At its best, The Simpsons pushes the limits of both animation and comedy on a weekly basis. At its worst, The Simpsons exists in a vacuum, where characters never grow older, or even wiser, despite the show’s record-breaking run. Of course, being a television show, The Simpsons is afforded the opportunity to not adhere strictly to rules of the real world. However, sometimes fans want more. Sometimes fans wanted to see the same smart dialogue and unique characters of The Simpsons through a mature len or different setting. For those fans, Mission Hill was a miracle. That was, until it was canceled in 2000.

Mission Hill first aired on the WB network in 1999, but went on a yearlong hiatus after the first two episodes due to poor ratings. The show returned in 2000, only airing for four more episodes, before being officially canceled. Mission Hill had a cult following through late-night airings on TBS and Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block in the coming years, and solidified its place in cult TV history upon its DVD release in 2005.

Like most brilliant shows that were unjustly cancelled, Mission Hill was plagued by the typical TV network missteps: awkward advertising and little recognition from popular press outlets. Combined with the fact that Mission Hill was placed on Friday nights at 8pm, when most people are actively trying not to stay home and watch TV, the show had a difficult time locating a core audience.

Of all the cancelled animated shows of the past decade, what makes this one in particular worth noting? Most importantly, Mission Hill came from rich blood. Former executive producers for The Simpsons, Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, created Mission Hill, alongside artistic designer Lauran MacMullan the former animation director for The Simpsons, The Critic and King of the Hill. Likewise, Mission Hill featured the vocal delights of Tom Kenny (SpongeBob SquarePants), Brian Posehn, and Jane Wiedlin (of The Go-Go’s) to name a few. Beyond the brilliant creative team standing behind the show, Mission Hill’s content appealed to the 18-35 demographic by presenting characters whose identities were torn between post-college dreams and the harsh realities of the working world.

In Mission Hill, 24-year-old waterbed salesman and college graduate Andy French (Wallace Langham) was forced to allow his genius 17-year-old brother Kevin (Scott Menville) to move into his downtown bachelor pad after their parents suddenly moved to Wyoming. Andy’s roommate, Jim (Brian Posehn), portrayed the main character’s high school pal who now works at an advertising agency where he attempts to capitalize on marketing to the very 90s youth that he identified with. We round out Andy’s loft with his last housemate, Posey, a neo-hippie stuck in the corporatism of 1990s America, and his beloved golden retriever Stogie.

The supporting characters in Mission Hill are numerous, but deserve brief recognition. Despite receiving very little attention from viewers during its time, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) took notice and awarded the program high praise for their honest portrayal of an adult gay couple. Andy’s neighbors, Gus (Nick Jameson) and Wally (Tom Kenny), are homosexuals. And that’s it. They’re not stereotypes, they’re not overtly flamboyant, they’re not walking impersonations of a ten-year-old mimicking a gay person; they’re just treated like an average adult couple who love each other. While this certainly seems like a no-brainer of a storytelling decision, it is still a landmark move considering that too many gay characters on television remain parodies of what straight people assume homosexuals live like. Instead, Mission Hill presented viewers with Gus and Wally’s character trait in a flat manner, with little need to obsess over their sexual preferences. Mission Hill was smart enough to redirect a fan’s attention away from the trivial and towards the crucial.

Unlike The Simpsons, in which problems are often created and resolved in a neat 30 minute time slot, Mission Hill presented flawed scenarios that characters could not escape.

The plot itself couldn’t be seem any more basic: older brother is forced to hang with his nerdy little sibling; hilarity is bound to ensue, right? Wrong. Remember, these are the same people who worked on The Simpsons and Futurama. Mission Hill chronicled a moment in everybody’s life that is often overlooked due to its sheer irrelevance: the awkward period between graduation and beginning a career. Most people just figure, “What was so impressive about my stint at an electronics store before landing my first real job?” Mission Hill successfully focused on Andy’s attempt to reconcile his two conflicting identities: one of an ambivalent 24-year-old and one of a young adult forced to become a parent. Mission Hill uniquely presents another set of forces in opposition: the care-free, slacker types of Generation X colliding with goal-driven members of Generation Y. Andy accurately represented the Generation X sensibility, while Kevin, the “too-smart-for-his-own-good” brother, remained the embodiment of Generation Y. It was difficult not to empathize with Andy or even Kevin, depending on your age at the time.

Creator Bill Oakley, in 1999, told the Washington Post that he created Mission Hill for young adults, complete with mature issues facing 20-somethings that might seem too grounded in reality for The Simpsons. Unlike The Simpsons, in which problems are often created and resolved in a neat 30 minute time slot, Mission Hill presented flawed scenarios that characters could not escape. Kevin always hated school, frequently dealt with bullies, and was rarely able to “fit in.” Andy spent most of the show struggling with whether or not to pursue his dream of being an artist, while selling his soul to the sales industry and performing a job he hates. There were legitimate obstacles standing in the way of Andy and Kevin reaching their goals (being an artist and going to Yale, respectively), which is hardly something that we normally see across episodes in other animated series.

Who among us hasn’t faced a similar quandary when we’ve had to go through a day-job in order to keep the possibility of fulfilling our dream alive? Mission Hill was innovative in the sense that the show’s creators wanted to present main characters who grow and progress in real-time, unlike The Simpsons where Bart and Lisa are forever in elementary school. Given the opportunity to have more than one season, audiences would have seen Andy eventually become a successful artist, and we would have been able to see Kevin go off to college.

The artwork in Mission Hill was truly unique.

In one episode, Andy finds himself out of a job when the waterbed store closes, and considers abandoning his dream of being a cartoonist by working at his roommate’s advertising agency. In this episode, Andy tries to negotiate the slacker sensibility of Generation X with the rise of the young middle class of Generation Y folks.

Mission Hill also didn’t shy away from mature content, best seen in an episode where Kevin masturbates to a pornographic magazine, accidentally sets a market on fire, and then must weigh the option of allowing his bullies to take the blame or admit his own guilt. Human sexuality is rarely, if ever, explored in such intimate details in animated series. However, Mission Hill approached the subject grounded through a moral dilemma, which made it seem less like smut and more so just an earnest problem.

Another fact that that sets Mission Hill apart from all other major animated programs of its time were the unique aesthetics. The design and layout of Mission Hill is truly something you rarely see on network TV. Buildings in Mission Hill creep through the background as thick outlines, with blotches of color across the screen like a watercolor painting. At the same time, the foreground featured brighter, warmer colors across the landscape, contrasting the dark city lurking behind the characters. Lines are drawn jagged and then smooth at times, shifting between focused and unfocused, that provide the show with a transitions between chaos and order. Beyond simply looking stunning, Mission Hill was able to use its distinct animation to prescribe attributes to each of its characters. The character of Andy is drawn slouched in order to personify his apathetic demeanor, while Kevin, the precocious young genius, is always drawn upright and stiff.

Yet another example of the brilliant aesthetics in Mission Hill.

Mission Hill was destined to fail from the get-go. Most previews for upcoming shows that year neglected to even mention Mission Hill. Likewise, a similarly named show on MTV forced creators to change the name from the originally planned title of Downtowners, which perhaps only further confused a potential fan base. Along with the Friday at 8pm slot (a night that the network had never produced shows on), Mission Hill aired before The Steve Harvey Show and the Jamie Foxx Show, which the creators felt were incompatible. Weinstein even told the Washington Post that it was like America didn’t know the show existed.

