As MTR’s res­i­dent TV won­der­girl, I have been keep­ing you all up to date on the fastly approach­ing Smal­l­ville movie event. Today, I have a new trailer for you, which brings back J’onn J’onzz (Mar­t­ian Man­hunter) and Green Arrow, and fea­tures Hawk­man, Star­Girl and Doc­tor Fate.

Are you going to watch or set your DVR’s? Feast your eyes on the trailer and comment:

It’s now offi­cial! On April 27th, 2010,  Street Fighter returns to kick ass on the PS3 & Xbox 360. For the last few months I have been shar­ing info with you guys about the games — trail­ers, game­play footage and char­ac­ters. Well, it seems today some new stuff hit the web and I wanted to share my find­ings with you guys.

First — Here is an anime trailer giv­ing some back­ground on new chal­lenger Juri:

Sec­ond: New Game­play footage:

Adon vs Ken:

Ryu vs Cody:

Trailer cred­its go to the crew at Machinima.com - look for their great videos on YouTube.

Too often I com­plain about the things I dis­like in pro­fes­sional wrestling, but instead of rant­ing and rav­ing about these things, I decided to write about how I would fix some things. Some of you may agree or dis­agree with my sce­nar­ios and are wel­come to comment.

Wel­come to the first col­umn of The Arm­chair Booker!

Let’s start with the num­ber one WWE show:

RAW

• Do away with the guest host­ing and either intro­duce a GM or some author­ity fig­ure to run the show.

• John Cena-Needs a heel turn to freshen up his char­ac­ter. Bring back the freestyles and street swag. Fans will enjoy the turn I’m sure. I would have also aligned him with Cryme Tyme for a solid faction.

• Bret Hart– Should have had the Hart Dynasty with him when he appeared on Raw and align DX with Vince. Would have ele­vated The Hart Dynasty and taken advan­tage of exist­ing beef between Bret,HBK & HHH.
• Bring in the other Dib­i­ase brother and make a Tag Team in Legacy. That way you could have the Dib­i­ase broth­ers for the tag belts, Cody for IC/US title, and Orton for the World Title. I’d call the Dib­i­ase broth­ers Money Inc. as an homage to their dad.
• Reunite the Colon Boithers, Car­l­ito & Primo, since solo they are struggling.
• Ele­vate Evan Bourne into a stronger mid-card feud with Swag­ger and MVP as your core guys.
• No more Hornswoggle!
• Would make San­tino a legit threat and cap­i­tal­ize on his pop­u­lar­ity by putting him in the IC/US title hunt as well.

Smack­down

• Cre­ate a sta­ble with Finlay,Drew McIn­tyre and Shea­mus. Have a vet­eran work with both of these young tal­ents and also cre­ate a tag team as well.
• Push Edge as your num­ber one heel.

• Con­tinue build­ing CM Punk’s Straight Edge Society.
• Move Khali to an enforcer role and limit his ring work.
• Build you Women’s Divi­sion around Beth Phoenix.
• Make Dolph Zig­gler, John Mor­ri­son and Matt Hardy your main mid-card guys for the US title, but ele­vate them into the main event often. This will allow you to both gauge crowd response and inject new blood into the main event scene.
• Chris Jeri­cho & Rey Mys­te­rio need to feud at the main event level.
• Keep and Kane & The Under­taker together and have them be the cen­ter of your Tag Team Division.

ECW

• Bring back the Hard­core Matches.
• Intro­duce a TV Title to give the mid-card guys a title to feud over.
• Shel­ton Ben­jamin needs some sort of mouth piece that can help him get over as a heel. I’d go with him, Zeke and Regal.
• Koslov needs to work on not look­ing so robotic in the ring.
• Align Baretta & Croft with Zack Ryder.
• Chris­t­ian needs to leave ECW in the Draft. Bring in a new vet­eran to carry the brand.
• I would move Char­lie Haas to ECW.
• Con­tinue push­ing Yoshi Tatsu.
• Use ECW to build new tal­ent and keep call­ing up new ros­ter mem­bers to keep the brand fresh.

This is just a sam­pling of how I’d change things. I am sure many of  you will have thoughts and sug­ges­tions of your own. Feel free to share them.

