The Lotus Is Rancid…

So someone made a Spider-Man fan film a couple years back that was supposed to be more comic accurate than any of the feature films. It covers a very familiar – and quite frankly, very tired – subject matter that has been touched on a couple times in these features. It’s perhaps one of the wall-crawler’s most famous moments… that eventually got undone, but that’s another story.

I never knew about this until I came across a couple Youtube things talking about how this is one of the worst Spider-Man things ever made… now think of the ground that covers.

After a while, I found the film in question. I sat down and watched the film. And for what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s the worst thing, or even ONE of the worst things to happen to Spider-Man. I could think of much, MUCH worse. And I don’t want to slag on this film too much because it is literally a bunch of amateur actors and filmmakers doing a movie based on a beloved superhero. Sometimes, you have to cut a little slack when it comes to these fan productions, especially considering the spoils of high-quality material that Trek fans were used to during the Golden/Silver/Bronze Age Of Star Trek Fan Films.

And in fairness, I didn’t completely hate this thing.

But instead, I was just really, REALLY bored.

I don’t want to turn this into a full review – I might save that for later down the road. But here’s what I want to know… a long time ago, a bunch of kids got together and planned to make their own secret Spider-Man movie. It’s something I’ve talked about in the old blog and will occasionally make mention of. To the best of my knowledge, nothing came of it and nobody made mention of it. It’s something that seems to have been completely and utterly forgotten.

So my question is this?

Is THIS Lotus thing the secret Spider-Man movie that’s been teased all this time? Is THIS what those folks who took shots at the Studi’HOS (their spelling, not mine) wanted to make all those years? I don’t know if that’s the case. Honestly, I’m not sure anyone even remember that to be a thing.

I can tell you one thing. If this was indeed the payoff to all that build and secret Spider-Man movie hype, then my only reaction would boil down to two words.

“That’s it?”

Anyway… just a random thought.

TNA Bound For Glory 2013

In a year that saw AJ Styles wrestle his final professional wrestling in front of a live television crowd – at least, as of this writing – it is only fitting that we finally get around to muse about the 2013 edition of TNA’s Bound For Glory PPV event, which featured the final PPV main event of a man that had truly been the marquee TNA star… even if he was never truly presented as such.

Continue reading “TNA Bound For Glory 2013”

State Of The Blog – September 2026

Hello and welcome to a rare evening edition of the monthly State Of The Blog for reasons that involve wanting to finalize stuff before making it public. Dates are set in stone, review subjects are not… save for a couple… and also gimmick tables are largely up in the air until further notice… or not… who knows? Who cares?

Anyway, Star Trek turns 60 this month… so naturally, let’s not talk about Star Trek and instead talk about other things that are not Star Trek… and no, we’re not pivoting to Star Wars. (Though make no mistake, we’re doing some of that eventually… the backlog on that front is certainly building up.)

Anyway, quite a bit of progress after the break…

Continue reading “State Of The Blog – September 2026”

Review #1365 – Pop’n Wizz (Mega Drive)

And now for something completely and utterly different from the usual… I promise.

Oh, and by the way, the thumbnails featured in this week’s lot of video reviews are from Youtube’s inspiration tab that’s going away, so I figured that I’d give these generic A1-generated thumbnails a whirl and see how many people don’t watch. Should be fun… or not.

For those who want to give this a shot:
https://format-c.itch.io/popn-wizz

On The 31st Day… No One Sent Me A Copy Of Section 31

It is the 31st of August in the year of our lord 2026… and it’s the time-honoured tradition of my declaration of not having watched the Section 31 streaming motion picture starring Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh.

Yep, we’re still doing this.

For what it’s worth, the only “physical” gift I got this year were a couple boxes of Magic: The Gathering cards that are TMNT-themed. Never played Magic before, but the cards look neat. Nobody sent me a DVD or Blu-Ray of this thing yet, so the movie remains unwatched.

I haven’t even touched Prime Video and will be letting my Paramount+ sub expire. Part of me is hopeful that it expires before Star Trek turns 60, so that I can see what BIG SWING the show has for the occasion. Hopefully, they’ll do a Star Trek episode; could sure use one of those.

Tonight Is All In… Or Rather This Morning…

Sadly, I will not be watching the show today due to prior commitments. Another birthday to celebrate and also waiting on a broken dryer to be fixed up…. Actually a lot of things need fixing up ’round these parts, but hey, I’m sure it’ll be a fine show that won’t cause anyone any problems and that ol’ Uncle Dave will give Kenny/Willy a kazillion stars and declare it the greatest wrestling match ever or whatever the case may be.

