OMG Vol. 3: The Top 50 Incidents in ECW History

I have a rare timely wrestling blog covering one of the latest features that WWE released just a few weeks ago. This one is for OMG Vol 3: Top 50 Incidents in ECW History (trailer | excerpt). I had a similar somewhat timely review with the last entry in the OMG series, covering WCW’s Top 50 OMG moments and for some bizarre reason that is my most viewed entry on this website so it only seemed right to do the series justice and have another somewhat timely blog with OMG Vol 3!

It is worth noting that OMG Vol 3 did not have a retail release. One was planned, but WWE cancelled it and a couple weeks ago released it as a WWE Network exclusive in tandem with an excellent ECW roundtable discussion with Paul Heyman and other ECW alumni. The awesome folks at WWE Network News fill in the details here and I will reference the fine people at WDN for their awesome original BluRay artwork and this article where they came up with their dream rankings so you can watch it along with the network’s countdown and see how it stacks up.

I had some original fears that since OMG Vol 3 was quietly getting released on the WWE Network with very little to no buzz that it was going to be a quickly slapped together hour long piece, but that is not the case. Like the previous two installments, OMG Vol 3 dedicates ample time to all 50 ECW moments that yields a total runtime of 2 hours and 18 minutes. This retains the same television countdown format style where they show clips of the moment interspersed with interview excerpts from talent who were involved in the ‘incident’ and/or were part of that ECW alumni. These are all new interviews as well, as WWE did not reuse prior interviews for this countdown.

Notable interview subjects include Joey Styles since his interview presumably was recorded before his release this past summer, Chris Jericho, Tommy Dreamer, Mick Foley, Rhyno, Rob Van Dam, the Dudleyz (including tracking down Spike and Sign Guy Dudley also), Joel Gertner, Cyrus, Mikey Whipwreck, Tazz, Lance Storm and Raven. Several of these names have gone many years since or never have been interviewed before for a WWE feature. Noticeably absent is Paul Heyman which is a head scratcher since he is still under WWE employment. Paul is seen throughout in moments he is a part of throughout the countdown, but I have no idea why Paul did not want to be interviewed for this. He is part of the excellent roundtable mentioned above, and he does talk about ECW in great length in other documentaries by WWE so perhaps he was just burnt out and needed a break.

The prior OMG releases had many moments of lightheartedness to them, especially the WCW installment that had many countdown moments that involved many embarrassing hokey incidents in their final years that led to the promotion’s demise. I presumed ECW’s countdown would get the same treatment, but that is not the case as the countdown has a constant dark and gritty feel that parallels ECW’s ‘Blood and Guts’ slogan they were known for. They even changed up the lovably corny OMG theme music from the past two countdowns my friend and I loved so much and replaced it with a much more fitting Joey Styles sound bite between each and every countdown. Just a quick heads up, this only goes covers the original ECW promotion from 1992-2001 and none of the ECW re-launch from WWE is featured. That is too bad because I would have popped to see a nod to my beloved ‘Gulf of Mexico’ match.

The countdown list has a lot of fitting moments that earned their spot on the list. I watched OMG Vol 3 with the same friend I watched the last two with and we noticed a lot of repeating moments with the Dudleyz, Shane Douglas, Beulah, Raven and Tommy Dreamer. Most were very OMG-worthy moments, but it got to be a bit repetitive seeing the same acts over and over. If you were there for ECW’s history you recall there were a ton of crazy moments in the Raven/Tommy Dreamer/Sandman lore where they got their families involved and seem an inspiration for a lot of the soap opera theatrics dominant in WWE storylines today. Rest assured the Sandman crucifixion spot ranked high on the list, and my friend called the Tommy Dreamer/Kimona/Beulah hardcore make out session making the top 10, albeit a bit higher than he predicted.

While WWE nowadays likes to boast they are in the PG era and are family entertainment, this is one of the rare releases by WWE to get a TV-MA rating. While I loved some of the dumb cheeseball nature of the past OMG entries, the dark, serious nature of the ECW version is the right tone to take with it, and it definitely wears its TV-MA rating proudly on its sleeve. If you have kiddos make sure to keep them out of the room because there is buckets of blood and some nasty violence nonstop throughout this, and they hold nothing back when it comes to the moments featuring the ladies from ECW as well since OMV Vol 3 has a few moments featuring previously unreleased footage. Perhaps this is another reason why WWE decided to go with making this a streaming exclusive. This way it had less of a visible retail presence and it could possibly go more unnoticed by the general public they try so hard to appease with their family friendly branding.

I hate to take this blog to a dour note, but I kind of have no other choice. The unfortunate reality of what we know about concussions today resulted in the loss of a lot of lives from ‘Attitude era’ wrestlers of the mid-to-late 90’s, and especially for ECW wrestlers who upped the violence and risk to new levels. It seemed WWE wanted to keep the spotlight away from wrestlers who passed because they are only featured at a minimum. There are a few exceptions like the Malenko/Guerrero classic, Tazz beating Mike Awesome for the ECW Title and Dreamer sending Brian Lee through a stack of tables but I guess I can see why WWE took this approach to the countdown so it did not appear as a nonstop ‘point out who all is dead’ marathon.

