Georgia Wrestling Now welcomes Big Wood and Phantom Troublemaker

MCW ring announcer Phantom Troublemaker (left) doing commentary for Dragon Con Wrestling. Photo by Harold Jay Taylor/Headlocks and Headshots.

Things don’t always go according to plan as evidenced by this week’s Georgia Wrestling Now. With the help of some unexpected calls, however, Wrestling with Pop Culture and Joshua Von Wheeler still put on an interesting show. Filling in for Les Thatcher is Deep Southern Championship Wrestling‘s Big Wood, who discusses Thatcher’s one-day seminar on Sept. 13, as well as other upcoming DSCW events. Then we hear from Monstrosity Championship Wrestling‘s Phantom Troublemaker, who fills us in on all the happenings at this Friday’s Monstrosity Championship Wrestling event. With additional commentary from Georgia Wrestling History‘s Larry Goodman and some surprise news from Dan Masters, it ends up being an entertaining show despite some minor mishaps. We also discuss recent and upcoming events in Peachstate Wrestling Alliance, Anarchy Wrestling, NWA Atlanta and more. Listen live at www.blogtalkradio.com/psp every Monday at 7 p.m. and call 347-324-5735 for questions or comments.

Check Out Sports Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with PSP on BlogTalkRadio

“Innocence” is guilty of nonsensical storytelling and predictability

Leave a reply

Beckett (Sophie Curtis) has this same expression for most of “Innnocence”. Unfortunately it’s not because she is under any sort of spell.

A fresh take on an old formula is typically a good thing. And that’s what I thought I was getting with Innocence, a teenage horror drama based on the book of the same name. The film jolts us right into tragedy as Beckett (Sophie Curtis) and her father Miles (Linus Roache) watch as Beckett’s mother is swept away by the ocean’s undercurrent while surfing. It seems like Innocence is off to a splendidly horrific start as this must be the horror Beckett has to deal with throughout the rest of the film. Nope.

In order to cope with their loss, Beckett and her father move to Manhattan where Beckett is enrolled in a preparatory school filled with every high school cliché you can imagine (a popular and pretty group of mean girls, a somewhat goth-y outcast to bond with, etc.). Beckett befriends Jen, the goth girl (Sarah Sutherland). One of the mean girls leaps from a campus window to her demise. Am I supposed to think death is somehow following Beckett? I don’t know, but she does some research and discovers there have been other suicides at this same school over the years.

Meanwhile, school nurse Pamela (Kelly Reilly) takes a particular interest in Beckett, and an even stronger interest in her father, basically shacking up with them as soon as they arrive. I have to say Reilly is one of the better parts of this movie, just as she was recently in Calvary and a couple of years ago in Flight. Reilly has a seductive nature that lends itself to her role here as a member of a coven of Desperate Housewives-looking women who run the school. So I certainly don’t blame Miles for accepting Pam’s advances so quickly. But wait a second. Didn’t he just lose his wife? Shouldn’t he and Beckett still be grieving a little more than they are, which is hardly at all? Sure, Beckett starts having nightmares and visions, but those don’t really have anything to do with her recently-deceased mother.

Kelly Reilly as Pam, the seductive witch, is the best part of “Innocence”.

OK. So, after the one girl kills herself, Beckett starts seeing the ghosts of other girls who have committed suicide at the school. These ghosts lead her to dark alleys and other secret locations, where she soon discovers that Jen’s mom, Pam and others are part of this coven that runs the school. And the school has basically served as a farm system that supplies the coven with the virgin blood they need to maintain their power and beauty. This is all going to come back to Beckett’s mother’s death, right? I mean, she must have been involved with this coven in some way. Or maybe she was a student at the same school when she was a teenager and witnessed something this coven didn’t want exposed. Nope.

Anyway, Beckett comes to realize that these suicides haven’t been voluntary at all. Instead, these girls have been under some sort of spell cast by the coven that causes them to unwillfully commit suicide so the coven can drink their blood without committing obvious murders. And it looks like Beckett is next in line, which is why Pam has been spending so much time with Beckett’s dad. (Maybe that explains Curtis’ trance-like acting, but probably not.) To thwart the coven’s plan, Beckett calls her boyfriend Tobey (Graham Phillips), whose mom (Stephanie March) is one of the more beautiful members of the coven, and does some seducing of her own. By the time the coven kidnaps Beckett and Pam ritualistically drinks her blood, it is no longer virgin blood and is of no use to the coven.

