Wrestlemania 25 Preview

The biggest night in the WWE year is once again upon us, Wrestlemania 25, this year from Houston Texas. There's a few intruiging matches and a few not so intruiging. Here's some quick thoughts on the card:

25 Diva Battle Royal

Quite frankly the only way this could be entertaining would be if all the Divas were naked! That isn't going to happen so as long as the match is kept fairly short it shouldn't be too pianful to watch. So far 18 divas have been confirmed from Raw, Smackdown and ECW, that leaves 7 former stars to fill the remaining spots. I'm having trouble remembering that many so I will guess Torrie Wilson, Victoria, Trish Stratus and Sunny (Tammy Sytch)will be there, not sure about the other 3 maybe Lita, Marlena and Sable maybe? My pick for the winner and new Miss Wrestlemania is Trish Stratus.

JBL vs Rey Mysterio - Intercontinental Title Match

JBL has promised to make history at WM25. I don't think beating Rey Mysterio counts as being historic and as little Rey Rey has had his ass kicked by practically everyone this year. My guess is that JBL beats Rey and retires as Intercontinental Champion.

Chris Jericho vs WWE Legends Ricky Steamboat, Superfly Jimmy Snuka & Rowdy Roddy Piper
Chris Jericho is the best thing about WWE right now, his one man war against the world has been brilliant, he's by far the best bad guy in the company right now and it's a shame he isn't involved in the title hunt. The build for this match has been great, Jericho has systematically taken the Legends to the cleaners. Unfortunately this match will most likely be the feel good bout of the night, Jericho will dish out much of the punishment only to be beaten thanks to interference from Mickey Rourke and Ric Flair.

Money in the Bank Ladder Match - Kane vs Mark Henry vs Christian vs Finlay vs MVP vs Shelton Benjamin vs CM Punk vs Kofi Kingston

I cannot understand why the hell Mark Henry and Kane are in this match when the likes of John Morrison and Carlito are still around. This year the hype has been focusing on the fact that every MITB winner has gone on to win a champiosnhip so I expect this years winner won't! The build up to this match has been a little weak and despite Kane dominating in the Battle Royal on Raw there is very little possibility that the Big Red Machine will come away victor. CM Punk is probably the only genuine main event talent but I can't see him winning it for the second year in a row so I'm putting my money on the outsider Christian to win it.

Shawn Micheals vs The Undertaker

HBK has done a stellar job keeping this feud interesting and it's good to see him playing a few mind games with Taker. These two haven't had a match at Wrestlemania so I'm expecting this one to be the show stealer. Taker is usually fed poor opposition like Khali and Kozlov so it's great to see him in there with someone the calibre of HBK. You can still be Mr Wrestlemania without winning so I predict the streak will not end here. Hopefully HBK can move on to a world title feud after this.

WWE Tag Team Unification Lumberjack Match - The Colons vs Miz & Morrison

I've not been following Smackdown very much so I'm not sure how they've built this match but they've got four men there who can go some, so we should get a decent match. I'm predicting MizMo to win here and unify the belts. No doubt there will be a free for all at the end with all the lumberjacks getting involved.

Jeff Hardy vs Matt Hardy

I'm not overly excited about this match because Jeff was flying high as a main eventer and his feud with Trtiple H had the potential to be huge. Matt was doing a solid job as the ECW champion and I fear the heel turn has cost him his best singles push. As this is an extreme rules match expect a couple of insane spots and a Jeff Hardy win to put this rivalry to rest.

John Cena vs Edge vs Big Show - World Heavyweight Championship

I'm a big fan of Edge, Big Show is OK and well I'm tired of Cena. The problem with Cena is that he's been made to look invincible and they've made him so cheesy it's ridiculous. I'd love to see Cena turn heel and go on the rampage but I fear that will never happen. Big Show has only been put in this match because Edge vs Cena has been done to death. I fully expect John Cena to win the title and Show and Edge to continue their feud over Vickie for a while longer.

Randy Orton vs Triple H - WWE Championship

I can't say I'm very excited about this, Randy is watchable but Triple H has just lost his way a bit really, I preferred him as a heel to be honest. Triple H has been made to look a bitch by Orton so I predict Hunter gets his revenge and retains his title.

