Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Deck the Halls

A few months back when reviewing the Joy Ride films I mentioned how my mom will always get me a random movie out of the $5 DVD bin as a Christmas tradition. Last year she gifted me a Christmas-themed film in the form of 2006’s Deck the Halls (trailer). I always try to watch a couple Christmas movies around this time of the year so now it seemed fitting to get it into the rotation.

Steve Finch (Matthew Broderick) has a successful career and a nice big house for his family. All he wants for the holidays is to have a classic Christmas season for his family doing all kinds of traditional customs he was raised on like the annual family greetings photo, caroling, decorating the tree, etc. The Christmas season is thrown for a loop for him when the Hall’s move in next door. Buddy Hall (Danny Devito) is far more free spirited than Steve and it is not too long before the two get into a heated rivalry into the Christmas season.

All Buddy wants for Christmas is the absurd goal to get his house so festive with Christmas lights that it is seen from space, and Steve tries multiple times to wreck that goal after Buddy unintentionally ruins a couple of his precious Christmas traditions early in the film. The two constantly try to one up each other in their blood feud, with Steve often being on the far worse end of the deal. Eventually it gets so bad that both Buddy’s and Steve’s families abandon them for Christmas at a hotel and then Steve and Buddy must cast aside their differences to win back their families in time for Christmas.

Deck the Halls has a straightforward plot, but the journey throughout is lackluster at best. There are a couple cringe-worthy scenes where Steve rocks a cheesy wannabe-stealth outfit in attempts of cutting the power to the Hall’s. Steve and Buddy amp up their feud by seriously competing in children’s games at the town’s local Christmas festival, and I get what the filmmakers were going for, but it is just painful to get through. I could never fully buy into Buddy getting more and more lights on his house throughout the film either as it appeared he was trying to poorly legitimize the classic satirical take of Griswold fully lighting up his house in Christmas Vacation. The film’s final act where the Steve and Buddy try to work together is not that convincing, and the film gets sillier in the final minutes when the whole town tries to help Buddy realize his dream.

There are a surprising amount of extra features on the BluRay. I usually do not point out subtitle options out that often unless the extra features are subtitled (which they are here!), but aside from that the main film itself probably has the most languages available in captions than I have ever seen before with a whopping 30(!) languages available for subtitles. Ludicrous caption options notwithstanding, there are several minutes of bloopers and deleted scenes. There are three features totaling around 15 minutes about the stage and lighting setup that I would suggest checking out to see how the film pulled off shooting a Christmas movie in July and how they rigged up the ambitious Christmas lights on the Hall household. Finally there is a commentary track with Danny Devito and director John Whitesell. I listened to several random scenes of the film with their commentary, and minus an occasional lull, the two have a good rapport about filming the feature during the summer and their chemistry with the cast and crew.

Bottom line, Deck the Halls is a Christmas movie for the kiddos, and if I was before my teens I could have seen myself loving a lot of the campy scenes I loathe now. If you want a family-friendly film to keep the kids at bay during the holidays while the adults can engage in fellowship then maybe Deck the Halls would fit that bill. When I was a kiddo, that family-friendly Christmas movie was Babes in Toyland that we got for free with a McDonalds Value Meal and my siblings and I must have seen that film close to a dozen times within a few years. On a side note, I was so underwhelmed by Deck the Halls (sorry mom!) that it inspired me to chance a couple Christmas movies on streaming apps that I enjoyed far more in forms of Merry Friggin’ Christmas and Small Town Santa and I will likely track those down soon on home video so be on the lookout for potential blogs on those films.

