January 3rd, 2012 › Films, Incredibly Bad, Wrestling › admin › no comments ›
a.k.a. Ángeles Infernales
Dir: Federico Curiel
Star: Mil Mascaras, Regina Torné, Fernando Osés, Claudia Martell
Mexican wrestling movies are a different breed entirely. Sure, WWE wrestlers make movies, and to a large extent, the characters they play are simply an extension of their in-ring personae. John ‘Hustle, Loyalty, Respect’ Cena? Get him to play an ex-marine in…er, The Marine. Demonic hell-spawn Kane? Psychotic serial killer: See No Evil [though Glenn Jacobs, the man responsible, has a degree in English literature, is a former third-grade teacher, and supports Ron Paul] But the key difference is that none of these movies include any actual professional wrestling.
Contrast the Mexican versions, where Mil Mascaras (or Santo, Blue Demon, etc.) is a crime-fighter – but one whose day-job is as a wrestler, and that comes first. Everyone is comfortably at ease with this, both good and bad. For instance, the villains break their leader out of jail on Friday night because “everyone will be at the match.” And when they do, said leader takes on Mascaras in not one, but two wrestling matches. It’s as if, at the end of The Marine, Robert Patrick challenged Cena to a Falls Count Anywhere bout. The forces of good are just as wrestling obsessed. When they realize one of their number has apparently been kidnapped by the Infernal Angels, they don’t exactly rush to her aid, saying “Let’s wait until the first fall is over. Mil Mascaras will tell us what to do.” One fall later, he airily tells them, “I’ll be done soon, wait for me in the dressing room.” Like I said: wrestling first; rescuing your friend from torture and being slowly dipped into an acid-bath…later.
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Tags: Incredibly Bad, Wrestling
January 1st, 2012 › Films, Lists › admin › no comments ›
I’ve changed things up somewhat this year, loosening the restrictions as to what counts as a “2011″ movie. It could be listed in the IMDB any time back to 2009, but it just needs to have strayed in to my consciousness in some way this year. Might be a cinema release, DVD release somewhere, or even showing up on cable. My theatrical experiences have remained light, so it’s more likely a film won’t get a chance until it becomes available by some other route. I’m thus a bit more flexible, simply because I’m aware of a risk some great movies might miss out on recognition, for fairly spurious reasons.
There are, of course, a few which still missed out exactly because they did not stray across my retina in a reasonable time. Leading the way is À l’intérieur (Inside), which was probably the best horror movie I saw in 2011. However, since it came out on DVD in the United States in April 2008. that was just too much of a stretch. Two others that were similarly eliminated were Onechanbara: The Movie, and Five Fingers.
Before we get to the list, here are eight honorable mentions, which ended up getting to the final round before being eliminated. Not without some heartbreak and much agonizing, it has to be said. These are, in alphabetical order: Attack the Block, The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Last Exorcism, Page Eight, Point Blank, Red State, Restrepo, Toy Story 3. And with that, on to the actual top ten. Links go to the full review on TC or GWG.org as appropriate.
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Tags: top 10
December 22nd, 2011 › Rants and General › admin › no comments ›
One of my duties at work is to be an admin on a company wiki, which largely consists of cleaning up spam entries thrown in there by black-hat search engine companies. They link to their clients’ sites with the search term they’re trying to boost, and places like Google see the link as a “vote” from a respectable company like ours, for the relevance of the search terms and the target site. Usually, it’s the standard mix of pharmaceuticals, weight-loss products, etc. much like your spam folder, but the other day, I noticed an odd one. The name “Jason Halek” had been inserted into a page, linking to his name as a . net domain [For obvious reasons, I'm not going to link to any of the sites in question].
I was mildly intrigued, especially as the destination site had two articles, headlined: “Jason Halek Makes Life-Changing Impact On Texas Children” and “Jason Halek Reaches Out To Disadvantaged Children Through Halek Charities” Who was Jason Halek, and why was he so keen to make sure his name was linked to these charitable enterprises, that he apparently paid for the services of a company to deface another website?
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Tags: internet, jason halek