for a party” – This is another look at the same swaggering procrastination we saw at the end of Ten’s life in The End of Time, and the more quiet dawdling Eleven did before he headed to Lake Silencio.
“Cheap and nasty time travel” – the Vortex Manipulator has been used by Jack Harkness in several episodes, and later by River Song, though likely not the same one.
“Anachronisms” – Peter Capaldi is an established guitarist, and was once in a punk band called The Dreamboys with a fellow named Craig Ferguson. Also, thought you can’t see it on screen, the amplifier on the tank bears a label from Magpie Electricals, the company that made the cheap TVs in The Idiot’s Lantern.
And here’s a question for you…When he starts playing the opening to “Pretty Woman”…is he playing it for Clara…or Missy?
“Inform High Command – the TARDIS is located” – Bors has been made a Dalek Agent, a sophisticated duplicate first seen in Asylum of the Daleks.
“How scared must you be, to seal every one of your own kind in a tank” – Davros’ motivations are at the core of this adventure. Having seen him as a scared child at the story’s start, the question about being scared here takes a new depth. Until this, save for the audio plays, we’ve never seen Davros as anything but a nearly total megalomaniac. Now we see him much more emotional, and at points, it’s hard to believe it’s all lies.
“I think you’ve been lying” – Oh geez, you THINK?
“Gravity” – As in Kill the Moon, both The Doctor and Missy are walking and dancing about to test the gravity of their location. In both cases, the gravity is natural, leading both to presume that they are on something far more massive than they thought.
“Did you miss our conversations?” – We’re presented with a montage of The Doctor’s past conversations with Davros, from their first meeting in Genesis to their most recent in The Stolen Earth. But it’s the quote at the start of this article, about a child who would grow up to be a dictator, that holds the most importance, as that’s precisely the situation The Doctor found himself in, and to his shame, he walked away.
“This is the planet of the Daleks” – and we see oh so many of them here – models in the style of the first adventure, straight through to the modern age, and all in between. They built an amazing assortment of models for Asylum, and clearly they got a dust off and re-used here, especially that Special Weapons Dalek we all got so excited about and barely got a moment on screen.
But once again, the New Paradigm models are nowhere to be seen. Moffatt admitted the redesign was a mistake – as he put it “They’re scarier when they’re wee”.
“Doesn’t matter which face he was wearing, they’re all The Doctor to me” – Once again, this is a suggestion that Time Lords “see” each other differently – their faces may literally change from visit to visit, but they always recognize each other. This is something how The Doctor says he doesn’t really see faces, especially Clara’s – he can’t tell the difference between when she’s young or old.
“The Doctor gave it to me when my daughter…” – Yeah, the thing about not knowing much about a character, ANY little tidbit is important.
“This is exactly where you dump a smelly old uncle” – The Daleks and Davros’ relationship has always been…contentious. They intended to kill him in Genesis, and only returned to Skaro to search for him in Destiny of the Daleks because they had no other options. He’s been able to order them around to a degree when his plans suited them, but the best description of his position with them is “kept man”. Not a prisoner, just someone useful and handy to have about.
“A man should have a race” – This is the start of the comparisons between Davros and the Doctor – both went to great lengths to make sure they would not be alone in the universe.
“Am I a good man?” – One could argue that everyone asks themselves that at one point or another. An old philosophical question is “Is Hitler in heaven?” – since Catholics believe that intent dictates sin, if he honestly thought he was doing good for the world, could he have been allowed to escape punishment? The end of Genesis of the Daleks tries to get philosophical too – The Doctor thinks about the races whose wars with each other ended as they united to face the Daleks, and wonders if somehow in such evil, there could result some good.
“You are not a good Doctor” – This moment, with two arch-enemies suddenly start laughing as a bad joke, is very reminiscent of Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke. The situation is largely the same – these two men know there will never be anything less than war between them, and the situation seems so helpless, and the surprise of a moment of comedy breaks the tension. Worked wonderfully. Throughout all this part of the story, one has to wonder how much of what Davros was saying was accidentally honest, perhaps even if only to further bait the trap, but honest nevertheless.