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

3
12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Guardians of the Galaxy
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Ink
Joy Ride 1 & 2
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jobs
Man of Steel
Man on the Moon
Marine 3-5
Mortal Kombat
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
The Replacements
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
The War
Wild
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Days of Future Past

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Lockdown 2006

Welcome to my second installment of reviewing every TNA Lockdown DVD! If you missed my recap of the first PPV in 2005 you can click here to catch up. That recap also contains a bonus intro that serves as a handy primer for the nuts-o promotion that somehow-someway keeps limping along that is TNA/GFW/Impact Wrestling. My plan is to review a Lockdown DVD every several months. Lockdown is the one event a year for the company where every match happens in a cage! Impact Wrestling has released DVDs of Lockdown PPVs through 2014. The 2015 & 2016 incarnations were shortened TV specials, but since the last blog Impact Wrestling finally launched its own Network/App, The Global Wrestling Network which features the entire Impact TV/TNA PPV archives so if/when I do get that far along with these blogs I will bite the bullet and subscribe to it and bestow the lowdown on Lockdown to you dear readers!

Also if you came here fresh from reading the 2005 Lockdown recap you will notice I am no longer referring to the promotion as Global Force Wrestling. That is because Anthem, the company that owns the promotion, had a major falling out with partner Jeff Jarrett before they fully completed the acquisition of his GFW promotion and they backed out of the GFW branding and went back to calling the promotion Impact Wrestling. For those keeping tabs that is the fourth, yes fourth name change for the promotion THIS YEAR because it started off 2017 as TNA, then went to Impact for a few months before changing to GFW for a few months and eventually back to Impact Wrestling. This is all great material for the eventual WWE buyout of Impact and they unleash their OMG 50 Incidents of Impact home video, which should really be a 5-disc 150 OMG Incidents because 50 is nowhere near enough!

So let us shift back to then-TNA in 2006. What has happened in the year preceding the previous Lockdown? Not too long after the premiere Lockdown PPV, TNA’s FSN TV contract ended, and after waiting a few months for WWE’s TV contract to end with Spike, TNA found their way on Spike the week after WWE left the network in October 2006. It was the beginning of a long partnership that would last over nine years with TNA staying on the network through 2014. The move to a major cable network was the catalyst for more former WCW/WWE talent coming over to TNA. Christian was the first WWE star to not re-sign with WWE and opted to bring his talents to Orlando and TNA got behind him big and within months he became the NWA World Champ and continued to hold it going into this show.

Sting was perhaps the biggest acquisition for TNA and he debuted a few months prior teaming with Christian in the first TNA PPV of 2006. Mr. “Big Poppa Pump” Scotty Steiner is two years past his failed WWE run and made his TNA debut shortly before this show and will have his first TNA match at this Lockdown. The Dudley Boyz are fresh off a successful six year run in WWE, and arrived in TNA towards the end of 2015 as the newly branded Team 3D and rocking flannel instead of camo. Finally, TNA acquired the hottest indy star in the summer of 2005 in the form of Samoa Joe and going into this PPV he is the X Division champion and undefeated at nearly a year into his run in the promotion. All these acts will have pretty solid runs in TNA and will have lengthy stays in the promotion. Also, this edition of Lockdown will be the final one for about a decade to not be booked by Vince Russo, and it shows with most of the matches here having solid, traditional rivalries and storytelling, and being surprisingly competent by TNA standards. I am greatly anticipating the nonsensical chaos to come in the future Lockdowns. OK, that primer setting up the 2006 Lockdown went on far too long but TNA/Impact is a…unique…company and a lot can occur in a year for them. On to the show!

TNA does a round robin league/tournament every year or two known as the X-Cup/Super X. It features a few teams consisting of cruiserweights from around the world. It usually lasts several weeks as the teams rack up points for their wins and losses. The opening match was a six man tag that served as a preview for the 2006 X-Cup with Team Japan’s Hirooki Goto, Black Tiger & Minoru defeating Team USA’s Alex Shelley, Sonjay Dutt, & Jay Lethal. Announcers Mike Tenay & Don West highlight that Lethal is at this point TNA’s youngest star on their roster at 23 years old! He has come a long way. The bout is a excellent opener with a good dose of the flips and dives expected from this division with a tremendous sequence of near falls in the final minutes that sees Black Tiger getting the pin on Jay Lethal with his Tiger Suplex.