Beckett is invited by Pam to join the coven.

Naturally, Pam instead offers to let Beckett drink her blood so Beckett can become part of the coven. Beckett spits the blood onto Pam’s face, which makes for a nice visual. Then Tobey comes to the rescue and, well, the movie ends in such a way that even a novice soothsayer could have seen it coming. Still, none of it ever relates to the loss of Beckett’s mother. So I guess that was simply an unnecessarily tragic impetus for Beckett to move to Manhattan and enroll in this witchy school. Meaning that what started out with the promise of being a new twist on an old idea ends up more like an extended episode of Charmed (or maybe even Charmed: The Next Generation). Actually, that comparison is doing Charmed a huge disservice. I haven’t seen the Twilight movies, but I imagine Innocence is (at least trying to be) to witches what Twilight is to vampires. Hence this sparkling review.

www.innocencethemovie.com

“Code Black” puts us in the middle of the chaos of America’s busiest ER

Leave a reply

A chaotic scene in C-Booth from “Code Black”.

To say that being an emergency room doctor comes with a unique set of stressful circumstances would be one of the biggest understatements in history. While treating life-threatening injuries and illnesses is obviously a major concern, there are countless other factors that make working in an ER one of the most complicated jobs around. In the award-winning documentary Code Black Ryan McGarry, M.D. shows us why the current healthcare crisis is a particularly challenging time for those training to be doctors, especially at Los Angeles County+University of Southern California Medical Center.

As veteran physician William “Billy” Mallon, M.D. notes in this documentary, L.A. County hospital is home to America’s busiest ER and “more people have died and more people have been saved than in an other square footage in the United States” in it’s trauma bay (known as C-Booth). The film begins at the hospital’s former location, an antiquated facility where doctors-in-training crowd around as emergency operations are done to treat potentially fatal ailments. To the viewer, these scenes are pure chaos. But to the doctors and trainees, it’s an oddly comfortable scenario, perhaps only because it is the only one they know. Even after a new hospital is built, however, the more spacious and up-to-date facility proves to have an entirely new set of obstacles to overcome despite its improvements.

“Code Black” writer/director Ryan McGarry, M.D.

Considering the current state of America’s healthcare system, and the fact that L.A. County is one of the largest of only a handful of public hospitals in the country, Code Black illustrates the discouraging extremes aspiring doctors are facing. Driven by a variety of factors ranging from personal loss to professional challenge, however, the doctors featured in this film are motivated to learn, adapt and do whatever it takes to overcome bureaucratic setbacks, uncontrollable challenges and the seemingly impossible times when the ER reaches Code Black, a discouraging situation where all these obstacles come to a head while the ER is overcrowded and there is no solution in sight.

It’s a particularly troubling time for those driven by a desire to help every patient that comes in, regardless of what has brought them to the ER. It’s this desire that motivates the doctors in Code Black to remain calm during the most trying times, get together outside of work to discuss solutions and work towards making L.A. County the hospital they want and need it to be. The film puts us right in the middle of it all, invoking emotions ranging from heartache to rage to occasional hope. Though it does little to offer a solution to any of the problems it reveals, Code Black definitely brings awareness to many of the hardships faced by aspiring doctors that we otherwise wouldn’t likely ever consider. And by humanizing the doctors with emotional backstories, Code Black succeeds in creating a sympathetic scenario for its audience.

www.codeblackmovie.com

Jett Bryant leaves his footprint with Drive-Invasion poster and Bigfoot performance

Leave a reply

Photo by Jeff Shipman.

For the past 15 years, one rambunctious event has signaled the end of summer for many Atlantans. This year the Drive-Invasion moves from the Starlight Six Drive-In Theatre to Turner Field, scales back from its usual two days to a one-day event and takes place the weekend after Labor Day instead of Labor Day weekend. Despite all these changes (as well as some new features such as Jim Stacy’s Food Truck Midway), this year’s Drive-Invasion will maintain a lot of sights and sounds from previous years. I can’t remember a Drive-Invasion that hasn’t included Dear God No! star Jett Bryant, a tattoo artist at Memorial Tattoo, keyboard player for AM Gold and front man for outlaw country outfit The Scragglers. This year his heavy Southern rock band Bigfoot will once again be stomping around on one of two music stages. Bryant also designed one of this year’s event posters, which will be available as a limited edition print at the Drive-Invasion Artist Market. The week leading up to Drive-Invasion is “the calm before the storm” for Bryant. So it wasn’t difficult to get Bryant to talk to Wrestling with Pop Culture about Drive-Invasion for a few minutes (though cheap beer and Tater Tots didn’t hurt).

