Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic vs. Frank Mir

Matt: It sounds weird to say this after Cro Cop terrorized PRIDE for so many years, but Mir seems like a BIG step up in competition for where he is right now.  Mir has seen much tougher competition over the past year-plus, and his game is not nearly as far removed from its prime as Cro Cop's.  Despite being outclassed against Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin, Mir has put together good wins against other top heavyweights.  Meanwhile, the feared left kick of Cro Cop only showed up in his fight against Pat Barry after Barry had gassed and broken his hand and foot (oh, and also after he had knocked Cro Cop down and nearly finished him).  I think Mir comes out with the same kind of smart gameplanning he used to beat Big Nog and Cheick Kongo.  WINNER: Mir via TKO in the 1st. 

Bruce: Both of these guys need a victory in the worst way.  That's not a good position to find yourself in.  I think Cro Cop has lost a step.  As a result his once dreaded kicks don't pack quite the punch they once did.  That's not to say that he couldn't kick Mir's head off given the opportunity.  I just don't think that opportunity will present itself.  This is Mir's first fight since his embarassing loss to Shane Carwin at UFC 111 and he needs a decisive win to prove he still belongs in the conversation.  WINNER:  MIR via TKO in the 2nd.

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Next Friday, October 1, 2010, Hatchet II is hitting theaters and is doing so without the blessing of the MPAA.  Rather than edit their movie down to get an approved rating, the folks involved with Hatchet II chose to release the movie unrated.

This will probably limit the number of theaters where you can see the movie, but it will undoubtedly increase the demand to see what all the fuss is about.

Hatchett II is the sequel to 2007's Hatchet.  It picks up right where the original left off:

 Marybeth (Danielle Harris from HALLOWEEN) escapes from the clutches of the deformed, swamp-dwelling killer Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder from FRIDAY THE 13th). Marybeth returns to the Louisiana swamps along with an army of hunters to recover the bodies of her family and exact her revenge against Victor Crowley. 

Director Adam Green had this to say about the decision to release the movie unrated:

Having a movie as graphically over the top as HATCHET II come out in major theatres unrated is an absolute dream come true -- not only for the genre fans but for the entire make-up effects crew who normally have to watch their amazing achievements get sliced and diced for theatrical release. This is an important event for the horror genre and I hope the real horror fans support HATCHET II and help change the way genre films are released theatrically from this day forward. Kudos to Dark Sky Films and AMC theaters for truly honoring the spirit of old school American horror and doing this right. Gorehounds won't know what hit them!

Earlier this week, the Hatchet folks released a "So NSFW Clip," for the movie.  You can see it after the jump.

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It's confession time from your dear old editor. 

This week I was going to make Hollywood's favorite octogenerian comeback kid, Betty White, our cheesecake.  She was onCommunity last night and that's really all of the hook I needed to justifty the pick.  I even joked that I would try to make all of the links Betty White related.  Given the amount of press Betty's gotten in the last 18 months, I could have done it. 

But I didn't. 

I did a quick scan of the movies opening this week, and, well, Kristen Bell won out. 

Does it help that Betty White is in You Again too? 

Ms. Bell first hit our pop culture radar as the title character on Veronica Mars.  Then she broke out of the CW ghetto and put her good girl image aside to do the horizontal mambo with Russell Brand in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  She played the sole female in the band of geeks in the cult classic Fanboys (in which she donned Princess Leia's iconic metal bikini) and took a turn as Elle, the lightning lass, on NBC's Heroes. 

According to her IMDB bio, she's also a rabid Detroit Red Wings fan.  Geek girl likes hockey?  Awesome! 

Since then she has been trying to take the Meg Ryan crown, starring in a series of middling romantic comedies and dating Dax Shephard. 

Yeah, we don't get him either. 

On to the links.

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Its that time of year.

The games that matter are getting fewer and fewer as the Boys of Summer head into the fall.

 Add to that the impending return of HBO's brilliantly profane Eastbound and Down and me coaching my kids' baseball team and I've got the great American past time on the brain.

I'll be honest, Kenny Powers of Eastbound and Down was the original inspiration for this list.  As I was looking for a decent Season 2 picture the other day I got to thinking about where Kenny's place in the Fictional Baseball Hall of Fame.

Then I made a list.

Its how these things work.

PLAY BALL!

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Everyone's favorite horror hostess is back and coming to a television station near you this weekend.

Elvira's Movie Macabre returns to the small screen to bring you cheesy horror movies, bad puns and good old fashioned snark.

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My birthday was last week.

One of my gifts was Chuck Klosterman's "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs."  We enjoy Mr. Klosterman's work here at GonzoGeek.  We've made no bones about it.  He's a kindred spirit.

What makes Mr. Klosterman's work so interesting is his ability to weave the most mundance threads from the pop culture landscape into the big observations about life.  In the essay "This is Emo," he starts with a discussion Generation X females love of Lloyd Dobler, not John Cusack,  into explaining why Coldplay sucks and finally hits on how all this ties into the differences between true and fake love.  Pretty heady stuff to be pulled from an Ione Skye movie.

