Archive for June 2nd, 2006

WWE Smackdown Reax #1: “Tazz was absolutely gold with his challenge to Raw’s Lawler.”

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

If McCool can wrestle as well as Kristal and Jillian and if Ashley suddenly develops some skill and one or two more female wrestlers join the roster, I think they should have a Women’s Title for the Smackdown division. I can’t help but enjoy every time I see Finlay wrestling, and the post-match Leprechaun assault just makes it all the better. I keep waiting for King Booker to look at his scepter and start shaking and nodding his head so the pyro can commence, but his semi-fruity yet regal walk to the ring will have to do for now…

Rojo Has Blog Search, Too

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

After writing about new blog search engines from Bloglines and Gnoos this week, Chris Alden (Rojo CEO) pointed out to me that Rojo also quietly launched a blog search service earlier in the month. Rojo has focused on building out its feed reader in the past - this is its first real dive into blog […]

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

Torch VIP Members, click on the red button above to access the latest in our series of VIP Audio Roundtables with Torch columnists Bruce Mitchell and Pat McNeill and Torch editor Wade Keller looking back at WrestleManias. In March, we featured audio discussions of the first two WrestleManias. Today, we present the first half of our two-hour-plus discussion on WrestleMania III. Part two will be published later this weekend…

Youkilis’ two-run HR in 9th lifts Red Sox past Tigers

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

Visit ESPN.com for the complete story.

An Inconvenient Truth / **** (PG)

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

Global warming is real, and unless it is reversed, the planet will pass a “tipping point” in about 10 years and start a slide into the destruction of civilization. Al Gore says this is not his opinion, “but the consensus of 100 percent of the scientists who have studied the subject.” It is not a political issue, Gore says, but a moral issue. This documentary, skillfully directed by David Guggenheim, is not the boring lecture you might expect, but fascinating and relentless. In 39 years I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film.

Overlord / **** (Not rated)

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

An overlooked masterpiece, an elegiac 1975 film that follows the journey of one young British soldier to the beaches of Normandy. Director Stuart Cooper seamlessly blends newsreel footage with new dramatic footage to follow Tom Beddoes (Brian Stirner) from his home in England to the beaches of the Normandy invasion. Cooper and John Alcott, Kubrick’s favorite cinematographer, spent three years in the archives of the Imperial War Museum matching documentary footage with their story; Alcott used antique lenses and treated film stock for a close visual match. The result has the poignancy of fiction and the impact of fact, and an aura unlike any other war movie I’ve seen.

Twelve and Holding / ***1/2 (R)

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

Weaves together the stories of three children who take desperate measures to solve their problems. Conor Donovan plays a boy with a birthmark, whose brother is killed, and who feels his parents wish he had died instead. Jesse Camacho is a fat kid loses weight. And Zoe Weizenbaum plays an adopted girl who eavesdrops on the therapy sessions of her psychiatrist mother (Annabella Sciorra) and gets a crush on one of her clients. The paths these kids take are wrong, but Cuesta’s direction and Anthony Cipriano’s screenplay are gentle with them; the movie observes their mistakes but does not blame, and understands how emotions can lead to a failure of common sense.

Ear Force X2 Wireless Headphones… Wired Wireless

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

When can something be wireless yet still have wires? When it is a set of the Turtle Beach Ear Force X2 wireless headphones.

Rockstar Table Tennis First Look

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

Table Tennis is yet another stroke of genius from the GTA developers.

The Break-Up / ** (PG-13)

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston play a couple not destined to find happiness together, something we sense when they first meet and they take the whole movie to find out. He’s a tour bus guide, she works in an art gallery, and they are spectacularly incompatible. But if we believed they were happy together, we’d care for them. But the movie’s problem is that it’s one long break-up that gets increasingly mean and messy; watching it is like being on a double-date from hell.

The Clip Show: Enter The Chosen One

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

· The Chosen One arrives , and the healing begins.

· Jennifer Aniston reacts to the news as if she’s eaten bad shellfish, then delights no one with her latest big screen…

Short Ends: The $17,000 Binky

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

· Idol champ Taylor Hicks wound up working at Wal-Mart even more quickly than we thought he would.

· If you can first get past the shocking fact that the $17,000 binky gifted to Shiloh…