Now that I got that out of the way, whether you know your ECW History or not, definitely make time to check out OMG Vol 3: The Top 50 Incidents in ECW History. I have covered a lot of ECW material on here already and seen other documentaries, but there were still around a dozen ‘incidents’ on here I had no idea of or I had long forgotten about them and it was nice to get a refresher with new insight from the subjects that were interviewed. It is easily the best produced and most enjoyable of the three OMG releases.

Past Wrestling Blogs

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
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
RoH Supercard of Honor V
RoH Supercard of Honor VI
RoH Supercard of Honor VII
RoH Supercard of Honor VIII
RoH Supercard of Honor IX
RoH Supercard of Honor X
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
Sting: Into the Light
Superstar Collection: Zach Ryder
Top 50 Superstars of All Time
Tough Enough: Million Dollar Season
True Giants
Warrior Week on WWE Network
Wrestlemania 3: Championship Edition
Wrestlemania 28
Wrestlemania 29
Wrestlemania 30
Wrestlemania 31
The Wrestler (2008)
Wrestling Road Diaries Too
Wrestlings Greatest Factions
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2015
WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2015
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2016

The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr. - The Complete Series

This article has been at least a couple years in the making, so I am thrilled to finally knock it out! The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr. (Original TV Promo) is a western comedy TV series with a hint of sci-fi thrown in for good measure to keep things interesting. It originally ran on FOX for 28 episodes during the 1993-94 TV season before being cancelled during the summer before production kicked off for season two. I had vague recollections of catching a few episodes of it growing up, but quickly forgot about it over the years.

Jump ahead nearly 20 years later and I found myself picking up the complete series on DVD as a birthday gift for my brother a few years back since I know he is a huge Bruce Campbell fan. Several years ago I was reminded of this TV series when my brother borrowed me Bruce’s autobiography, If Chins Could Kill where he had mostly positive memories of his time on the show. My brother said he would only watch episodes of the show with me whenever we got together and hung out. So starting roughly a year and a half ago we started watching the episodes in one or two episode chunks every month or two. A week ago we finally finished, and even though technically the DVD is my brother’s, since I originally purchased it and watched every episode with him I feel it would be appropriate to cover it here.

If you never heard of this show and thought it might have been a predecessor to the awesome Firefly western/sci-fi series going by my description than you are sadly mistaken. If you watch the linked commercial above it is clear that Briscoe County is far more lighthearted than Firefly. Bruce Campbell is the leading role as Briscoe County Jr., and the show kicks off with Briscoe’s father getting murdered in the line of duty. We jump ahead to Jr. trying to live up to his dad’s legacy by being as good as a sheriff as his dad was, but by playing by his own rules as a private bounty hunter.

Joining Briscoe is Lord Bowler (Julius Carry), who originally is Briscoe’s rival bounty hunter trying to compete with him on bringing in the latest on the wanted list before him. It was entertaining watching Bowler transition from rival to partner with Briscoe over the show’s first several episodes. Carry and Briscoe absolutely nail their performances as the carefree ‘opposites attract’ partnership. Joining them is attorney Socrates Poole (Christian Clemenson) who is the over-the-top-yet-loveable doofus who fills them in on their latest mission and occasionally joins them in the field to stir things up for all parties involved.

The show has the familiar ‘villain of the week’ TV setup, but there is also a grander season spanning mystery where a couple familiar foes have recurring roles. The Bly Gang was responsible for Briscoe Sr.’s death and Briscoe is after them for the first half of the season, while the Bly Gang is also after a mysterious orb that Briscoe & Bowler are also after. This orb is where the sci-fi elements come into play, and as much as I enjoyed this show, the handful of orb-themed episodes were not usually among the good ones as things just got a bit too out there for me to suspend my disbelief. I did get a chuckle watching the awesomely bad 1993-era TV special effects that happened around the orb, but if you are trying to marathon this show as quick as possible I recommend skipping the orb episodes or watching them at double speed if you must.

The better lighthearted moments that hit more at home with my brother and I were whenever the show hinted at future technology. Briscoe County Jr. is set 100 years before it originally aired in 1893 when America is on the cusp of an industrial revolution. The show has a professor by the name of Albert Wickwire (John Astin) who occasionally pops up to demonstrate all kinds of zany prototypes for automobiles, rockets and rubber bullets to name a few. There is a few other minor periphery character that appear throughout the season. Most of whom added a lot to the show like the lovely Dixie (Kelly Rutherford), but occasionally there were some that were just completely off the mark and mind-numbingly annoying such as the wannabe Elvis sheriff, Aaron Viva (Gary Hudson).