BIG BAD WOLF REPORT – So far there’s no blatant threads hanging out there to lead us to the finale. Presuming we’ll see either (or both) the Daleks and Missy again, their appearance alone may yet be the only connection.
“I am a Dalek” – It’s here with Clara in a Dalek we’re seeing the parallel to Asylum of the Daleks, where we saw Oswin Oswald in a similar predicament. While Oswin was part of the Daleks for quite a long while, she had time to hack into their databanks and play merry hell with their systems. Clara has no time to do such things, but she’s got time to be affected by something else – Dalek Nanotech. In Asylum, the air was permeated with it, slowly converting anything on the planet to Dalek Agents. Clara’s just had herself connected to one directly, the nanotech “repairing any damage”. That…may not end well.
“Gallifrey is back, and it is safe…from both of us” – We thought that the return of Gallifrey might be the story of an upcoming season, but this line may suggest that it will be left alone for a bit. The Doctor may be content with knowing that his people are safe, and not worry about the details.
“This is why I gave her to you in the first place to make you see – the friend inside the enemy, the enemy inside the friend” – It was rather left undiscussed, but it was indeed Missy who arranged The Doctor and Clara to meet. She gave clara the phone number of the TARDIS back before The Bells of St. John, and planted the ad in the paper that brought the pair back together in The Eleventh Hour. Eleven asked Clara if she was “a trick; a trap” – might that question still not be answered?
NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – Clara has a big mouth, and should stop asking for adventures with monsters. After the Lake, passing through this Saturday.
The BBC is giving us all a grand Christmas present – Alex Kingston will return to Doctor Who for the Christmas special as The Doctor’s Paramour and assassin, River Song.
Day one of filming the eleventh Doctor Who Christmas special starts this week and is written by lead writer and executive producer, Steven Moffat, produced by Nikki Wilson and directed by Douglas Mackinnon (Doctor Who, Sherlock).
Award-winning Alex Kingston comments on her reappearance:
“To be honest, I did not know whether River would ever return to the show, but here she is, back with the Doctor for the Christmas special. Steven Moffat is on glittering form, giving us an episode filled with humor and surprise guest castings. I met Peter for the first time at Monday’s read-through, we had a laugh, and I am now excited and ready to start filming with him and the Doctor Who team. Christmas in September?, why not!”
Steven Moffat, lead writer and executive producer adds:
“Another Christmas, another special for Doctor Who – and what could be more special than the return of Alex Kingston as Professor River Song. The last time the Doctor saw her she was a ghost. The first time he met her, she died. So how can he be seeing her again? As ever, with the most complicated relationship in the universe, it’s a matter of time …”
River Song’s timeline with The Doctor has always been a topic of great discussion among fans. From her point of view, her first appearance in Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead was the last time she saw The Doctor, having died and all. Up until the recent episode The Name of the Doctor, all of River’s appearances have been from earlier in her life / timeline – only in the latest one have we seen her from after the events of that first (well, I say “first”…) meeting. So there’s no knowing from whence we’ll be seeing her appear this time.
As fans of their relationship know, there’s one very important moment we’ve yet to see – The Doctor has not yet presented her with the souped-up version of the sonic Screwdriver she used with such style in the Library. And considering Christmas is traditionally when presents are exchanged, who’s to say this isn’t when it’ll happen?
Curse you, Moffat, we haven’t even gotten to the premiere of the new season (September 19, as if you didn’t know) and you’ve already got us looking ahead to Christmas.
We all know how it works. A movie company gets a hold of a classic property like a TV show or even another movie, and proceed to “improve” it for a new audience by largely removing almost everything that made the property good in the first place. It takes a singular talent to perform such surgery on a concept and successfully replace the gaps with quality entertainment is a rare accomplishment.
