Best Run in terms of anything Audrey Hepburn: Breakfast at Tiffany's, Charade, The Children's Hour, Paris When It Sizzles, My Fair Lady, Wait Until Dark, The Unforgiven, How to Steal a Million, and Two for the Road. Natalie Wood: Splendor in the Grass, West Side Story, Gypsy, Love with the Proper Stranger, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, All the Fine Young Cannibals, Cash McCall, Penelope, This Property Is Condemned, Sex and the Single Girl, The Great Race, and Inside Daisy Clover. Julie Andrews: Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, The Americanization of Emily, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Hawaii, Torn Curtain, Star!, and Think Twentieth. Bette Davis: Pocketful of Miracles, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Nanny, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, Dead Ringer, The Empty Canvas, The Anniversary, and Where Love Has Gone. Monica Vitti: L'Avventura, Follie d'estate, La Notte, Three Fables of Love, L'Eclisse, Sex Quartet, I Married You for Fun, The Girl with the Pistol, Kill Me Quick, I'm Cold, On My Way to the Crusades, I Met a Girl Who..., Help Me, My Love, The Scarlet Lady, Red Desert, Le bambole, Il disco volante, Modesty Blaise, High Infidelity, Nutty, Naughty Chateau, and Sweet and Sour. Liv Ullmann: Persona, Kort är sommaren, Tonny, Smeltedigelen, En hyggelig fyr, Onkel Vanja, Måken, De kalte ham Skarven, Cocktailselskapet, Hour of the Wolf, An-Magritt, The Passion of Anna, and Shame. Catherine Deneuve: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Repulsion, Belle de Jour, Les Petits Chats, L'Homme à femmes, Les Portes claquent, Ça c'est la vie, And Satan Calls the Turns, Tales of Paris, Portuguese Vacation, Vice and Virtue, The Young Girls of Rochefort, Who Wants to Sleep?, Le Chant du monde, The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers, La costanza della ragione, Male Companion, Male Hunt, Manon 70, La Chamade, Benjamin, Mayerling, The April Fools, A Matter of Resistance, Mississippi Mermaid, Tout peut arriver, and Les Créatures. Julie Christie: Darling, Doctor Zhivago, Fahrenheit 451, Petulia, Far from the Madding Crowd, Billy Liar, Crooks Anonymous, The Fast Lady, Young Cassidy, and In Search of Gregory. Rita Moreno: West Side Story, Popi, This Rebel Breed, The Night of the Following Day, Marlowe, Summer and Smoke, and Cry of Battle. Judy Garland: Judgment at Nuremberg, I Could Go On Singing, Pepe, A Child Is Waiting, and Gay Purr-ee. Joan Crawford: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Strait-Jacket, The Caretakers, The Karate Killers, Berserk!, and I Saw What You Did. Nora Ricci: The Birds, the Bees and the Italians, A Very Private Affair, Giuseppe Verdi, The Shortest Day, La fiera della vanità, The Witches, The Damned, Metti, una sera a cena, and The Libertine. Pamela Tiffin: Summer and Smoke, One, Two, Three, The Pleasure Seekers, For Those Who Think Young, Come Fly with Me, The Lively Set, and State Fair. Claudia Cardinale: 8 1/2, The Leopard, Rocco and His Brothers, Girl with a Suitcase, Cartouche, The Pink Panther, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Hell with Heroes, Blindfold, The Professionals, Lost Command, Don't Make Waves, The Day of the Owl, Il bell'Antonio, Austerlitz, The Lovemakers, The Lions Are Loose, Auguste, Careless, La ragazza di Bube, Time of Indifference, Circus World, The Magnificent Cuckold, Sandra, The Conspirators, A Fine Pair, Diary of a Telephone Operator, and The Red Tent. Anouk Aimée: 8 1/2, La Dolce Vita, Lola, Justine, A Man and a Woman, The Last Judgment, The Joker, The Shortest Day, White Voices, Justine, The Appointment, Model Shop, La fuga, Sodom and Gomorrah, One Night... A Train, and The Dreamer. Sandra Milo: 8½, Juliet of the Spirits, La visita, Méfiez-vous, mesdames, Ghosts of Rome, Weekend, Italian Style, Premio Nobel, Trusting Is Good... Shooting Is Better, Beautiful Families, The Strange Night, Classe Tous Risques, Adua and Her Friends, and Vanina Vanini. Coral Browne: The Killing of Sister George, Dr. Crippen, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, The Legend of Lylah Clare, Tamahine, The Night of the Generals, and Go to Blazes. Rita Tushingham: Doctor Zhivago, Smashing Time, A Taste of Honey, The Leather Boys, The Knack ...and How to Get It, Girl with Green Eyes, A Place to Go, The Guru, The Trap, The Bed Sitting Room, and Diamonds for Breakfast. Deborah Kerr: The Innocents, The Sundowners, The Grass Is Greener, The Night of the Iguana, Marriage on the Rocks, The Chalk Garden, The Naked Edge, Casino Royale, The Gypsy Moths, Eye of the Devil, The Arrangement, and Prudence and the Pill. Ava Gardner: Mayerling, The Night of the Iguana, 55 Days at Peking, Seven Days in May, The Bible: In the Beginning..., and The Angel Wore Red. Debbie Reynolds: How the West Was Won, Divorce American Style, The Singing Nun, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, The Rat Race, Pepe, The Pleasure of His Company, The Second Time Around, Debbie Reynolds and the Sound of Children, How Sweet It Is!, Mary, Mary, Goodbye Charlie, and My Six Loves. Hermione Baddeley: Mary Poppins, Marriage on the Rocks, Harlow, The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Rag Doll, Midnight Lace, Information Received, Let's Get Married, The Happiest Millionaire, and Do Not Disturb. Virna Lisi: How to Murder Your Wife, Not with My Wife, You Don't!, The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Un militare e mezzo, Sua Eccellenza si fermò a mangiare, 5 marines per 100 ragazze, Eva, The Shortest Day, Don't Tempt the Devil, Duel of the Titans, Le bambole, The Black Tulip, Coplan Takes Risks, The 25th Hour, A Maiden for a Prince, Assault on a Queen, Made in Italy, Casanova 70, The Possessed, Kiss the Other Sheik, The Girl Who Couldn't Say No,Arabella, The Girl and the General, If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, The Christmas Tree, Anyone Can Play, and Better a Widow. Liza Minnelli: The Odd Couple, The Sterile Cuckoo, and Charlie Bubbles. Marilyn Monroe: Let's Make Love and The Misfits. Shirley MacLaine: The Children's Hour, The Apartment, Two for the Seesaw, Irma la Douce, Sweet Charity, Ocean's 11, Can-Can, Gambit, The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom, John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!, What a Way to Go!, Woman Times Seven, The Yellow Rolls-Royce, My Geisha, All in a Night's Work, and Two Loves. Suzy Kendall: 30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia, To Sir, with Love, The Penthouse, Thunderball, The Liquidator, Circus of Fear, Up Jumped a Swagman, Up the Junction, The Sandwich Man, and Fräulein Doktor. Angie Dickinson: Ocean's 11, The Sins of Rachel Cade, Captain Newman, M.D., Point Blank, The Killers, Jessica, The Art of Love, I'll Give My Life, The Bramble Bush, A Fever in the Blood, The Chase, The Poppy Is Also a Flower, Cast a Giant Shadow, Some Kind of a Nut, Sam Whiskey, The Last Challenge, Young Billy Young, and Rome Adventure. Eva Marie Saint: Exodus, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, Grand Prix, The Sandpiper, All Fall Down, 36 Hours, and The Stalking Moon. Anne Bancroft: The Miracle Worker, The Graduate, The Pumpkin Eater, The Slender Thread, and 7 Women. Patricia Neal: Hud, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Subject Was Roses, In Harm's Way, and Psyche 59. Sue Lyon: The Night of the Iguana, Lolita, 7 Women, Tony Rome, Arsenic and Old Lace, Four Rode Out, and The Flim-Flam Man. Ann-Margret: The Pleasure Seekers, State Fair, Bye Bye Birdie, The Cincinnati Kid, Viva Las Vegas, Stagecoach, Rebus, The Prophet, Seven Men and One Brain, The Tiger and the Pussycat, Murderers' Row, The Swinger, Bus Riley's Back in Town, Made in Paris, Once a Thief, Pocketful of Miracles, and Kitten with a Whip. Flora Robson: 55 Days at Peking, Murder at the Gallop, Cry in the Wind, 7 Women, The Shuttered Room, Eye of the Devil, Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, Guns at Batasi, and Young Cassidy. Elizabeth Taylor: The Sandpiper, Scent of Mystery, The V.I.P.s, Cleopatra, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, BUtterfield 8, Reflections in a Golden Eye, Boom!, Secret Ceremony, Anne of the Thousand Days, The Comedians, Doctor Faustus, and The Taming of the Shrew. Lee Remick: Days of Wine and Roses, Wild River, The Detective, Sanctuary, Experiment in Terror, Hard Contract, No Way to Treat a Lady, The Hallelujah Trail, Baby the Rain Must Fall, The Running Man, and The Wheeler Dealers. Angela Lansbury: The Manchurian Candidate, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, A Breath of Scandal, Blue Hawaii, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, All Fall Down, Dear Heart, In the Cool of the Day, The World of Henry Orient, Harlow, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Mister Buddwing, and The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders. Janet Leigh: Psycho, The Manchurian Candidate, Harper, Bye Bye Birdie, Pepe, Wives and Lovers, Kid Rodelo, Who Was That Lady?, Hello Down There, American Dream, Three on a Couch, and Grand Slam. Vera Miles: Psycho, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Follow Me, Boys!, Sergeant Ryker, Mission Batangas, Kona Coast, The Green Berets, Hellfighters, One of Our Spies Is Missing, Gentle Giant, The Spirit Is Willing, Back Street, Five Branded Women, The Lawbreakers, It Takes All Kinds, Those Calloways, and A Tiger Walks. Maria Grazia Buccella:I Married You for Fun, Giacomo Casanova: Childhood and Adolescence, Sissignore, It's Your Move, Where Are You Going All Naked?, Domani non siamo pià qui, Villa Rides, A Maiden for a Prince, After the Fox, Pleasant Nights, Dead Run, L'armata Brancaleone, The Dirty Game, Man from Cocody, La donna degli altri è sempre più bella, Siamo tutti pomicioni, Canzoni in bikini, Adultery Italian Style, Up and Down, Up and Down, Menage all'italiana, La strada dei giganti, Nerone '71, Il Boom, The Fall of Rome, Il Gaucho, The Night They Killed Rasputin, and Fountain of Trevi. Bibi Andersson: Persona, The Passion of Anna, Bröllopsdagen, The Girls, Tænk på et tal, Le Viol, Blow Hot, Blow Cold, Pardon, Are You For or Against?,Pan, All These Women, Karneval, The Devil's Eye, The Pleasure Garden, Square of Violence, The Mistress, Ön, Duel at Diablo, My Sister, My Love, and About Love. Ingrid Thulin: Hour of the Wolf, The Judge, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Sekstet, The Damned, O.K. Yevtushenko, The Rite, Domani non siamo più qui, Adélaïde, Calda e... infedele, Badarna, Games of Desire, Winter Light, Return from the Ashes, The Silence, Night Games, and Agostino. Jane Fonda: In the Cool of the Day, The Chase, Tall Story, Period of Adjustment, The Chapman Report, Walk on the Wild Side, Barbarella, Hurry Sundown, Barefoot in the Park, Cat Ballou, Sunday in New York, Circle of Love, Joy House, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Spirits of the Dead, The Game Is Over, and Any Wednesday. Katharine Hepburn: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Long Day's Journey into Night, The Madwoman of Chaillot, and The Lion in Winter. Jeanne Moreau: Jules and Jim, La Notte, Seven Days... Seven Nights, Viva Maria!, Eva, Five Branded Women, The Yellow Rolls-Royce, Chimes at Midnight, A Woman Is a Woman, The Trial, Dialogue with the Carmelites, The Victors, The Fire Within, Bay of Angels, The Train, Banana Peel, The Oldest Profession, Le Corps de Diane, The Bride Wore Black, Great Catherine, The Sailor from Gibraltar, The Immortal Story, Mademoiselle, Diary of a Chambermaid, and Mata Hari, Agent H21. Faye Dunaway: The Arrangement, Hurry Sundown, The Happening, Bonnie and Clyde, The Thomas Crown Affair, A Place for Lovers, and The Extraordinary Seaman. Geneviève Page: Mayerling, Belle de Jour, El Cid, Grand Prix, Three Rooms in Manhattan, Song Without End, Corsaires et Flibustiers, Le Majordome, Tender Scoundrel, The Day and the Hour, Youngblood Hawke, The Reluctant Spy, Decline and Fall... of a Birdwatcher, and A Talent for Loving. Brigitte Bardot: A Very Private Affair, Affaire d'une nuit, La Vérité, Testament of Orpheus, Viva Maria!, Une ravissante idiote, Shalako, Les Femmes, Spirits of the Dead, Masculin Féminin, Two Weeks in September, Dear Brigitte, Contempt, Love on a Pillow, Marie Soleil, Please, Not Now!, and Famous Love Affairs. Jean Seberg: Breathless, Lilith, Paint Your Wagon, Moment to Moment, A Fine Madness, The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers, Diamonds Are Brittle, Backfire, The Girls, The Road to Corinth, Birds in Peru, Pendulum, Line of Demarcation, The Looters, Let No Man Write My Epitaph, Congo vivo, Time