There is a nice flow to this PPV with a quick backstage interview between every match with the wrestlers giving a quick traditional verbal beating of their rival shortly before their match. The former Bubba Ray, now known as Brother Ray gives a super rah-rah-USA promo with a 3D twist to the Pledge of Allegiance before their match later with Team Canada. However next up is Christopher Daniels against a mystery opponent that wound up being his former Triple X partner, the returning Low-Ki, who is now going by Senshi. Some of you may recall Low-Ki/Senshi from his brief 2010 run in WWE as the season two winner of NXT, Kaval. The two obviously know each other well and go move-for-move and counter-for-counter in another excellent highspot match-up where Senshi gets the victory with a reverse-Suplex-leverage pin.

The greatest worst faction in TNA history, Three Live Kru, disbanded since the last Lockdown with Kip James arrival in TNA and joining the group, but Konnan did not trust him and turned on his buddies. He went on to form the Hispanic-gang themed faction LAX with Hernandes & Homicide which I was a big fan of for their lengthy run in TNA. Kip and BG then teamed up as The James Gang and brought along BG’s dad, WWE Hall of Famer, Bullet Bob along for the ride. There is a fun montage highlighting this rivalry where Bullet Bob proves his true grit here by taking on Konnan in an arm wrestling match…in a cage! This looks like it could be a trainwreck going into it, but Konnan and Bullet Bob do a hell of a job with their facials in their tribute to Over the Top and it makes for a dandy little encounter. There is a bonus stipulation where the losing team has to get whipped and BG drags it out with his trash talk between lashings while the crowd chants “boring.” So the post-match hoopla is a wash, but the actual arm wrestling duel was surprisingly fun.

Speaking of crowd chants, there are a few ‘This is awesome’ chants I noticed this show. I am not positive but thinking back on it this chant may have originated in TNA. WWE was still pre-PG at this time and most of their crowds then chanted ‘Holy Shit’ or ‘ECW’ for highspots if I recall correctly. Now their crowds regularly chant ‘This is awesome.’ I could be wrong, but maybe TNA/Impact’s long-lasting legacy will be it being the origin of that popular chant. That chant was also predominant in the second annual Xscap match that sees six X-Division stars start off in an elimination match until it is down to two competitors where the bout then becomes an escape-the-cage-to-win match.

This year sees Elix Skipper, Petey Williams, Puma, Chase Stevens, Shark Boy and Chris Sabin in the Xscape match. Highlight of the bout is Stevens going up to the cage for a splash unto his opponents who were waiting to break his fall in a telegraphed spot, but then something happens and it looks like the X-Division stars get cold feet on wanting to take the spot or their timing is off and they whiff catching Stevens who air balls directly onto the mat in the nastiest spot of the night. The announcers try to improvise and cover for the spot by saying the wrestlers smartly moved out of the way and I guess it works, but what is more bizarre is Stevens barely selling the miss and continues to wrestle like he hit the move and is on a roll in the match….’bowling-shoe ugly’ as good ‘ol JR would say. Anywho, the match boils down to Williams and Sabin, and backfired interference from Petey’s manager Coach D’amore leads to Sabin escaping the cage in an entertaining final sequence.

Next we have the Lockdown debut of Samoa Joe defends his X-Title as he takes on Sabu. First thought here, is damn does Joe look like a kid here in 2005 compared to how we see him now in 2017. I believe this is also Sabu’s final TNA match for awhile because he went off to WWE for their ECW relaunch for a year. That did not stop Sabu from bouncing around like crazy and being the first combatant to get busted open this night. He tried to stab Joe with his trademark railroad spike, but fails to do so as he falls victim to Joe’s musclebuster and Joe walks out of this still undefeated.

Bubba had a pro-USA promo earlier, but Team Canada manage to top him with their pro-Canada speech as they intentionally bomb singing the opening lines to the Canadian anthem. Bobby Roode and Eric Young have come a long ways since these TNA early years. Bubba Ray, D-Von & Spike Dudley are known in TNA as Brother Ray, Brother D-Von & Brother Runt, respectively. They are taking on Team Canada’s Eric Young, A1 & Bobby Roode in an ‘Anthem Match.’ Hmm….I wonder if this should be the new marquee match type of the company today considering Impact Wrestling’s new parent owner is Anthem Entertainment, who is based out of Canada no less! What is an Anthem Match, you ask? In TNA, it is a Flag Match, but since this is Lockdown the wrestlers have to grab their county’s flag from the top of the cage to claim victory and the losers must then be shamed as they have to listen to their rivals’ national anthem in disgrace!