Why did Mission Hill fail? Was the dialogue awful? Nope. Were the storylines bad? Never. Was there no potential for growth? Hardly. Every show made you more and more curious just if there was hope for Andy or his roommates. Would Generation X prevail or would Kevin, the personification of Generation Y and the dot-com boom, set to overtake the world by force?

In the end, it isn’t truly fair to compare Mission Hill as being a superb program based solely on the fact that it was created by people behind The Simpsons. Instead, it’s easier to view the program as a separate entity, detached from all other animated programs that both the creators and actors worked on before or after.

Mission Hill is a lost relic in animated TV history, which despite showing the struggle between two generations of 1990s and early 2000s young adults, remains surprisingly relevant even with today’s demographic.

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

The Metal Gear Solid series has been critically acclaimed since the very first game on the PSOne, and for good reason. These games have been upping the ante for storytelling in videogames since day one, and thankfully have exceptional gameplay to boot.

Even in its early days on the MSX, Metal Gear was ahead of its time, and once its grand finale, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots closed things off perfectly, one could look back at the series in awe at just how much it has done for the industry.

The Metal Gear Solid HD Collection takes two main series entries – Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, both for the PlayStation 2 – and one side entry – Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker for the PSP – and gives them the HD treatment so many games of the last generation have been receiving as of late. While there are some odd omissions, this collection is an absolute must-have for die-hard fans of the series as well as folks looking to get into it for the very first time.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Let’s start with the oldest entry in the collection, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The HD collection contains the Substance version of the game, which is loaded with extra content. There’s reading to do (a small novel’s worth), hundreds of virtual missions, and Snake Tales – short, non-canonical bits of gameplay as Solid Snake running through the Big Shell. On top of that, of course, we’re also given one of the greatest games of all time.

MGS2 was highly controversial when it was released in 2001 for a number of reasons. The beloved series protagonist Solid Snake was dumped early on in favor of Raiden, a younger, whinier, more effeminate operative who’s new to real life sneaking missions. This led to a story that many considered to be convoluted and an overall mess, but that’s because they didn’t play it five times to figure out what’s going on. Yes, it’s a bit confusing, but eventual understanding of the story gives players a full appreciation of Raiden and his role in the game. Some people are still furious about the game’s story, but most can now see past the murky waters of series creator Hideo Kojima’s horrifyingly brilliant brain and wrap their minds around a smart, cleverly written game, the themes of which ring truer today than they ever did in 2001.

The gameplay improvements over the original Metal Gear Solid (sadly not included, but easily downloadable on the PlayStation store for a very reasonable price) are tremendous. First person aiming, hanging from rails, rolling, holding up guards, the list of new (11 years ago) features goes on and on and is absolutely staggering. There’s so much variety in the game as far as what to do and how to do it that it easily warrants multiple playthroughs.

Naturally the only big change in the switchover is the HD graphics, and they certainly do not disappoint. MGS2’s graphics were out of this world in 2001, and while they certainly don’t hold up to today’s standards they still look quite nice. The HD polish only adds to the atmosphere of the rainy tanker or the mid-ocean Big Shell, with vibrant colors and simple but sharp textures. Since this is an early-era PS2 game, the environments are a bit plain and bland, but the design is still exceptional and the character design remains incredibly unique to this day. Show me another videogame character that looks like Solidus Snake.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater also includes the upgraded version, Subsistence, though the amount of content has been axed a bit. While MGS2 lost the skateboarding game, as it was actually a demo to a real game, Subsistence loses Snake vs Monkey, which is a true shame due to the amount of content it had in the original game. It also loses Snake’s hilarious nightmare sequence in the main game, and the hilarious conversation with weapons specialist SIGINT afterwards, as that happened to be a demo of an actual game as well. However, the more important part of the package is still included – the original Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake for the MSX. Two more full-length games stealthily snuck their way into this package!

The first Metal Gear does not hold up at all, though it’s worth a run through if you remember the original. Which you probably don’t, considering most are familiar with the NES Metal Gear, an odd port/remake that has many differences from the MSX version. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, however, never saw outside of Japan until the original release of MGS3: Substance in 2006, and is actually quite a great game. You can see where a lot of the first Metal Gear Solid comes from. It is incredibly difficult, but worth a go.

Snake Eater is a favorite of many Metal Gear fans because it took the story back a notch as well as back in time, to the 1960s. Playing as Solid Snake’s father (is that what you call the man that you are a clone of?), Big Boss, we get to see just why Big Boss turned on his country and became a mercenary loyal only to himself. It’s a fascinating story that, while complex, does not nearly reach the levels of ridiculous that MGS2 does – a good or a bad thing depending on who you are.

The game focuses on survival in the jungle, requiring you to eat wild animals to survive. Environments are navigated in camouflage and face paint to obscure you from the enemy’s vision, and since it takes place over 40 years before the first Metal Gear Solid, Soliton Radar hasn’t exactly been invented yet. Using older technology and nature to your advantage, navigating the environments is a slow-paced but very satisfying challenge.

Since MGS3 was released in 2004, it’s much better looking than MGS2. The wooded areas have many textures, various shades of green and brown, and lighting effects that still look quite nice even compared to the many gorgeous modern day titles available. The HD upgrade to MGS3 is most beneficial here, as the colors of the jungle pop to life. It honestly felt like a new game.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

The biggest and most important upgrade for this HD collection, however, is Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, originally for the PSP. Taking place ten years after MGS3, this game tells the story of Big Boss forming Outer Heaven, a home for mercenaries without a country. The story may not be nearly as important to the mythology of the series as the other two titles in the collection, but it’s still some nice insight into who Big Boss is and for that alone it’s worth a shot.

While this game is not only able to reach a much larger audience who never owned a PSP, and while it does look better on a proper television and in HD, it’s the control scheme that justifies the purchase of the entire collection. Peace Walker controlled awkwardly on PSP, and was the reason I personally had to bow out of a playthrough only a few hours in. Aiming with the face buttons instead of a second analog stick just doesn’t cut it. However, being playable on the Xbox 360 and PS3, a proper dual analog control scheme has been implemented and the game is finally very much playable. Shootouts aren’t awkward and frustrating, accuracy skyrockets, and the game is actually fun. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.

For those that DO own the PSP version of the game, Peace Walker in HD does offer a feature unfortunately called “transfarring.” With an A. It allows players to transfer their game save from the PSP onto the PS3 (seriously, why not just call it “transferring”?), and back to the PSP once again. Play on the road, come home and play it on the TV, then hop back on the road, all with the same save. It’s an incredible feature.

The game itself is a bit of an odd one out, though. Instead of a full on linear storytelling experience, the game is broken up into small missions with loads of side missions and other things to do such as managing an entire army. I personally enjoy it, but others may not like the huge change from the norm. Peace Walker, no matter how you look at it, is absolutely loaded with content and is certainly worth your time.

Oh, and it has online co-op and it’s really, really good and basically required for the insanely difficult and unfair boss battles.

The Verdict

This collection as a whole is incredible. If you can ignore the massive omission of the original Metal Gear Solid and the fact that Xbox 360 owners still cannot play Metal Gear Solid 4, this middle chunk of the series on one disc is still a great bargain. Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 are both considered classics, with each having every right to be called the best in the series. Peace Walker is a different flavor of Metal Gear but equally satisfying. All these games on one (or two for Xbox 360 owners) disc, as they originally were, would already be a steal. However, with an HD polish on each game, proper controls and online for Peace Walker, and trophies/achievements for all three games, this collection is an absolute must own for anyone.