Out for Love, In the French Style, Five Day Lover, and Love Play. Tippi Hedren: The Birds, Marnie, and A Countess from Hong Kong. Sophia Loren: Two Women, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Marriage Italian Style, Lady L, A Countess from Hong Kong, Judith, Arabesque, More Than a Miracle, Ghosts – Italian Style, The Fall of the Roman Empire, Operation Crossbow, El Cid, Five Miles to Midnight, Boccaccio '70, The Condemned of Altona, Madame, Heller in Pink Tights, It Started in Naples, A Breath of Scandal, The and Millionairess. Maggie Smith: Go to Blazes, Young Cassidy, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The V.I.P.s, Othello, The Pumpkin Eater, Hot Millions, Oh! What a Lovely War, and The Honey Pot. Vanessa Redgrave: Oh! What a Lovely War, Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment, Camelot, Isadora, The Charge of the Light Brigade, A Man for All Seasons, Blowup, The Sea Gull, and A Quiet Place in the Country. Doris Day: Do Not Disturb, Midnight Lace, Send Me No Flowers, Lover Come Back, That Touch of Mink, The Thrill of It All, The Glass Bottom Boat, The Ballad of Josie, With Six You Get Eggroll, Caprice, Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?, Please Don't Eat the Daisies, Move Over, Darling, and Billy Rose's Jumbo. Mia Farrow: Secret Ceremony, Guns at Batasi, John and Mary, Rosemary's Baby, and A Dandy in Aspic. Suzanne Pleshette: The Birds, Rome Adventure, 40 Pounds of Trouble, If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin, The Power, Target: Harry, Mister Buddwing, Youngblood Hawke, A Distant Trumpet, Fate Is the Hunter, Wall of Noise, The Ugly Dachshund, Blackbeard's Ghost, Nevada Smith, and A Rage to Live. Shelley Winters: A Patch of Blue, Lolita, Alfie, Harper, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Three Sisters, Let No Man Write My Epitaph, The Chapman Report, The Young Savages, Wives and Lovers, Time of Indifference, A House Is Not a Home, The Balcony, Arthur? Arthur!, Wild in the Streets, Enter Laughing, Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, The Mad Room, and The Scalphunters. Anna Karina: A Woman Is a Woman, Le petit soldat, Bande à part, My Life to Live, Alphaville, Pierrot le Fou, Sweet and Sour, Lamiel, The Oldest Profession, Anna, Made in U.S.A, The Nun, Zärtliche Haie, Justine, Dämonische Leinwand, Before Winter Comes, The Stranger, Laughter in the Dark, Man on Horseback, The Magus, Circle of Love, Cléo from 5 to 7, Sun in Your Eyes, She'll Have to Go, Tonight or Never, All About Loving, Shéhérazade, The Camp Followers, Un mari à prix fixe, and The Thief of Tibidabo. Anika Ekberg: La Dolce Vita, Le tre eccetera del colonnello, Anonima cocottes, Who Wants to Sleep?, Bianco, rosso, giallo, rosa, The Cobra, Pardon, Are You For or Against?, Crónica de un atraco, Un sudario a la medida, Death Knocks Twice, Malenka, Woman Times Seven, The Glass Sphinx, How I Learned to Love Women, Way...Way Out, The Alphabet Murders, Boccaccio '70, Call Me Bwana, 4 for Texas, The Mongols, Behind Closed Doors, The Dam on the Yellow River, and If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. Geraldine Page: The Three Sisters, You're a Big Boy Now, Sweet Bird of Youth, Trilogy, The Happiest Millionaire, Dear Heart, Summer and Smoke, Toys in the Attic, What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?, and Monday's Child. Joanne Woodward: A Fine Madness, Rachel, Rachel, Winning, Signpost to Murder, The Fugitive Kind, Paris Blues, From the Terrace, A Big Hand for the Little Lady, The Stripper, and A New Kind of Love. Mariko Okada: Eros + Massacre, A Story Written on Water, Illusion of Blood, Woman of the Lake, An Autumn Afternoon, The Scent of Incense, Akitsu Springs, and Late Autumn. Barbra Streisand: Hello, Dolly! and Funny Girl.
Casino workers in Vegas sue over coronavirus safety concerns
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 61%. (I'm a bot)
LAS VEGAS - Unions representing 65,000 Las Vegas-area casino workers accused some resort operators on Monday of putting employees at risk of illness and death during the coronavirus pandemic by skimping on safety measures like a requirement for mask-wearing. "They want to work, but they want to work safe," Culinary Union executive Geoconda Argüello-Kline said of hotel housekeepers, cooks, bartenders, vehicle valets and others. A lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas does not directly cite the death last week of Adolfo Fernandez, 51, a Caesars Palace porter and union member from Las Vegas who was diagnosed with the COVID-19 respiratory illness after returning to work when casinos reopened June 4 after a three-month shutdown. The lawsuit points to the experiences of employees at an eatery at Harrah's Las Vegas, valets and porters at the Signature Condominiums towers at MGM Grand resort, and restaurant kitchen workers at the Bellagio casino. Despite "Overwhelming evidence of the importance of mandating facial coverings by guests in public areas of casinos and hotels," the document says, "Defendants, along with other casinos and hotels in southern Nevada only 'encouraged' guests to wear face masks." During the economically devastating casino shutdown imposed in mid-March, union officials consistently called for Gov. Steve Sisolak, the regulatory Nevada Gaming Control Board and the Clark County Commission, which oversees the Las Vegas Strip, to impose strict worker safety measures.
Summary Source | FAQ | Feedback | Topkeywords: work#1LAS#2casino#3Union#4people#5 Post found in /Coronavirus. NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.
This is the continuation of my series highlighting specific critic's criticisms of TLJ. Part I on Humor is here, which also details my reasoning for this mining operation. Here we are covering Canto Bight, and we have everything from run of the mill iodized stuff to hail-sized rock salt on display, so adjust your goggles accordingly.
Johnson overplays his hand occasionally — most notably an unnecessary sequence at the casino city of Canto Bight that goes straight from a political sermon into a plot hole
Ethan Sacks, New York Daily News - Fresh
The bad news is, this involves an unnecessary trip to a kind of casino planet that doesn’t really advance the story.
Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic - Fresh
A scene in an opulent casino is easily the most painful yet in this new generation of Star Wars flicks, eliciting images of the green screen busy set pieces of the early-2000 franchise additions, enticing to the youngest members of the audience who need their stories overly padded with shiny spectacle.
Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot - Fresh
Boyega is a loveable hero, and his new compadre Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) is a nice addition. However, as much as it isn’t overbearing, their entire sub-plot is when the adventure loses steam. This moves the film away from where all the interest is – Luke. At this point, it becomes a little disjointed and unnecessary, never reaching a point of excitement required for a chunk of plot of this degree.
Cameron Frew, FrewFilm - Fresh
an extended digression with Finn and Rose that doesn’t end up counting for much plotwise
Bob Chipman, Moviebob Central - Fresh
Sadly, Boyega's Finn -- still an appealing character -- is saddled with a go-nowhere plot-line that has him and Resistance mechanic Rose show up at a space casino and cross paths with a rogue with a heart of a gold (or maybe just rogue?) played by Benicio Del Toro. There's the kernel of interesting idea there as we glimpse the socioeconomic underpinnings of this galaxy far, far away in a way we've never seen before, but it's a digression whose payoff doesn't warrant the build-up. And when you're already the longest Star Wars ever made (two and a half hours!), some snipping here and there might not have been a bad idea.
Zaki Hasan, Zaki's Corner - Fresh
I’m not a big fan of Finn and Rose’s side adventure, which has the air of a spinoff story being tacked onto the main narrative (probably to give Finn a purpose, since Rey is doing her own thing with Luke). Apart from showcasing the power of hope on a younger generation, it’s not as well integrated into the seams of the larger story as it could’ve been.
Tomas Trussow, The Lonely Film Critic - Fresh
It’s Finn’s mission which takes the film off on a diversion where it didn’t really need to go. There’s a lot of comedic hijinks involved in all of this which George Lucas would have excised from the first draft of anything he ever wrote.
Niall Browne, Movies in Focus - Fresh
Much of the Canto Bight sequence feels unnecessary
Molly Templeton, Eugene Weekly - Fresh
First, both prominent new characters Rose and DJ seemed shoe-horned in, and Rose especially doesn't seem to have a real place in this film nor does she add anything to be hopeful about in the future. And while both Rey and Poe fans will probably be pleased with where their characters go, Finn sort of takes a step back, as he is sent off on a side adventure that seems like second-tier Star Wars. It's a diversion that takes up a good portion of the film and really serves no purpose to the overall story...worse yet, it seems to contain some heavy-handed political messages not commonly found, at least not this blatantly, in the Star Wars universe. These are more than just quibbles too: Most fans will not be used to the slow, lumbering pace or the general unevenness of this film...especially coming on the heels of the action-packed pacing that JJ Abrams brought in Episode VII.
Tom Santilli, AXS.com - Fresh
There’s some stuff that feels extraneous (the whole Canto Bight sequence, which seems to exist to set up a new Lando-like character played by Benicio del Toro), and the cycle of attack and retreat — mostly retreat — gets a bit monotonous.
Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com - Fresh
Muchas de las situaciones se sienten forzadas e innecesarias (por ejemplo, la aventura de Finn y Rose, me parece innecesaria).
Ruben Peralta Rigaud, Cocalecas - Fresh
Their jaunt to the casino planet of Canto Bight serves little purpose besides introducing Del Toro, updating the cantina scene, and offering up a tired CGI chase scene that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Attack of the Clones. Kudos (maybe) to Johnson for introducing income inequality to the Star Wars universe, but the entire sequence feels rushed and shoehorned into an already long movie.
Pete Vonder Haar Houston Press - Fresh
The weakest of these is Finn's. It's briskly paced and full of action yes, but let's just say a casino is no cantina... Worse, it also sees him interacting with Prequel Trilogy levels of CGI critters.
Karl Puschmann, New Zealand Herald - Fresh
But the worst distraction “The Last Jedi” has to offer involves erstwhile Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) and a Resistance maintenance worker named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), a subplot every bit as visually and narratively inept as Lucas’ prequels were taken as.
J. Olson, Cinemixtape - Rotten
Finn’s entire storyline could be cut and the film would be better off. As Finn was one of the driving-force leads of The Force Awakens and also a charming character, this is a disappointing development. His adventure is such a low point that it would not seem out of place in one of George Lucas’ efforts from between 1999 and 2005, and it serves little purpose to the film’s overall plot.
Alex Doenau, Trespass - Fresh
there’s too much going on in The Last Jedi, and a lot of it feels like filler. Besides the aforementioned, stalled-out space battle, there’s a clunky sequence in a casino that goes on far too long, a lot of distracting cameos, and new characters inhabited by Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro, who bring close to nothing to the proceedings.
Bob Grimm, Reno News and Review - Fresh
Finn and Rose (a new addition to the principal cast) distract the audience with an overlong and ultimately unnecessary side plot.
Richard Dove, International Business Times - Rotten
And this plotline feeds right into the absolutely unforgivably terrible subplot, which is the adventures of Finn (John Boyega) the cowardly ex-storm trooper, and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), the class-conscious engineer, who go on a fetch quest that is every bit as pointless as the whole matter of the military nonsense, only even worse, because it hinges on terrible comedy, bad CGI, and a spectacularly horrible moment when Johnson stops the film in its tracks to provide a ruthlessly on-the-nose lesson about economic inequality and the military-industrial complex.
Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending - Rotten
Some of what happens on the casino planet — called Canto Bight, and sure to figure in the next film — is goofy on a level as cringe-inducing as things we saw in the prequel trilogy; like, Jar-Jar Binks–awful.
MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher - Fresh
Johnson does his best to hustle from one location to the next, but the narrative has a tendency from time to time to drag. The biggest example of this are the scenes on Canto Bight. Which is a shame, because a huge chunk of the film’s message is established on these scenes. But the very nature of the story, with its many moving parts, inadvertently makes this section of the film feel like a diversion.
Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm - Fresh
The humour is kind of sour in other places, too, such as the silly neo-cantina scene as Finn and Rose track the whereabouts of a mysterious encrypter, who might be the rebellion’s last hope, into a sort of galactic Monte Carlo. The abundance of slapstick there and in other parts of the film doesn’t click and feels forced.
Diva Velez, TheDivaReview.com - Fresh
In an unnecessary and quite frankly preposterous third subplot, Finn (John Boyega) and a new character, Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), race against the clock to locate an underworld figure who can help them neutralise the First Order’s tracking device, thus allowing the diminished rebel fleet to escape.
Vicky Roach, Daily Telegraph (Australia) - Rotten
Weak points come with awkward humour that lacks comedic rhythm and an unnecessary casino escapade, where a disposable underworld character DJ (Benicio del Toro) is introduced, that subsequently soft lens into what is essentially a children's adventure tale about animals
Craig Takeuchi, Georgia Straight - Fresh
Unfortunately, we keep getting dragged away from the only emotionally resonant portion of the film to watch Finn and Rose engage in sub-prequel hijinks on the casino planet. Everything here is forced and awful, visually uninteresting and often dark to the point of unwatchability, lousy with mawkish little kids making bug eyes at the camera as we marvel at the horror of economic inequality, and drowned in an atrocious patina of truly terrible CGI. It calls to mind the droid factory in Attack of the Clones and the pre-podrace sequence in The Phantom Menace. Most offensively, the whole Finn/Rose diversion has absolutely no importance to the forward momentum of the plot—it's utterly irrelevant, even nonsensical.
Sonny Bunch, Washington Free Beacon - Rotten
Not everything in the film works: a few of the goofier comic moments fail to land and true to the legacy of Lucas there’s a fair amount of eye-wincing dialogue. More importantly, the second act bows under the weight of too many narrative strands; Finn’s away mission comes off as a bit superfluous, as does Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo, and both Rose and the beloved Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) are sadly underwritten. In a trade-off that brings scope and complexity, Johnson has sacrificed narrative efficiency.
Christopher Machell, CineVue - Fresh
I didn't like the sequence in a casino--a callback to the Star Wars Cantina, of course, but also a chance to discuss the evils of war profiteers and the 1%. There are creatures there, there's slapstick, there's a heist of sorts, and it all harks back to my favourite of Johnson's films, The Brothers Bloom, in the interplay between the characters, in the lightness and clarity of the scheme. But it's tonally disruptive, and it introduces a trio of children who seem like part of a different film.
Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central - Fresh
Finn and Rose’s trip to a gambling planet – basically a space Monaco – flits between light fun and on-the-nose political narrative.
Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle - Fresh
It also begs the question why the space casino sequence, arguably the least relevant to the core story, wasn’t dramatically trimmed back. Aside from a throwaway final shot, this section of the film is the weakest – designed to depict profiteering space-capitalism run rampant (ironically, also depicting a stable of space-horses also running rampant).
Patrick Kolan, Shotgun Cinema - Fresh
But as ingenious as this setup may be, it also gives rise to the film's most pointless subplot. After waking from his coma, Finn (John Boyega) contrives a means by which he can disable the New Order's tracking device, albeit one that requires him to sneak off the fleeing vessel, travel to a Monaco-styled casino planet, track down a master codebreaker and infiltrate the enemy's warship undetected. This enormous MacGuffin sees Boyega partnered with the charming Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico, a Resistance engineer low in status but high in pluck. The problem is that their side adventure does absolutely nothing to advance the actual story.
Tom Glasson, Concrete Playground - Fresh
Unfortunately, John Boyega’s Finn, Oscar Isaac’s Poe and Kelly Marie Tran—as Finn’s new partner-in-rebellion Rose—are given the equivalent of busywork while the rest of the cast moves the plot along.
Simon Miraudo, Student Edge - Fresh
A detour to a casino planet where Finn and a resistance mechanic named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) search for a codebreaker to help them disrupt the First Order's tracking of the retreating resistance ships feels like a trip into another movie. The stakes here seem far lower than the live-or-die scenario facing Poe, General Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher) and the others trying to make their getaway.
Greg Maki Star-Democrat (Easton, MD) Fresh
The only characters not doing a huge amount of growing are Finn (John Boyega) and mechanic Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), and not for nothing, their subplot opens up a momentum drain that is the only weakness in The Last Jedi. Boyega and Tran are perfectly enjoyable, and their subplot isn’t a complete waste of time, but you start to feel the length of The Last Jedi when it veers off with them, and Finn’s arc is a pale echo of Poe’s so it’s not like much is being accomplished.
Sarah Marrs Lainey Gossip Fresh
Rey’s journey toward learning the ways of the Jedi is far more entertaining than Finn’s convoluted (and ultimately pointless) storyline
Josh Bell Las Vegas Weekly Fresh
Rose’s character is front and center in the film’s weakest sequences. We’re diverted to a city where the worst of the worst frolic. No, not the usual hives of scum and villainy. It’s a casino where the very, very rich cavort. The evil One Percenters! If you’re not immediately yanked out of the story here you deserve a prize. The accompanying dialogue is equally clunky, as is the reason all these vapid souls gained their fortunes.
Christian Toto, HollywoodInToto.com - Rotten
Far less successful is the time spent with the rebels on the run from Hux and the First Order. Not only is it centered on the slowest space chase in sci-fi history, but subplots featuring Poe, Finn (John Boyega), and Rose (newcomer Kelly Marie Tran) go absolutely nowhere. Sure we get introduced to DJ (Benicio Del Toro) and Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern), but it’s with actions that fail to connect either through sheer stupidity or the simple truth that their absence wouldn’t change the story in the slightest. They’re obvious filler, and as is the Disney way (witness their Marvel films) the studio’s never met a character that couldn’t be jammed into a movie for no reason other than the misguided belief that more is better. Finn and Rose’s adventure in particular offers some additional action beats and a visit to a casino — think the Mos Eisley Cantina scene from Star Wars, but for the 1% — but it is meaningless noise.
Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects - Fresh
Meanwhile, what feels too much like the “B plot” side adventure has Finn and Rose on a mission that takes them into another film entirely, a sort of intergalactic James Bond-meets-Free Willy. It’s hard not to feel that their entire subplot could be axed in order to make The Last Jedi stronger and tighter, which is unfortunate.
Kaila Hale-Stern, The Mary Sue - Fresh
There is a whole section that feels out of kilter and harks back to the CGI naffness of the prequels — and is also virtually pointless to the plot.
Jamie East, The Sun (UK) - Fresh
The film’s epic 150-minute runtime allows plenty of room for Johnson’s inventiveness, but there’s also a tiny bit of fat in the middle of the movie, specifically in the Canto Bight scenes with Finn and Rose. The casino city itself is gorgeous and has some crazy-cool characters, plus Finn and Rose’s presence there shines a light on some new, worthwhile themes for the Star Wars franchise. However, in terms of the overall story, the whole escapade feels a little pointless and small. It doesn’t help that Benicio del Toro’s new character, DJ, who is part of the same storyline, is largely insignificant.
Germain Lussier, io9.com - Fresh
Star Wars: The Last Jedi does have a clear weak spot -- specifically the side plot that develops between Finn (John Boyega) and newly-introduced Resistance member Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran). Following a genuinely funny meet-up between the two characters, they are given their own special mission searching for a codebreaker who can assist in the battle against the First Order. But this storyline never feels particularly inspired or impactful as everything else going down in the movie. While it is constructed to fit with the larger themes of the film, features its own interesting expectation-flipping turns, and does eventually have a key impact on the macro scale, it's also the only part of the feature that ever feels expendable, and not helping anything is that it features the weakest visual effects of the blockbuster (especially during a second-act chase sequence).
Eric Eisenberg, CinemaBlend - Fresh
Finn and Rose’s mission takes them to Canto Bight, a kind of Monte Carlo peopled by extras from Babylon 5, and feels like it is just ticking the Weird Alien Bar box started by the Cantina. A ride on space horses also feels like a needless diversion, as does Benicio Del Toro’s space rogue, whose strange, laconic presence never really makes its mark.
Ian Freer, Empire Magazine - Fresh
It’s a shame, then, that the righteousness of Finn and Rose’s place in the film is undermined slightly by the limpness of their mission. Perhaps feeling there had to be some kind of Mos Eisley–esque sequence in the film, Johnson sends the pair to a casino city full of all kinds of creatures. It’s fun, sure, but the whole operation ultimately turns out to be a red herring. At least there’s some nice musing on liberation during this stretch, reminding us of the real stakes of this long story—freedom is, after all, what the Empire denies and the Rebel Alliance promises. And in a gorgeous third-act sequence—which includes the film’s true Empire Strikes Back homage—Finn and Rose finally get the emboldened moments they deserve. I just wish they fit more integrally into the central thesis of the film, that they were just as special, in their way, as Rey is, glinting with messianic power as she ascends.
Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair - Fresh
Of the three simultaneous plots, it’s Finn’s that sometimes drags down the energy, particularly with an introduction of a shady thief played by Benicio del Toro, the only new addition to the cast that doesn’t quite work; he seems to be acting in his own private movie, and it’s not as good as this one.
Will Leitch Paste Magazine - Fresh
Where the film struggles the most is on Canto Bight. Taken on her own, Rose isn’t a bad addition to the Star Wars mythos, and the movie definitely needs someone to play against Finn. Unfortunately, they lack the electric chemistry we saw between Finn and Rey in The Force Awakens, and their secret mission in a casino feels like it should be far more entertaining than it actually is.
Matt Goldberg, Collider - Fresh
Some action sequences are superfluous and unengaging. Benicio del Toro all but cameos as a sort of hobo hustler, while John Boyega’s Finn is sidelined, relegated to relatively inconsequential hi-jinx.
Alex Godfrey, GQ Magazine [UK] - Fresh
Finn (John Boyega) and newcomer Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) attempt an espionage mission that takes them to what is the Star Wars equivalent of the French Riviera. It’s a casino city named Canto Bight, and their adventures here push the Rick’s Café sensibilities from the original Star Wars’ cantina sequence to their limit. Nevertheless, this entire subplot amounts to a whole lot of padding while the real tough and revelatory decisions are made on Ahch-To.
David Crow, Den of Geek - Fresh
Plot-wise, I felt the entire side story at the casino world of Canto Bight was unnecessary. If you cut the entire sequence out of the film, it would have little impact on the core narrative.
Scott Chitwood ComingSoon.net - Fresh
Finn (John Boyega) wakes up, meets a admiring fan down in maintenance named Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and they head off on their own adventure, a detour that somehow combines the louche slickness of Cloud City and moralizing at its most Disney.
Joe Gross, Austin American-Statesman - Fresh
But The Last Jedi’s two-and-half-hour sprawl still includes an awful lot of clunky, derivative, and largely unnecessary incidents to wade through in order to get to its maverick last act. This is especially true when it comes to the plausibility-straining mission of stormtrooper turned Rebel Alliance fighter Finn (John Boyega) and puckish series newcomer Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran).
Sam C. Mac, Slant Magazine - Rotten
There are a couple of big names that fail to deliver much aside from, perhaps, realizing their childhood dreams of being in a “Star Wars” movie. A trip to a city that might as well be called Space Macau also fails to pay many dividends.
Christopher Lawrence, Las Vegas Review-Journal - Fresh
Case in point is the plot involving Finn (John Boyega) and new hero Rose's (Kelly Marie Tran) McGuffinesque mission to Canto Bight, which is of the ashtray-on-a-speederbike variety, and takes away from the tension cranked up elsewhere.
Harry Guerin, RTÉ (Ireland) - Fresh
The remaining 20% is made up of two different locales, one of which is entirely superfluous to the story. Essentially, there is a subplot that introduces Benicio del Toro’s mysterious work of eccentricity, except it doesn’t really do much of interest with him. Admittedly, it feels as if the character could be destined for bigger things in the final chapter, but I can only go off of what I watched, and well, the middle portion of The Last Jedi is stuck in the furthest setting from lightspeed. The journey expands to a space-Vegas full of various alien life forms and inhabitants, but it’s not as visually striking as previously explored planets. Additionally, by design, there seems to be filler injected simply because the other characters need things to do while Rey accomplishes what she needs to with Luke.