Even though I already mentioned how out-of-date the special effects are, since this is a western themed show not a lot of other cutting edge effects are needed for the majority of episodes that do not have sci-fi hijinx. This was shot in the Warner Bros. lot so one can only imagine the nearly limitless wardrobe, props and set pieces they had available to them. While this is a comedy, this hit all the right notes for me as far as western action scenes went, with plenty of fist fights and shoot-outs aplenty. The few serious moments in the show really hit home because of how seldom they transpired, case in point is the series finale which is a two episode special. If the producers would have known they were going off the air after the first season at time of production, they could have ended the show with the most gut-wrenching, dour moment of the season at the end of the first part of the special because of how well crafted it was. Luckily, that is not the case and we got a more open-ended closing where Briscoe and Bowler ride off into the sunset ready for wherever their next adventures take them.

This DVD is loaded with extra features. There is one commentary on the two-part pilot with Bruce Campbell and producer, Carlton Cuse. There is an excellent booklet accompanying the DVD set filled with liner notes from Campbell on each and every episode that provided some worthwhile background info I made sure to read after each episode. There are several behind-the-scenes features with the standout being History of Briscoe County, which is a half hour retrospective with the cast and crew. I really dug this as they interviewed all the major cast and crew members on their memories of the show, and thoughts for ideas of season two and how surprised they were when it got cancelled and how the show gained a new audience in reruns on Saturday mornings on TNT. Worth noting is they did interview Julius Carry here just a couple years prior before he passed from cancer. If you are not one to really dive deep into extras make sure to at least go out of your way and indulge in just this one.

Tools of the Trade is 12 minutes of combined interviews from the cast and crew with a bunch of amusing anecdotes from the show and Reading from the Book of Bruce is Campbell spending seven minutes reading the entire excerpt relating to his time on the show from his aforementioned autobiography. Finally, Briscoe County Writer’s Room is where several of the writers and producers gather in an open 43 minute discussion reminiscing from their time on the show. There are many good tales in here, but a few times they did get a little heavy into the nuts and bolts production process that went over my head and there are times where they were shouting over each other that got to be a little much, but then again it shows how passionate they were for the show.

Minus several episodes, my brother and I had a riot enduring the 28 episode season of The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr. Of the 28, I would say roughly 20 of them are hits while eight did not do it for us. I do not fault the show though because that does seem to be a slightly longer than usual season, so I could see how some ideas made it out of the writer’s room that should have stayed there. I am not nearly the mega Bruce Campbell fan my brother is, but I enjoyed Briscoe County just as much as he did, and if you are up for some western comedy than this will be right up your alley.

Past TV/Web Series Blogs

2013-14 TV Season Recap
2014-15 TV Season Recap
2015-16 TV Season Recap
Angry Videogame Nerd Vol 8
Angry Videogame Nerd Vol 7
Mortal Kombat: Legacy - Season 1
RedvsBlue - Seasons 1-13
Roseanne – Seasons 1-9
Seinfeld Final Season
Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle
Superheroes: Pioneers of Television

Jobs & Steve Jobs

I am fresh off having a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend so my gift to you is a special two-for-one entry today covering the two recent biopics done on Steve Jobs from Universal. Those films are 2013’s Jobs (trailer) and 2015’s much more uniquely titled Steve Jobs (trailer). I am well aware and a fan of the TNT original TV movie, Pirates of Silicon Valley (trailer) from 1998, but I already dug that movie out of my backlog a couple years before I started this blog. I vividly recall in 2011 it was only a week or two after I rewatched Silicon Valley when Steve Jobs suddenly passed away.

Steve Jobs already finished his autobiography, Jobs, before his death, but it released a few weeks later to rave success and a film adaptation quickly followed in 2013. I read and really enjoyed the biography as it goes pretty in depth about Jobs’ entire life and he has a ton of insight throughout it. A lot of people know of Jobs to be the man who founded Apple and responsible for the Apple II, Macintosh, iMac, iPod and iPhone. The mammoth book covers a ton of his other endeavors, both successful and unsuccessful, and unfortunately for the film version of Jobs it walks that fine line of the two hour mark and just manages not to overstay its welcome, but with that length it is just simply not enough time to devote to everything Jobs accomplished.

A lot of time is dedicated to seeing Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) and Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad) founding Apple right out of the Jobs family garage. The avid game player in me will give Jobs brownie points for being the only one of the three movies about him that covers his brief time at Atari where him and Wozniak helped design the arcade hit Breakout. The film hits the main bullet points of Jobs Apple career with Apple making it big with the release of the Apple II thanks to their first big investor, Mike Markkula (Dermot Mulroney), the friendship and betrayal of Apple CEO John Sculley (Matthew Bodine), the big Super Bowl ad reveal of the Macintosh and its failure in the marketplace that lead to the ousting of Jobs from Apple. The film skips about a decade just in time to see Jobs return to Apple and takeover the iMac project to huge success that leads to him becoming the CEO of Apple.

The film ends at that point and other than a quick wraparound at the beginning of the film, there is no time dedicated to Apple’s portable devices that made Apple the behemoth it is today. I understand and get that because at some point you got to find a good “now you know the rest of the story” moment to cut off at and that seemed absolutely perfect. I wish there could have been some actual verbal nod to Jobs founding Pixar and all the success he had there in his years off from Apple, but the film mostly sticks to his computer career. There is a couple of brief scenes of Jobs distancing himself away from his estranged daughter Lisa early on, and she is far less of a focus of the film here than in Steve Jobs.