Team 3D has a fairly decent entrance theme knockoff to their killer Powerman 5000 track in WWE. There are a few fun spots in here such as a Bubba-Bomb from the top rope and a terrific false finish where Team 3D’s initial flag grab was not recognized because the ref was knocked out. This will probably be the first and only time where we have a flag match in a cage with a ref bump false finish….only in TNA! What is more amusing is Runt then grabbing the flag for the official victory and the TV crew cutting to the announcers to hype the rest of the card while the crowd chants along to the national anthem in its entirety well after they stop playing the instrumental version on the PA. Tenay & West hilariously fail to talk over them before giving in and recognizing the crowd’s rightful patriotism!

New mother of triplets and the first-ever WWE Diva Search winner, Christy Hemme makes her TNA debut next to deliver an envelope for West & Tenay to announce. A year prior, Dusty Rhodes was the on-screen authority figure of TNA, but since then Larry Zybysko went on to procure the role, but has been up to shady corruptions on the side and Tenay & West announce that the ‘TNA Executive Committee’ is reviewing Zybysko’s actions and working on finding a new replacement. That replacement in the coming weeks was revealed to be none other than Jim Cornette. In that same announcement, TNA reinstates Zybysko’s rival he previously fired, Raven. Zybysko comes out to protest, but Raven promptly comes out and chases him out of the ring.

Christian Cage (he had to add the last name to his billing in TNA to avoid legal troubles with WWE, oh yeah he too has a solid knockoff of his WWE theme for his TNA music) defends his NWA World Title next against Abyss. The montage that played before this match highlighting their feud showed Abyss stalking Christian’s wife so Christian is none-too-happy about that and interrupts Abyss’s entrance for a surprise attack and the two brawl outside the ring and into the stands before officially starting the match in the cage several minutes later. Abyss then proceeds to have several minutes of methodical, lulling dominance in the match before a ref bump and Christian liven up the crowd with a believable near fall after a splash from the top of the cage. When that did not work, a sunset flip from the top of the cage into a powerbomb onto thumb-tacks was still not enough to put away Abyss. Abyss’s manager James Mitchell then busts out a second bag of tacks to the announcers’ delight and in vintage Abyss fashion, his attempt to win with them backfires as Christian hits an Unprettier on the tacks for the pin. The first half really dragged, but the surreal near falls and stunts in the second half saved this match. Not all was well for Christian however as Abyss got his revenge by choking out Christian with a chain after the match.

The main event is the second annual Lethal Lockdown, AKA Wargames, headlining this card with Rhino, AJ Styles, Sting and Ron Killings teaming up to face America’s Most Wanted, Jeff Jarrett and Scott Steiner. Just like last year, two guys from each time start off for five minutes before other team members come out in two minute intervals. When all the entrants are in the cage, a roof seals everyone inside and only then are pinfalls and submissions official. AJ Styles and Chris Harris start off for initial five minutes and I forgot how awesome and quick AJ was back in these early TNA years. He can still go and deliver MOTY candidates with ease today, but there is a special flash and spring to his step back then. This match only sees three of its entrants get busted open this year with Harris, AJ & Rhino all doing the honors. Combine that with Sabu & Abyss from earlier in the night and that ups to the total to five wrestlers dawning the crimson mask overall.

The roof eventually seals everyone in after Sting enters last, but for whatever reason the roof of the cage is filled with weapons to entice the wrestlers to leave the cage, and within a minute of being sealed in AJ and James Storm slip out to the top of the cage where AJ climbs on top of a ladder that is on top of a cage and splashes James Storm through a table on top of the six sides of steel in one of the more memorable spots of the night. In the ring however Sting recovers from a guitar joust that did not go in his favor against Jeff Jarrett and recuperates in time to reverse a Scorpion Deathlock onto Chris Harris for the tapout win! This was a bonkers main event and considering the gimmick and weaponry involved I got what I wanted out of it with the creative top of the cage spot from AJ and the craziness that unfolded inside the ring whenever new entrants entered the fray. I like how the tradition of the PPV two years in so far sees the X-Division have their marquee Xscape match and the heavyweights get the traditional War Games rules matchup for their gimmick headliner.