Robert Kojder, Flickering Myth - Fresh
The scenes on Canto Bight seemed like an unnecessary divert for Rose (a new character I actually really like) and Finn. This “casino planet” was like a scene right out of a low-budget Sy-Fy channel movie shot in Vancouver. It felt too familiar and earthbound to be a scene in an other-worldly scene in a Star Wars movie. The Rose/Finn alien horse race through the casino that ruined the galactic one-percenters good time and did some property damage was just ridiculous and should have been cut. Rose and Finn flopping around on the alien horse just looked like a bad theme park ride.
Chris Gore, Film Threat - Fresh
There’s a lengthy diversion to the casino planet of Canto Bight that feels pointless and tacked on just for the sake of giving us a cool new corner of the galaxy to feast our eyes on.
Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly - Fresh And that's it for Part II. Happy Holidays to all my fellow fans and miners! Next week I will conclude with Part III, which will cover- well, let's just say it's the longest of this series by far. Heh.
Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives. PREVIOUS YEARS ARCHIVE:1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998
A week later and it's even less clear what WCW hoped to accomplish by putting Sable on Nitro. It did nothing for the ratings, either that week or the following. All it has done is strengthen WWF's case against WCW in the ongoing antitrust lawsuit. WCW is claiming that she bought a ticket and just happened to show up to their show, which is bullshit that nobody is buying, especially since she was sitting front row with security guards on either side of her and then repeatedly shown in close-up shots on camera. Plus, she didn't show up until more than an hour into the show and then left soon after being shown on camera. Sable's explanation was even dumber, as she was quoted in USA Today saying, "I wanted to see if the same level of obscenity was taking place. It was not." Anyway, all WCW employees were told not to mention her name, even her real name, on air but they had pictures of her on the WCW website after Nitro aired and one of them referred to her as Sable. WCW immediately removed the photos the next day but everything is forever on the internet so you know how that goes. WWF lawyer Jerry McDevitt spoke with WCW's lawyers and threatened to file a federal lawsuit against WCW and is investigating whether or not Sable was paid for her appearance (WCW lawyers refused to answer that question). Sable appearing on WCW TV like she did is a blatant violation of her WWF contract and WWF has made it clear that under no circumstances will they give up the rights to the name Sable, with McDevitt saying, "She can sue us till the cows come home and she's not going to get it." The rights to the name are especially important for her right now due to her upcoming Playboy issue, which is due out in August. Without WWF signing off on it, Playboy can't promote her as "Sable" which is going to be a huge blow to sales of the magazine (and especially considering WWF isn't promoting it on TV at all).
Sable has gotten a lot of publicity out of the lawsuit, appearing on various shows and doing media interviews, mostly trashing the WWF and calling it obscene. Dave notes that Sable's credibility in this is lacking, since she willingly participated in the obscene behavior for years and in fact was one of the leading stars of it and benefited enormously from it. Furthermore, over the years, she has done countless interviews defending WWF against media outlets who called the product obscene (unlike Owen Hart, who was on the record in the past admitting he didn't like the direction of the company). It really looks like Sable had no problem with the on-screen obscenity until she started having a contract dispute. Jerry McDevitt says there's no truth to Sable's claim that she signed her contract under duress or that Jim Ross threatened to fire her if she didn't sign immediately. That being said, nobody in WWF has denied her allegations that they wanted her to "accidentally" lose her top on TV, which is pretty sketchy and, along with other sexual harassment allegations, it makes it hard to look at WWF as an innocent victim here. In a USA Today story, Vince McMahon responded by basically trying to blame all of this negativity on WCW, which is obviously absurd, saying, "I think that opportunists such as our competitor are really behind a lot of all of this negativity. They don't know how to compete with us, and in essence what they're trying to do is beat the drums of negativity, hoping that, in some way, that is going to hurt the organization or hurt our fans."
Of course, WWF is also facing a major lawsuit from the family of Owen Hart. One of the Hart family lawyers is a Kansas City attorney named Gary C. Robb who is recognized as one of the best lawyers in America and is known for winning record-high settlements in several major cases. In one 1995 case, he got a verdict of $350 million for his clients following a helicopter crash, which is the highest liability jury verdict in U.S. history. Soooo...not great news for WWF (spoiler: he ends up getting Hart's family $18 million, which was also a record for that sort of case, but we'll get there eventually). WWF is just one of many parties named in the suit (the stunt people, the arena people, the harness manufacturers, and more). The lawsuit alleges negligence, failure to provide proper equipment, failure to provide proper training, failure to follow basic safety procedures, etc. For what it's worth, after the incident, the NBA banned having mascots come down from the ceiling. Eric Bischoff hasn't said for sure if they're going to ban it or not, but they don't plan to lower Sting from the ceiling anytime soon again. Famous O.J. Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran appeared on a TV show and sided with the Hart family and blamed WWF for the accident. McDevitt responded, basically telling Cochran to fuck off and saying that the whole thing was just a tragic accident and that in the entire history of the WWF, Owen Hart was the first time a wrestler has ever died in the ring.
Oh, we're not done. Bassam Al Othman, the host of Good Morning Kuwait, filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against WWF related to Vader roughing him up on TV back in 1997. Jerry McDevitt called it a "silly lawsuit" and accused Othman of trying to pile on to WWF while they're facing the Hart and Sable lawsuits. Othman is particularly upset that WWF aired footage of Vader roughing him up on TV.
Konnan was quoted in a newspaper article saying some stuff about WCW that got him in a lot of hot water with Eric Bischoff. Konnan was quoted saying, "You have a lot of wrestlers that wield a lot of power. If you don't conform or be part of their clique, if you're not drinking or training with them, you get cut out. That's just bad business." Konnan also said that in the past, Bischoff had become intolerable and condescending to people, but that Bischoff had been trying to be better lately. Regardless, the comments infuriated Bischoff and he and Konnan had a loud screaming argument at each other backstage at Nitro, with Bischoff particularly upset that Time-Warner executives might see the quote and start wondering what's going on backstage that they don't know about.
There's been an extreme lack of 5-star matches in recent years, but we finally got one! Misawa vs. Kobashi for the Triple Crown title in AJPW is a strong front-runner for match of the year and Dave gives it the full 5 (and yes, this ends up winning match of the year, making it 2 years in a row that Misawa and Kobashi win that award). Kobashi ended up getting his nose destroyed and had surgery 5 days later to repair it and was supposed to take a month off, but he's already announced he'll be back on the next tour starting next week, because Kobashi.
Hayabusa is expected to be unmasked soon. They're doing an angle where FMW's heel commissioner is telling him he can't wear his mask anymore. The real reason is because Hayabusa is so broken down from injuries that he knows he needs to change his in-ring style and the idea is for him to become more of a ground-based wrestler and he wants to unmask and basically change his character entirely (he briefly wrestles under the name H for awhile, unmasked, before eventually returning to the Hayabusa gimmick).
Antonio Inoki is bringing back the Big Van Vader gimmick and giving it to some new guy named Sylvester Terkay who works in Inoki's UFO promotion. If you recall, there was a big lawsuit deal in the early 90s because Inoki owned the rights to the name "Big Van Vader" and the smoking headgear thing. That's why the real Vader dropped the "Big Van" part of his name and stopped using the smoking helmet. Dave thinks trying to give this classic gimmick to a green rookie is a terrible idea (this dude dabbled in WWE for a minute back in 2006ish but never amounted to anything beyond that).
The ECW/TNN deal still hasn't been finalized. There may have been a snag due to Rob Van Dam's recent interview in High Times magazine where he talks about smoking pot, which the TNN people evidently weren't thrilled with. But it doesn't seem to be that big a deal and ECW is still expected to finalize a deal with TNN soon, with the first episode of ECW on TNN likely debuting in August. There's no word on how this will all work out as far as tapings go or what can be shown where (there's going to be issues with TNN not allowing ECW to air any of the TNN-show footage on their syndicated shows). Either way, ECW is basically coasting right now because they don't want to shoot any big angles or start any new storylines until the national show debuts. When that happens, the plan is to push Van Dam as the top star and eventually build to him winning the ECW title.
Christopher Daniels debuted in ECW in a match with Super Crazy and everyone there reported that it was the best match of the show, but Paul Heyman didn't like it for some reason and decided not to air it on TV. Anyway, after the match, Daniels cut a promo saying that if you're 200 pounds and from Mexico they call you a Luchador, if you're 200 pounds and from Japan they call you an international superstar, but if you're 200 pounds and American, you get a needle in your ass as quick as you can.
ECW had their first ever show in Chicago this week which was a big success with a sold out crowd of 3,000. There was one part that almost went bad. A fan threw a chair in the ring, leading to Bubba Ray Dudley leaving the ring and going into the crowd after the fan, but luckily, nothing happened. Also, Sabu did a run-in at the end of the show. That doesn't sound like a big deal until you hear this part: Sabu was on a tour with FMW in Japan. He flew from Tokyo to Chicago, just to do the run-in on the ECW show, then immediately flew back to Japan to finish the FMW tour (having read every issue of the Observer from this decade, I'm convinced that there wasn't a harder working guy in the business during the 90s than Sabu, especially earlier in the decade).
ECW wanted to bring in Vader to put over Taz at the upcoming PPV, but it's not happening. Due to his deal with AJPW, they want Vader to be kept strong and won't allow him to do any jobs elsewhere. ECW wants to find big name stars who will put over Taz clean and Vader was willing to do it, but since AJPW won't let him, it won't be happening.
There's a new promotion starting up in California called Xtreme Pro Wrestling, that is co-founded by male porn staproducers Tom Byron and Rob Zicari, who performs as Rob Black. The promotion is expected to heavily feature porn stars from their companies.
WCW's Great American Bash PPV did a 0.43 buyrate, making it the 5th lowest PPV buyrate in WCW history. Considering how hot wrestling (well, WWF) is right now in the mainstream, that's a pretty horrific number.
Goldberg appeared on the Dennis Miller Show on HBO this week and a few days prior to the show, Bischoff had a meeting with Goldberg's agent Barry Bloom because there was significant concern over what Goldberg might say, since the two sides are still at pretty heated odds over Goldberg's contract situation right now. Anyway, Goldberg didn't say anything bad and Dennis Miller was actually really defensive of wrestling, talking about taking his son to a WCW show and how nice everyone was. He didn't seem to understand the whole promotional war though and he brought up Steve Austin, but Goldberg just sorta changed the subject. He did complain about the schedule, but never complained about WCW directly. Others weren't as nice. In a recent radio interview, Hulk Hogan was interviewed and although he didn't name Goldberg by name, he referenced him, saying there was a guy in the company who was given a huge push but didn't have much experience and now he's self-destructing before their eyes. Okay Hulk, sure.
WCW has pretty much given up on trying to re-sign Chris Jericho and have all but accepted that he's leaving when his contract runs out soon. Dave says it's basically because certain people have gotten in other peoples' ears and convinced WCW that Jericho isn't worth it and that he's never drawn money. Dave thinks Jericho, along with Goldberg, have potential to be two of WCW's most marketable stars in the future if they were positioned right but hey, what does Dave know? Anyway, the only real pitch WCW has given to Jericho is they want to put him in a young guys vs. old guys feud, with people like Jericho feuding with Flair. Of course, that isn't really a promotion for Jericho, it's mostly just a way to move Flair down to midcard (also, Randy Savage shot down the idea of being involved in the angle because he doesn't want to be seen as an old guy). As for WWF, they're basically promising to push Jericho as the next Shawn Michaels.
Arn Anderson is said to be uncomfortable with the fact that WCW has brought Sid Vicious back, but is willing to go along with it and do business. When asked about it, Eric Bischoff had this to say: "It became clear to me he has matured over the past five years. He realizes he made mistakes in and out of the ring and recognizes the tremendous opportunity he has here. So far, he has conducted himself very professionally. I've got all the confidence in the world that he's learned from his mistakes... If it doesn't work out, Sid's options are really limited. I think he's matured to the point that he understands that."
Kevin Nash was said to be pretty upset about Sable being at ringside during his promo on Nitro last week, since it completely took the focus off him and the crowd spent the entire time chanting for her during his segment.