Jobs does a decent job with the massive ground it has to cover. Ashton Kutcher does a pretty solid performance of Steve Jobs, and he is excellent doing the Steve Jobs freak out at overworked Apple employees, but he is simply outmatched by the excellent Michael Fassbender in Steve Jobs. I have seen interviews with the real Steve Wozniak and I would say he is somewhere in between how the two films portray him. Josh Gad portrays him as the stereotypical computer geek and Seth Rogen portrays him as an alpha and one of Jobs’ few peers willing to stand up to him and call him out in front of his entire team. Rogen’s performance is far more entertaining than Gad’s and there was part of me that was gratified to see Rogen knock a serious role out of the park and it was nice to see him go one flick where his on screen character does not use drugs.

I remember not seeing a trailer when I reluctantly saw Steve Jobs at the theater last year and I went in expecting a redux of the biopic with more credible actors and the film trying to cover more ground on Jobs’ life and career since Jobs had a mixed reception. I could not have been more wrong and was blown away at the unique concept Steve Jobs went with for its format. Steve Jobs is separated into three parts with each part lasting about 35-40 minutes before Steve Jobs delivers a big press conference for three big product reveals in his life: the 1984 Mac debut, 1988 Next Black Cube debut, and the 1998 iMac debut. In those 35-40 minutes before Jobs hits the stage he is shown frantically moving about and getting ready for the show while interacting with six key figures from his life. Those figures are the aforementioned Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen) and John Sculley (Jeff Daniels). Joining them are marketing executive Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), top programmer Andy Hertzfield (Michael Stuhlbarg), his ex-girlfriend Chrisann (Katherine Waterston) and daughter Lisa (Makenzie Ross, Ripley Sobo, Perla Haney-Jardine).

The dialogue for this script is unbelievably well written. Every encounter Steve has with one of these figures is usually an intense verbal clash acted to perfection. It would feel awkward to describe Steve Jobs as a ‘total nonstop dialogue’ movie, but that is exactly what it is and I absolutely loved it. The film wisely sneaks in very brief periods to let you breathe and digest what you witnessed from time to time. Every key conversation Steve has circles around a big moment around his life previously detailed above. As much as I enjoyed this film, I could not help but think to myself as I watched it, “there is no way all these pivotal exchanges in Steve’s life happened just moments before these three big press conferences.” I came to find out later through production interviews and the commentaries on the BluRay that the film used creative license where it took real exchanges in Steve’s life with these six figures, but spliced them all together so they transpired conveniently before the big press day.

Both Jobs and Steve Jobs have a couple behind-the-scenes features and commentaries for their extra features on their respective BluRays. Jobs has a few brief EPK extras that serve more as extended trailers, a couple minutes of deleted scenes and a commentary with director Josh Stern. There is one really good deleted scene for Jobs that has a good moment with Steve and his daughter worth seeing. Stern has plenty of good facts and insight about the production, but he could have worked better in the booth with someone else to team up with.

Danny Boyle has the better solo director commentary for Steve Jobs, and he speaks just as fast as the dialogue moves in the film as he has tons of notes on the cast and production that he wants to squeeze in that made for a very informative and entertaining listen. There is a second commentary for Steve Jobs, this one with writer Aaron Sorkin and editor Elliot Graham. They have a remarkable discussion breaking down most of the intense dialogue scenes in the film and elucidate on their favorite lines and lines they regret cutting, but felt they had to. It got really into the nuts and bolts of the script writing process, but I was on board with them all the way. Sadly, both Steve Jobs commentaries reference a couple deleted scenes that they wish could have made the final film but presume we would be treated to them on the extras, but for whatever reason Universal decided to omit them on the BluRay. We do however have a far better Making of Steve Jobs behind-the-scenes special that is exponentially better than the EPKs on Jobs. The Making of is a thorough 44 minute piece interviewing the cast and crew on how this film was shot in its unique style and their thoughts on Steve Jobs himself.

If you made it this far it should come as no surprise that I easily prefer Steve Jobs over Jobs. If you got the time to devote to it, I would far more recommend the Jobs biography over the film. It is a decent Cliffs Notes version of his life to a certain point, and it would probably actually help benefit to watch it first before Steve Jobs to get familiar with a lot of the supporting players and key points it addresses so you do not miss a beat in the blitzkrieg of dialogue bliss that is Steve Jobs.