These games are some of the finest examples of storytelling in the medium, they all play unlike anything else, and are experiences that you will never forget.

Not a bad deal.

DO IT!

A Super Nintendo, yesterday

He is the ‘driver’, a stuntman/mechanic/getaway driver of little words but sometimes explosive action. He lives alone and works alone, his closest acquaintance being Shannon (Breaking Bad and Malcolm in the Middle’s Bryan Cranston), the owner of the garage where he works who wants to establish a car race team with his decidedly dodgy business partner Bernie (Albert Brooks). Driver also does a rather nifty sideline in getaway driving for crooks who aren’t half as cool as he is.

His life looks pretty set until he forms an attachment with his next door neighbour Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her young son and things start to go wrong when her husband gets out of jail and needs money urgently to pay off outstanding gangland debts. Just as Driver wants to do something positive and good in his life for Irene, the wheels come off his well-run existence and he finds himself involved in a job that he knows is going to land him in trouble.

It’s at this juncture that the film launches itself into full-blown violent action with adrenaline-fuelled car chases and fight scenes that leave the audience feeling like emotional punchbags. Gosling effortlessly switches from caring nice guy to coldly calculating killer without batting an eyelid or breaking into a sweat. He says more with just the slight incline of an eyebrow than a Shakespearean actor can say with a whole monologue. But he’s not the only performer upping his game here; Mulligan is also extremely good as the sweet but fragile Irene, while Cranston and Brooks are excellent in roles they really inhabit.

At just 100 minutes director Nicolas Winding Refn keeps the storyline pumping along and one of the film’s great strengths is that you really can’t second-guess which way it will go. Add in a cool car, cool driving gloves, cool jacket and a cooler than cool electronic soundtrack and you get a film that blows most of 2011’s other releases straight off the motorway.

In Kaiju (which means beast in Japanese) Big Battel, performers dress up like ferocious monsters and wrestle in matches that walk the line between campy and cinematic. These brave performers adorn elaborate costumes and fight on top of carefully constructed buildings on the surface of a pro-wrestling ring in tournament-style performances.

Andy working ringside at a live Kaiju Big Battel event

Many of the Kaiju matches mimic great fight scenes from classic monster movies, filled with oversized beasts towering over helpless cities and villages. Beyond simply showcasing monster battles, Kaiju has a mythology that traces the roots of its characters through interweaving backstories not unlike a classic sci-fi program.

The man who builds many of these artificial cities, and has held nearly every position in Kaiju over the years, is Boston based performer/producer Andy Bell. What makes Andy more than your average member of the entertainment industry? When he’s not building costumes for aliens and monsters to engage in epic battles, Andy Bell teaches high school art near Boston, Massachusetts (full disclosure: he was my teacher). I recently sat down with Andy to learn more about Kaiju Big Battel and understand how the unique environment informs his pedagogy.

If aliens landed on Earth, how would you describe Kaiju Big Battel to them?

Well, it’s a tough call. I don’t know if I’d stay in character or out of character. Before this interview, I was wondering if I would stay in character. Sometimes fans are into it. We don’t break the fourth wall. It’s wrestling; it’s kayfabe. Monsters are real, we will concede that our wrestling is fake, but monsters are real and danger can happen. I’d tell the alien that some of its friends are involved, tease and joke with it, and say: Kaiju is a conflict of epic proportions; good versus evil. We allow monsters to fight in the ring to save cities everywhere. If they were battling through Manhattan or Boston, it would be untold destruction. We create a safe format for monsters to fight everywhere. We can’t have monsters running around major cities. We create a format that is safe and enjoyable for them to fight without damaging cities everywhere. We work with a lot of independent wrestlers, lots of punk rock bands, and very talented video/audio people.

At a Kaiju event, you’re not Andy Bell?

No, no, no, I’m Andy Salbino. I’m a construction worker. I design all the buildings that act as the mat of our wrestling ring in Kaiju! I signed my first autograph this year, actually. I’m a total character while there. I create the cities and put them in the crushable urban cityscape between matches or during matches. Since I’m in charge of the buildings, when bad monsters of low moral standing start to fight, it’s my job to say, “hey! Don’t destroy that building! It took me a long time to create these buildings!” Which isn’t a lie. I actually do create these buildings. I created most of them, though not so much anymore. Randy [Borden, creative director of Kaiju Big Battel] actually designs most of them now. If they’re into the back-story of Kaiju then they’ll know me. A lot of people show up for the first time, so they don’t know. I’m almost always there. If it’s a travelling show, then I may sit it out, but its been years since I’ve missed a show. They see me in character wearing a hardhat, drinking beer (which is fake), setting up buildings, and catching pieces of the set if it flies into the stands. Sometimes I have to be a bouncer and kick people out. If people get too close to the ring, then it’s an insurance liability, so I have to ask those people to leave.

How strict are you about remaining in character at Kaiju events?

I don’t take it too seriously. During the show is when I’m on. Lots of people have had my character since the late 90s. I started in 2003. Some people use fake Italian accents, which I don’t. I just yell at the monsters for ruining my buildings and chat with kids in the front row. I ham it up, drink my fake beer, and have fun with the crowd. We try to do fun things at Kaiju that play off the location of the event. Hell Monkey, the satanic simian, almost got married at a Kaiju show in Las Vegas. He chose someone out of the audience, some gorgeous chick, and brought her up. There was a wedding, big music, and then the hero came out to ruin everything. We have to maintain kayfabe, you know, the babyface monsters have to go over the heel.

Tell me about your history as a pro-wrestling fan prior to working with Kaiju

I was a fan like everyone was of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in the 1980s. I always liked the characters and all the production elements. Their bodies are superhuman and they’re elaborate characters. I stopped following wrestling in the 1990s, so I came to Kaiju from an artistic standpoint, not a wrestling fan. However, after doing Kaiju for almost ten years, I have a healthy respect for the business. I’ve seen lots of great wrestling. I’ve worked with Dragon Gate USA and they’re awesome; they do crazy maneuvers off the ropes. I love Chikara, those guys are awesome, but I don’t follow the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) much. In the Kaiju van, when you’re talking with other employees or veteran wrestlers, you’ll hear stories, like,“Oh, did you hear about Jake the Snake? Did you hear about Big Boss Man?”

I met Honky Tonk Man recently and he was cool. He was eating his breakfast sandwich and was totally nice. He was not involved with Kaiju, but I met him at a nearby comic-con. That’s something Kaiju often does; we try and schedule events near conventions that might attract new fans. How about the feud between Warrior and Hulk Hogan? Is it still going? They’re nuts. [Ring of Honor wrestler] Chris Hero has worked with us a few times, he’s super sweet and very nice. The first time he worked with us, he actually gave us some pointers on how to run matches. We’ve also had the Japanese wrestler Munenori Sawa work an event for us.

Andy producing a live Kaiju Big Battel performance.

Tell me about your history with Kaiju Big Battel.