As much as I love wrestling and their spin-off prod­ucts, there are times that you really need to go “What The Fuck”!!!! My dear read­ers - this is one of those times. WWE has decided to launch a series of comic books enti­tled “WWE Heroes” which cen­ters around the WWE ros­ter and their adven­tures. The back­story for the series cen­ters around an age-old feud between “The Shadow King” and “The King Of Kings” (which prob­a­bly means HHH and The Under­taker or some­thing along those lines).

While I appre­ci­ate cre­ativ­ity and inno­va­tion, WWE Heroes to me is just another WWE attempt to cash in on a new medium. Not to be a total douche but are any comic fans really read­ing this? Do they even care?

I admire what WWE is try­ing to do but I feel that they are spread­ing them­selves thin with so many projects. Between films and comics and poor attempts at main­stream­ing (Raw guest hosts I am look­ing at you), WWE is pro­vid­ing var­ied prod­ucts but none are par­tic­u­larly inno­v­a­tive or engag­ing. I think that the most suc­cess­ful thing that they have done thus far in terms of new projects was the flick “See No Evil” and while it was orig­i­nal, at least used a gen­uine scary lead char­ac­ter in the form of Kane.

I really would like WWE to reach that pin­na­cle of pop­u­lar­ity, but with all these hokey attempts at main­stream­ing they are tak­ing three steps back instead of mov­ing for­ward. That’s my take! What’s yours?

(con­tinue reading…)

After three oppo­nents have been denied the chance to fight Bobby Lash­ley by the Florida Ath­letic Com­mis­sion, all being called “not com­pet­i­tive” fights for the 4–0 pro wrestler-turned MMA fighter; Strike­force has finally got an approved oppo­nent for Lash­ley. His oppo­nent for Jan­u­ary 30th’s Strike­force: Miami event will be Wes Sims (22–12-1). This Ulti­mate Fighter alumni and UFC vet  is best known for his two losses against for­mer UFC Heavy­weight Cham­pion Frank Mir (one loss being a DQ due to ille­gal stomps to the head), and his antics on The Ulti­mate Fighter Sea­son 10.

Wes Sims is cur­rently on a three-fight win streak (his first round loss on The Ulti­mate Fighter does not count on his record), and is look­ing to upset the unde­feated Lash­ley. Bobby Lash­ley has fin­ished 3 out of his 4 wins, only once going the dis­tance with Ulti­mate Fighter Sea­son 8 cast mem­ber, Jason Guida. Lashley’s only other notable win is against Bob Sapp at Fight Force Inter­na­tional: Ulti­mate Chaos in June.

Strike­force: Miami will also have sev­eral other high pro­file fights, includ­ing Heis­man Tro­phy win­ner Her­schel Walker (0–0) in his MMA debut against Greg Nagy (1–1); Rob­bie Lawler (18–5) vs. Melvin Man­heof (24–6-1); Strike­force Women’s Light­weight Cham­pion Cris­tiane “Cyborg” San­tos (8–1) vs. Mar­loes Coenen (17–3) for the title; and Nick Diaz (20–7) vs. Mar­ius Zarom­skis (13–3) for the Wel­ter­weight Championship.

You can watch Strike­force: Miami on Show­time at 10pm EST on Jan­u­ary 30, or live at BankAt­lantic Cen­ter in Sun­rise, Florida. Tick­ets are going for around $50.

“Hey, that sym­bi­otic ooze just fell from the sky and attached itself to Spider-Man’s motor­cy­cle, this is bull­shit! This is not how it hap­pened in the comics!!”

“Crim­son dynamo and Whiplash aren’t the same person!!”

“Johnny Blaze doesn’t even use the Penance stare, that’s Dan Ketch’s power!!”

“Wolverine’s back-story is noth­ing like this!!”

To those that make those com­ments, with all due respect and with great kind­ness, I sim­ply say , please read further.

The major­ity of peo­ple who bitch about sit­u­a­tions in movies like this don’t even read comics, and the ones who do read them, half of them don’t even have the facts right, so it’s usu­ally peo­ple talk­ing out of their asses con­cern­ing such things.