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
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Creed
Dirty Work
Faster
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Ink
Man of Steel
Marine 3 & 4
Mortal Kombat
The Replacements
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Source Code
Star Trek I-XII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
Veronica Mars
Wild
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Days of Future Past

Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 3

Last year WWE released what I presume will be the final collection of WCW’s Monday Night offerings with The Best of WCW Monday Nitro Vol. 3 (trailer). Former WCW star and yoga sensei Diamond Dallas Page did such a bang-up job hosting the last two collections that he returns here to host the third installment. DDP is an awesome host as he usually has a few behind-the-scenes stories about one of the wrestlers in the match he is about to introduce. I have the BluRay of Vol. 3, and just like the Vol 2 BluRay, it collects seven hours of matches, promos and other segments playing out chronologically throughout the entire 1995-2001 run of Nitro. Just like Vol 2, there is an an exclusive eighth hour of material just for the BluRay. Including the BluRay exclusives, there are 38, yes 38 matches on this BluRay. On top of that there are around a dozen other special promo segments interspersed throughout the matches.

For fans who did not grow up in the ‘Monday Night Wars’ the key thing to remember is that RAW and Nitro would give away main events worthy of headlining PPVs on TV every week, but to make up for it most of those televised matches would usually have some kind of wonky interference or lame DQ finish to the match. The reason for this was so the promotion would have the true match to end a feud at the ever-important monthly PPV fans had to pay around $40 a month for. Every great now and again the promotion would throw us a bone and give us an incredible televised PPV-caliber matchup with a ‘clean’ finish, and that ratio of quality is about what you get on this collection. For every five matches that have some serious star power involved, expect only one to have a finish without any interference.

Like my entry for Vol 2, I will not recap every single one of the 38 matches here, but will point out an assortment of highlights throughout the collection. I completely forgot Marc Mero, AKA Johnny B. Badd in WCW competed on Nitro in its first year before he went to WWE, and you can witness him and Eddie Guerrero put on a good high-flying matchup for the TV title. There is a World Title change on here from early ’96 in a match between Randy Savage and Ric Flair when those two played hot potato with the World Title during that time.

Vol. 3 has an extraordinary amount of Rick Steiner material on here. Most of it consists of him running in for interference, but there are a few Steiner tag matches on here and there is also the very short match of the Dogface Gremlin taking on Sting in December 1996. That bout is noteworthy because it will go down as the only time Sting wrestles in 15 months when he debuted the ‘Crow’ version of Sting after Fall Brawl ’96 until he won the title from Hogan at Starrcade ’97. Shortly after this match in the collection is Chris Jericho with his very first Cruiserweight title defense against Juventud Gurrera. According to the announcers this is just the second time we witness him using his new finishing move, the Liontamer, better known as the Walls of Jericho today.

We have proof that Stevie Richards was in WCW for a cup of coffee in 1997, as he appears here for a very short match against DDP. An extended clip of when the nWo takes over Nitro plays and it just goes on forever as they redecorate the announce booth. There are also many matches from 1996-1999 that feature a ton of interference from the nWo, so you have that to look forward to. Worth pointing out is about half of the entrance music WWE no longer holds the rights to so we get noticeably inferior music dubbed over instead (or in some cases some wrestler’s WWE themes get dubbed over their WCW music), but for what it is worth there is actually a pretty decent instrumental cover version of “Voodoo Child” for “Hollywood” Hogan.

Remember the Flock? Remember good ‘ol Reese? I hope you do not, but we are ‘treated’ to one of his debut appearances as he helps fellow flock member Billy Kidman get a victory. There are a lot of nWo interview clips from the summer of ’98 when the group split up into nWo Hollywood and nWo Wolfpac. Still all these years later it just did not seem right to see Lex Luger and Sting donning the nWo colors after fighting them off for two years, even if they were part of the ‘good’ version of the nWo. There is a really good segment included here where Hogan and Bishoff call out DDP & Karl Malone which turns into a awesome encounter with a hot crowd to really emphasize the impact, and then DDP and Malone cut a righteous promo of their own too. This segment is easily one of the hidden gems of Vol. 3 not to overlook.

There is a surprising amount of Bret Hart matches on here considering he wrestled for WCW for only two years. There are really good clean matches on here with him squaring off against Booker T and Lex Luger. There are also a few matches on here where Bret faces the likes of Sting, Jeff Jarrett and Hulk Hogan that start off surprisingly good (yes, even the Hogan match!) but have rather awful finishes (especially the Hogan match, I am not even going to attempt to explain it). We get a surprise Sandman cameo from his short run in WCW where he competed as Hardcore Hak on this collection against Rick Steiner. It seemed only fitting that of all three Nitro collections the only one that has Hak in a match is a hardcore match that trails off backstage and he gets tossed off to the side and forgotten so Sting and Rick Steiner can brawl for a bit to build up their feud instead.

There is a bizarre tornado tag match from early 2000 I must recommend. An inside joke a couple of my friends and I have always had is our tongue-in-cheek love for WWE relaunch of ECW, with us especially loving the ‘Gulf of Mexico Match’ between Chavo Guerrero and CM Punk. Turns out WCW had a prototype Gulf of Mexico Match with Sting & Vampiro against Lex Luger & Ric Flair. It will probably be first and last time I see a match end with a piledriver in the water. It is a hilariously dumb match all Gulf of Mexico enthusiasts should watch! The last match on the main feature is a really good tag bout between Booker T and DDP against an all-evil Steiner Brothers.

