PlanBFromOuterSpace

At the International Wrestling Cartel (ICW) show tonight in Pittsburgh, I met Gregory Iron, the Handicapped Hero and overall super funny dude. A lot of his t-shirts have been inspired by iconic 80s-90s wrestling imagery, so in honor of the gang doing "No Holds Barred" in a couple of weeks, and since I'm a fan, I thought I'd post this... Follow Gregory Iron on Facebook and Twitter! He's one of the only people that does Bitstrips right and has used it to advance his storylines! He also uses Bobby Brown's theme from "Ghostbusters 2" for entrance music! That's my jam! https://www.facebook.com/thehandicappedhero

That's correct, but I'll bet that they really weren't expecting to lose "Star Wars" as a film franchise in the then unlikely chance that there'd ever be another one. And who should buy Lucasfilm? Oh, just the very same people that they're trying to keep the X-Men and Fantastic Four away from. Disney and Marvel will make money out of anything they have, and it's up to Fox to decide if they want a share of it, and it's actually led to some really ballsy choices to keep interest going. Even including non-Marvel properties, they've actually done some pretty creative stuff to re-start franchises after driving them INTO the ground to begin with, as "Prometheus", "Rise of the Planet of the Apes", and of course "X-Men: First Class" were at least better received than their direct predecessors (the AvP films, Buton's Apes, and the first Wolverine) that seemingly stalled or killed their respective franchises in their tracks.

To be fair, the second FF did similar business to the first, so it's not like they lost money, but I think Fox knew they were pushing their luck by continuing to go in that direction. It wasn't like "Ghost Rider", where even if they were basically two different kinds of movies, they were connected, and less than half the people that saw the first one bothered to show up for a sequel. The casting of this new FF kind of puzzles me, as going by the actors involved, I'm not sure who will be playing who, whereas I think the earlier ones were (for the most part) cast well to type. If it works out though, I'd like to see the FF run into the X-Men, and if THAT goes well and Marvel can get all of the studios on the same page, MAYBE we can at least one day get a Marvel proper vs. Fox Marvel movie, assuming Marvel proper doesn't get the rights back at some point. Disney was already able to get Star Wars away from Fox through their purchase of Lucasfilm, so I can only imagine that Fox would try that much harder to keep the rights that they have, if for no other reason than to spite them.

IMDB is pretty lousy sometimes with possibly spoilerish cast listings. If I remember correctly, Jason Statham was like the sixth or seventh listed person on "Fast and Furious 6". We had to promote that film and had stuff all over our lobby, and someone had just compiled the list of names from IMDB with pictures of the actors, including Statham, so I did a little checking to make sure he WASN'T in the main cast, that he'd just be a cameo, before replacing his bio with something like "Who's the mystery villain behind it all? Stay through the credits to find out!". Suspense, people. Suspense...

It's also the first of two movies he did in 1985 where he killed communism dead, the second of which was "Rocky IV", which deserves an honorary Oscar for being the first ever feature-length montage.

I would think that they had the "like a bird" part in mind first, right? I mean, if that's your punchline/payoff, you'd work backwards from that to make it make sense in the script I would think. However, I've seen TOO many movies where the characters are impossibly quick-witted, like they were just WAITING to use a perfectly-crafted response to this question that they'd only been asked one second ago, so it's refreshing to see such a sloppy exchange, which would probably be the most realistic thing in the movie.

Oh, don't you worry, it's still great and a fine representation of action films of it's time. I still bust it out on occasion and enjoy it quite a bit, which I can't really say about the 2004 one, which has it's moments, but then also has a boring hour or so BETWEEN those moments.

They must be the same cops from "2 Fast 2 Furious" that immediately forget to ever look for this group of people in very distinct vehicles ever again. Seriously, they spend the whole movie hanging out together, and one of the cars is bright pink and has a huge dragon on it or something.

It's already being done. They announced it a while back, and I think they said on Facebook that it's going to be a live show at Largo next month.

Or the 1989 Dolph Lundgren "Punisher" film! COME ON! I know the adopted white mute ninja daughter of Lady Tanaka has some pretty sweet boot knives that she tries to stick Dolph with as he picks her up off the ground and totally ragdolls her.

Having worked at a movie theater the entire time, I've come to recognize and understand the trends as well, as I've seen them ALL come and go, from your "Harry Potter" and your "Twilight" to all the franchise non-starters in between. You try to explain that to people that are convinced that something's the next big thing, when really it's just a cash-in on something else, and you get the "Oh, you think just because you work at a movie theater it makes you an expert?" bullshit. No, it doesn't make me an expert, but it IS our business to have some idea of how something's going to perform so that we can plan and operate accordingly. It does just so happen that I have an interest in that kind of thing, as well as some experience working IN film (funny you should mention "I Am Number Four"...), so maybe I have more to add to the conversation than just "No one's gonna see this because it looks like it sucks", but it doesn't take a genius to see how transparent, schizophrenic, and desperate the "Vampire Academy" marketing was. Again, the movie's been out for a week, and we still don't know who it's for!