There are 14 minutes of bonus features on the DVD. There is photo shoot footage with Christy Hemme and alternative entrance camera shots and alternative match angles from several entrances and several excerpts of matches. Nothing too special, but a decent sprinkling of extras to quickly devour. This was actually a surprisingly good PPV with all the X-Division matches delivering and Christian/Abyss managing to salvage a great World Title bout after its initial stumbling. The ‘entertainment’ bouts that were the Anthem and Arm Wrestling bouts were convenient pallet cleansers that were wisely placed on the card to recharge the crowd and deliver some laughs. Most importantly, the main event delivered and after sleeping on it for a bit, gets my nod as the match of the night. I am getting warm fuzzies reliving this era of Impact Wrestling, but it is all about to get crushed because about a half year later Vince Russo returns to TNA as the primary booker for about a decade and it only goes downhill from there. Join me again here in several months for the 2007 Lockdown PPV, the first to come under the era of Vince Russo.

Past Wrestling Blogs

Best of WCW Clash of Champions
Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 2
Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 3
Biggest Knuckleheads
Bobby The Brain Heenan
Daniel Bryan: Just Say Yes Yes Yes
DDP: Positively Living
Dusty Rhodes WWE Network Specials
ECW Unreleased: Vol 1
ECW Unreleased: Vol 2
ECW Unreleased: Vol 3
For All Mankind
Goldberg: The Ultimate Collection
Its Good to Be the King: The Jerry Lawler Story
Ladies and Gentlemen My Name is Paul Heyman
Legends of Mid South Wrestling
Macho Man: The Randy Savage Story
Memphis Heat
OMG Vol 2: Top 50 Incidents in WCW History
OMG Vol 3: Top 50 Incidents in ECW History
Owen: Hart of Gold
RoH Supercard of Honor 2010-Present
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
Sting: Into the Light
Straight to the Top: Money in the Bank Anthology
Superstar Collection: Zach Ryder
TNA Lockdown 2005-2014
Top 50 Superstars of All Time
Tough Enough: Million Dollar Season
True Giants
Ultimate Fan Pack: Roman Reigns
Ultimate Warrior: Always Believe
War Games: WCWs Most Notorious Matches
Warrior Week on WWE Network
Wrestlemania 3: Championship Edition
Wrestlemania 28-Present
The Wrestler (2008)
Wrestling Road Diaries Too
Wrestling Road Diaries Three: Funny Equals Money
Wrestlings Greatest Factions
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2015
WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2015
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2016
WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2016
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2017

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Roseanne - Season 8

We are just a month away from the return of new episodes of Roseanne (season 8 excerpt) on ABC! Last week I finished season eight, and now must try and blitz through the final season in time for the series premiere next month! If this is the first Roseanne blog you are viewing here dear reader, then you can catch up on past season recaps by clicking here.

-It’s time for the job roll call. Roseanne (Roseanne Barr), Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), Nancy (Sandra Bernhard) and Leon (Martin Mull) are still holding down the fort at The Lunchbox restaurant. Like last season, the restaurant takes a little more of a backseat this season and is only featured in several episodes. Also like last season, Nancy is only sprinkled in a few episodes this season as well. I am all for that as less is more with her character, as the show went overkill with Nancy in her first couple seasons on the show. Darlene (Sara Gilbert) is still in college in Chicago and pops in every other episode as a result, while Becky (Lecy Goransen & Sarah Chalke, more on that in a bit) references having a job at one point in the season, but does not specify where. Dan (John Goodman), Mark (Glenn Quinn) and Fred (Michael ‘O Keefe) are still at the city garage, but a new opportunity comes across their desk late in the season. David (Johnny Galecki) references working part time at a pizza shop, but bails on that late in the season to spend one episode training at a Disney World-esque theme park that turns out to have some dark characteristics that leads to David bailing on that too.