Noteworthy from the BluRay extras are the aforementioned Bret Hart matches against Lex Luger and Hulk Hogan. There is also a really good interview with Ric Flair calling out Bret Hart to set up Bret’s first real feud in WCW in early ’98. There is a world title match between Jeff Jarrett and Sting that has an awful finish, and then it is immediately followed up with a blink-and-you-will-miss-it clip of a Goldberg monster truck for no apparent reason.

That wraps it up for The Best of WCW Monday Nitro Vol. 3. As mentioned above there is a ton of matches that have finishes that leave you cringing, but there are also a fair amount that have good action throughout and mostly clean finishes. It was also entertaining to see this volume have special cameos from guys I forgot about from WCW history like Johnny B. Badd, Reese, Hak and Stevie Richards. You get a pretty good mix of action from each year of WCW history, so there is a solid amount of high-flying cruiserweight action, a ton of nWo run-ins, a good dose of action from past their prime, but could still go hall-of-famers like Bret Hart, Ric Flair, Hogan, Savage and Sting and a lot of garbage 1999-2000 booking from Vince Russo that put the final nail in WCW’s coffin. A watched this in a few hour and a half to two hour sessions and usually by the end of each session I was starting to get good vibes of the Monday Night War all over again. With that said, if you want to relive this era of WCW and do not have the time to devoure every episode of Nitro on the WWE Network, then you cannot go wrong with this latest collection of Nitro history.

Past Wrestling Blogs

Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 2
Biggest Knuckleheads
Bobby The Brain Heenan
Daniel Bryan: Just Say Yes Yes Yes
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
RoH Supercard of Honor V
RoH Supercard of Honor VI
RoH Supercard of Honor VII
RoH Supercard of Honor VIII
RoH Supercard of Honor IX
RoH Supercard of Honor X
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
Sting: Into the Light
Superstar Collection: Zach Ryder
Top 50 Superstars of All Time
Tough Enough: Million Dollar Season
True Giants
Warrior Week on WWE Network
Wrestlemania 3: Championship Edition
Wrestlemania 28
Wrestlemania 29
Wrestlemania 30
Wrestlemania 31
The Wrestler (2008)
Wrestling Road Diaries Too
Wrestlings Greatest Factions
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2015
WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2015
WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2016

San Andreas

Last week I was visiting some friends out of town and when I arrived they were watching a documentary on earthquakes off Netflix. It was playing in the background while we visited and during it I just felt like blurting out, “this kind of makes me want to watch San Andreas again” and both my friends agreed too for being in the mood to witness The Rock kick an earthquake’s ass! San Andreas (trailer) hit last year in 2015 and is a perfect example of a popcorn summer blockbuster.

I am a sucker for over-the-top natural disaster flicks such as Deep Impact and Dante’s Peak being some past favorites of mine. San Andreas ups the ridiculous quotient to a new level, but since it features The Rock as an everyday, mega-jacked-up rescue helicopter pilot with a million dollar smile this earthquake has a foe ready to take it head on! Audiences worldwide agreed as San Andreas ended up being a worldwide box office success.

Of course it would not be a disaster movie without a disjointed family with a lot of history deciding to also come to a boil during this disaster that rocked Los Angeles all the way up to San Francisco. Dwayne Johnson is Raymond Gaines, a divorced father who already lost a daughter in a rafting accident and is trying to reconnect with his other daughter, Blake (Alexandra Daddario). Raymond’s ex-wife Emma, (Carla Gugino) complicates that by pressuring Raymond to hurry up and sign the divorce papers. One other primary character here is Dr. Lawrence Hayes (Paul Giamatti) who is a scientist at CalTech with the latest in earthquake prediction technology being on the cusp of forecasting the disaster that is about to transpire.

In order to appreciate this movie you just have to suspend disbelief and accept you are going to see a lot of crazy stunts and special effects that will definitely get you scratching your head. There are countless “yeah, right!” moments in this film, but once you just roll with them and embrace them you will be in for an awesome ride. If it were any other film trying to get away with this, odds are I would probably dismiss the film right away, but the unbelievable charismatic enigma that is The Rock makes it irresistibly difficult to do so that I cannot help but root for Raymond to overcome every obstacle the earthquake puts in his path so he can rescue and reunite his family!

The background family story is pretty forced and ugly to stomach, but while watching this I felt the producers felt this way too. I got the impression the filmmakers rectified this by hamming up all the campy family moments whenever possible that I could not help but share a million dollar smile with the Rock whenever they transpired, that went doubly so with his “second base” line being absolutely priceless in delivery. Trust me, you will know it when you see it, and only Rock can get away with corny moments like those and turn them into theatrical gold. The special effects and action scenes are top notch from beginning to end and you can tell the filmmakers spared no expense when it came to CG.

