BEFORE: We're not just heading toward Mothers Day, also Star Wars Day (May the 4th) is coming up fast, and of course I don't have anything ready, like on Instagram I just posted all of my autographs from Episodes 4-6, and that's good for three posts. That's a little more than a third but a little less than half of my collection, I can probably wait a year before posting my signed 8 x 10's from Episodes 1-3 and then the next year I could do the sequel and spin-off films. That will give me a chance to beef up the collection a little bit if I can get a little extra money to buy a few more, between now and then. The collection's just not complete without Celia Imrie and Richard E. Grant in it - just kidding, the collection will never be complete.
Anyway, more about "Star Wars" tomorrow, hopefully. Dwayne Johnson carries over from "Gridiron Gang".
THE PLOT: The story of mixed-martial arts and UFC champion Mark Kerr.
AFTER: Like yesterday's film, this is a film based on a true sports story, and one that had a documentary made about it before it was turned into a bio-pic. I wonder if directors comb through lists of docs every year, looking for the best underdog or comeback story to turn into a fiction film with a name actor attached. It's a process, I suppose. Both films have similar endings, and you have to wonder if that held back both films when it came to the box office. People love underdog stories, but they also love to root for winners, just saying.
It's a weird time in filmmaking, all of the famous directing sibling pairs seem to have broken up. The Coen brothers aren't making movies together any more (one is directing movies with his lesbian wife, but that's a whole other story...) and the Wachowski brothers (who became the Wachowski sisters, another story...) aren't active either, that just left the Safdie brothers, and now they seem to be on the outs as well. They made "Uncut Gems" and "Good Time" together, and now you're more likely to see the Gallagher brothers perform as Oasis again than to get these two guys working on the same film.
But whatever, I only need ONE person to carry over to the next film, and I'm good. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will be here tomorrow, but in an entirely different capacity. There's one person in this film I know in the real world, I used to play pub trivia against him before he became a minor celebrity in the world of game-show contestants with immense trivia knowledge - you can see him interviewing the Rock as Mark Kerr near the start of the film.
It would be too simple to blame Mark's girlfriend (later his wife, for a few years) for his failure. But she did spend time drinking and partying with him when he was supposed to be training. The old myth about training for boxers is that they're not supposed to have sex, because that would weaken their legs, but I'm not sure if there's any truth to that, or if that's even a thing any more. But I'm guessing drinking and doing drugs is still considered taboo during training. Another part of the problem here might have been ego, Kerr went to wrestle in Japan with the mind-set that he had never lost a match, well, that could have something to do with where he wrestled before and many other factors, once someone gets to the championship level in a sport, they're going to have to learn to deal with the losses, because, well, theoretically everybody's good and nobody wins all the matches. The last undefeated football team was ages ago, and I doubt it's possible in the other U.S. sports to go through a season without a loss, because they play so many games.
We're watching "24 in 24" now on the Food Network, since "Tournament of Champions" is over, but T.O.C. follows a bracket system akin to the NCAA "March Madness" basketball tournament, or the NBA playoff system. You win, you move on, you lose, you go home. Just to GET to the playoffs is some kind of accomplishment, though, and for a chef to get to T.O.C., they must have done something right - but the genius of the bracket system is that there's going to be a winner and loser in every battle, so SOMEBODY is going to win five matches in a row, that's a mathematical certainty. And even though "24 in 24" uses different non-bracket methods to eliminate chefs, it's similar in that it starts with 24 people and eventually only 1 will be left. So 24 people think they have a shot at winning, and 23 of them will be proven wrong. For a game-show like "The Floor" the odds are even worse, 99 players will be proven wrong, but still, it's guaranteed that even if the topics are random, the system is there to guarantee one winner.
Mark had gained success in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (which started out as "no holds barred" fighting, but had to modify the fighting rules in the late 1990s) but then when he attends the 1997 Pride Fighting Championship in Japan and loses to Igor Vovchanchyn via some illegal knee strikes, and the goes through the stages of grief - bargaining (pointing out the illegal moves) and denial (my drinking and drug use had nothing to do with it), and then anger and depression show up a bit late for the party. Back at home he argues with Dawn and then overdoses, forcing him to enter rehab to get clean, an attempt to break up with Dawn, and starting with a new trainer, Bas Rutten. I do know who Bas Rutten is, but only because he appeared on "The King of Queens" was in the movie "Here Comes the Boom".
Anyway, training with Bas Rutten turns out to be a good thing, and Kerr gets clean and back into shape, even wins a couple fights. But then he reconciles with Dawn, leaves training camp, breaks up with Dawn again, and when Dawn tries to kill herself, Mark is distracted, to say the least. Back in Japan for another Pride FC, he loses a brutal fight and has to get stitches, while his friend and former training partner Mark Coleman advances to the finals. Well, at least the two friends didn't have to fight each other for the championship, that could have been very awkward, right? Right after than, Kerr married Dawn, they had a son, but they broke up after six years, he retired in 2009, and is mostly unknown today, despite the influence he had on the early MMA events.
Directed by Benny Safdie (director of "Good Time" and "Uncut Gems")
Also starring Emily Blunt (last seen in "The Fall Guy"), Ryan Bader, Bas Rutten (last seen in "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2"), Oleksandr Usyk, Lyndsey Gavin, Satoshi Ishii (last seen in "Here Comes the Boom"), James Moontasri (last seen in "End of the Road"), Yoko Hamamura, Stephen Quadros, Paul Cheng (last seen in "Peter Pan & Wendy"), Roberto de Abreu Filho, Andre Tricoteux, Marcus Aurelio (last seen in "The Humanity Bureau"), Whitney Moore, Paul Lazenby, Jonathan Corbblah, Nala Sinephro, Jerin Valel, James McSweeney, Ilan Rosenberg, Nick Toren (last seen in "The Pink Panther"), Jill Basey (last seen in "A Thousand Words"), Raja Flores, Egidyus Klimas, Olga Dzyurak, Chris Franco, Takao Osawa, Zoe Kosovic, Tomoyasu Hotei, Gary Copeland, Yushin Okami, Marcus Vinicios, Adam Santos, Kirk Langer, Bethany Brown (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), Randi Lynne, Takaaki Nagata, Jugo Hashimoto, Haruo Tokashiki, Yasuhiro Nakatsuka, Hiroko Taki, Yasuko Mitsuura, Shinpei Otsuki, Midori Takiya, Naoshi Sasaki, Royal Johnston, Adrienne Lovato, Ryan Ventura, Paul Wu, Jaime Fair, Jordan Greer, Byron Capers, Annette Alvarado, with a cameo from Mark Kerr.
RATING: 6 out of 10 demolition derby cars (must be a metaphor, right?)
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