Category: Written Reviews

BOOK REVIEW – 100 Things WWE Fans Should Know And Do Before They Die (2019)

Bryan Alvarez – he of Figure Four Weekly, F4WOnline, Bryan & Vinny, and MINUS FIVE STARS fame – wrote another book. This time, he wrote one on his own, as opposed to sharing the spotlight with R.D. Reynolds and taking all the credit, as was the case with the previous literary endeavor, The Death Of WCW.

Just kidding, Bryan.

100 Things WWE Fans Should Know And Do Before They Die is essentially one of those list-type things, where you have 100 different topics of relative importance and each topic has a number of paragraphs dedicated to it. Some entries in the book have more space dedicated to it than others, while others have little more than short blurbs dedicated to it. In the case of the short blurbs, you sometimes wish there was more that could be expanded upon, but then again, some of these topics could very well be subjects for their own books in and of themselves.

The book opens with a forward from Lance Storm, who is something of a literary connoisseur in addition to be a former wrestler and trainer of future wrestlers. Once you somehow get past that without falling asleep, you get the rest of the book, which hits you with all the basic historical bits to bring a newcomer to the WWE bubble up to speed. And that’s pretty much the whole aim of the book; it’s essentially something that you can give to a newcomer to get them up to speed on what this whole thing is about. The topics aren’t delved into deeply – though some topics have more pages dedicated to them than others, which merely get a paragraph’s mention at most – but this is less a deep dive and more into a refresher of things.

There’s nothing in this book that longtime fans of the genre doesn’t already know before, but serves as a nice reference and Bryan’s wit is more or less on full display here. There’s even a couple entries written by other people who know more about certain bits than he does, which shows some level of humbleness that is normally lacking. The overall format of the book is convenient for those wanting a quick read; each entry typically has a page or two dedicated to them, so you can read an entry or two before calling it a day.

100 Things… does what it does well enough. It’s not the deepest look into the WWE inner workings nor does it try to be. It’s just a primer for newcomers to get themselves acquainted with the WWE universe and a little beyond that. If you’re looking for something more in-depth, you’re not going to get that here. But if you just want something that’s good for a quick read before dozing off, this gets the job done.

BOOK REVIEW – Hollywood Hulk Hogan (2002)

In 2002, Hollywood Hulk Hogan has returned to WWF for the first time in 1993. He got a big match with the Rock at Wrestlamnia X-8 that saw the Toronto crowd turn on the People’s Champ to cheer Hogan on like the returning hero – Hogan was a heel at the time. Long story short, the next night, Hogan was officially made into a babyface, slowly returned to his red and yellow colors (but still kept the Hollywood moniker, five-o-clock shadow, feather boas, and Voodoo Child entrance theme – which I’d argue is a better theme for Hogan than Real American), and eventually beat Triple for the Undisputed WWF Title where business tanked… but we don’t talk about that part.

Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW – Hollywood Hulk Hogan (2002)”

DVD Review – WWE RAW X: Tenth Anniversary Special (Jan. 2003)

On January 14, 2003, Monday Night RAW celebrated its tenth anniversary with an awards show ceremony that served more as a public masterbation of WWE’s public image than anything of merit. Eventually, they released the special, along with a handful of special features, onto DVD. I never got to watch the special live since it wasn’t part of the TSN package, but I was able to procure the DVD and so this is what I’m going to be looking at.

Continue reading “DVD Review – WWE RAW X: Tenth Anniversary Special (Jan. 2003)”

For Those Who Really Need Details On Solo

My hard-hitting review of Solo: A Star Wars Movie… well, let’s be fair. The banner pretty much sums up my thoughts on the film as a whole. Hell, I even did a quick dooble on the BoogieBoard gimmick (included after the break) that I posted shortly prior to this post.

But if you really want further thoughts…

Continue reading “For Those Who Really Need Details On Solo”

The Last Jedi… Meh… But With Spoilers!

For those who want a spoiler-y version of my thoughts on The Last Jedi… for whatever reason… here it is… It’s not a deep or detailed analysis nor is it a review – AW HELL NO, SON – but it is very spoiler-y and will address things that I both liked, didn’t like, and just wondered. Suffice it to say, those who would prefer a spoiler-free musings on the film can just scroll down and read my thoughts on the previous post.

(Note: I bounce around a lot and there’s a somewhat in-coherency to the whole ramble. But hopefully, whatever thoughts come to mind go through clearly, and if not… well, I tried.)

Continue reading “The Last Jedi… Meh… But With Spoilers!”

The Last Jedi… Meh.