I started in 2003 as a production assistant. I was an artist. I had just moved to Boston and there wasn’t much for me. The art scene wasn’t ready for me at that time and I wasn’t ready for it. There wasn’t a lot going on. So, I found another group of artists doing something offbeat and weird. I was already doing costumes and weird stuff, so I fell into it pretty nicely. I started just doing production, but now I do a lot of organization and coordination. I act as a producer for the most part nowadays. Kaiju has always been centered in Boston, but in 2010 they moved to New York City. So I’m not as involved with day-to-date operations, like paperwork and those things. It’s fine with me because I don’t want to be a paperwork guy… I’m not sure what I want to do. Before 2010, my role was getting larger and larger. As people left, I took their responsibilities. I was essentially an office manager: making calls, finding people for live events, filming on sets at various studios or in live locations, acquiring props, or usually producing live shows. One of my former students is the audio guy. Before him, I’d coordinate music for the event, organize lots of the video work, and make sure cameras were where they needed to be. Basically, I’ve done everything except creative directing.

Describe how your role with Kaiju changed since 2003 when you began.

I’ve stepped back since they moved to New York. I adjust my schedule when shows are coming up and then coordinate which performers and workers come in to the show. I’m not hiring new people; they do that in the New York office. We work with Chikara, but I don’t really know those guys. They’re great performers and awesome dudes. I coordinate the old group, and the New York office does the newer projects. My role is getting smaller and smaller, which I’m fine with. I have my own project I want to work on. I want to create a pilot. I’m making costumes and starting production. I know video people, I know audio people, and now that I’m moving away from Kaiju’s coordinating duties, I have lots of free time. Likewise, I know pro-wrestlers who I hope to get involved. A lot of wrestlers, by their 30s, are trying to slow down. I know one girl in particular who feels she’s getting too old to wrestle.

You mentioned that there’s a mythological backstory within Kaiju. How important is that story to fans? Is it always evolving?

Like any wrestling show, there are plots lines for each character that go for a while or get dropped when it’s exhausted. Maybe one character will have a running joke for a long time. We had a monster that always lost and he still does, so when he wins it will be great. We use a lot of classic wrestling tropes. Instead of a single heel and babyface, we have stables. Kaiju Big Battel is essentially four factions: Heroes, Dr. Cube’s posse (they’re evil depending on the city), the Rogues (they’re all out for themselves and are not on anyone’s team), and Team Space Bug. The crowd usually wants the Heroes to win and they get behind them. Other towns support Dr. Cube and his posse. Our fans take these factions very seriously. Dr. Cube garners a lot of heat. He got punched in the face at an event one time.

Does the Kaiju universe exist in a vacuum or do they acknowledge things from the real world?

We definitely rely and react to things going on in the real world. We joked about Hell Monkey’s ear being bit off by Dr. Cube after Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ear off [during a boxing match]. Hell Monkey still has the bite mark to this day. We maintain these jokes forever. We did a lot about Occupy Wall Street when we were in New York. People get it and they’re talking about it. Sometimes it goes too far. Dr. Cube once joked about a Tsunami that killed a lot of people in the south Pacific. We have meetings before every show so we can touch base and go over everything before we go out there. At our creative meeting beforehand we decided not to use that joke. Some people thought it was funny, but I knew it wasn’t cool, even if Dr. Cube is a villain. People were on the fence. The performer decided not to do the joke, but at the show, Dr. Cube did the joke. If you look at the tape, people clearly have their hands on their heads. Our heels are wildcards, they’re villains, they’re unpredictable.

Going off that example, each monster in Kaiju does things the performer would never do in their ordinary life. How important is it to separate the individual from the character?

I think it’s very important. A lot of performers get into that. When dressed up like monsters for Kaiju Big Battel, they can do things they’d never do in real life. We do a lot of appearances, like dance nights, where it’s a “Monster Dance Night.” People that would never dance at a party are now dancing because they’re in character. If things go over the line, like the Tsunami incident, it does make me uncomfortable.

Just as Kaiju lets people use characters to take personal risks, do you try and transfer that sentiment to your classroom?

That’s something I’ve never considered. Everybody takes their own role as an art teacher, just as they might as a producer. For me, I like making things, making art, and that’s how I run my class. I do a lot of jobs to make money, where I’ll build something that I don’t have a big emotional investment in. Sometimes it’s work. A lot of art teachers try and focus on helping students create deep meaningful pieces, as if that’s what’s important about art class. Instead, I try and say to students, “here you go, you need to learn these tools, you need to learn how to make stuff. If you have a job, you have a deadline and you need to put it out there. You need to learn how to meet a deadline.” I’m more of a dude. I’m more of a guy.

You said that the Boston art scene wasn’t ready for you, and you weren’t ready for it. Tell me more about where you were as an artist in 2003.

I didn’t think there was a lot going on, and to an extent I still don’t think there is. I’m still disappointed with how it works. A lot of galleries are focused on established artists or university artists. Some are university run and hard to get into. There are little places to show if you’re some lowbrow artists like me. It was easier to join forces with a group that already does cool things. I have a day job which supports me, and allows me to take odd jobs doing art that brings in a couple bucks here or there. It’s not a fast track to financial success.

What was your philosophy on art when you first got to Boston and joined Kaiju?

Well, a quick background. When I graduated college and eventually came to Boston I didn’t know my identity as an artist. Back then I was like, “well, I draw, I paint, I do a lot of things.” I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Then I realized that I needed to do costuming and performance. I’ve always been obsessed with monsters, so finding Kaiju was perfect for me. Building costumes was something I really wanted to get into. I started at the bottom when Kaiju asked people to make buildings. I’ve made hundred of buildings to date. Everything you see at a Kaiju show gets smashed and it was all hand-made beforehand. It dovetails with my philosophy of art, which I try to carryout in my day-job. I’m a high school art teacher. I try to tell my students and employees at Kaiju that it’s not about the product that you make, but it’s about the process. We did a Kaiju show at the Warsaw in Brooklyn and spent two months creating a scale model of the Empire State Building. It was smashed in ten minutes. People asked, “doesn’t that hurt?” and I said, “no, it’s about making it. It’s process over product. That’s important.”

Andy acting as referee for a match between two monsters in Kaiju Big Battel.

How do you negotiate your role with Kaiju with your job as a high school teacher?

It doesn’t really conflict at all, honestly. I get a lot of time off as a teacher, about three months a year. Things always work out. I use my two personal days a year as a teacher to go do shows in New York or Philadelphia, as I did last month. I use my vacation time to work with Kaiju and make art for them. Sometimes, I think I have to be two different people. As a teacher, I’m different than I am as a Kaiju person. Backstage at Kaiju, I’m not as sensitive with adults as I am with kids in my classroom. Working with kids and knowing how sensitive they are has made me more approachable as a manager with Kaiju. We used to have an executive producer who was tough to work with. However, he helped people reach excellence as best they could. Now, coming back to teaching after working with people in a more business environment in the entertainment industry, I don’t sweat dealing with managers or supervisors because it was so much harder doing it with Kaiju.

How do you find talent for Kaiju?