WCW hopes Bret Hart will return at the July 5th Nitro at the Georgia Dome. Dave thinks Hart has the potential to come back as a huge babyface, but then again, he should have been the biggest babyface in the world when he debuted in WCW last year after the Screwjob, but they botched that so don't hold your breath. It's possible Hart may not be back by then, because Bischoff told him to take all the time he needs in the wake of Owen's death. Hart has been telling people that he's not sure if he's going to wrestle again, although most people still think he will.
WCW was going to bring in rap group Naughty By Nature to perform at the Georgia Dome Nitro, but Master P flexed some muscle and got it nixed (as a lifelong hip hop fan, this is the most random shit ever. Also, I never heard anything about those guys having beef and in fact, I think Master P was featured on a NBN song around this time. So I'm gonna assume this is a case of Dave maybe getting one wrong here).
Notes from WCW Nitro at the Superdome in New Orleans: the show drew a little over 15,500 fans paid. They were looking to be in the 13-14,000 range but sales surged slightly once Master P (who's from New Orleans) got added to the show and they sold an extra 2,000 tickets or so. Master P was telling people last week that him in WCW would sell out the Superdome and, well, so much for that. Eddie Guerrero returned, after a 7-month absence, to absolutely zero fanfare. Dave says Eddie was noticeably slow and seemed hesitant in the ring since it was his first match back. The No Limit rappers were all over the show and it all pretty much sucked.
Random WCW Notes: Scott Steiner's back has been in terrible shape lately and there's rumors he may not be able to keep wrestling much longer. Bam Bam Bigelow has been getting epidurals to drain excess fluid out of his spine. Referee Charles Robinson has 4 cracked vertebrae in his upper back from Randy Savage doing the elbow drop on him a few weeks back. Steve Regal has been training at the WCW Power Plant. There's also an impressive tag team at the Power Plant named Shannon Moore and Shane Helms who have worked some indies.
Curt Hennig's anti-rap redneck group is actually getting over with WCW crowds even though they're supposed to be heels. WCW is aware of it and not happy about it, and they're planning to bring in Willie Nelson to film a vignette with Hennig, where Hennig tries to buddy up to Willie but gets shot down. They want country music fans to also think Hennig's group is uncool. (Trying to promote a redneck group against a group of rappers to their mostly southern fanbase. How did they think this was gonna go?)
Dusty Rhodes returned to doing commentary for WCW Saturday Night and Dave says it was gruesome. "I need a damn thesaurus to keep finding new words to describe WCW," he adds.
Chris Jericho did some concerts with a band called Fozzy Osbourne in Atlanta. Jericho was the lead singer and people said he was good. Then Dave drops a classic deadpan Dave-joke: "He said both rap and country suck and heavy metal rules. If he could have kept his drug problems under control he'd have probably been the best worker in the business by this point. That's Heavy Metal, not Jericho I'm talking about."
WWF Raw Notes: Kurt Angle beat Matt Hardy in a dark match. Al Snow picked his nose and ate the booger. Prince Albert wore panties. The Rock is really over.
WWF is claiming that they want to sell their Las Vegas hotel and casino because they can't renovate it to be an arena that they could hold events at, and that they're planning to buy a bigger hotel somewhere in Vegas. But a lot of people are saying the real reason is that WWF just doesn't want to admit that they made a mistake and way overpaid for this shitty hotel and now they're just trying to dump it and be rid of it. There's no plans to actually buy another hotel in Vegas, that's just to save face.
Random WWF notes: Brian Christopher needs major knee surgery and will be out the rest of the year. Mick Foley is also working on his autobiography while he recovers from knee surgery. Expect Rock and Austin biographies to come out later this year also.
Steve Austin was going to go on the Jay Leno show to respond to Goldberg's challenge awhile back but when WWF informed Leno's people that Austin would be turning down the challenge, they cancelled it. Leno only wanted him on the show if he was going to accept and obviously that's not happening.
Letters this week are mostly about Owen Hart and Sable. The usual, people remembering him, then picking sides. Who's to blame, why Vince is the devil, so on and so forth. There's also several letters about Sable's lawsuit, sadly all of which have pretty much the same theme: she paraded around half-naked on TV, she posed for Playboy so she's basically a whore, she knew what she signed up for, she should shut up, WWF made her who she is, etc.
WEDNESDAY:King of the Ring fallout, Hogan goes on Larry King's show to tell lies for an hour, Vince McMahon makes the media rounds, and more...
Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives. PREVIOUS YEARS ARCHIVE:1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998
Posting this right at the start of OilMania seems like a bad idea but who knows, let's see how it goes!
Dave looks at business numbers for 1998 and needless to say, basically every record got destroyed. The 1998 numbers compared to 1997 are staggering. WWF live attendance increased more than 71% over the year before. TV ratings increased nearly 49%. PPV buyrates increased 67%. Over 33% of their live shows were legit sellouts (compared to only 16% in '97). WCW was the same story. 46% increase in attendance, 56% increase in ratings, 17% increase in buyrates, and 49% of its shows sold out. An estimated 3.85 million people attended WWF and WCW shows during 1998, generating about $78 million in gate revenue ($38m for WCW, $40m for WWF). Dave starts tossing in other numbers and percentages, accounting for ECW and other indies and whatnot. WWF did better numbers than WCW in every category throughout most of 1998. WCW peaked in March and has been on a steady decline ever since. Meanwhile, WWF peaked in December and still seem to be on the rise. There's a lot more detail in this but yanno....numbers. Meh.
AJPW and NJPW numbers are also covered, but in less detail. AJPW attendance was down slightly (10%) from last year, and both years are the lowest of the decade, so not good news there. For most of the year, they were having their lowest attendance numbers in company history, but the arrival of Vader seems to have given them a boost near the end of the year. TV ratings held steady and basically didn't change. And no matter what, AJPW's first ever Tokyo Dome show more than made up for any declining numbers by generating millions of much-needed dollars for the company. As for NJPW, attendance increased slightly (about 5%) but TV ratings dropped significantly (nearly 20%) which is obviously not great news.
Toshiaki Kawada won AJPW's Triple Crown title last week from Misawa but he also broke his right wrist and forearm during the match by hitting Misawa in the back of the head with a spinning backfist that hit so hard that it hurt the wrong guy. He finished the match, going another 15 minutes after. Three days after the match, Kawada underwent surgery and it's believed he'll be out until May (when AJPW has their 2nd ever Tokyo Dome show). Kawada will be vacating the title he just won and it's unclear what they will do next to crown a new champion. There's a lot of problems because they had months of booking planned already and now it all has to be scrapped and it throws plans for several upcoming major shows into chaos (man, I bet it sucked to be Misawa right now. At this moment, Baba is hospitalized and no one knows why, not even Misawa allegedly, and he's running the company while also having to deal with this shit. I can only imagine the stress that dude was dealing with).
WWF's Royal Rumble is in the books. From an in-ring standpoint, aside from one match (Rock/Mankind), it wasn't great and shows the lack of depth WWF has when it comes to in-ring talent. But from a story and booking standpoint, the show opened up a lot of possible doors. It was sold out weeks in advance and it's likely going to do a huge buyrate if early projections are any indication. Some of the show (specifically Rock/Mankind) was brutally violent but aside from that, the show was actually somewhat toned down compared to recent Raws and PPVs. There's starting to be whispers of sponsors getting uncomfortable with the product so that's probably why.
Other notes from the show: Christian beat Jeff Hardy in a dark match. Too Much (Brian Christopher and Scott Taylor) also did a dark match job and Dave mentions that the plan to have them do a gay wedding angle at the February PPV has been scrapped, which is why they have been de-pushed on TV. Word is neither guy was exactly thrilled about doing it (we'd get Billy & Chuck a few years later). The announcers talked about how Mankind has never submitted in his entire career, which Dave points out is just patently ridiculous because he tapped out on WWF TV just a few months ago. Then they said the same thing about Billy Gunn later in the show, which was even more absurd. Mabel returned and will end up as part of Undertaker's group, which Dave is just THRILLED about. The finish of X-Pac/Gangrel was screwed up when referee Teddy Long counted 3 for a spot when he wasn't supposed to. The crowd chanted "you fucked up" at everybody as the match went to the planned finish a moment later. The Sable/Luna strap match ended the exact same way every strap match since the beginning of time has ended, with the heel dragging the face to each corner while, unbeknownst to them, the face is also touching each corner, and then the face manages to get the last one. Dave points out how that doesn't even make sense because the object is to drag your opponent to each corner, and every time they do this finish, the heel is the one pulling them, so that shouldn't count. But whatever. And the Rumble match was basically built around Vince and Austin. As far as Rumble matches go, it was probably the worst Rumble ever, but it at least had some stories going on within the context of the match.
Oh yeah. The Rock vs. Mankind match. For starters, Dave congratulates Observer reader Bryan Alvarez, who called the Observer hotline and predicted the finish (playing the audio of Mankind saying "I quit" from the previous week's Raw). The match was going along fine and then Rock handcuffed Mankind's hands behind his back. And from there, it got sick. Eleven full-force brutal chairshots to the head. Beyond overkill. Dave says it didn't remotely qualify as entertainment and he's worried that Mick Foley is going to end up with no brain cells left and says 90% of the calls they got on the Observer hotline were people pissed at Foley for going along with that. Dave pretty much found the whole thing sickening and hopes we never see anything like it again (yeah, needless to say this one is famous for pretty much all the wrong reasons).
Raw's ratings streak over Nitro is now 13 weeks in a row and counting and the gap between the two shows seems to be getting wider every week, although this week it was actually kinda close. WCW experimented with doing the main event match at the end of the first hour to try to prevent people from switching over to Raw when it started and it seemed to work a little bit, although not enough to matter. Raw still demolished them.
Still no real details on the condition of Giant Baba. Every year, AJPW does a big birthday celebration show for him, and this year, he obviously wasn't able to attend as he's still hospitalized. But word is they brought him a tape of the show and he watched it with a big smile on his face. There's hope that Baba will be back before AJPW's Tokyo Dome show in May. Those close to him aren't saying what exactly is wrong but are telling people that it's not that serious (spoiler alert: we'll be covering his obituary in the next issue).
Scott Norton is said to be really upset about how his IWGP title reign went down. He was apparently told it was going to be a year-long title reign, but it ended up getting cut short (about 4 months) and he lost the title to Keiji Muto at the Jan. 4th show. Norton is telling people he's finished with NJPW (naaaah).
Still a lot of news coverage of the Hashimoto/Ogawa match from the Jan. 4th show. It's looking more and more as if it was a real shoot and some are saying Hashimoto was aware beforehand that it was going to be a 100% shoot match. There have been claims that he covered himself in oil before the match so he could slip out of Ogawa's holds and Dave says looking at the match, that does appear to be true. But at this point, the consensus is that the match was a shoot, not an angle. Whether Hashimoto was aware of it being a shoot from the beginning is still somewhat debated.
Jesse Ventura was recently sworn in as the governor of Minnesota and it's already going poorly. His appointee to head the Dept. of Natural Resources resigned 6 days after starting the job when it was discovered he had several fines and citations for hunting and fishing violations. Fun side note: the judge who swore Ventura in as governor is the same judge who ruled in his favor in his lawsuit against WWF several years ago.
Tajiri vs. Super Crazy matches have reportedly been stealing the show at all of the recent ECW house shows and it's expected that they will face each other on next month's Living Dangerously PPV (yup).
Dawn Marie is getting breast implants this week. ECW is paying for it since they basically asked her to do it.
Speaking of ECW women, they did a backstage interview with Tammy Sytch and Chris Candido, which is the first time they've really shown Tammy's face up close on TV in awhile and Dave says she looks like she hasn't slept in months (yeah she was really starting to look haggard during this time. Drugs are bad, mmm'kay).
There have been rumors that Sid Vicious no-showed a recent ECW house show but for once, it's not true. He actually wasn't booked. "He will no-show at some point soon, it just hasn't happened yet," Dave says.
WCW is almost certainly going to do a match at SuperBrawl that will lead to Rey Mysterio being unmasked. Bischoff tried to get Mysterio to unmask in 1997 and it turned into a huge issue, with Mysterio almost quitting the company and Bischoff threatening to sue him for breach of contract. But this time, Mysterio is said to be okay with it, since Kevin Nash is booking everything now and Mysterio says he trusts Nash to do right by him (Mysterio has since completely gone the other way on this and says he regrets ever doing it).
Wrestling media for the week: DDP appearing on Regis & Kathy Lee. Goldberg appearing on Jay Leno. Maxim, Forbes, and Playboy all doing magazine stories on wrestling. Larry Zbyszko appeared on MTV with Rob Zombie, leading to Zbyszko saying the last time he worked with a zombie was when he wrestled Dusty Rhodes, which Dave thinks was hilarious. A bunch of other WCW guys appeared on the MTV show also.