Based on the ads and now a description from someone that's actually SEEN it, I STILL don't know who this is supposed to be for. I've caught a scene here and there at my theater (there hasn't been a single person in the auditorium whenever I've been working), and it doesn't seem like an actual movie. Check out the IMDB comments section for some sad, sad discussion by people that don't understand how movies work.

From what I remember, I thought the effects were fine for the most part, but what was tge deal with that 8-bit column thing on the ship at the end? It seriously looked like it was a placeholder or an unfinished effect or something.

That WAS pretty mind-blowing at the time, as up to that point, every player was either indistinguishable white guy or indistinguishable black guy. I can still remember a little further back, to like "Michael Andretti Racing" or something like that, where the big innovation was that you could drive a red car OR a blue car. In the SINGLE PLAYER game! Ho. Lee. Shit.

I grew up in the Chicago area and haaaaaaated the Pistons for being such a pain in the ass through the late 80's, so it was pretty great once the Bulls started steamrolling everyone in the 90's. When Rodman joined up in the late 90s, the hate for all things Detroit had sort of worn off, but it really didn't seem like they needed him at that point anyway. He just happened to be playing for them when they were murdering everyone. Anyone remember the EA Sports NBA games for the SNES and Genesis? It started with Lakers vs. Celtics, and then just started naming itself after whoever was in the NBA Finals, but then it just became Bulls vs. Lakers, Bulls vs. Blazers, etc. until they just re-named the series NBA Showtime or NBA Live or whatever it was, because it had basically just become the "Bulls Vs." series anyway.

Actually, it only came out about 4 and a half months after "Space Jam", so I'm sure that one thing had nothing to do with the other. Remember, this was also during a time when Shaq inexplicably had a film career, even though his films did nothing but fail. Speaking of which, HDTGM needs to do "Steel". "The LEGO Movie" (also featuring Shaq) was a better "Superman" tie-in than "Steel". Hell, "The Lego Movie" would be fun for this show, in a good way.

Another big one from around that time: Shaq being shitty at free throws. It seemed like every time he made an appearance outside of basketball, that would be referenced somehow. I GUARANTEE (but I'm not willing to check to be sure) there's probably an entire conversation devoted to this in "Steel". I wouldn't say it was AS dated, because as far as I know, he kept that shitty free throw for a pretty long time. Speaking of Chicago though, I grew up on the Bulls, and I always thought that Bil Cartwright had the most beautiful ugly shot of all.

It's at least one basketball pun short of being something that could have come out of Rodman's mouth in this film. At LEAST one.

He's actually right from the suburb of Pittsburgh where I lived (I'm a whole 15 minutes down the road now). I mean, I wasn't in the area until 2000, don't know anyone that knows him, and he was of course long gone by then, but he was still popping in to play at the Days Inn and small places like that up until "Rock of Love" hit and his stock went up again. He seems like he'd be a pretty OK dude though.

Is there anything more punchable than a 12-year-old doing that thing with the sunglasses there? I challenge you to find something more punchable.

I remember liking "Tomorrow Never Dies" a lot at the time, but didn't care much for "The World is Not Enough". The video game was great though, and it felt a bit underrated after the "GoldenEye" game ruled the world. Man, THAT thing was like the shit-talkingest game of all time, and there always seemed to be a game going in my dorms for like 2 straight years. I think "Die Another Day" is the only Bond movie from the last 30 years or so that I've never seen in it's entirety. I still have the teaser poster for it somewhere though, and it's pretty rad.

Have you read Hardcore Holly's book at all? It's pretty great, as he was a career mid-carder that got stuck with all sorts of ridiculous shit, but he's got a lot of great stories (including a complete breakdown of the "Brawl For All" fiasco) and doesn't seem to really hold any grudges (although there certainly are some folks he doesn't like), and it's actually pretty amazing what Vince did for him once they decided to get out of the stock car racing business. I SO can't wait for "No Holds Barred"...

If you're interested in learning even more about the kind of bizarre deals that WCW was making around this time, I strongly suggest "The Death of WCW" by RD Reynolds (WrestleCrap) and Brian Alvarez. It's pretty amazing. I have the original version, but I think they may have just put out or are planning to put out a 10th anniversary edition.

In 1998, at the height of his Rodman-ness, THIS happened... Don't know why I couldn't find this in its entirety, but parts 2 and 3 should be right there too. I'm pretty sure that this is the match where Dennis Rodman FALLS ASLEEP while standing in the corner.

That reminds me, there was a wedding of a friend that I went to, where at some point in the ceremony, the priest or whoever said something like "Now take a look around at your neighbors, the people sitting around you, greet them, shake their hands", and since my friends were all sitting together, we all did the exploding sun fist bump thing back and forth for about a dozen times each. It's not often that you're asked to do awesome handshakes in church, so you best not waste it