Performers? Ok, well we usually go for independent wrestlers. Kaiju began as a school project with Randy [Borden] and his friends in Boston. They realized that people loved getting involved with the monsters in public. They started doing wrestling matches and eventually began renting out halls. As it grew, our talent got more diverse. For instance, we recently had a guy who went to wrestling school in California and then moved to Boston. He looked up different promotions and found Kaiju to be the most interesting.  He was a good fit, very well trained, so he is great. Our announcer is the announcer for Chikara, so we have lots of those guys and they’re all awesome. We’re kind of like Chikara in the sense that we try to do absurd things every now and then. Some of our jokes totally bomb after we write it. For instance, we have a tree monster. In one match, he had stuffed squirrels crawling all over him. We wrote it as him throwing the squirrels at the crowd. Everything has to line up perfectly for a joke to work. The announcer has to be in key with the performer and the audience. For some reason, things didn’t work out even though it was funny when we wrote it.

Are you on the creative team for Kaiju then?

I don’t do much writing/creative work. When a script comes together, Randy knows what he wants to happen. Jack, our announcer, is his biggest ally in New York. Jack can say, “we have this plot, and we have these characters,” then they’ll call me and I’ll coordinate the costumes or performers. I make suggestions from time to time, and they sometimes make it into the script. I’m more logistical than creative; I’m a producer. I don’t produce everything. I’ve organized everything for certain shows, but for others, I may just organize audio. It really depends on the situation. When they first moved to New York from Boston in 2010, I didn’t consider moving and doing Kaiju full-time because I love teaching too much. I’ve done every job at Kaiju. When you know how to do every job, and you’re willing to do it for free, then you move up quickly. It’s like being in a band; it’s a labor or love.

What do you get from teaching that you don’t receive from working in Kaiju?

I’m good at teaching. I come to a place with lots of people that I like. This room we’re in right now, the art-room, this is my happy place. I can draw throughout the day if I need to. The process over product theory is very important. It’s all about making art, not keeping it afterwards. I was with Kaiju before becoming a teacher and it strengthened me as a teacher. It’s all about the attention of the audience. You can hold their attention for only so long, and then you have to redirect it. The feeling of losing a crowd’s attention is identical to losing a classroom. In teaching, I might show a video and then do another activity or switch it to, “watch me do this!” and create an activity. If I’m at a wrestling show, I get bored. That’s why with Kaiju we show you wrestling and then cut to a “commercial” where we show some live footage or stuff filmed in a studio.

We want to keep your attention throughout. We keep changing things up for people with an MTV-generation attention span. As a teacher, I can gauge what kids like and what they’re into. Sometimes people at Kaiju want to do certain things that are outdated. For instance, a song will go over the heads of 90% of people out there, so I’ll choose something else to connect to the audience. I know what’s good with the hipsters, the anime kids, etc.

How do you approach students who are artists that are having difficult locating a niche like yourself before you found Kaiju?

I see a lot of students that I wish I could take into Kaiju. Sometimes I see kids who are great with video and I’d love to get them involved. I see lots of kids who can’t find their niche. I send them off to art school and hope that it straightens them out. I don’t think much about students when I think about what I’m trying to do with my work. When I go home it’s Andy Time.

When you leave the classroom, you focus more so on using art to support yourself. How important is it for artists to understand the concept of doing artwork to pay the bills, regardless of their emotional investment in it?

Well, you have to do jobs. I take almost every job that somebody offers me, even if I don’t get paid a lot. I just did a logo for a band called Rotten Tongue. I take most jobs with the hope that I’ll get really good and people will notice and hire me for other jobs that pay for money. I pretty much do what I want, even at work…I do what I want all the time. Everybody takes a different path. If you have a paying job on the side, you can do whatever you want with art. Do I tell my students that it’s important to do work/do jobs to get by as an artist? I don’t think too far in my student’s future. I’ll see that they have certain skills and push them in that direction. However, I’m trying to prepare them for college. They’ll ask me what I’m working on and I show them. I try to instill the fact that you have to do work; you have to do smaller jobs. For them as artists, sometimes you have to do an English paper and that’s work to them. That’s their job that they have to do to get by.

Five years from now, where would you like to be in relation to Kaiju Big Battel?

I’d like to still be involved in some capacity. I would like to see “Kaiju version 2.0″ with fresh blood. I don’t want to get rid of our old performers, but I’d love to see more independent wrestlers such as those from Chikara. I’d like to see a couple storylines that we’ve dropped to come back. We have a monster that’s a kid, and I’d love to see them grow up. We have a couple toys out, but I’d love to see more. I’d also like to wrestle. I’ve taken a few bumps here and there, but I’d like to do a full match.

How has teaching changed your life as an artist?

My teaching position is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s a place I can go where people like what I do, my co-workers feel that I’m an expert in my craft, and I have a great time. There was no real art department when I got to this school. I built it up to what it is today. When I came to this school there was a supply closet piled high with junk. I went through it, found the good stuff, got more good stuff, and found books that were good. I began integrating technology into the classroom before it was popular. I taught kids PhotoShop, set up a TV in the classroom and let them see slideshows of their art. Integrating technology into the classroom is very popular now, but I was doing it six years ago.

I teach a lot of outcasts, and I mean that in a very positive way. I love working with these kids. I have kids who aren’t planning on going to art school, but it’s important to me as a teacher to understand what a student wants to get out of art class. Some art teachers feel that you need to know how to draw a perfect still life. Not every kid needs that. Some of my students need to blow off steam, they need to just draw, they need to make a mess, and they can learn to draw still life pictures in art school if they really want. I’ll let a kid relax and put his head down in my class if it means he’ll succeed elsewhere. I’ve created something amazing here, and the fear is that if I ever left, who would take it? This is my dream job.

Want to know more?

To learn more about Kaiju Big Battel and find out how you can see their unique performance live, check out http://www.kaiju.com.

Be sure to watch the following video to see Andy Bell referring a Kaiju match in 2011:

There’s been plenty of excellent documentaries about music hall, the Palladium, light entertainment stars etc which have provided valuable opportunities to see some gorgeous old archive footage of some of the great, eccentric, thrilling and downright bizarre acts that audiences of your grandparents’ generations would enjoy every Saturday night at their local hall of wonders.

Mat Ricardo is a variety performer

Of course, as a professional variety artist, I’ve enjoyed these shows as much as anyone, and probably more than most, but there was something in them that irked me. A basic fact that they all got wrong. At the end of every documentary about music hall or variety, the narrator will always start talking about the death of variety in the UK. What killed it? Was it TV? Rock & roll? How did an entire artform get taken out behind the barn and shot?

The simple fact is – it didn’t. Variety didn’t die, and it’s lazy and shortsighted to think it did. Sure, there was a point at which the people who owned the music halls realised that they could save a bunch of money and capitalise on the lucrative new teenage audience by booking a couple of rock & roll bands instead of a bill full of a dozen or so different acts and an orchestra, but that only put the nails in the coffins of the venues – not the artform.

The truth is, in the intervening decades, the variety arts shrunk a little, but by no means died. The performers just changed venues – found new places to work. Someone once said to me “If you can do a backflip, you’ll always eat”, and these people could do backflips. So instead of spending their lives travelling from hall to hall, they worked in circuses, or in cabaret clubs, or in holiday camps, or in working men’s clubs, or in panto, or in a dozen other places where family audiences still wanted to be entertained. Sure, it became harder to find work, and sometimes you had to make your own, and yes, a lot of acts chucked it all in, but the artform survived. Every decade threw up its own new place for variety artists to work.

In the 1980s, when I started my career, it was the street.