My thoughts on the latest Star Wars film are going to be brief because going into too much detail might be dipping deep into spoiler territory and I’d like to give people who have seen the movie a chance to go in with a clean slate rather than be, well, spoiled.

With that having been said, the only thing that I can say about The Last Jedi is that nothing of note happens and it’s back to business as usual. And even that might be a bit too spoiler-y without being too spoiler-y, but for what is supposed to be the big, major Star Wars entry – the big middle chapter in the trilogy – it just felt like a filler episode of a television series rather than anything of great significance.

Don’t get me wrong; I liked the movie enough that there were brief bits to enjoy. The space battle at the beginning of the movie was pretty good, the battle on the salt planet wasn’t too bad, I enjoyed the brief character interactions between Rey and Luke, the cast in general does the best they could with the material given and almost makes me believe in it, and then there was seeing Luke Skywalker in action for the briefest of moments.

But for the most part, I was largely underwhelmed. Questions that have been set up in the previous episode are either brushed aside or given rather underwhelming resolutions, there are plenty of uninteresting characters that I absolutely don’t care about, some of the character motivations are pretty goddamn stupid, the humor (with some exceptions) was overbearing to the point of obnoxiousness and almost makes me wonder if Episode IX is going to feature a crossover with the Guardians of the Galaxy, and as far as the direction of one Master Skywalker… well, I can see why Mark Hamill would fundamentally disagree with that sort of thing.

All of this would’ve been forgiven if the story was worth a damn and unfortunately, that isn’t the case here. Say what you will about The Force Awakens, but that had a sense of scope and opened the door to many new possibilities and interesting takes. It’s a pity that The Last Jedi chooses to ignore or even discard these new things and just bring things back to business as usual. I daresay that the movie is more interested giving us random characters who only exist to check items off the diversity checklist that the media likes so much, rather than give audiences a story that’s worth a damn.

Contrary to the supposed rallying cry that a lot of people are going for – at least if you were to follow the plethora of user reviews on the IMDB, this didn’t kill Star Wars for me. But I can safely say with absolute certainty that this is the first time since Attack of the Clones where I came out of a Star Wars movie completely underwhelmed and just disappointed by the lack of vision.

For what it’s worth, it’s an alright movie… but the best since Empire Strikes Back? Not a chance.

That would be last year’s Rogue One.

COMIC REVIEW – Star Trek: Deviations (IDW, 2017)

IDW is at it, again.

They’re doing another round of their Deviations event – one-shots of various licensed properties being subjected to “What If?” scenarios. We’ve sampled a couple of these last year and this year… well, there was only one that piqued my interest and that was the Star Trek one. Took me a little longer to gather my thoughts on this one because… well, let’s be honest here. I’ve read three of these Deviations so far and we’re one for three at the moment.

Yeah, this isn’t very good, either… but this time, the blame falls on the premise, which seems to be all over the place.

The premise of this Deviation seems fascinating on paper; what if, instead of the Vulcans, it was the Romulans who were Earth’s first encounter with extraterrestrials. It’s an idea that has potential to be explored and possibly spin off an interesting alternate take on Star Trek lore before we get to the eventual “everyone dies” ending that a lot of these things fall back on because we’re uncreative hacks or something.

So what happens when the Romulans land on Earth before the Vulcans? They turn the planet into a Romulan colony and enslave the human race. Jump ahead to the 24th century and an eyepatched Will Riker leads a ragtag band of freedom fighters (who, coincidentally or conveniently, happen to be some of the old TNG crew in similar altered states or worse) to find a man who may or may not know the location of a Federation base… wait, what? A Federation base? How could there be a Federation base if the Romulans enslaved the human race shortly after Zefram Cochrane’s warp flight? If the humans never had a chance to develop space flight, how could there be a Federation? Hell, that Delta on the cover shouldn’t even be there if that were the case.

So IDW either lied about the deviation or nobody had a fucking clue. I’m leaning more towards the former because IDW has been doing Star Trek comics for years now and they’re usually on the ball with this stuff. I’d have to assume that, at some point, the Federation and the Romulans got into a war, the Romulans won, took control of Earth and enslaved the humans. That would make more sense and less questions would be brought up that we’d never get answers to. Approaching the story from THAT context rather than the premise it was sold on… eh, it’s not so bad.

For what it’s worth, it’s a fast-paced piece of business that doesn’t waste time on exposition since we don’t have time to waste in a one-shot book. The action bits are well-done and it was interesting to see the different takes on these familiar TNG characters. Would it have been nice to get more emphasis on the main players and how things have changed? Sure, but given what’s there… it was fine.