Actually, when watching the extras it was surprising the amount of effects that were practical and the filmmakers actually admitting to cutting corners on certain aspects of the film because a lot of their budget went to the pricey CG. I will give props to a certain action shot that was one continuous take for nearly five minutes when Emma gets caught in the earthquake while on the top floor of a skyscraper restaurant that had many intense moments. There is only a half hour of behind-the-scenes extras, but they are well worth watching as they break down these crazy scenes and how they looked shot in raw green screen footage and how they materialized on the silver screen. There is also a director’s commentary with Brad Peyton who does a commendable job for a solo commentary full of many production facts like not being allowed to shoot at the actual Hoover Dam, the filming process in Australlia and many shout outs to the cast members in major and minor roles.

San Andreas is the perfect movie to throw in on a rainy night to enjoy with your family and friends and a big bowl of popcorn. It makes full use of its $110 million budget, and with it raking in $474 million worldwide it came as no surprise a sequel was quickly greenlit and is due out in a year or two. I am eagerly anticipating its arrival and will be there day one with a bucket of popcorn by my side!

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
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Creed
Dirty Work
Faster
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Ink
Man of Steel
Marine 3 & 4
Mortal Kombat
The Replacements
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Source Code
Star Trek I-XII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
Veronica Mars
Wild
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Days of Future Past

Roseanne - Season 1

Roseanne (1988-97, ABC) is right up there with Seinfeld (1989-98, NBC) as one of my all time favorite TV shows. Both series ran nearly concurrently with each other, with Roseanne starting and ending just a year earlier. In case you are unfamiliar with the show, Roseanne (trailer) is centered around the Connor family being a hard working blue-collar family barely making ends meet, while being constantly at odds with each other for better or worse. A couple years ago I ran across the series bundle set for $20 online and could not pass it up. Over the last several weeks I watched an episode here and there until finishing up the first season a few days ago and the show still holds up remarkably well as it did when I was a kiddo.

I loved the show growing up because when it originally aired I related more with the three Connor children on the show because I was in their age bracket and they were constantly driving each other up the wall like I was with my three siblings I grew up with at the time. Watching this show with a fresh set of eyes nearly two decades after it originally aired at the age of 33 I find myself now just a couple years younger (!) than when the parents Dan (John Goodman) and Roseanne (Roseanne Barr) were when the show first aired so obviously I am leaning more towards their story arcs this time around.

My memories of the show featured a decent split of the episodes focusing on the parent’s and children’s story arcs, but the first season is more 80% Dan & Roseanne being the focus while the kids are primarily background noise with a few occasional episodes of one of them being at the forefront. First season Roseanne took me awhile to get use to because it was well before Darlene (Sara Gilbert) and Becky (Alicia Granson) started dating their significant others that wound up as season regulars in later seasons. Becky more-or-less retained her princess character throughout the show, but we are still a couple seasons away from Darlene and DJ (Michael Fishman) from developing into the super emo/out there characters I remember them as. In the first season they are mostly siblings who are constantly driving each other up the wall, and I absolutely loved watching them drive Dan & Roseanne nuts too.

John Goodman is sublime as Dan, and he was a natural for the hard working father role from the first episode. However, it took Barr several episodes to come into her own on the show. She seemed a little too hostile and aggressive with her wit and tone before dialing it back to a more appropriate level about halfway through the season. In one of the extra feature interviews on the first season, Barr herself stated the exact same thing until she was able to find equal ground with the writers and producers on how to round off her character. I think for covering this TV series when it comes to covering the actual individual season content I am just going to list several things that stood out to me in each season, so here are a few more noteworthy items from the debut season.

-I always associated Roseanne and her sister, Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) for working at the traditional diner throughout the show’s history, but in the first season they were manual laborers at a plastics factory. On top of that, their boss was a pre-ER George Clooney who toyed with dating Jackie off and on for the first season. An evil new boss in the season finale led to Roseanne and Jackie quitting the plastics factory.

-I had no idea until I watched the pilot on the DVD that there was originally a different DJ in the first episode. Michael Fishman took over on the very next episode, but the pilot DJ featured a slightly older kid but he retained nearly the same look and essence that Fishburn did for DJ in the first season. Also slightly different in the pilot episode was the theme song before it got altered a bit into the opening theme I grew to love from the second episode on.

-I really dug how most of the episodes take place almost entirely inside the Conner’s home. Every few episodes we would get a couple scenes of Roseanne and Jackie at work, but minus a few other moments throughout the season nearly half the episodes this season take place entirely at the Conner’s residence or at the plastics factory. This may seem limiting to the show at first, but somehow the show made it work and proved that a lot of stuff can go down at home and be damn entertaining in the process.

-We are still a bit off from Dan running his own cycle shop, and in the first season he is an independent contractor working dry wall who has ups and downs throughout the season with good paying gigs and occasional lulls between contracts.

-Standout episodes to me in the first season is when the Conners spend an episode coming together to survive a tornado that hit town and it brought back many memories of my family running amok whenever a tornado warning would occur. The episode where the family is kicking back in a friendly rivalry at the bowling alley hit the right notes with me too because of a lot of friendly rivalry games I had with the family.