Of course, there had always been buskers – one man bands who worked the cinema queues in London’s West End, escapologists who’d get chained up, then wait until enough money had been thrown in the hat before escaping – but in the 80s the Greater London Council renovated Covent Garden market and licensed it for outdoor performances, and unknowingly created a place for a whole new generation of performers to learn their stuff. I arrived there in the late 80s and immediately knew I’d found something special. A gang of people who had decided to be street performers not because it’s easy money (it’s not, it’s the hardest I’ve ever had to work, often for the lowest return), but because they had an idea for something funny, or spectacular, or silly, and knew that if they worked hard they could find an audience for it there.

There was, and remains, no pecking order, no hirearchy, everyone is equal, and everyone gets an equal shot at pulling an audience, keeping them entertained and separating them from their money. And everyone dies on their arse sometimes. It’s part of the job, just as it was in the glory days of music hall. In my years there I found myself attacked my knife-wielding maniacs, heckled by very drunk celebrities (who shall remain nameless), had my shows destroyed by everything from coach parties of French tourists to blizzards – everything that ever happens on a street in London has happened to some poor street performer.

Remember the poll tax riots in the early 90s, where thousands of protestors went on the rampage in the West End? Guess who was doing a street show when a squad of mounted police chased 10,000 of them through Covent Garden? Yep, me.
The thing about street performing is, you have to hold that audience through thick and thin, so you’d best shy away from anything that won’t appeal to as wide an audience as possible. That’s to it’s credit, and it breeds performers who can entertain anyone anywhere, but in my years as a busker, I sometimes found myself wanting to be a little more subtle, a little less chainsaw juggling and a little more razor sharp wit.

And then, a few years ago, something cool started happening. I started getting calls from new little cabaret clubs. Cool basement venues where people were putting on shows containing burlesque performers, cabaret singers, character comedians, circus performers… in short – variety.

It started small, but grew quickly – drawing on a talent pool of people like me who had been around the block enough times to have the performing chops, but who were hungry for a new place to do their thing. And these days I don’t work on the street at all, I perform most nights of the week in the network of cabaret venues that have spread across London, some of them having survived from the glory days of variety. I get to work stages that have been graced by Frank Sinatra, Noel Coward and Judy Garland, and I don’t forget how lucky I am for a second. I’ve played everywhere else – I’ve worked Butlins, entertained the queues at Madame Tussauds, done kids parties, performed for theatres full of old age pensioners (great audiences, by the way), kept hundreds of American tourists amused on cruise ships, held my own in the roughest comedy clubs – and whenever I’ve worked I’ve carried two things with me – the stagecraft I learned while a street performer, and the knowledge that I’m part of a variety legacy. That I’m a member of a huge, sprawling extended family of people who can do backflips, or something similar, stretching back hundreds of years into the past, and into the future too.

That’s why my new monthly live show Mat Ricardo’s London Varieties will have, as well as the best variety line-ups in London, a section where I interview a great from the world of variety or comedy on stage. I want to pick the brains of my peers – the performers who influenced me and my generation – and get a few of the great anecdotes that are usually saved for the bar after the show. Because variety didn’t die, it just moved around a bit to survive, it ducked and dived like the shrewd creature it is, until the time was right to start coming back.

And you know what? The time is right.

Mat Ricardo’s London Varieties happens monthly, starting Thursday, February 9, at the Bethnal Green Working Mens Club. Doors 7.30pm, show 8pm sharp.

Full information about Mat Ricardo’s London Varieties, and ticket booking information can be found here.

The interview section of the show will be recorded as a podcast.

Find out more about Mat Ricardo at www.MatRicardo.com, and follow him on Twitter @MatRicardo

More of the left, less of the right

Let’s be real here – there’s been a severe overkill with guns in action games for a long time now, and it needs to stop.

I’m going to set the record straight off the bat – I love a good shooter. BioShock, Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead, the list goes on. First- and third-person shooters can be loads of fun. However, as I was playing Uncharted 3 the other day, I got this horrible sinking feeling in my stomach when I saw a series of waist-level crates and partitions on the ground, readying me for a shooting sequence. Why do I have to shoot people in every game I play?

Going through the entire Uncharted series, the shooting segments have always been the only parts that don’t leave me with a stupid looking grin on my face. The game is full of these gorgeous set-piece moments, with thrilling chase sequences, adrenaline-pumping battles with nature, and action sequences that make the last ten years of Hollywood action films feel like a couple of teens on YouTube. With all that excitement, why on Earth does Nathan Drake still have to shoot hundreds of men in the face?

Uncharted is, for all intents and purposes, an Indiana Jones knockoff, albeit a very good one. A charming man with a lovely lady and a sassy sidekick explore old ruins, solve elaborate puzzles left by ancient civilizations, and generally get into mischief. Sure Dr. Jones gets into a scuffle here and there, and may even fire off a round or two, but did he shoot literally hundreds of people per adventure? Did he commit murder on a mass scale? Nathan Drake did; on three separate occasions. And he probably shouldn’t have.

For some games, shooting an insane amount of people as the main gameplay mechanic is perfectly fine. Call of Duty would be pretty dumb without guns. Shooters definitely have their place in the industry. My argument is that not every single action game needs to have shooting of some kind. I use Uncharted as my primary example because EVERYTHING ELSE in those games is perfect, unique, and exciting. Once I start taking cover and shooting guys, I’m bored since I know Uncharted offers a lot more.

In Uncharted 2, the game opens with you climbing a train while it falls off a cliff. That is incredible. Uncharted 3 features an exhilarating chase sequence through the streets of Yemen, with rooftop jumping and civilian shoving, and not a gun in sight. These things are so good – why would I want to go back to the mundane and just shoot dudes? It kills the mood. The game offers plenty of challenge in the action sequences and puzzle solving proving that it wouldn’t just be some cakewalk without shooting. Uncharted could certainly pull it off. Not including shooting sequences would be a huge risk, but it could result in brilliance. Naughty Dog are an incredibly smart development team who are certainly good enough to work their way around it.

Moving away from Uncharted, there are plenty of other games that just don’t need guns in them to be exciting. One of my most anticipated games in 2008 ended up as one of my biggest disappointments – Mirror’s Edge. I had followed the game for a long time leading up to its release, thrilled with the idea of first-person platforming on rooftops in a sterile future plagued by severe information control. Parkour jumping with the occasional enemy skirmish? I was all signed up.

Mirror's Edge is a great example of a game that could have gone without shooting

I knew going into it that you’d have the ability to steal an enemy’s gun and unload it into an enemy or two here and there, and I was perfectly fine with that because it seemed like a rare occurrence. But, once I got to about the last quarter of the game, it might as well have been Halo. I found firefights around nearly every corner towards the end, which completely ruined an otherwise fresh experience.

It almost feels cheap or lazy in a way. The entire game was designed around first-person free running, with minimal shooting here and there. Since the challenge of the game, and its entire point, was based around the platforming, shouldn’t the final challenges be absurdly difficult jumping sections? Instead of challenging the player by having them use everything they had learned in this unique experience up to that point, it felt as if they were challenging the audience by using stuff they learned in other games. Where is the payoff?

I feel like a lot of developers might just feel that without shooting a game has no real challenge or, unfortunately, mainstream appeal. Obviously that isn’t true, with games like Super Mario Galaxy, Portal 2 and Skyrim being such massive hits; it seems like shooting is the go-to mechanic for developers short on ideas. Take the upcoming I Am Alive, which I named one of my most anticipated games of 2012 despite some less-than-favorable recent developments. In more recent discussions with the game’s developers, it looks like the post-apocalyptic survival horror joint from Ubisoft is going to have some conflicts that aren’t with the already horrifying threat of mother nature.