All of this while you have Adam “Edge” Copeland on the roster, who actually did compete in the Greatest Wrestling Match Ever back in 2020 with Randy Orton. WWE told you so themselves. Would they lie?

Anyhoo… gotta run. Stuff to do.

Later.

Flaky As May Be…

Konami recently put out a trailer for the upcoming Belmont’s Curse game… I’d post it here, but I forgot to bookmark the video and don’t feel like looking it up. Basically, it just announced the English cast for the game, which includes a couple voice actors from the Netflix series as well as someone voicing a character from a previous Castlevania outing. Needless to say, I’m largely ambivalent regarding casting for these things, so other than the little bits of gameplay shown off, my anticipation remains the same.

I do have to laugh at some of the folks who are crying foul that this feels nothing like the Castlevania they grew up with or were familiar with. To those folks, I say, “Join the club. Now you know how some of us felt when Symphony Of The Night was a thing.”

Castlevania has moved past its Igavania phase. If you want more of that, Bloodstained is right there and the new one will offer more of that, I’m sure. Am I completely on board with this new style being presented? Not entirely, but I wouldn’t say that I’m against it, either. To compare it to what came before is doing this a disservice. If you want to say that you prefer the older games over what this one is offering, fair enough. But to anyone who says this doesn’t need or deserve to be a Castlevania game… I’ve said the same thing about Order Of Ecclesia for years. I even made a video on that count; you can watch that here.

Belmont’s Curse is scheduled for release on October 15th. I’ve considered getting this on Switch, but figure that I might be better off getting this on Steam and running this on the big tower. I’ll probably post some quick thoughts afterwards. If the game rocks, I’ll say so. If the game sucks, I’ll say so. But I’ll judge it on its own merits before deciding whether I like it more than whatever came before… and if this turns out to be worse than Judgment, we’re all boned.

Anyway, some big stuff coming up on the channel and the blog. Hope it all works out…

May Has A Stroke…

“Did you hear that Marvel gave Aunt May a stroke?” was what someone asked me.

To which I immediately replied with, “What? Again?”

So this is the hook for the 1000th overall issue of The Amazing Spider-Man… which promises to change things up FOREVER… which means it’ll last about six months before sales go to shit and we revert everything back to whatever stupid status quo we have going right now.

I feel compelled to remind people that 600 issues previous, Marvel actually had the balls to KILL OFF Aunt May by letting her die peacefully in her sleep. And you want to know something? Amazing Spider-Man #400 was a tremendous issue that grew a relationship and gave a character that has been around for decades a dignified road to the pearly gates, which rarely happens in comics… and then cops came around and arrested Peter for murder because Marvel can’t leave nice things alone.

By the way, Aunt May was eventually brought back to life… on account of the woman who died was an actress and the real May had been a prisoner of Norman Osborne, who also returned to life around that time, too… and she’d get shot and that became the impetus for One More Day… the less said, the better.

Look, I don’t know what becomes of May this time around. Maybe they finally found the balls to kill her off and we can all finally attempt to evolve whatever sad sack they’re calling Peter Parker these days into the next phase of his life. I’m not asking for them to bring back the marriage because I don’t trust these people to handle that piece of business without completely fucking it up per usual. Nor am I asking them to undo everything since One More Day because that would be a disservice to whatever following this thing has gained since that time. Just because I don’t care for what they’re doing with the Spider-Man character these days doesn’t mean others don’t. Nobody wants Marvel to pull a NEW 52 and alienate those who became fans outside of what veterans perceive as the “golden years” of the character or whatever term you wish to use.

All I’m asking is that if you’re going to change one thing – just ONE thing – it’s to overcome whatever aversion you have to character GROWTH and let the character GROW. Whatever excuse you have for not making this character grow beyond “that darn Parker luck” in an attempt to make him related no longer holds mustard. If you want to make Parker a loser because that’s how you see your audience, that’s your prerogative and the people who complain about this stuff and yet still continue to provide you business or defend your name being sullied probably deserve to be called losers as a result.

Not me, though; I haven’t bought a Spider-Man comic in years and the last one I did buy was a trade paperback collection for Maximum Carnage, which was a comic event from the 90s… though most people probably know it as the thing that inspired the video game.

On the bright side… I’ve heard good things about the new movie. Maybe I’ll give it a watch one of these days… once it’s on DVD.

Oh wait, Sony doesn’t do physical media any more…

Never mind.