-If you recall last season, Roseanne was midway through her pregnancy when the season ended. With the offseason break, it feels like Roseanne’s pregnancy is dragging on endlessly to the point that family members make some 4th-wall-bending gags referencing just as much. I did find it fitting that Roseanne has her kid on Halloween. If you thought that was the last pregnancy of the series, you are dead wrong because late in the season Darlene and David find out they are having a kid too and shortly thereafter get hitched in one of the most memorable episodes of the series!

-In a bizarre twist, Lecy Goransen returns to portray Becky after taking three seasons off for college. I always preferred Lecy’s portrayal of Becky more, but I am guessing the production staff did not want to give Sarah Chalke’s version of Becky the complete burial and they had her comeback for three random episodes this season as Becky. It takes a little adjustment adapting to the Becky-swapping but eventually I was acclimated to it by the end of the season.

-I referenced in the previous season recap that the writers of Roseanne must have been big fans of Friends because they referenced it a couple of times last season. The writers continue to shed some form of appreciation to Friends again this season when Dan concludes his favorite classic sitcom is a lot like a 1970s version of Friends, and Roseanne later goes on a tirade stating it is impossible for the cast to eat anything and look as good as they do. I stated last season the writers must have borrowed a page out of Friends by dumbing-down Mark to make him the Joey Tribianni of the cast. I thought it was impossible for them to make Mark even more of a tool, but I was proven wrong in grand fashion this season when Mark gloats about his Scrabble skills and later gets jealous in the Disney World episode when he goes on a rage when he presumes Goofy is making a pass at Becky.

-This season marks the final appearances of Fred and Crystal. Fred was a huge character in the previous two seasons and it was jarring to see him only in a couple early episodes this season and never referenced again. I thought they could have kept something going with the uncomfortable divorcees dynamic between him and Jackie constantly passing their kid over to each other in an early episode, but it was not to be. Crystal has even more of a depressing sendoff. Crystal was a huge supporting character in the first four seasons of the show, but she only appeared on a handful of episodes in the previous three seasons. Her decreased presence on the show is baffling considering she is married to Dan’s father. Her final appearance is on the season premiere where she gives Roseanne a baby shower gift and only has one line of dialogue.

-Aside from the pitiful sendoffs to major supporting characters my other gripe this season is there is a midseason lull filled with too many gimmick episodes. My theory is the writers were getting a little burnt out this late into Roseanne’s run and decided to do a few episodes they had on the backburner for awhile. There is a 1950s black and white themed episode filmed in the fashion of Leave it to Beaver that did not win me over. It may have been a fresh satire when it originally aired, but seeing it for the first time in 2017 comes off as a spoof I have seen countless times. There is also an episode that did not work for me which features Dan jamming out with Blues Traveler, who were kind of a big deal when this episode aired in the late 90s.

-I did not mind the two-part Disney World episode as the first episode is primarily the Connor family annoying the passengers and staff on the airplane ride there and the second episode is the family taking on the rides and thrills of Disney World like only the Connors can. I felt dirty for liking these episodes however when I was doing my background research for this blog when I discovered that episode aired shortly after Disney acquired ABC and it forced most of the hit ABC shows of the time to incorporate Disney World themed episodes.

-Other quick highlights of mine this season is when Jacki and Roseanne team up to get a stereotypical older-cranky manager type fired from his job in three straight episodes. Another stellar episode is when the Connors throw Becky and Mark a party in their trailer and guilt-shame Becky in the process in order for Becky to improve her life. The dangers of the Internet are revealed this season when David connects Jacki up to the Internet (and with AOL of all services!) and she instantly succumbs to its addictive qualities in another killer moment. I am happy for Leon finding happiness this season when he marries Scott (Fred Willard). Roseanne’s ideas for the ultimate gay wedding do not sit well with Leon, but luckily the wedding winds up going off without a hitch!