Chris Jericho's sidekick Ralphus is actually one of the ring crew guys who drives the ring from city to city. He gets paid $200 per appearance for being on TV every week.
Stu and Helen Hart won't be losing the Hart family home after all. Whatever shit was going on with that has been settled, although they may still have to sell some of the land near the house that they own.
A big group of school teachers and the school board in Winnipeg are still fighting to get WWF's Raw pushed back to a later airtime so kids won't watch it. Dave points out that kids still know to use VCRs. WWF of course tries to push the narrative that they are for adults and that their prime audience is the 18-34 demographic. Dave calls bullshit and says that the highest rated age group for Raw is actually teenagers and young children aren't that far behind. Obviously, that is the parent's responsibility, not WWFs, but regardless, the idea that kids aren't watching WWF is ludicrous because they're actually watching it more than any other demographic.
When reviewing Raw, Dave goes on a rant about WWF bringing Mabel back and putting him with Undertaker's group. He talks about how WWF basically buried Vader due to his size, despite him being 10x the worker Mabel ever was and in much better shape. He was also a big star and doesn't have a reputation of carelessly injuring people that Mabel apparently has. "They should have brought back Sid or Ahmed Johnson way before this clown," Dave says. Tell us how you really feel. Besides, Dave wonders, when they're just weeks away from bringing in The Giant from WCW, what purpose does Mabel serve?
On Raw, Mankind challenged the Rock to an empty arena match to take place during halftime of the Super Bowl. Dave thinks whoever came up with the idea deserves a raise because it's a pretty brilliant idea.
Remember how WWF bought into that casino in Las Vegas and planned to turn it into a WWF Hotel & Casino? Well now they plan to tear down the whole building and rebuild. They want to be able to do live shows from there, but the current building isn't structured in a way that would allow them to set it up as an arena to do shows.
WWF's upcoming Super Bowl commercial will reportedly be called "A Day At The Office" and will feature a bunch of wrestlers and stunt men and explosions and whatnot during a tour of WWF's Titan Towers. Dave recaps the entire commercial, frame by frame exactly, even though it hasn't aired yet. But he's got the scoop on what it will be. Anyway, WWF reportedly paid $1.6 million for the 30-second ad and it will air in the 3rd quarter. The next day, they plan to launch a multi-million dollar ad campaign, mostly to shit-talk all the critics of their product.
Lance Storm writes in a letter to the Observer and Dave responds, so let's watch these 2 notorious goofballs totally not take wrestling too seriously:
Just a small complaint. When writing match results, do you actually watch the match or are you retelling someone else's account. Perhaps I'm a bit too detail conscience or even a bit anal retentive, but I find it frustrating when match details are incorrect. Your recent account of my PPV match with Rob Van Dam strongly resembled our match, but had a couple of moves credited to the wrong person and a false finish out of order or wrong. Maybe these details are insignificant, but in a newsletter that voices its opinions as absolute, it would be nice if the actual facts were as well. Lance Storm Calgary, Alberta DM: I watch every PPV match. In doing match write-ups, the idea is not to list moves or spots in order but attempt to tell the story of the match listing things that stick out after it's over and thus had impact, and not necessarily to place those spots in their specific order. If a spot is credited to the wrong person, that's an unforgivable mistake.
Other letters this week: people pissed at Mick Foley for likely allowing himself to get brain damage in the Rumble match, someone pissed that Steve Austin won wrestler of the year ("He only has 5 moves, and flipping off Vince McMahon is one of them"), someone comparing Tony Schiavone following Eric Bischoff's orders to bury Mick Foley to the Nazi's following Hitler's orders, and more.
MONDAY:the death of Giant Baba, Bischoff and McMahon bickering in the media, Empty Arena match, and more...
A few months ago I completed a read through of all ~400 TLJ reviews on RT(now up to ~415). It was painfully boring at times, but that's salt mining for you. I wanted to get a handle on the critical reception which is commonly cited as universal praise. While it's generally true that critics loved TLJ, they also had some criticisms that would be right at home here at STC, and these come from super experienced and intellectual film critics, so they have to be valid, right? After all, these people know so much more about film than a layperson. They can fully evaluate a film on countless criteria that average fans don't comprehend. /s, but you see where I'm going here: many TLJ fans have put critics on a pedestal, as if their opinion is somehow more valuable as a baseline for TLJ's quality. So what about when critics are echoing our own criticisms of TLJ? Almost every criticism we have lobbed at this movie was shared by at least a few critics, but there were three main criticisms that stood out as the most common. I'll start this series with humor in TLJ. Peter Debruge, Variety -Fresh
Luke is funnier than we’ve ever seen him — a personality change that betrays how “Star Wars” has been influenced by industry trends. Though the series has always been self-aware enough to crack jokes, it now gives in to the same winking self-parody that is poisoning other franchises of late, from the Marvel movies to “Pirates of the Caribbean.” But it begs the question: If movies can’t take themselves seriously, why should audiences? Harrison Ford was a good enough actor, and Han Solo an aloof enough character, that he could get away with it, but here, the laughs feel forced — as does the appearance of cuddly critters on each new planet.
Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter -Fresh
General Hux, who's goofily played by Domhnall Gleeson as if he were acting in a Monty Pythonesque parody
Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger -Fresh
humor is not only prevalent but often turned, mockingly, on the self-serious mythology of the whole saga. Sometimes there are too many jokes; certainly there's an overabundance of cutesy aliens.
Niall Browne, Movies in Focus -Fresh
It’s Finn’s mission which takes the film off on a diversion where it didn’t really need to go. There’s a lot of comedic hijinks involved in all of this which George Lucas would have excised from the first draft of anything he ever wrote. There’s more humour in The Last Jedi than previous Star Wars movies; some of it hits, some of it doesn’t. The much publicised Porgs work for a moment or two, but they outstay their welcome. The film drew to a halt too many times to show-odd cute creatures. I didn’t care for the crystal wolves during the climatic battle and the aforementioned space Llamas feel like they belong in a Disney movie (wait, this is a Disney movie!)
Rendy Jones, Rendy Reviews -Fresh
"The Last Jedi" is a movie that follows elements of other Star Wars movies that works on its own but feels so similar to a Marvel film because the first half of this movie is a comedy. Seriously a lot of the first half of the movie has a silly vibe amongst all the death and destruction that surrounds it. It desperately tries to be a parody of itself by making serious situations comedic.
Ruben Rosario, MiamiArtZine -Fresh
Much has also been made of “Jedi's” jarring tonal shifts. Johnson inserts broad humor, then abruptly makes things serious, then back again to goofy content.
Christopher Llewellyn Reed, Film Festival Today -Fresh
[Kylo's] partner in evil, Domnhall Gleeson, as General Hux, is less fine, though much of the problem stems not so much from the actor as from the tonally strange, abusively co-dependent relationship between the two men; their jokey rapport feels like it belongs in a very different movie.
Alex Doenau, Trespass -Fresh
However, from the beginning there’s a discordant sense of humour that’s somewhat counter to the series’ ethos to date: rather than funny situations rising organically in the script, many of the characters openly seem to be making jokes. It’s how we introduce Poe this go-round, and it feels slightly off.
Owen Richards, The Arts Desk -Fresh
There’s a surprising amount of comedy in the film, quite a bit at the expense of beloved characters or series law; it’s funny, but not respectful.
Tim Brayton , Alternate Ending -Rotten
The Last Jedi has an impressively poor batting average for its jokes: it opens with a vengefully dumb "I have a bad phone connection" bit that put me on the movie's bad side basically as soon as it had a side to be on, and it's not exactly all uphill from there.
James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk -Fresh
Sometimes, however, his proclivities come at the film’s expense, such as his penchant for inserting quippy humor, sarcasm, and sight gags at odd times, which often undercuts the drama or simply smacks of too much effort.
Craig Takeuchi, Georgia Straight -Fresh
Weak points come with awkward humour that lacks comedic rhythm and an unnecessary casino escapade, where a disposable underworld character DJ (Benicio del Toro) is introduced, that subsequently soft lens into what is essentially a children's adventure tale about animals.
Rob Dean, Bullz-Eye.com -Fresh
Further pushing the disconnect is that the script is far too self-aware, constantly making the sort of jokes that nerds have been making about “Star Wars” for decades, as if it’s too cool to purely accept itself on its own merits. The comedy works about half the time, but there are a ton of jokes in this film that underscore all of the overly serious talk of hope that populates the movie.
Sonny Bunch, Washington Free Beacon - Rotten
Johnson tries too hard on the humor front. Just one, brief, example: The whole opening sequences involves Poe doing conference call shtick while trolling Admiral Hux (Domhnall Gleeson). It's weirdly un-Star-Wars in the sense that it feels like something you could see on any dreadful sitcom here on planet Earth; this sequence is more fit for The Big Bang Theory than a supposedly dark entry in the Star Wars canon. The Star Wars movies have always been funny, of course, and there are moments when Johnson makes it work in a Star-Wars-sort-of-way. On the whole, though, it feels desperate and forced.
Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru - Rotten
Johnson's screenplay awkwardly blend action and drama with comedy and little bit of tacked-on romance. One particular scene involving an image that's not what it initially appears to be comes out of nowhere and feels like it belongs in a parody of Star Wars even though it does generate laughter.
Tom Glasson, Concrete Playground -Fresh
With more gags, one-liners and quirky moments than all the other Star Wars films combined, The Last Jedi introduces a levity to the staid franchise in the vein of Roger Moore's turn as post-Connery Bond. At times it works, even to the point of guffaws, but ultimately the humour feels misplaced. In a story where loss abounds and crushing defeat looms large at every turn, the repeated cutaways to doe-eyed porgs purring like extras from a Pixar film distract more than they entertain. So, too, does Domhnall Gleeson, whose character General Hux plays more like a parody of a Star Wars villain. As a result, both the New Order and the film itself are robbed of their most enduring menace: the Empire.
Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com -Fresh
In “The Last Jedi,” we watch Poe poke at Hux, who’s been turned into a buffoon for the new film, teasing him by faking communication issues and sharing an opinion about his mother. It’s the first of many awkward attempts at humor from Johnson, who isn’t known for funny business
Kevin McCarthy, WTTG-TV -Fresh
The first act of the film features major pacing issues combined with unnecessary comedic moments that ultimately hurt the tone of the film. Unfortunately, a lot of this comes from Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker character.
Jonathan W. Hickman, Daily Film Fix -Fresh
I found myself frustrated that the tone was comedy and sometimes almost veered into parody. Everything else is jokes and comedic references with a side of cheese. I found myself shaking my head more than laughing along.
Ray Greene, CineGods.com - Rotten
But it also doesn’t feel quite right — the language, the iconography, the weirdly campy humor at the beginning — it doesn’t feel a part of the Star Wars universe.
Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly -Fresh
The less said about the awkward attempts at comic relief, the better.
Matt Looker, TheShiznit.co.uk -Fresh
the comedy - and there is plenty of it - is spread out more evenly across the whole cast. In the case of Domhnall Gleeson's Hux, this becomes a good opportunity to poke fun at the horribly hammy performance he gave in The Force Awakens. But when he is playing those laughs off against his only foil - Kylo Ren - Johnson threatens to undermine their status as epic villains.
Christian Toto, HollywoodInToto.com - Rotten
Johnson drops plenty of cutesy comic moments into the mix, some of which would make even George Lucas blush. What was passable in 1977 no longer flies as easily today. And a franchise as esteemed as this one deserves richer comic relief.
Mark Hughes, Forbes -Fresh
The first act's humor is the shakiest, with some gags seeming more like something out of a Star Wars satire. The tone and irreverence of it was out of place, and a couple of bits went on one or two beats too long.
Scott Menzel, We Live Entertainment -Fresh
Speaking of laughs, the jokes and humor just fall flat. The jokes seemed out of place or were just so “on the nose” that I couldn’t help but be annoyed by them. I feel like the modern day humor didn’t feel the tone of the story and yet Johnson kept trying to lighten the mood by adding in cheesy jokes that weren’t even remotely amusing but instead were rather cringe-worthy.