I have been a fan of comic books since I was a lit­tle kid. I would gather around with my bud­dies, we’d quiz each other with trivia, we’d read one another’s books, trade cards, and we pretty much kept abreast of all on goings in our comic book worlds. This has been the norm since the late 80’s, through­out the 90’s and up until now for me. I own more comics than I have space for in my 2 bed­room apart­ment , and I like to think that I have a wealth of knowl­edge of comics, par­tic­u­larly Mar­vel comics, and espe­cially con­cern­ing Spi­der Man, with scat­tered knowl­edge around the realm of all things comics in general.

The rea­son for my post is to be the fan boy that actu­ally takes the side of movie direc­tors as opposed to the mil­lions of the “other” fan­boys who do noth­ing but com­plain about any lit­tle deci­sion made by direc­tors to bring their favorite heroes to the big screen.

(con­tinue reading…)

As a woman, I pride myself on being able to hang “with the boys” in regards to my abil­ity to watch stuff most girls won’t even con­sider.  So, in keep­ing up with this, I decided to watch the pre­miere of Spike TV’s newest com­edy “Blue Moun­tain State”. About five min­utes in,  all I could muster was “Wow”.  I imme­di­ately likened it to the “Van Wilder” movies or “Var­sity Blues” on crack. This show takes every col­lege TV show and movie you have ever seen and bun­dles it into one half hour of  non­stop sex, drink­ing and foot­ball. (I assume I have your atten­tion now?)

Before I begin, a lit­tle back­ground for those of you who live under a rock and haven’t seen Spike’s heavy pro­mo­tion for Blue Moun­tain State. BMS fol­lows three col­lege fresh­men who attend Blue Moun­tain State Col­lege. Two of the three are on the BMS foot­ball team ”The Goats” — Alex (Darin Brooks) and Craig (Sam Jones III, you may remem­ber him as Pete from Smal­l­ville). Round­ing out the three is the trusty sidekick/Alex’s BFF Sammy (Roman­ski) whose goal is to become the Goat’s mascot.

The show revolves around these guys adapt­ing to col­lege life while jug­gling foot­ball, (mostly) naked girls, team haz­ing and maybe (at some point) classes. We quickly meet some of the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, most importantly:

Team Cap­tain and Line­backer Thad (Alan Ritch­son):  the odd­est char­ac­ter on this show, and I can­not wait to see where they are going with him.  He heads the haz­ing rit­u­als, which is all “pretty gay” and is obvi­ously the lead bad guy to our three newbies.

Craig’s gold-digging “B” of a girl­friend Denise (Gabrielle Den­nis): eas­ily the most annoy­ing char­ac­ter to me, as you will all prob­a­bly agree after watch­ing. As her main goal is to get Craig to the NFL (to get that money, money, yeah, yeah), she has a no-sex pol­icy with Craig, as “all the testos­terone makes him play better.”

 We also meet Coach Marty Daniels (Ed Mari­naro) quickly, and he seems to have good one-liners that will be funny addi­tions to the show. I wanted to see more of him, as the coaches usu­ally have some of the best mate­r­ial in these kinds of shows.

Ok, now onto the short recap. We got two back to back episodes to sink our teeth into (or maybe I should say fin­gers – more later.) Episode 101 was enti­tled “It’s Called Haz­ing, Look It Up”. In this episode, we meet the char­ac­ters and get to watch some funny haz­ing that includes shav­ing other team­mates’ asses, and hold­ing a book of team­mates’ secrets with­out los­ing it under penalty of ass-whopping, and a Cookie Race – I won’t spoil that.

Episode 102 is called “Promise Ring”. When Craig loses the promise ring Denise gave him dur­ing a night out at a strip club, he goes on a hilar­i­ous search to find the ring, which he believes he lost in (yes, not a typo) a strip­per before she learns that he lost it. Much hilar­ity ensues, and it cul­mi­nates with a not-so-subtle “break-in”. I won’t ruin that either.

All in all, the show is a lit­tle over-the-top in terms of debauch­ery, but it is cable TV after all. While funny, there are some things I can live with­out per­son­ally, but I am sure a lot of you will love it just the way it is. I will prob­a­bly give it a few more episodes before mak­ing a final judgment.

Side Note – I also really like the BMS theme song, which is ‘Hell Yeah’ by Rev Theory.