The Apprentice - Episode 2

Quick thoughts on this weeks show:

Anytime anyone on the Apprentice says they are an expert in any field they inevitably end up getting fired. Whilst Yasmina stepped up to the plate (like the pun?!) despite questions from Debra it was Rocky I feared for most as he rattled off his accomplishments in the catering trade.

Yasmina, although very bossy and not allowing any input from her team members seemed to take control, her idea of Mediterranean food was simple and yet could be passed off as quite classy. The guys on the other hand decided to go with sarnies! Surely not the best way to impress a bunch of city slickers! Their Olympic theme also sounded a bit naff and when Rocky suggested the lads dress up in their Olympic clothes I could see a taxi with his name looming ominously.

And in true Apprentice tradition, we got our first cringeworthy pitch/presentation. This time Kate floundered and fluffed her way through a meeting where she admitted she had no clue and referring to Bruschetta as a cold canopy! Back in the car, the ever optimistic Debra moaned that they had already blown the task! Two weeks in and she's already annoying me.

Rocky's next blunder came when he set his team's price per head at £65. Philip looked like an idiot as he tried to pitch it to his customers having to eventually agree to £15 per head. Meanwhile Yasmina's cost cutting seemed to get pretty scary when she went crazy in Asda buying all the cheap stuff to keep her costs down. Man, if I was a customer at her place I'd think twice about the quality of her fare! Her skimping meant her team got humilated when they went to drop off their orders.

But if the girl's food looked bad, the guys came out with kids party food! I'm sure I saw doritos with bits of tomato on them! No wonder they made a loss!

In the boardroom Rocky got the boot even though it looked like James was gonna get it. For some reason Howard reckoned that Rocky should have stayed and one of the other 4 should have gone. I think SAS got it right by sacking the Rock!

Best line of the night came from Nick, when accused of walking around not doing a lot, Noorul tried to deny this fact, but Nick hit hime with "Well I watched you very carefully, In fact I made it my buisiness to watch you for sometime". That's scary!

Right now my favourite is probably Lorraine, she spotted that her team had over spent last week and this week she worked hard and tried to stay positive despite Debra the poison ivy giving up.

The Apprentice - Series 5 epsiode 1

I thought I'd make a few brief comments on the first epsiode of the new series of The Apprentice. First off here's a recap taken from the BBC website:

Project Managers: Mona - Ignite, Howard - Empire

Sir Alan wants to see the candidates get their hands dirty in this task. They've got ten hours to bring in the cash by cleaning and they've got up to £200 to spend on industrial cleaning materials.

Under pressure to start making money, the boys are fast to secure a contract to valet 30 mini cabs. Howard sends half the team to the cab forecourt, while he takes his half out shoe-shining. Back at HQ the girls' faff about choosing their cleaning products. 'Well done,' lawyer Anita announces, as the girls tot up £196 on materials, 'you've spent your budget wisely'.

How hard is it to clean a car? Back on the forecourt the hyped boys' team announce, 'we're Muppets if we can't do these 30 cars. If you're not fast you're going to be last'. Fast forward to 4 pm and only a few cars have been finished and most to a poor standard. Project manager Howard abandons his shoe shining and swoops in to speed up the valeting service.

The girls struggle with their business too. Their offer of £250 for three Hummers is refused. The client usually pays £20 per car. Car cleaning proves lucrative, but it's harder work than they imagined. Debra's splinter team have secured an opportunity to clean a showroom of classic cars, but after taking three hours to clean four cars and smearing a Mustang with shoe polish, the un-amused manager sends the girls packing.

At 7 pm, back in the boardroom the efforts of each team become clear. The girls make ten pounds more than the boys, but lose the task due to the £196 they spent on materials. Debra, Mona and Anita receive a roasting from Sir Alan, but Anita's singled out as the person responsible for the failure of the task. 'You were on the back of the van. You saw the money flowing out,' says Sir Alan. 'You showed no initiative' and Anita is the first casualty of the boardroom.