Luckily, Guy Ritchie is a singular talent, and while there is effectively none of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement in the film, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is a perfectly entertaining period spy movie, a fine film about two men named Napoleon and Illya, much in the same way his Sherlock Holmes films were about two clever fellows name Sherlock and Watson, just not the ones we’re acquainted with.
In this iteration, Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) is a former master burglar; captured but pardoned in exchange for working for the CIA, and Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) is the KGB’s best man, but prone to fits of violent rage. So clearly this is not your father’s (or in my case, my) U.N.C.L.E. agents. Cavill plays Solo with a smooth charm that works perfectly, and while he’s not the cool emotionless Russian that sent hearts aflutter in the 60s, Hammer plays Illya as a semi-traditional Russian brute with a soft side.
Also missing is U.N.C.L.E.’s nemesis Thrush – here an unnamed “international criminal organization” is behind the plot, headed by Victoria Vinciguerra (Elizabeth Debicki), a classic brilliant femme fatale, played to the hilt. The organization has obtained the means and the scientific expertise to manufacture nuclear weapons, still the hotly guarded secret in the sixties, forcing the US and USSR to team up and send in their best men, the aforementioned Napoleon and Illya, who have by now met once, before the were asked to play nice. Napoleon had just completed a tactical extraction, pursued by Illya, of one Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander), daughter of the scientist believed to be working for Victoria. She is recruited to make contact with her…um, father’s brother, who is believed to have been the one to facilitate the arrangement, in the hopes of revealing their treasonous scheme.
The film hits all the points you’d like a period spy movie to hit— fast-paced split-screen editing, the stealth incursion into the bad guy’s lair, some staggering costumes for the ladies (none of which were particularly revealing, but still a retro joy to behold) and the requisite turncoat moment or two (to say who did it to whom would be telling). The soundtrack is a delight, a combination of Ritchie’s traditional amazing skill for picking existing songs, and a score chock fill of pan flutes and hammer dulcimers, the source of much of the music found in spy films in the sixties. But the film rises and falls on the chemistry between the stars. Cavill and Hammer plays against each other perfectly, and both work well with Vikander.
As mentioned at the beginning, the only complaint one could have for the film is exactly how little a role U.N.C.L.E. itself actually plays in the film. Hugh Grant arrives in the third act as Alexander Waverly, here a member of British Intelligence, and it’s only at the very last moment of the film that the eponymous acronym is ever used, and even then, it’s made to sound like it’s going to be nothing more than a code name for the pair, um…team. I pretty much knew going in that we were going to be saddled with a “When they first met” movie, and we would have to sit there and wait for them to become the team we know with the same impatient frustration of sitting through Popeye, and just waiting for Robin Williams to eat the gorram spinach. We didn’t get cameos by Robert Vaughn or David McCallum, I didn’t even see the U.N.C.L.E. special Walthers I thought I’d spied in the trailer. I sat through the credits, hoping against hope they’d give us ONE tip of the hat, that iconic title card that made sitting through the TV show’s credit worth it every week.
Throw me a frikkin’ BONE, here!
Happily, this was one of the few cases where I was able to put my feeling about missing what we didn’t get aside and just enjoy what we did get, because what we got was cherce.
Fathom events will team with BBC Worldwide North America for a national broadcast of the Doctor Who series eight climax Dark Water/Death in Heaven this fall. Scheduled for September 15th and 16th, and presented in 3D, the event will also feature a new prequel teaser for series nine entitled The Doctor’s Meditation. In addition Wil Wheaton, former Wesley Crusher and now multiform internet sensation, will host a special interview with Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman.
The two-part season finale featured the return of The Master, in the form of Michelle Gomez, who has already been confirmed to re-appear in the two part series nine opener The Magician’s Assistant / The Witch’s Familiar, set to premiere several days after this presentation on September 19.