Kevin Jagernauth The Playlist -Fresh
In the pursuit of providing some buoyancy to the picture, Johnson wields comedy like a sword, but it’s unfortunately the weakest element of the film. “Star Wars” has always been home to plenty of cornball one liners, and comedic passages, but there’s a delicacy to how they’re employed and delivered that allows them to land….or simply fall flat. Far too often, it’s the latter outcome in this picture, with some of the laughs feeling underwritten or simply shoehorned in. There’s a distinct lack of cleverness to the wit employed here — think something as seemingly spontaneous as BB-8’s “thumbs up” in ‘The Force Awakens’ — and while the gags don’t grind the picture to a halt, there are certainly some awkward patches where the expected laughs don’t materialize.
Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects -Fresh
The film is a series of points both high and low, and it’s nowhere more clear than in the humor. Several beats work well to bring a smile, but others fall tone deaf to the carnage and pain surrounding them. From the very beginning Hux’s scenes are made to feel like lost reels from Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs, and poor Boyega can’t catch a break as Finn is saddled with lame one-liners at every turn.
Alex Godfrey, GQ Magazine [UK] -Fresh
It’s funny, though not always when you want it to be – perhaps fearing too much gravitas, Johnson undermines it a little too often.
Robert Kojder, Flickering Myth -Fresh
Rian Johnson has crafted an installment that largely defies saga standard narrative structure and tone. There is a quick comedic dialogue exchange in the beginning between Oscar Isaac’s fighter pilot Poe Dameron and Domhnall Gleeson’s First Order General Hux that falls in line with the brand of humor Disney and Marvel inject into that particular cinematic universe.
John Serba, MLive.com -Fresh
Some stabs at comedy feel overwrought and clunky, including a stint on a ritzy planet of war profiteers, an extended sequence of skillfully directed silliness destined to be beloved fodder for apologists only.
This is the continuation of my series highlighting specific critic's criticisms of TLJ. Part I on Humor is here, which also details my reasoning for this mining operation. Here we are covering Canto Bight, and we have everything from run of the mill iodized stuff to hail-sized rock salt on display, so adjust your goggles accordingly.
Johnson overplays his hand occasionally — most notably an unnecessary sequence at the casino city of Canto Bight that goes straight from a political sermon into a plot hole
Ethan Sacks, New York Daily News - Fresh
The bad news is, this involves an unnecessary trip to a kind of casino planet that doesn’t really advance the story.
Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic - Fresh
A scene in an opulent casino is easily the most painful yet in this new generation of Star Wars flicks, eliciting images of the green screen busy set pieces of the early-2000 franchise additions, enticing to the youngest members of the audience who need their stories overly padded with shiny spectacle.
Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot - Fresh
Boyega is a loveable hero, and his new compadre Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) is a nice addition. However, as much as it isn’t overbearing, their entire sub-plot is when the adventure loses steam. This moves the film away from where all the interest is – Luke. At this point, it becomes a little disjointed and unnecessary, never reaching a point of excitement required for a chunk of plot of this degree.
Cameron Frew, FrewFilm - Fresh
an extended digression with Finn and Rose that doesn’t end up counting for much plotwise
Bob Chipman, Moviebob Central - Fresh
Sadly, Boyega's Finn -- still an appealing character -- is saddled with a go-nowhere plot-line that has him and Resistance mechanic Rose show up at a space casino and cross paths with a rogue with a heart of a gold (or maybe just rogue?) played by Benicio Del Toro. There's the kernel of interesting idea there as we glimpse the socioeconomic underpinnings of this galaxy far, far away in a way we've never seen before, but it's a digression whose payoff doesn't warrant the build-up. And when you're already the longest Star Wars ever made (two and a half hours!), some snipping here and there might not have been a bad idea.
Zaki Hasan, Zaki's Corner - Fresh
I’m not a big fan of Finn and Rose’s side adventure, which has the air of a spinoff story being tacked onto the main narrative (probably to give Finn a purpose, since Rey is doing her own thing with Luke). Apart from showcasing the power of hope on a younger generation, it’s not as well integrated into the seams of the larger story as it could’ve been.
Tomas Trussow, The Lonely Film Critic - Fresh
It’s Finn’s mission which takes the film off on a diversion where it didn’t really need to go. There’s a lot of comedic hijinks involved in all of this which George Lucas would have excised from the first draft of anything he ever wrote.
Niall Browne, Movies in Focus - Fresh
Much of the Canto Bight sequence feels unnecessary
Molly Templeton, Eugene Weekly - Fresh
First, both prominent new characters Rose and DJ seemed shoe-horned in, and Rose especially doesn't seem to have a real place in this film nor does she add anything to be hopeful about in the future. And while both Rey and Poe fans will probably be pleased with where their characters go, Finn sort of takes a step back, as he is sent off on a side adventure that seems like second-tier Star Wars. It's a diversion that takes up a good portion of the film and really serves no purpose to the overall story...worse yet, it seems to contain some heavy-handed political messages not commonly found, at least not this blatantly, in the Star Wars universe. These are more than just quibbles too: Most fans will not be used to the slow, lumbering pace or the general unevenness of this film...especially coming on the heels of the action-packed pacing that JJ Abrams brought in Episode VII.
Tom Santilli, AXS.com - Fresh
There’s some stuff that feels extraneous (the whole Canto Bight sequence, which seems to exist to set up a new Lando-like character played by Benicio del Toro), and the cycle of attack and retreat — mostly retreat — gets a bit monotonous.
Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com - Fresh
Muchas de las situaciones se sienten forzadas e innecesarias (por ejemplo, la aventura de Finn y Rose, me parece innecesaria).
Ruben Peralta Rigaud, Cocalecas - Fresh
Their jaunt to the casino planet of Canto Bight serves little purpose besides introducing Del Toro, updating the cantina scene, and offering up a tired CGI chase scene that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Attack of the Clones. Kudos (maybe) to Johnson for introducing income inequality to the Star Wars universe, but the entire sequence feels rushed and shoehorned into an already long movie.
Pete Vonder Haar Houston Press - Fresh
The weakest of these is Finn's. It's briskly paced and full of action yes, but let's just say a casino is no cantina... Worse, it also sees him interacting with Prequel Trilogy levels of CGI critters.
Karl Puschmann, New Zealand Herald - Fresh
But the worst distraction “The Last Jedi” has to offer involves erstwhile Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) and a Resistance maintenance worker named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), a subplot every bit as visually and narratively inept as Lucas’ prequels were taken as.
J. Olson, Cinemixtape - Rotten
Finn’s entire storyline could be cut and the film would be better off. As Finn was one of the driving-force leads of The Force Awakens and also a charming character, this is a disappointing development. His adventure is such a low point that it would not seem out of place in one of George Lucas’ efforts from between 1999 and 2005, and it serves little purpose to the film’s overall plot.
Alex Doenau, Trespass - Fresh
there’s too much going on in The Last Jedi, and a lot of it feels like filler. Besides the aforementioned, stalled-out space battle, there’s a clunky sequence in a casino that goes on far too long, a lot of distracting cameos, and new characters inhabited by Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro, who bring close to nothing to the proceedings.
Bob Grimm, Reno News and Review - Fresh
Finn and Rose (a new addition to the principal cast) distract the audience with an overlong and ultimately unnecessary side plot.
Richard Dove, International Business Times - Rotten
And this plotline feeds right into the absolutely unforgivably terrible subplot, which is the adventures of Finn (John Boyega) the cowardly ex-storm trooper, and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), the class-conscious engineer, who go on a fetch quest that is every bit as pointless as the whole matter of the military nonsense, only even worse, because it hinges on terrible comedy, bad CGI, and a spectacularly horrible moment when Johnson stops the film in its tracks to provide a ruthlessly on-the-nose lesson about economic inequality and the military-industrial complex.
Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending - Rotten
Some of what happens on the casino planet — called Canto Bight, and sure to figure in the next film — is goofy on a level as cringe-inducing as things we saw in the prequel trilogy; like, Jar-Jar Binks–awful.
MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher - Fresh
Johnson does his best to hustle from one location to the next, but the narrative has a tendency from time to time to drag. The biggest example of this are the scenes on Canto Bight. Which is a shame, because a huge chunk of the film’s message is established on these scenes. But the very nature of the story, with its many moving parts, inadvertently makes this section of the film feel like a diversion.
Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm - Fresh
The humour is kind of sour in other places, too, such as the silly neo-cantina scene as Finn and Rose track the whereabouts of a mysterious encrypter, who might be the rebellion’s last hope, into a sort of galactic Monte Carlo. The abundance of slapstick there and in other parts of the film doesn’t click and feels forced.
Diva Velez, TheDivaReview.com - Fresh
In an unnecessary and quite frankly preposterous third subplot, Finn (John Boyega) and a new character, Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), race against the clock to locate an underworld figure who can help them neutralise the First Order’s tracking device, thus allowing the diminished rebel fleet to escape.
Vicky Roach, Daily Telegraph (Australia) - Rotten
Weak points come with awkward humour that lacks comedic rhythm and an unnecessary casino escapade, where a disposable underworld character DJ (Benicio del Toro) is introduced, that subsequently soft lens into what is essentially a children's adventure tale about animals
Craig Takeuchi, Georgia Straight - Fresh
Unfortunately, we keep getting dragged away from the only emotionally resonant portion of the film to watch Finn and Rose engage in sub-prequel hijinks on the casino planet. Everything here is forced and awful, visually uninteresting and often dark to the point of unwatchability, lousy with mawkish little kids making bug eyes at the camera as we marvel at the horror of economic inequality, and drowned in an atrocious patina of truly terrible CGI. It calls to mind the droid factory in Attack of the Clones and the pre-podrace sequence in The Phantom Menace. Most offensively, the whole Finn/Rose diversion has absolutely no importance to the forward momentum of the plot—it's utterly irrelevant, even nonsensical.
Sonny Bunch, Washington Free Beacon - Rotten
Not everything in the film works: a few of the goofier comic moments fail to land and true to the legacy of Lucas there’s a fair amount of eye-wincing dialogue. More importantly, the second act bows under the weight of too many narrative strands; Finn’s away mission comes off as a bit superfluous, as does Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo, and both Rose and the beloved Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) are sadly underwritten. In a trade-off that brings scope and complexity, Johnson has sacrificed narrative efficiency.
Christopher Machell, CineVue - Fresh
I didn't like the sequence in a casino--a callback to the Star Wars Cantina, of course, but also a chance to discuss the evils of war profiteers and the 1%. There are creatures there, there's slapstick, there's a heist of sorts, and it all harks back to my favourite of Johnson's films, The Brothers Bloom, in the interplay between the characters, in the lightness and clarity of the scheme. But it's tonally disruptive, and it introduces a trio of children who seem like part of a different film.
Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central - Fresh
Finn and Rose’s trip to a gambling planet – basically a space Monaco – flits between light fun and on-the-nose political narrative.
Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle - Fresh
It also begs the question why the space casino sequence, arguably the least relevant to the core story, wasn’t dramatically trimmed back. Aside from a throwaway final shot, this section of the film is the weakest – designed to depict profiteering space-capitalism run rampant (ironically, also depicting a stable of space-horses also running rampant).
Patrick Kolan, Shotgun Cinema - Fresh
But as ingenious as this setup may be, it also gives rise to the film's most pointless subplot. After waking from his coma, Finn (John Boyega) contrives a means by which he can disable the New Order's tracking device, albeit one that requires him to sneak off the fleeing vessel, travel to a Monaco-styled casino planet, track down a master codebreaker and infiltrate the enemy's warship undetected. This enormous MacGuffin sees Boyega partnered with the charming Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico, a Resistance engineer low in status but high in pluck. The problem is that their side adventure does absolutely nothing to advance the actual story.
Tom Glasson, Concrete Playground - Fresh
Unfortunately, John Boyega’s Finn, Oscar Isaac’s Poe and Kelly Marie Tran—as Finn’s new partner-in-rebellion Rose—are given the equivalent of busywork while the rest of the cast moves the plot along.
Simon Miraudo, Student Edge - Fresh
A detour to a casino planet where Finn and a resistance mechanic named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) search for a codebreaker to help them disrupt the First Order's tracking of the retreating resistance ships feels like a trip into another movie. The stakes here seem far lower than the live-or-die scenario facing Poe, General Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher) and the others trying to make their getaway.
Greg Maki Star-Democrat (Easton, MD) Fresh
The only characters not doing a huge amount of growing are Finn (John Boyega) and mechanic Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), and not for nothing, their subplot opens up a momentum drain that is the only weakness in The Last Jedi. Boyega and Tran are perfectly enjoyable, and their subplot isn’t a complete waste of time, but you start to feel the length of The Last Jedi when it veers off with them, and Finn’s arc is a pale echo of Poe’s so it’s not like much is being accomplished.