-Darlene’s wedding was a very special episode that leads to a grand three episode finale for the season. Dan was not a fan of how quickly the wedding came to be, but him and Darlene eventually talk out their differences in a touching scene and the wedding is a success…..until Dan has a heart attack during the reception. The next episode features the family coming together and being there for Dan while he recovers in the hospital. All initially seems well in the season finale when Dan comes back home, but when Roseanne confronts Dan about cheating on his new hospital-ordered diet Dan looses it and the two have THE ultimate fight of the series thusfar. It was goosebump-scary how intense the two got into it, and such a downer to end the season on a cliffhanger that had me thinking the Connors may be heading for a divorce.

-After a couple seasons with no extra features, season eight has two extras. One is a video commentary with Roseanne and Michael Fishman doing commentary over the episode where David works at the evil-Disney World. It is not worth watching unfortunately as the two do not have much to say and there are many lulls throughout. Other than that there is a quick eight minute feature on all the jobs Roseanne has held throughout the show’s run which is a quirky little watch. As I mentioned in previous blogs I will echo again here that I would have loved more in-depth interviews with the cast and crew about the controversial topics the show hits on and what was going on with Chalke/Goransen constantly swapping out and Darlene only being on every other episode for the show’s last several seasons.

-Minus a stretch in the middle part of the season, I will give a thumbs up to season eight of Roseanne. A part of me is super-bummed to see things get so heated in the season finale, but another part of me is excited to see if and how Roseanne and Dan salvage their marriage. Then again, I recall hearing a few times over the years that Roseanne’s final season is complete garbage, but I have no choice but to try and breeze through it before the show returns to ABC next month! Please join me here soon for my season nine recap to see if season nine is as dreadful as everyone else says it is!

Past TV/Web Series Blogs

2013-14 TV Season Recap
2014-15 TV Season Recap
2015-16 TV Season Recap
2016-17 TV Season Recap
Adventures of Briscoe County Jr: The Complete Series
Angry Videogame Nerd Volumes 7-9
Mortal Kombat: Legacy - Season 1
OJ: Made in America: 30 for 30
RedvsBlue - Seasons 1-13
Roseanne – Seasons 1-9
Seinfeld Final Season
Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle
Superheroes: Pioneers of Television

Man on the Moon

Season’s greetings everyone! Now seemed like the perfect time to pull Andy Kaufman’s 1999 biopic, Man on the Moon (trailer) out of the ‘ol backlog box. People who are keen to the seemingly endless amount of Netflix original content hitting lately are probably aware of their recent documentary, Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (trailer). That documentary is all about the behind-the-scenes tomfoolery Jim Carrey was up to as he portrayed Andy Kaufman for the film, but stayed in character off-camera to everyone’s dismay.

I watched the documentary last week, and was surprised at the plethora of footage the studio captured of Jim Carrey embracing the spirit of Kaufman as he pulled modern day Kaufman-esque pranks on his cast and crew mates. After consuming that it seemed ideal to finally get around to watching my DVD of Man on the Moon after it sat in my backlog box since 2004 from a buy-two-get-one-free promotional offer with The Rundown and a director’s cut of Beyond the Mat.

I barely had a clue who Andy Kaufman was when I first saw the film in the theaters back when it hit theaters mere days before the turn of the century. Astute readers of this blog know I am an ardent wrestling fan. All I knew about Kaufman going into this film was from reading wrestling magazines and websites of the time that chronicled how Kaufman had a feud with wrestling legend Jerry “The King” Lawler in his wrestling territory based out of Memphis, Tennessee in the early 1980s. Their rivalry garnered some national attention when the duo got into a tussle on Late Night with David Letterman. So when wrestling was having its ‘Attitude era’ boom period in 1999, I eagerly attended the film because WWE promoted it on their programming because they brought in Jerry Lawler (who was announcing for WWE at the time) to reprise his role in his feud with Andy in the biopic.