Still, one of my favorites is entitled "Sulking with Lisa Loeb on the Ice Planet Hoth."  In this one Mr. Klosterman examines the deeper meaning of the original Star Wars trilogy to Generation X.  This leads to discussion of how Reality Bites has similar themes.

What?

Trust me.  Find the essay.  Its worth a read.

All of this leads me to the introduction of this week's cheesecake.  Say hello to Winona Ryder.

In the aforementioned essay, Mr. Klosterman analogizes Ms. Ryder's character in Reality Bites to the original moody Jedi, Luke Skywalker. 

She pursued a path that was difficult and depressing, and she did so because it showed the slightest potential for transcendence.  Not coincidentally, this is also the Jedi's path.  Adventure?  Excitement?  The Jedi craves not these things.  However, he does crave something greater than the bloodless existence of his father.  Quite simply, Winona Ryder is Luke Skywalker, only with a better haircut and a killer rack.

That's good stuff kids.

Ever since she appeared as a band geek with a thing for Corey Haim in Lucas, Ms. Ryder has been part of our collective geek culture.  She dated Depp and Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum.  She was Tim Burton's original muse.  She was Jerry Lee Lewis' wife, Ripley's clone and Spock's mom.  Of course, no discussion of Ms. Ryder's place in the geek girl pantheon would be complete without a mention of her defining role as Veronica, the original gossip girl, in 1989's Heathers.  That movie set the template for all teen angst in media since.

Sure, she got pinched for shoplifting in 2001, but after Mr. Klosterman' examination, I prefer to think that Ms. Ryder was practicing her Jedi mind trick on the Saks sales clerk.

The Force is strong in that one.

On to the links.

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When I was in eighth grade a new kid moved in and was quickly assimilated into our wandering band of geeks.  The new guy came to Louisiana from New Jersey.  He brought The Destroyer with him.

I was intrigued by the covers of his paperbacks showing cars, guns, women, ninjas and guys doing martial arts.  None of those were things eighth grade me was doing. 

I wanted to check out the books, or, at least, books like them.  So the next time we were at the department store I made my way to the long aisle containing the paperbacks.  They were all there:  best sellers, romance, and, down at the end, the "men's fiction."

It was there that I met Mack Bolan.

"The Executioner" became my companion.  I think I must have carried around one of those paperbacks with me for the next 3 or 4 years.  In that time I learned a lot about guns, the Mob and international terrorism.

What does any of this have to do with The Expendables?

Simple.

It was these books that paved the way for my entry into that sub-genre of movies known as the 80s action-adventure movie.  Mack Bolan got me to John McClane.  He got me to Red Heat, Commando, Cobra, Lethal Weapon, Predator and Wanted:  Dead or Alive.

And, as I was watching The Expendables, I couldn't help but think of Phoenix Force. 

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Whatever knows fear burns at the touch of the Man-Thing.

Believe it or not, there was a time when movies based on Marvel comics were a crap shoot.  Sure, they started out strong with the firstX-Men, Spider-Man and the first two Blade movies.  But then, before a certain armored Avenger made his presence felt at the cineplex, things got bumpy.

Daredevil?  Not very good.

Hulk?  Ang Lee proved he had no idea how to make a comic book movie.

The Punisher?  Thomas Jane?  John Travolta?  Next.

Sure, they rebounded pretty well with X2 which I think still stands as one of their best, but it was followed by things like the firstFantastic Four movie and Elektra.

It was rough going at the House of (Movie) Ideas.

Enter Man-Thing.

What's a Man-Thing you might ask?  The simple answer is he's Marvel's answer to DC's Swamp Thing, although, I believe Man-Thing (let's call him Manny from here on out) predates Swamp Thing by a year or two.  You want the more complex answer?  Read this, then get back to me.

It looked like Marvel was scrapping the bottom of the barrel, almost literally, to bring the muck monster to the big screen.  Things didn't work out.  The movie was created as a direct to video release.  However, as superhero movies took off, the powers that be decided to schedule it for a Halloween release.  They wisely reconsidered and moved it back to the straight to video queue.

The movie was eventually picked up by SyFy (then Sci-Fi) as a "Sci-Fi Original" and has gained a bit of a cult following since then.

What does all this mean to you my dear reader(s)?

It means I stumbled across Man-Thing during last Saturday's vegetative monster movie marathon on SyFy and was finally able to record  and watch the damned thing.

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Every now and then I post images from the glacially slow 'Deck of Cards' project.  Here's the two latest: Trump that, Bitches! Who's up for a little Gim-Runny? And why has it been such a slow process? Because of me and how I am. I got to looking at the two cards side by side and realized that the queen was too busy. The design needed to be simpler. So...... And trump it I shall!

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