Fathom Events has had a several-year partnership with BBC, beginning with a national broadcast of the 50th anniversary episode The Day of the Doctor, which the company described as bringing the “largest surges of traffic ever” to their website. They’ve since broadcast the Series 8 premiere episode Deep Breath, as well as a presentation of the David Tennant two-parter Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel. Fathom have presented a number of genre-friendly events, including an ongoing series of science fiction films “commented on” by MST3K alumni at RiffTrax, and an upcoming return to theaters of the animated classic The Iron Giant.
Tickets go on sale July 31 – check the Fathom Events website for a list of participating theaters.
First rule of pro wrestling(*) – you NEVER know what’s going to work.
Mick Foley spent years breaking his body in the indies, but he became a superstar when he put a sock on his hand.
Steve Austin barely avoided being called the “Ice Dagger”, made fun of a bible passage at King of the Ring, and people had “Austin 3:16″ signs in the audience the next night.
You can spend weeks pushing someone, but another performer can say something in the ring, or do a move in a weird way, and the fans will pull them to their collective breast and never let go.
So is the tale of Blue Pants.
Leva Bates has been doing journeyman work in the indies for some time, establishing a solid reputation.
So one day the gang from WWE’s developmental brand NXT gave her a call, asking her to come by as do a stint as “Enhancement talent”, better known as “a jobber”, even better known as “the guy paid to lose the match”.
So Leva finished her shift as a costumed character at Universal Studios, grabbed her bag, and went to Full Sail University to play…well, another costumed character.
She was set to face Carmella, a new member of the Women’s Division, newly teamed up with hot tag-team Enzo Amore and Colin “Big Cass” Cassidy, a pair of old school NYC paisan tough guys. Leva’s character didn’t even have a name, so Cass took a look at her bright blue ring gear (actually a cosplay outfit inspired by X-Men regular Kitty Pryde) and introduced her as “Old Blue Pants”, hailing from “The back of the clearance rack”. She didn’t have an entrance theme – Cass just hummed the theme to The Price Is Right.
And that’s when things got weird.
Yes, she lost the match. Maybe some of the educated wrestling fans in the audience recognized her, maybe they just felt like being silly. But they watched her smiling, peppy attitude, the “I’m just happy to be here'” smile plastered across her face, watched her deliver solid moves, and decided she was the one to watch.
So she came back a couple weeks later, to lose again to Carmella…and the cheers were even louder. By the third visit, she DID have an entrance theme – a recording of Cass humming the (no longer quite, for copyright purposes) theme to The Price is Right.
And she won.
And the place exploded.
This day-worker was getting bigger pops than the contracted superstars. And everybody was loving it.
Leva’s made a few more appearance on NXT over the past few months. She’s yet to win another match, but there’s a point where you’re so over with the crowd you don’t need to win, they’re just happy you showed up.
She’s everything wonderful about wrestling, and more importantly, wrestling fans. We’re an odd crowd – we don’t often engage in the hooliganism you see in other “real” sports. Indeed, sometimes the fans will go to great lengths to make sure a five-year-old fan at her first show gets to meet her favorite wrestler. And we don’t always do what the marketing department want us to. And the smart company will know when to cut bait and go where the fish are biting.
Just this week, WWE elevated three of NXT’s best women wrestlers to the main stage at Monday Night Raw. Charlotte (daughter of legend Ric Flair), Becky Lynch, and current NXT women’s champion Sasha Banks premiered on RAW with a bang, laying waste to the current stable of WWE “Divas”, as the women are branded. And true to form, they ripped the place up.
Now, when wrestlers move from the “Farm league” of NXT to the main roster of WWE, two things happen. One, there’s a deep and abiding hope that they won’t get lost in the much larger pool of the main roster. But it also means a new opportunity for the folks in NXT to move into the limelight. NXT has a great roster of women, including the ever-perky Bayley, the aforementioned “Queen of Staten Island” Carmella, and more in training, ready to make their premiere.