For now: here are some quotes to get you interested:

Coach Daniels: “Where do we come from? FROM OUR FATHERS BALLS!” “Cham­pi­ons know they came from their father’s balls.”

“Once upon a time, some weak pathetic pussy coined the phrase “Win­ning isn’t every­thing”. For most peo­ple in most sit­u­a­tions, he was right. But I’m not one of those peo­ple and THIS is not one of those situations.”

Alex: “Your girl­friend sucks. She intro­duces you to account­ing majors and then gives you shit for drink­ing a beer?”

“There is no way that girl is a vir­gin. Vir­gins don’t go to state col­lege, man. Wake the fuck up!”

“Never date the strip­pers, you don’t take the paint­ing from the museums”

You can catch Blue Moun­tain State Tues­days on Spike TV at 10PM EST. Check your local list­ings, and find the first two episodes at http://www.spike.com/show/34560

For those of you that lis­tened to this weeks episode of MTR you will have heard my thoughts on Mod­ern War­fare break­ing the bil­lion thresh­old. It is a very impres­sive feat to say the least. The crew from Giz­modo showed us a chart cre­ated by busi­ness man­age­ment show­ing the break­down of rev­enue between both projects and it goes to show that games when done right and with a strong fan base can com­pete against movies. I am sure many of you will be as sur­prised as I was upon see­ing this chart.

As a fight­ing game & mar­tial arts enthu­si­ast, I try to sup­port both gen­res respec­tively. Every time one of my favorite fight­ing game fran­chises makes the jump to the sil­ver screen, I am there, popcorn in hand with the hopes of being enter­tained and finally see­ing a real life film imi­tate some­thing I enjoy.

For years, I have endured the good ( Mor­tal Kom­bat 1) , the bad ( Mor­tal Kom­bat 2), and the awful ( Street Fighter-Legend of Chun-Li) in terms of fight­ing games jump­ing to the sil­ver screen. The newest chal­lenger is the  film based on the Namco Tekken fran­chise. With a decent cast and a semi-accurate story, I think that maybe they got it right (some­what). This inter­pre­ta­tion of Tekken fol­lows Jin Kazama as he bat­tles his way through the tournament.

Check it out

Being the TV lover that I am, I fig­ured I would share some of our favorite show’s mid-season return dates with you.

Thurs­day, Jan. 14
Com­mu­nity returns at 8PM on NBC — If you haven’t watched this com­edy star­ring Joel McHale of “The Soup”, I HIGHLY rec­om­mend it.
Fringe is back at 9PM on FOX

Sun­day, Jan. 17
The new show Human Tar­get pre­mieres at 8PM on FOX — This looks like a pretty cool show. I will def­i­nitely be check­ing it out.
24 has a 4-hour, 2-night pre­miere that starts at 9PM on FOX

Thurs­day, Jan. 21 is a big night for me per­son­ally — my DVR will be work­ing over­time:
New CW hit show The Vam­pire Diaries is back at 8PM — Not as much of a chick show as you may think — give it a try.
Both Super­nat­ural (CW) and The Office (NBC) return at 9PM
Burn Notice returns at 10PM on USA

Fri­day, Jan. 22nd
Smal­l­ville returns at 8PM on the CW (Also, the Absolute Jus­tice TV Movie is Feb­ru­ary 5th.)

Wednes­day, Jan. 27th
Psych is back at 10 PM on USA

Tues­day, Feb. 2nd
LOST comes back for it’s final sea­son on at 9PM on ABC

Thurs­day, March 18th
Flash­For­ward returns at 8 PM on ABC

Tues­day, March 30th
V finally returns at 10 PM on ABC — ABC had given us a few episodes to get into and then yanked it until March — bas­tards. Can’t wait to get back into it.

Also, per­haps of inter­est,  the Doll­house Series Finale is Jan­u­ary 22nd at 9PM on FOX — I never watched this show, but it had a cult fol­low­ing that said it was good. If you were a part of that cult, I am sure this date is of inter­est to you.

If there are any other shows you are inter­ested in know­ing about, please let me know and I will do my best to get you a date.

Slightly off topic, I have read that things are look­ing pos­i­tive for a 10th sea­son of Smal­l­ville as well as a 6th sea­son of Super­nat­ural. Let’s see how this pans out, but I would be happy for both.