I was trying to ponder recent examples of Andy Kaufman to compare his style of comedy to and the best I could come up with is Sacha Baron Cohen. Both performers conjured up personas and were both pioneers in uncomfortable reaction comedy in real life scenarios on unsuspecting strangers not enlightened to their act. Sacha filmed his adventures as Bruno and Borat while Kaufman had the alter ego of Vegas lounge singer reject, Tony Clifton unleash his brand of havoc on the cast of Taxi. Most of the cast of Taxi reprise their roles in cameo appearances in Man on the Moon along with a handful of other celebrity cameos throughout the film.

There is a fantastic bit at the beginning of Man on the Moon where Carrey does a bit as Andy with his trademark humor to scare away the casual moviegoer expecting slapstick laughs. The film perfectly captures how Kaufman was ahead of his time and doing daring bits of comedy and always trying to innovate and come up with something different every time he went on stage. He had help along the way with lifelong friend Bob Zmuda (Paul Giamatti) as the film captures how his improv act caught the eye of George Shapiro (Danny Devito). George opened doors for Andy for nationwide success with his infamous debut on the first episode of Saturday Night Live lip-synching the theme to Mighty Mouse and how that lead to Andy’s breakout success on the hit sitcom, Taxi.

Andy did not want all the fame and fortune however as he only complied to go along with the crowd-pleasing Taxi with the understanding that he would get his own special where he would do his own style of comedy. I love how Man on the Moon portrays Andy’s revenge when management tells Andy they would not run his special and how Andy reigned terror on the set of Taxi as Clifton to get himself off the show.

That brought the film to what 16-year old Dale at the time was anticipating the most, the wrestling section as Kaufman turned his attention to his secret favorite passion, professional wrestling. Andy did not have the most intimidating musculature so he instead wrestled over 60 matches against women and proclaimed himself the intergender champion of wrestling. This did not sit well with Jerry Lawler, and he challenged him to a match that saw Kaufman leaving the arena in a stretcher. Andy loved his new ventures in wrestling, but wrestling’s showbiz background carried a stigma with Hollywood at the time and film fairly encapsulates how Andy’s wrestling endeavors blackballed him from Hollywood.

Unfortunately, Andy developed lung cancer around this time in 1983 and he passed away a year later. The final act of the film is a tearjerker, and attendees of the funeral state in the extra feature interviews that Man on the Moon nailed the atmosphere and vibe of Kaufman’s one-of-a-kind funeral. In the buzz following the Netflix documentary, I heard several commentators and critics recently state how they believe Kaufman is still alive and how he faked his death for the quintessential prank.

There are a few noteworthy extras on the DVD. Spotlight on Location is a 19 minute EPK piece with standard cast and crew interviews promoting the film along with a few takeaway anecdotes on how Carrey stated how this was the first film in several years he had to audition for and how the cameos came to be. There are 12 minutes of delete scenes that I wish most would have made the cut where Kaufman has fun messing with the crowd during his standup and backstage antics after his wrestling performances. There is a text bio of Andy’s life that is quite thorough and covers a few more details the movie could not squeeze in and text production notes with several pages of behind-the-scenes information on what went on off camera during the film’s production. I ate up both features and devoured both entries.

Finally, this will probably be the only movie blog where I highlight the music videos as the standout extra feature, but that is the case today because this has two music videos from REM, with ‘Man on the Moon’ being the standout track and gaining fame beyond the soundtrack because it still gets regular nationwide radio play today. Whenever I hear it I cannot help but nod along to it as I recall a few of my favorite scenes from the movie.

After gleaming more knowledge on Andy’s life over the years I was able to appreciate Man on the Moon exponentially more than 16-year old me did 18 years ago. I want to slap myself for having this awesome film sit in my backlog for well over a decade, and it took a kickass Netflix documentary that dropped from out of nowhere to inspire me to watch it, but as the adage goes, better late than never. If you have yet to see Man on the Moon then by all means check this out to learn about one of the most groundbreaking comics of all time and then track down the Netflix documentary, Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond to discover all the craziness that transpired backstage.

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

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12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Guardians of the Galaxy
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Ink
Joy Ride 1 & 2
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jobs
Man of Steel
Marine 3-5
Mortal Kombat
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
The Replacements
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
The War
Wild
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Days of Future Past