Is this a chance for Leva to make the move to regular talent?
If she does, I’ll cheer till I’m blue in the…
well, you know.
(*) OK, we know what the REAL first rule of pro wrestling is, but work with me here…
Leva’s youtube channel is home to her show The Geek Soapbox, where she dishes on comics and video games.
Warner Bros kicked off their annual visit to San Diego with a new trailer for Guy Ritchie’s take on the 60’s spy series The Man From U.N.C.L.E., kindly releasing it online so we wouldn’t have to suffer through grainy and keystoned phone footage.
The trailer is largely an extended version of the first teaser trailer, with a smattering of new scenes featuring the snappy dialogue and slick editing that Guy Ritchie is known for… save for that period he was married to Madonna.
There’s still no use of Thrush as the name of the “international criminal organization”, and it sounds more like “UNCLE” is of a code name for the pair, as opposed to an actual agency. But at its core, the original series was The Napoleon and Illya Show, so as long as the chemistry between the stars works, there’s every chance the film will succeed. And judging from what we’ve seen, it certainly seems like they do well together.
In addition to the trailer, Warner Bros announced an online game, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: Mission Berlin. It’s a third-person perspective game in the style of Grand Theft Auto, with your choice of either Solo or Kuryakin running and driving through various secret missions. Currently playable on the web at www.manfromunclegame.com, it will soon be available at both the Apple and Google app stores soon.
People of a certain age (i.e. “Old”) will remember when in the early days of HBO, a weird ,wild animated film called Twice Upon a Time made the rounds. Many paid it heed because it was executive produced by George Lucas, currently in the process of imprinting our childhoods with a new mythology. But except for a laserdisc and VHS release, the film rather fell off the table, save for dedicated maniacs who remembered it fondly.
The tale of the two audio tracks is somewhat of a confusing tale. There’s a more raunchy version of the dialogue that features a number of curse words – it’s been long assumed that was the original version of the film, but that’s not the case. As Korty explains in the commentary, they were contractually obligated to deliver a family-friendly film, and so they did. But when sneak previews proved unsuccessful, Korty’s producer Bill Couturié (Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt) took it on himself to re-record many of the lines with more salty language, to attempt to make the film more accessible to an older audience. It had the opposite reaction – the film’s limited release resulted in numerous walkouts and demands for refunds, and the wide release was cancelled. The second version is the one that was (accidentally, it’s believed) to HBO, and when it was replaced with the “clean” version for later showings and the video release, the belief arose that the film had been censored – indeed, it had been returned to its original form. Interestingly, even Warner Archives mixes this up – They describe the dirty version as the “Director’s Original Version”, when in fact it’s the PG version that was Korty wanted and delivered.
“I think you’ve been lying” – Oh geez, you THINK?
We all know how it works. A movie company gets a hold of a classic property like a TV show or even another movie, and proceed to “improve” it for a new audience by largely removing almost everything that made the property good in the first place. It takes a singular talent to perform such surgery on a concept and successfully replace the gaps with quality entertainment is a rare accomplishment.
is a perfectly entertaining period spy movie, a fine film about two men named Napoleon and Illya, much in the same way his Sherlock Holmes films were about two clever fellows name Sherlock and Watson, just not the ones we’re acquainted with.
The film hits all the points you’d like a period spy movie to hit— fast-paced split-screen editing, the stealth incursion into the bad guy’s lair, some staggering costumes for the ladies (none of which were particularly revealing, but still a retro joy to behold) and the requisite turncoat moment or two (to say who did it to whom would be telling). The soundtrack is a delight, a combination of Ritchie’s traditional amazing skill for picking existing songs, and a score chock fill of pan flutes and hammer dulcimers, the source of much of the music found in spy films in the sixties. But the film rises and falls on the chemistry between the stars. Cavill and Hammer plays against each other perfectly, and both work well with Vikander.