It’s just unfortunate that for all the good bits that this issue offered, I am left with more questions regarding anachronistic aspects of the story, including the final big reveal, which – had this been following the original premise of the series – should not exist in the first place. I don’t know… this feels like a sampler of a much larger story and if there’s more to come, I’d look forward to reading it.

As a one-shot, however, Star Trek: Deviations leaves much to be desired.

Random Thoughts On… Suicide Squad

So let me be upfront about this… I am not the biggest fan of the recent crop of DC films to come out of that camp. I’m talking about the Zack Snyder helmed stuff like Man Of Steel and Yawn Of Justice. Even going further back, I’ve also fallen a bit numb on what some would laughingly call the “holy” Dark Knight trilogy, of which only one of the films (The Dark Knight) holds up to any real degree. I’m not saying that I hate the films… well, Yawn Of Justice comes close… I just don’t think they’re all that good.

That having been said, watching the few trailers for this Suicide Squad film left me with some semblance of cautious optimism that this might be interesting at most and not completely worthless at worse. I was looking forward to this one; mostly to see how bad this might turn out.

Having just seen it and giving some deep thought, I can say with a clear conscious that Suicide Squad is perfectly average fare… and that probably makes it the best DC Film yet. Shocking, I’m sure.

Seriously, I actually enjoyed this one. It was simple, straightforward, no nonsense, no world building crap, just a bunch of bad guys doing bad things to even badder people. There was some decent gunfights, there was a couple laughs to be had at times, the mood was appropriately grim at times, and there was some attempt at making you care about these not-heroes, which is more than what I got out of the other flicks. In a strange way, Suicide Squad almost accomplishes the Iron Man affect; taking relatively lesser known characters and making people care about them in some form or another.

If there were any complaints to be had, I thought the drug-induced editing was a bit too much, what with all the “colorful” graphics and desperate attempt to infuse “livelihood” to a grim picture that was perfectly suited for the dark tone. The picture was dark to a point where it was difficult to see what was going on, The choice in music was absolutely dreadful, almost as if they just took whatever songs are or were popular and stuffed it in there without rhyme or reason in regards to tone (the actual score by Steven Price, on the other hand, is pretty good). And I’m particularly dismayed that they did very little with Katana (the one with the soul-stealing sword). Oh well.

Despite the quibbles, Suicide Squad was somewhat enjoyable and was completely terrible. Not a cinematic masterpiece nor a theatrical terror; just a perfectly average film that just happens to be the best film to come out of the DC Film Universe or whatever the fuck they’re calling it… and when “perfectly average” is the best you’re getting out of DC, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture.

Here’s hoping Wonder Woman doesn’t turn out to be a bust… sorry, poor choice of words.

Or is it?

COMIC REVIEW – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Deviations (IDW, 2016)

Of the half-dozen issues that IDW put out for its “Deviations” event – essentially a take on the “What If?” concept of alternate realities and the such – I’ve bought and read two books; one on Ghostbusters and one on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Ghostbusters book had an interesting idea marred by poop jokes, low brow humor, and just bad writing overall.

The Deviations on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, on the other hand? That fares a bit better. And that says something considering I haven’t been a regular follower of IDW’s (still ongoing) TMNT comic book… something that I eventually plan to rectify sooner than later, I hope.

This Deviation alters a plot point in the series, wherein the original narrative Leonardo is brainwashed into joining the foot clan, this narrative changes things by having all four Turtles brainwashed and in pursuit of their now-former master, Splinter. Although a familiarity with the original story in question may enhance one’s enjoyment of the story a bit, the book’s prologue provides enough of a backstory that bring those not in the know a little more up to speed. Who knows? Maybe it might entice potential readers to pick up back issues or the various trade paperback collections.

As for the issue itself, it’s not a bad read despite the story not being all that fantastic. The possessed Turtles almost become interchangeable caricatures of each other, with only slight hints of personality being shown and the lead up to the big battle at the end could’ve used a bit more meat. Regardless, I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy this book; the final battle at the end is certainly fun and the side story of Arnold Jones mulling over the loss of his son Casey (which triggered this whole thing to begin with) adds a bit of depth to a character that seemingly had none.

The art is fine, a bit messy at times, but it’s fine. I mean, as its own little thing, it’s a nice and somewhat believable story that’s saddled with a predictable ending (everybody dies, of course – hardly a spoiler if you’ve read a lot of What Ifs). An intimate knowledge of IDW’s take on the Turtles would certainly help, but this holds its own just fine as a standalone.