S-T

I want to see Gwen Stacy have a one night stand with the Green Goblin and have little Goblin babies. Because that worked so well in the comics. Wait, no it didn't. Never mind.

That would be brutal.

Watching Smackdown now... I'm surprised the crowds have turned on Batista as much as they have. They are pulling the heel turn on him, and the crowd is not giving them much of a choice. The problem is we now have two heels in the WrestleMania main event. Face vs. face matches are one thing, but heel vs. heel matches generally don't work (in my opinion) and especially don't work as the WrestleMania main event. Who are the fans going to cheer for? How much is the crowd going to crap on this match? Are they going to have to turn Randy Orton face, or will they need to change the match and insert someone the fans will cheer?

The parody of Sarah Palin as President is quite funny.

From a storytelling perspective, you would think that everyone would jump on the champion and make sure he is eliminated first. Especially since the champion almost always wins. Sad to hear about Frazier. Not surprising, given his girth. But sad anyway.

Happy Birthday.

I recently went back and watched all seven Saw movies again. (I know.) Anyway, I originally said Saw 5 wasn't as bad as it could have been. (Which is not exactly high praise.) But after re-watching 1 through 7, I have a lot less regard for 5 than I did the first time, because the timeline cannot possibly work for this. If you watch Saw 5 within a week of watching Saw 1, the timeline flaws are much more glaring - the first time I watched Saw 5 it had been four years since I had seen the first one, so my memory wasn't clear. Anyway, to the timeline. As you recall, in the opening trap of Saw 5, Hoffman killed his sister's ex-boyfriend, and tried to pin it on Jigsaw. Then Jigsaw kidnapped him and blackmailed Hoffman into being his sidekick. The first Jigsaw murder in Saw 1 was the overweight guy in the razor wire trap. Hoffman helped with that one. This means that Jigsaw had committed several murders before Saw 1 ever happened. The only way for the timeline to work is if it goes like this: Jigsaw kills a bunch of people. Hoffman is investigating him. Hoffman pulls a copycat. Jigsaw kidnaps Hoffman and makes him Jigsaw Jr. This also means we can make at least one prequel, if not more. And I have officially put more thought into this than the writers did. I have soured on this series over time, and the entertainment value comes from laughing at how bad the writing is from people who think they are writing a smart movie. I think the reason I have been a lot more lenient on this series than I would have been otherwise is because my name was not mentioned in the first one. And then the Saw II Special Edition DVD played to my ego even more with "The Scott Tibbs Documentary." (By the way, in the very first Saw movie, there were two traps where someone had to die - the bathroom trap and Amanda's trap.)

Evil businessmen are common bad guys in fiction. Lex Luthor and the Kingpin are two examples. This one went beyond that, IMO.

So we open with The Great Satan America having conquered Iran, and GSA oppressing the peaceful people of Iran in a totalitarian police state... Come on. Really? As a movie, I think it fares well next to the original. (I do miss the gore.) But the political stuff was too heavy handed. Had they just let it be after the final scene where Murphy's story arc ends, it would have been fine... annoying, but not too bad. But they just had to put the explanation point on at the end and really ram it into the ground. Please. Can I just have a fun action movie please? I see enough of this as I read the news every day. This is supposed to be an escape from reality.

I'm going to see it in about an hour. Very disappointed in the rating, because the violence was such a big part of the first one. I never understood the point of the spike to interface with computers, even when I saw it way back then. How many computers have a hole to put a spike in? A cable, I could see... but a spike? It makes no sense. I realize the point of having the spike was to provide Robocop a weapon to stab someone in the head with later, but that could have been a straight-up weapon instead of a spike.

It will be interesting to see how they handle multiple bad guys. But is it a good idea to have more than one enemy? If there is a two-on-one fight, it makes each bad guy look less threatening one-on-one. That can be handled well, and hopefully it will be. The cool thing about the Ultimate Six series some years ago is that when Spider-Man's enemies joined forces it took the Ultimates to take them down. Too bad that can't happen here, with Sony owning the rights to ASM. As to Rhino, the battlesuit is straight out of the Ultimate Universe. I am really looking forward to this, and I am hoping to see it opening weekend. A few days before this movie comes out, it will be ten years since I joined the Earth-2 forums. What a way to celebrate.

One thing that confuses me about the concept for The Brave & The Bold 110 is that Wildcat was a Justice Society member, on Earth 2. Did they address the fact that the two characters existed on different worlds? (Of course, one of the hosts - I forget which - said TBATB was basically out of continuity anyway.)

Over The Top is really silly, but it's a lot of fun in its own way. I don't see a lot to rant about there.

Ah, yes. There are a couple big-name actors who probably wish they could erase that movie from history.

Texas Chainsaw 3D, 2013. Synopsis: "Protagonist" was a newborn when the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre took place in 1974. This direct sequel takes place in 2012. She is now 22 years old. Wait. What?

It always brightens my day when there is a new Tranquil Tirades.

I really want the three of you who ripped VI and VII apart to get back together to review VIII. I know you said you were done, but those podcasts were way too awesome not to get together again when VIII comes out. It will be a four year break. Come on, you can do it. When I looked around and realized I was the only person in the theater saw VII was starting, I sat down and thought, "I knew this was going to be bad, but this is going to be even worse than I expected." And that movie was still worse than I anticipated, even with those lowered expectations. You cannot call a movie the "final chapter" and end with a cliffhanger! I have seen every one of them after my name was mentioned in the first one, though VII was the only one I saw in the theater. But I have never stabbed anyone with a rusty nail. I never even met that guy.

Thanks for this. I hated this movie. A few months ago I went back and re-watched the 1986 Transformers animated movie to remind myself what a good Transformers movie looks like. I can't believe this movie didn't get a lot more flack for the shockingly racist ghetto-bots. Michael Bay might as well have put on a minstrel show with actors in blackface eating watermelon and fried chicken. Just plain offensive.

I was dreading the scene with him talking to his parents and his mom saying he must be well endowed to get such attractive girlfriends. I had seen a couple reviews that spent a lot of time complaining about that scene. After it only lasted a couple seconds, I thought "well, that wasn't as bad as I expected." It's pretty bad when the best thing I can say abut a movie is "that wasn't as bad as I expected."

I'm surprised you didn't rip into Deep Wang more. It wasn't as bad as the second movie, but it was certainly horrid.

And this podcast was a full three years before Saw V was released in theaters.

I know this is a very old topic, but this deserves a mention. (I listened to the podcast again recently.) From this episode, the review of Saw II: That is exactly what Saw V was.

I agree with both of you, and not just because I dislike the booking of it. It's a basic issue of treating your customers with respect. How much did Mania cost? $50? $60? If I had purchased the PPV and then got that world title match I would be honked off. A world title match should be a featured match, not an 18 second joke. And I would say that no matter who was in the match.

Has WWE discontinued showing new Smackdown episodes on YouTube? They haven't uploaded a new episode in two weeks. There is one more episode on Hulu, but YouTube is more user-friendly IMHO.

Yes, I did hate Dances with Smurfs!