-There are a few extras worth watching on the first season. There are new interviews (well from 2005 anyways) with Barr and Goodman who discuss their memories of the show and how they knew they had something special from the start. There is also an excellent blooper reel to round off the extras.

-I was surprised to find myself enjoying the first season as much as I did as I presumed it would take the show a couple seasons before it fully found its footing, but here you can tell that the whole cast was gelling together perfectly by the halfway point of the first season. I am looking forward to keep plugging along with the next seasons.

Past TV/Web Series Blogs

2013-14 TV Season Recap
2014-15 TV Season Recap
2015-16 TV Season Recap
Angry Videogame Nerd Vol 8
Angry Videogame Nerd Vol 7
Mortal Kombat: Legacy - Season 1
RedvsBlue - Seasons 1-13
Seinfeld Final Season
Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle
Superheroes: Pioneers of Television

Wild

I wish I could get out and hike more often than I do. I have always been a fan of getting lost in nature and my thoughts. The last time I went hiking was about two years ago just a couple months prior to the release of today’s film that happens to deal with hiking. That film is 2014’s Wild (trailer). The film is based on the popular book from a couple years prior by one Cheryl Strayed, who spent over 90 days hiking the Pacific Crest Trail to find herself after suffering a string of personal tragedies.

Just showing Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) hike for 1100 miles nonstop would not exactly be ideal, so the film makes great use of jump cuts throughout her hike to help detail Cheryl’s past lows such as her and her spouse, Paul (Thomas Sadoski) going through a divorce and losing her mom (Laura Dern) to cancer. The cuts are well timed, usually occurring when Reese is suffering through a somewhat relatable hiccup on the trail. Cheryl meets all kinds of interesting characters along the trail, and we really do not get a chance to get too attached to many of them since the film does a good job at keeping the pace moving. My favorite character I had to include a snapshot of here is when she gets interviewed by a inspiring journalist of an independent magazine, The Hobo Times.

There are a lot of quick, touching moments along the trail for Cheryl that I could not help but get invested in. The one that got me to crack up the most was her attempting to put her “monster” of a backpack on in Wild’s opening. Another notable moment is when Cheryl takes a couple days to rest from the trail when it crosses paths with the town of Ashland. The one big repeating source of conflict of Cheryl’s time on the trail is of her fear of getting assaulted. I remember my initial viewing of the film in the theater and thought they overdid it a bit by constantly coming back to Cheryl getting easily intimidated by nearly every person she encounters. However, I later went on to read the book and found out the film did not take any liberties because that was legitimately how Cheryl felt on the trail.

After reading the book and watching the film a second time, I was pretty satisfied with how the film portrayed the book. The film is just the right length at a little under two hours and did a pretty good job squeezing in as much from the book as possible. The film did not have time to go into detail on every one of her pre-hike personal stories, and some of them are only briefly shown in the film as quick flashes a couple times when Cheryl goes through bouts of nausea on the trail. I was fine with this as you did not want the movie overstaying its welcome. If I had to nitpick a couple of things missing from the book, there are a couple of female hiker friends Cheryl meets and teams up with for parts of the trail, but in the film they only show her conversing with one at a rest stop. A big trail moment exclusively in the book is when Cheryl encounters a bear in a very tense moment, and I would have loved to see how that played out on film because Cheryl did a wonderful job describing her life flashing before her eyes before she miraculously scared the bear off. This is conjecture on my part, but perhaps Reese said absolutely no way to doing a scene with a live bear.

There are a solid amount of extra features on the BluRay of Wild. There is a commentary track with director Jean-Marc Vallee and producers Bruna Papandrea and David Greenbaum. It is worth a listen as the crew gives a lot of fun factoids about filming in nature, and goes out of their way to mention what each major and minor actor brought to the film. There are several minutes of deleted scenes with or without director’s commentary. There is nearly a half hour of several mini-features labeled under the “Promotional Features” category. They all have brief interviews with the cast and crew and while a little informative, they serve as mostly extended trailers with a lot of spots from the movie. I would instead watch the four other extras that also total a half hour, but feature less movie footage and more interviews from the cast, crew and Cheryl herself. Real Cheryl Strayed shows Cheryl revisiting a lot of spots from the trail that were used in the film and is well worth checking out. Real Location is the Best Location is another must-see extra that goes more into detail on filming on the Pacific Crest Trail.

I have to admit I am a little biased when it comes to Wild. As a minor fan of hiking this film hits all the right notes on what I like about hiking, and does a stellar job at staying true to the source material. Additionally, one of my favorite musicians has a small role in the film (I will not spoil who), and I had a chance to briefly talk to him about it at a meet and greet after a concert, and that only helped me like this film even more. So yeah, I may be biased so please pardon me when I say if you are looking for a feel good journey of self-discovery flick, then you absolutely have to watch Wild.

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
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Creed
Dirty Work
Faster
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Ink
Man of Steel
Marine 3 & 4
Mortal Kombat
The Replacements
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Source Code
Star Trek I-XII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
Veronica Mars
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Days of Future Past