Sarah Marrs Lainey Gossip Fresh
Rey’s journey toward learning the ways of the Jedi is far more entertaining than Finn’s convoluted (and ultimately pointless) storyline
Josh Bell Las Vegas Weekly Fresh
Rose’s character is front and center in the film’s weakest sequences. We’re diverted to a city where the worst of the worst frolic. No, not the usual hives of scum and villainy. It’s a casino where the very, very rich cavort. The evil One Percenters! If you’re not immediately yanked out of the story here you deserve a prize. The accompanying dialogue is equally clunky, as is the reason all these vapid souls gained their fortunes.
Christian Toto, HollywoodInToto.com - Rotten
Far less successful is the time spent with the rebels on the run from Hux and the First Order. Not only is it centered on the slowest space chase in sci-fi history, but subplots featuring Poe, Finn (John Boyega), and Rose (newcomer Kelly Marie Tran) go absolutely nowhere. Sure we get introduced to DJ (Benicio Del Toro) and Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern), but it’s with actions that fail to connect either through sheer stupidity or the simple truth that their absence wouldn’t change the story in the slightest. They’re obvious filler, and as is the Disney way (witness their Marvel films) the studio’s never met a character that couldn’t be jammed into a movie for no reason other than the misguided belief that more is better. Finn and Rose’s adventure in particular offers some additional action beats and a visit to a casino — think the Mos Eisley Cantina scene from Star Wars, but for the 1% — but it is meaningless noise.
Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects - Fresh
Meanwhile, what feels too much like the “B plot” side adventure has Finn and Rose on a mission that takes them into another film entirely, a sort of intergalactic James Bond-meets-Free Willy. It’s hard not to feel that their entire subplot could be axed in order to make The Last Jedi stronger and tighter, which is unfortunate.
Kaila Hale-Stern, The Mary Sue - Fresh
There is a whole section that feels out of kilter and harks back to the CGI naffness of the prequels — and is also virtually pointless to the plot.
Jamie East, The Sun (UK) - Fresh
The film’s epic 150-minute runtime allows plenty of room for Johnson’s inventiveness, but there’s also a tiny bit of fat in the middle of the movie, specifically in the Canto Bight scenes with Finn and Rose. The casino city itself is gorgeous and has some crazy-cool characters, plus Finn and Rose’s presence there shines a light on some new, worthwhile themes for the Star Wars franchise. However, in terms of the overall story, the whole escapade feels a little pointless and small. It doesn’t help that Benicio del Toro’s new character, DJ, who is part of the same storyline, is largely insignificant.
Germain Lussier, io9.com - Fresh
Star Wars: The Last Jedi does have a clear weak spot -- specifically the side plot that develops between Finn (John Boyega) and newly-introduced Resistance member Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran). Following a genuinely funny meet-up between the two characters, they are given their own special mission searching for a codebreaker who can assist in the battle against the First Order. But this storyline never feels particularly inspired or impactful as everything else going down in the movie. While it is constructed to fit with the larger themes of the film, features its own interesting expectation-flipping turns, and does eventually have a key impact on the macro scale, it's also the only part of the feature that ever feels expendable, and not helping anything is that it features the weakest visual effects of the blockbuster (especially during a second-act chase sequence).
Eric Eisenberg, CinemaBlend - Fresh
Finn and Rose’s mission takes them to Canto Bight, a kind of Monte Carlo peopled by extras from Babylon 5, and feels like it is just ticking the Weird Alien Bar box started by the Cantina. A ride on space horses also feels like a needless diversion, as does Benicio Del Toro’s space rogue, whose strange, laconic presence never really makes its mark.
Ian Freer, Empire Magazine - Fresh
It’s a shame, then, that the righteousness of Finn and Rose’s place in the film is undermined slightly by the limpness of their mission. Perhaps feeling there had to be some kind of Mos Eisley–esque sequence in the film, Johnson sends the pair to a casino city full of all kinds of creatures. It’s fun, sure, but the whole operation ultimately turns out to be a red herring. At least there’s some nice musing on liberation during this stretch, reminding us of the real stakes of this long story—freedom is, after all, what the Empire denies and the Rebel Alliance promises. And in a gorgeous third-act sequence—which includes the film’s true Empire Strikes Back homage—Finn and Rose finally get the emboldened moments they deserve. I just wish they fit more integrally into the central thesis of the film, that they were just as special, in their way, as Rey is, glinting with messianic power as she ascends.
Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair - Fresh
Of the three simultaneous plots, it’s Finn’s that sometimes drags down the energy, particularly with an introduction of a shady thief played by Benicio del Toro, the only new addition to the cast that doesn’t quite work; he seems to be acting in his own private movie, and it’s not as good as this one.
Will Leitch Paste Magazine - Fresh
Where the film struggles the most is on Canto Bight. Taken on her own, Rose isn’t a bad addition to the Star Wars mythos, and the movie definitely needs someone to play against Finn. Unfortunately, they lack the electric chemistry we saw between Finn and Rey in The Force Awakens, and their secret mission in a casino feels like it should be far more entertaining than it actually is.
Matt Goldberg, Collider - Fresh
Some action sequences are superfluous and unengaging. Benicio del Toro all but cameos as a sort of hobo hustler, while John Boyega’s Finn is sidelined, relegated to relatively inconsequential hi-jinx.
Alex Godfrey, GQ Magazine [UK] - Fresh
Finn (John Boyega) and newcomer Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) attempt an espionage mission that takes them to what is the Star Wars equivalent of the French Riviera. It’s a casino city named Canto Bight, and their adventures here push the Rick’s Café sensibilities from the original Star Wars’ cantina sequence to their limit. Nevertheless, this entire subplot amounts to a whole lot of padding while the real tough and revelatory decisions are made on Ahch-To.
David Crow, Den of Geek - Fresh
Plot-wise, I felt the entire side story at the casino world of Canto Bight was unnecessary. If you cut the entire sequence out of the film, it would have little impact on the core narrative.
Scott Chitwood ComingSoon.net - Fresh
Finn (John Boyega) wakes up, meets a admiring fan down in maintenance named Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and they head off on their own adventure, a detour that somehow combines the louche slickness of Cloud City and moralizing at its most Disney.
Joe Gross, Austin American-Statesman - Fresh
But The Last Jedi’s two-and-half-hour sprawl still includes an awful lot of clunky, derivative, and largely unnecessary incidents to wade through in order to get to its maverick last act. This is especially true when it comes to the plausibility-straining mission of stormtrooper turned Rebel Alliance fighter Finn (John Boyega) and puckish series newcomer Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran).
Sam C. Mac, Slant Magazine - Rotten
There are a couple of big names that fail to deliver much aside from, perhaps, realizing their childhood dreams of being in a “Star Wars” movie. A trip to a city that might as well be called Space Macau also fails to pay many dividends.
Christopher Lawrence, Las Vegas Review-Journal - Fresh
Case in point is the plot involving Finn (John Boyega) and new hero Rose's (Kelly Marie Tran) McGuffinesque mission to Canto Bight, which is of the ashtray-on-a-speederbike variety, and takes away from the tension cranked up elsewhere.
Harry Guerin, RTÉ (Ireland) - Fresh
The remaining 20% is made up of two different locales, one of which is entirely superfluous to the story. Essentially, there is a subplot that introduces Benicio del Toro’s mysterious work of eccentricity, except it doesn’t really do much of interest with him. Admittedly, it feels as if the character could be destined for bigger things in the final chapter, but I can only go off of what I watched, and well, the middle portion of The Last Jedi is stuck in the furthest setting from lightspeed. The journey expands to a space-Vegas full of various alien life forms and inhabitants, but it’s not as visually striking as previously explored planets. Additionally, by design, there seems to be filler injected simply because the other characters need things to do while Rey accomplishes what she needs to with Luke.
Robert Kojder, Flickering Myth - Fresh
The scenes on Canto Bight seemed like an unnecessary divert for Rose (a new character I actually really like) and Finn. This “casino planet” was like a scene right out of a low-budget Sy-Fy channel movie shot in Vancouver. It felt too familiar and earthbound to be a scene in an other-worldly scene in a Star Wars movie. The Rose/Finn alien horse race through the casino that ruined the galactic one-percenters good time and did some property damage was just ridiculous and should have been cut. Rose and Finn flopping around on the alien horse just looked like a bad theme park ride.
Chris Gore, Film Threat - Fresh
There’s a lengthy diversion to the casino planet of Canto Bight that feels pointless and tacked on just for the sake of giving us a cool new corner of the galaxy to feast our eyes on.
Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly - Fresh And that's it for Part II. Happy Holidays to all my fellow fans and miners! Next week I will conclude with Part III, which will cover- well, let's just say it's the longest of this series by far. Heh.
Far Right Conservative Think Tanks and Republican professors acknowledge Trumps plan would not only create an economic collapse but a breakdown of basic everyday life.
Trump accused of engaging in incidents of physical assault, verbal abuse, intimidation, and threats of physical harm towards workers to suppress unions.
Trump somehow thinks ISIS has become competition against him in the real estate industry after falsely believing they started building their own Hotels.
Trumps daughter recalls story during her childhood when Trump pointed at a homeless man saying he was 4 billion dollars richer than him because, “that’s how much debt I’m in.”
Trump retaliates against tenant for filing complaint by drilling holes in her ceiling and filling her apartment with construction dust. (Tenant later dies of lung cancer.)
Trump is fined 200,000$ in 1992 by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement for not allowing blacks or women onto his casino floor while racist Mafia leader is gambling.
Trump hires a financial analyst to gauge his Taj Mahal Casino project, the analyst says that the project would fail by the end of that year. Trump sues the analyst demanding he says it will succeed. By the end of the year the Casino declares bankruptcy.
Author Timothy O’Brien calls Trump a millionaire instead of a billionaire. Trump responds by suing him for $5 billion dollars. O’Brien gets to court and is able to prove Trump had been lying about his net worth and was in reality worth between $150 and $250 million.
Comedian, Bill Maher responds to Trumps demands for Obama to release his birth certificate to prove he was born in America saying Trump should release his to prove his mother had not mated with an orangutan. Trump responds by suing Bill Maher for 5 million dollars.
Later when asked if Trump knew Maher was joking and didn’t actually think Trump was the product of bestiality Trumps responds with “I don’t think he was joking. He said it with venom.” (I just want everyone reading this to take a moment and wonder how people would react if Hillary tried to take away a comedians free speech and make them pay her millions over making a joke about her)
Las Vegas Strip hospitality workers filed a lawsuit against casino operators on Monday, accusing the companies of failing to protect employees from Covid-19, one of the first efforts to hold... The powerful Nevada union that represents more than 60,000 casino workers in the Las Vegas area sued several of the city's casino operators on Monday, accusing them of failing to properly protect Casino Workers in Vegas Sue Over Coronavirus Safety Concerns Unions representing 65,000 Las Vegas-area casino workers are suing resort operators, alleging that employees are being put at risk of FILE - In this April 28, 2020, file photo, the sun sets behind casinos and hotels along the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas. Unions representing 65,000 Las Vegas-area casino workers are suing some resort operators, alleging that employees are being put at risk of illness and death due to skimpy safety measures during the coronavirus pandemic. Vehicle traffic backs up along Las Vegas Boulevard in Las Vegas on Saturday in a line for the Fall Giving Pop-Up, a one-day event providing free food assistance during the pandemic. (David Becker / For The Times) When the pandemic barreled through the glare and promise of this city, Cristina Lopez lost her casino job. She canceled family vacations. Las Vegas Strip hospitality workers filed a lawsuit against casino operators on Monday accusing the companies of failing to protect employees from Covid-19, one of the first efforts to hold LAS VEGAS (AP) - Unions representing 65,000 Las Vegas-area casino workers are suing resort operators, alleging that employees are being put at risk of illness and death because of skimpy safety Culinary Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165, which represent 60,000 workers in Las Vegas and Reno, brought the suit through their joint bargaining agency. Unions representing 65,000 Las Vegas-area casino workers accused some resort operators on Monday of putting employees at risk of illness and death during the coronavirus pandemic by skimping on On Monday, the workers filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas claiming that Caesars Entertainment owned Harrah’s and MGM-owned Bellagio and MGM Grand did not end food and
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![[World] - Hospitality workers sue Las Vegas casinos for allegedly not protecting them from coronavirus | The Independent](https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/PIrPhvdepo3oKflKOOiDYPwsYMRVXHeDJNpsHW6Tjfg.jpg "[World] - Hospitality workers sue Las Vegas casinos for allegedly not protecting them from coronavirus | The Independent")
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