It’s crazy that a game can’t have action and excitement without someone firing a gun. If you watch the above trailer to I Am Alive, you’ll see a distinctly chilling atmosphere. A city in ruins, desolate, with only traces of humanity. A man approaches a group of seemingly hostile survivors. He climbs buildings, avoids obstacles, and battles earthquakes.

And then he shoots a bunch of guys.

I like to think I’m not alone here when my heart sinks as the shooting picks up towards the end of the above trailer. The theme of man vs. nature has been central to storytelling for centuries. With games evolving more and more as a narrative medium, why can’t simply that be explored? This game would be absolutely perfect for it. But instead, we’ll just have to shoot people. It’s disheartening to say the least.

Good game development, like any good art, comes from passion. If a game like Mirror’s Edge starts off unlike anything else and ends up exactly like everything else, doesn’t that say the developers simply stopped caring and lost faith? Or maybe it’s the fear of risk-taking. Naughty Dog obviously knows how to create a killer game, but sometimes I wonder if the shooting in Uncharted was thrown in to appease one of the largest markets out there, the shooter fans.

There’s almost this level of forced conformity to it. To be an action game and fit in with today’s climate of games, you’ve got to shoot stuff. Uncharted doesn’t need the gunplay, but if it didn’t have it, there would probably be a big chunk of the gaming community that would ignore it entirely. They’d miss out on some of the best visuals, writing, acting, and pure action in any medium today because it’s slightly less familiar to them without guns. People have such specific expectations of certain genres of games that something different could scare them away regardless of quality.

Clearly there’s a bigger argument to be had here, as far as developers taking risks, business vs. art, or something new vs. the same old stuff, and maybe I’ll discuss it all another time. But, as far as shooting goes, we just don’t need it all the time. I’m not calling for an end to shooters, I’m not calling for the genre to disappear. I just believe that not every action game needs guns to be good or challenging.

And sometimes, you just want to kill something with your bare hands.

Most wrestling fans consider WrestleMania to be the best pay-per-view of the year, but the Royal Rumble will always be my favorite.

Ever since I discovered a VHS tape of the 1992 Royal Rumble at my local video store as a child, I’ve been fascinated by the event. While the title matches on the card are almost always superb, it’s the 30-man Royal Rumble match that initially blew my mind.

The Royal Rumble is like a wormhole in the WWE Universe; for a single night, neither fans nor superstars act normally. During the Rumble, even the most hardened of smart marks are willing to suspend disbelief more so than usual. Hardcore and fair-weather fans alike create pools and take bets as if wrestling were the Super Bowl or FA Cup Final.

Fans argue intensely about who deserves a win to a degree which rarely occurs with other WWE pay-per-views. The Royal Rumble is perhaps one of the last pay-per-views where it truly feels like anything can happen. Retired wrestlers can surprise fans with a cameo, while long forgotten stars, like Booker T, Kevin Nash or even RVD in the past, make surprise returns and be greeted with open-arms.

Jim Ross once suggested that the WWE is run like a precise science. In that sense, I would argue that the Royal Rumble is a complex pro-wrestling equation built upon two crucial elements: everybody has to matter and everything has to matter. Without these two elements, the pay-per-view as we know it is hardly as enticing.

Everybody matters

In the Royal Rumble, fairly unknown jobbers like JTG, Tyler Reks, and Yoshi Tatsu are bound to receive the biggest pops of their year. For one night only, these men are no longer relegated to internet-only programmes like Superstars or NXT. Instead, they’re featured prominently alongside main eventers like Cena, Orton, and Triple H. Unlike WrestleMania where main eventers have elaborate and pretentious entrances, at the Royal Rumble every guy walks down the ring in a fairly equal manner. The sheer enthusiasm and adrenaline pumping through fans in attendance is enough to make nearly any wrestler receive massive amounts of praise or heat (depending on their character) the second their music hits.

The number a wrestler enters the Royal Rumble is equally important. The wrestler who enters at number 30 is notoriously well-regarded since statistically it would seem that they have the most stamina to win. Likewise, the person who enters at number one is obviously against insurmountable odds. If the person entering at number one happens to win, it can elevate their image in the minds of fans to staggering heights. However, the wonderful thing about the fictitious world of wrestling is that things don’t always have to make sense; just because a wrestler entered last doesn’t necessarily mean he has to win. To date, only two men have entered at number one and taken the Royal Rumble (Chris Benoit in 2004 and Shawn Michaels in 1995).

History shows that entering last has its merits too. In 2007 and 2008 respectively, Undertaker and John Cena entered at number 30 and won the Royal Rumble. For both men, entering the Rumble at the end proved to be a huge factor in their victories. Fans will recall other memorable late-entry victories such as Edge’s win in 2010, after coming in at number 29. With Edge and Cena, coming in later was combined with the fact that both had been out with an injury and provided wrestling fans with the shock of a lifetime.

Vince McMahon understands more than any other promoter in the world how to pace a pro-wrestling event. Watching a Royal Rumble match can feel like being on a carnival ride with no end in sight. The match itself shifts from moments of high-intensity to simple rest-spots. There is a decent amount of chaos mixed with plenty of filler fighting. At the same time, the Rumble can act as a vehicle for two wrestlers currently in a storyline feud to seek revenge. Obviously, there are moments in the Royal Rumble match when fans will see nothing but a bunch of men trying to haphazardly push piles of other wrestlers over the top rope. However, as time goes on, and the number of superstars in the ring slowly dwindles, the energy among the performers becomes infectious. When the clock strikes zero, every entrant generates a level of speculation and excitement that few other wrestling events manage to accomplish.

Everything matters

Winning the Royal Rumble is one of the last sacred things in the WWE, next to the Undertaker’s WrestleMania streak. Every year, the winner of the Royal Rumble is promised a shot at a major championship title at WrestleMania (except for 1992 when Ric Flair won the vacated WWF title with his Rumble victory). Scroll through a Wikipedia list of Royal Rumble winners and you’ll see a list of the greatest main events in WWE history: Steve Austin, The Rock, Undertaker, John Cena, Shawn Michaels, Triple H, Hulk Hogan, and Ric Flair.

Winning the Royal Rumble means that you’re important to the WWE and they’re willing to give you a shot at the top tier of the biggest pay-per-view in their calendar year. WrestleMania has the potential to change a wrestler’s entire career trajectory, and the Royal Rumble acts as an invitation to that upper echelon. One could argue that Austin’s first Rumble victory at the beginning of the Attitude Era in 1997 cemented his status as the figurehead of a new movement in professional wrestling.

Part of what makes the Royal Rumble such an exciting PPV is the fact that it offers a glimpse into what the next year or so of WWE programming might look like. When Alberto del Rio won last year, many fans felt that it was too soon. Regardless, del Rio still dominated the main spot on numerous pay-per-views throughout the year and even managed to hold the WWE Championship title twice. Likewise, he stepped up on Smackdown during a time when the amount of main eventers on the programme was limited. A Royal Rumble win acts as a quick window into the thought process of Vince McMahon and other management figures. Del Rio’s win meant that the WWE infrastructure clearly had plans for the performer.