Bigfoot is a difficult band to track down for an interview.

I make sure that I keep two days a week specifically for drinking and nothing else. It’s a little me time and you fit right in on that.

How many Drive-Invasions have you performed at?

I don’t even know, man. Between Monster Bash and Drive-Invasion, they kind of all blend together. Between Bigfoot and Rock City Dropouts, I think I’ve played almost all of them. I didn’t start going to them until the third or fourth one, but I know Bigfoot’s played at least four, if not more. I don’t know if I’m counting Monster Bash in that.

My understanding is that this year’s Drive-Invasion focuses on bands that have played at previous Drive-Invasions.

I think they were just trying to keep it local this year and get people to come down and perform that are good at it. And it’s a one-day thing this year, which I’m going to have to get used to. I’ll show up that morning and have to leave that night. You can’t show up the morning before and leave the morning after like I’m used to doing.

Tell me about the poster you did for this year’s Drive-Invasion.

I did the monster from The Horror of Party Beach drinking a tiki drink. I wanted something that would catch the eye and did a little nod to a buddy of mine with the orange tiki glass and the pink straw. When Jimmy [Bickert, Drive-Invasion organizer] asked me to do it I was originally going to do Jaws. Then I realized if I did Jaws it would just look like a Panama City Beach T-shirt. So I went with the other monster instead and it looks good. I like it. It’s awesome. And we’ll be selling them at the show.

What time is Bigfoot performing?

I think we go on at 2:45. Don’t quote me on that. I think we go on early enough that I can continue to get hammered for the rest of the day. We’re maybe the third band, fourth band. I’m not quite sure. Early enough that I can get a buzz on before we play and continue to get hammered and probably end up in a hotel. That’s going to be the plan.

I’m assuming there’s not a Braves game at Turner Field that night.

There’s no Braves game, but there is a [Great Atlanta Beer Fest] in the next parking lot. So we might have some overflow from that, I hope. The more, the merrier. A bunch more drunks.

I’d imagine they might have some people from Drive-Invasion trying to sneak in for the beer.

They might. But they don’t have all the cool bands over there.

It’s been a while since Bigfoot released a CD, but I know you have some newer stuff recorded. What’s Bigfoot been up to?

We are elusive like the namesake. We don’t do anything. We come out of hiding to play these events, then we don’t see each other again for months. Except for my drummer is now my neighbor, so I see him all the time. But he’s more of my neighbor than he is my drummer. I’ve got most of his lawn equipment at my house.

We’ve got a lot of stuff recorded, but Jimmy Hall’s always out of town and he’s kind of like the lifeblood of the band. We can perform without him, but he’s the blood that runs through the veins when it comes to writing new stuff. He does guitar teching for Sugarland, so he’s always on the road.

Aside from performing and getting wasted, what else are you looking forward to at this year’s Drive-Invasion?

Photo by Jeff Shipman.

I’m looking forward to the [Silverscreen and Gasoline Car and Bike Show], as always. I’ll be honest with you, I know I love the movies but I never remember seeing them at the Drive-Invasion. I know the draw is going to see the drive-in movies. The bands are just an accessory to the event. But rarely do I remember seeing a movie at Drive-Invasion. I’m awake, I’m just drunk and talking shit somewhere. I want to make sure this is on the record. There’s been an ongoing event at the Drive-Invasion for years called Last Man Standing. It is exactly what it entails: who is the last man standing? It’s gone back and forth over the years, but last year I got the title of Last Man Standing. That means if we can’t do an all-nighter again I am the last champion. I want that on the record.

Do you have a trophy or anything to commemorate that?

There’s no trophy. It’s all here, man. It’s all in the heart. I know I won. But it’s going to suck not to compete again. It’s just about time, though. I’m too old for that shit.

Aside from changing to a one-day format, how do you think the Drive-Invasion will be received now that it’s not at the Starlight?

I think it’s going to be pretty good, man. I’m excited about it. A lot of people were kind of bummed out at first that it wasn’t going to be at the drive-in. But I’d say Jimmy [Bickert], Lisa [Williams] and Dusty [Booze] and all them have done a great job trying to keep it alive. I live for this weekend. My whole year revolves around going to Drive-Invasion.

www.drive-invasion.com

Georgia Wrestling Now welcomes Logan Creed

Leave a reply