In that sense, the Royal Rumble serves as an elaborate trailer for the upcoming year in the WWE not unlike a carefully planned cinematic preview. At the same time, when an established wrestler, like Undertaker or Cena, wins the Rumble there is still an importance behind it. When a veteran wins, fans are sure to see who Vince McMahon thinks deserves a compelling storyline or feud leading into the biggest show of the year. A Royal Rumble win for a veteran is a vote of confidence for a performer who may feel beyond their prime.

Last year, CM Punk entered the Rumble at number one and remained in the ring for more than 35 minutes. Jump ahead a year, and he’s the top guy in the business.

Wrestling fans often argue that the biggest difference between WWE and UFC (or even Ring of Honor) is the fact that a win/loss ratio doesn’t matter in the former. A main eventer can lose five matches and then win the belt, leaving many wrestling purists angry over the inconsistencies. The Royal Rumble however is one night when winning means everything. Winning the Royal Rumble is basically a promise that you’re going to mean something that year; winning the Royal Rumble says, “you’re our man; we trust you”. Beyond simply winning, remaining in the match is just as important. Last year, CM Punk entered the Rumble at number one and remained in the ring for more than 35 minutes. Jump ahead a year, and he’s the top guy in the business, both as far as titles are concerned and in respect to all-important merchandise sales.

One could argue that Vince uses the Royal Rumble match to test the limits of certain performers to see how well they stand up to pressure. Randy Orton exemplified this theory in 2004, entering at number two and remaining for over 33 minutes, shortly before his elevation into the main event. Chris Jericho did the same in 2003 after entering at number two and remaining for almost 40 minutes. Both Orton and Jericho are prime examples of now seasoned performers who managed to elevate their careers without even winning the Rumble, instead using the match as a proving ground.

Everything Isn’t Always Great

It’s worth noting that not every Royal Rumble has been perfect. Hacksaw Jim Duggan, while a sweetheart, is basically a goof and just happens to have won the first ever Royal Rumble. Likewise, Albert del Rio’s win at last year’s Rumble and subsequent mediocre title runs in 2011 soured many fans to the tradition of the event. Of course, there is also the 2004 Royal Rumble, which to many fans no longer exists given that Chris Benoit – a murderer and monster – won that year.

Of course, there is also the instance when Vince McMahon won the Royal Rumble. In this case, many fans felt slighted that an actual year-round performer didn’t take the prize, but even then, Vince’s win managed to raise his heel status to unbelievable levels. Likewise, there have been men who entered the Royal Rumble early on but were not being tested by Vince McMahon for their main event suitability (see Bull Buchanan in 2001 and Golga in 1999). In the end, these small examples of Royal Rumble follies hardly cloud the importance and prestige of this holy night in professional wrestling.

Everything else

Looking forward, what are my hopes for the Royal Rumble? I want a female wrestler to win the Royal Rumble and main event WrestleMania.

While I can certainly see a woman like Beth Phoenix or even Kharma taking home the top prize, I want to see a female wrestler who isn’t even in the WWE yet win the Rumble. Maybe she’s still in Florida Championship Wrestling or working the independent scene. Maybe she’s an NCAA athlete or an accountant. Either way, it’s something that needs to happen not simply because it would be shocking given the gender. Rather, it would prove that women in the Royal Rumble go beyond simply being an after-thought. Many fans scoff at the idea of there being a Divas match in the main event of WrestleMania.

To that I would argue that I don’t want a Divas match; I don’t want a match where supermodels that barely know how to run the ropes win the match. I want to see two female athletes wrestle at the same level of competitiveness and intensity as their male counterparts. And I know that it’s possible.

Director Clint Eastwood tries to cut through the lies, tittle tattle and media sensationalism to get at the truth and the real Hoover, but he errs on the side of caution and the film is less wonderful and rather worthy and stodgy because of it.

Leonardo DiCaprio in J. Edgar

Spurred on by his ambitious mother (Judi Dench) young J. Edgar joins America’s fledgling secret investigation services in the 1920s and builds them up into the formidable and quite justifiably feared FBI. Hoover’s style was more intimidation and paranoia than good old honest detective work, but his mantra of ‘if you’re not with me you must be against me’ made him the most powerful man in the States bar the President himself (and J. Edgar wasn’t above spying on his paymasters either).

Through his career J. Edgar served six presidents and kept secret files on them all, forever trying to sniff out intrigue, sexual misdemeanours and his big bugbear, affiliation to the communist cause. He was aided and abetted by two loyal members of staff; his faithful and trusted secretary Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts) and his protégé Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). Eastwood hints at a deeper, more emotional bond between Clyde and Hoover than simple friendship but leaves the extent of the relationship vague and is equally ambiguous when it comes to J. Edgar’s alleged predilection for dressing up in female clothing. However, this kind of hands off approach does not serve the film well as the audience is left in a kind of limbo as to what (and who) J. Edgar really is. This isn’t helped by the cut up timeframe of the movie with the action jumping forwards and back through the years rather confusing matters (and even in old man’s make up DiCaprio still looks and sounds young).

The film is also shot in myriad tones of beige, the camera lens giving a soft focus fuzziness to everything , a device that works well for the 1930s sections but is less successful as the century marches on. DiCaprio’s performance is solid, but not particularly memorable and it is actually Armie Hammer (so good in the Social Network) who impresses as Clive, really imbuing his character with pathos and a stoic longing that gives him the air of a loyal pet dog pining for his master.

At 137 minutes the film could do with a good half hour shaved off the running time. It could also do with the inclusion of some of the more colourful intrigue and rumour Clint Eastwood has been so at pains to leave out.

Fiennes has chosen to relocate this tale of over-weaning pride and hubris from the Roman Empire to an unspecified and fiercely tribal Balkan territory (the film was actually shot in Serbia and Montenegro). This certainly gives it a modern edge and having his actors stride around in combat gear wielding heavy weaponry underlines the brutality and violence of the piece with some ruggedly shot battle scenes.

Ralph Fiennes in Coriolanus

Fiennes plays Coriolanus, the exalted soldier from a long line of military heroes who returns home to his devoted wife (Jessica Chastain) and autocratic mother (an excellent Vanessa Redgrave) victorious after defeating his sworn enemy Tullus (Gerard Butler). What Coriolanus now plans to do, with the advice of his mentor Menenius (Brian Cox), is translate his military success into political clout and be elected to the ruling elite. But to do so he needs the backing of the common people and he is not popular as they sense his contempt for them, and distrust his arrogance. With his political hopes dashed and his pride piqued he conceives a plan so treacherous even his own family are forced to beg him to reconsider, but he has convinced himself his actions are justified thus setting himself on a suicidal course.

There are some stand out performances here including Redgrave whose Volumnia really is a monster of a mother; Butler as Tullus the worthy opponent who knows he can never beat Coriolanus by conventional means; and Cox who is so laidback and reasonable as Menenius he throws Coriolanus’s intractability into sharp contrast.

However, the weak link here is Fiennes himself who snarls and spits and rages but never towers over the production as Coriolanus really should. His anger seems merely churlish childishness whereas it should be a dark whirlpool of deep-seated ire that cannot be assuaged. It doesn’t help that with his shaven head he looks exactly like Voldermort but without the wand.

Those who don’t know the play may find its central premise a little hard to swallow and Fiennes’ inability to encapsulate Coriolanus’s noble inner-warrior makes his character too one-sided to be credible.