A good start by the boys but it's plain to see divisions have already started to form. I think Howard did a good job as PM and told Phillip not to clean car interiors, the latter did not adhere to this instruction and the boys found themselves under pressure fromt he start. Meanwhile Howard's team seemed to do well in their shoe shining efforts and made a decent return on their minimal investment.

The girls were disorganised, Mona didn't really seem like she wanted to be PM. Her management of the team was poor and she should have kept tabs on how much money was being spent on equipment. Kate had the right idea when she said they were spending too much on materials but she wasn't vocal enough. In the boardroom Anita got the heave ho because she didn't fight her corner although the real culprit was Mona who now lives to fight another day.

First impressions:

Noorul Choudhury - He reminds me of Mani from series 3, smug and full of himself.

Debra Barr - Loudmouth who got caught out lying in the boardroom by Mona. She'll cause plenty of trouble but I'm sure SAS will like her feisty attitude in the boardroom.

Phillip Taylor - Can't follow orders and I think he's going to try and be a leader from the start.

Mona Lewis - Way out of her depth, talks rubbish and it won't be long before she is gone.

Anita Shah - Unlucky to get fired on this occasion, but lets face it, with a face like hers, she wasn't going to win anything!
No one really shone in this first epsiode

Hell's Kitchen Day 3 & 4

Day 3 started with Chef Ramsey testing the contestants on their knowledge of meat. They had to label 12 types of meat correctly. The second part of the challenge was for the teams to identify which type of meat came from which part of the cow. The guys won the challenge and headed off for their treat while the girls had to first unload a truck full of meat before having to eat various gruesome animal parts.

HK was turned in to a steak house for the evening and steak house worker Giovanni took the meat station in the blue kitchen but his efforts were less than stellar. Meanwhile, Andrea took charge in the red kitchen and led her team to victory. The guys nominated Seth and Charlie and Chef Ramsey got rid of the latter.

Day 4 started with a breakfast challenge where both teams had to cook breakfast for 50 child cheerleaders and footballers. The guys lost the challenge and Seth was blamed be his team mates. Back at the house, Danny and Ben went at it, Ben lost his cool and and told Danny "You couldn't even cook my ****".

The girls went for their treat and the guys were left to do their prep - they didn't complete it. Dinner service was a crash crash with Coi in the Red kitchen feeling the wrath of Chef Ramsey. In the Blue kitchen, enemies Ben and Danny both got an earful and while Seth got an extra special bollocking for wiping his face and then wiping his pan. Ramsey announced both teams as losers and told them to nominate two people for eviction.

Back at the house and Coi openly admitted that she had been terrible, Carol chipped in to say that had Lacey been on that station, it would have been ten times worse! The contestants lined up in front of Chef Ramsey, the boys picked Seth and Ben whilst the girls picked Lacey and Colleen. With Lacey and Colleen both up for nomination, I feared the worst for Colleen but chef picked off Seth. But there was one final twist before the end, Lacey was moved to the mens team much to the joy of Carol.

Lesbian Vampire Disappointment!

Not since the release of Sankes on a Plane was released have I been so disappointed with a film that has an awesome title! But at least Snakes on a Plane had plenty of snakes, In Corden and Horne's latest outing, Lesbian Vampires aren't lesbian enough for my liking!

After being dumped by his girlfriend again, Jimmy (Horne) and his best friend Fletch (Corden) decide they need a break, being skint Jimmy comes up with the idea of a hiking holiday, much to the disapproval of Fletch who is more interested in getting his end away. The pals head off to the village of Cragwich for some peace and relaxation. Upon entering the village, the mysterious locals send the boys to a lodge where they meet a group of female Swedish party goers (although the accents were so bad they could have been American or Irish). At the lodge the travellers fun is short lived as a series of mysterious disappearances throws Jimmy, Fletch and Lotte in to a battle against the Vampire Queen Carmilla.

If you read the last paragraph you may be thinking that this film doesn't sound bad, well let me be perfectly clear, this film is far from good, in fact it, it is terrible! Thankfully for Horne and Corden, they already have a fan base out there and a succesful show because if they were first timers, they would have been finished after this shambles. The script is poor, the gags are non exsistant, the plot is bland and the direction is weak. There is no gore, in fact every time one of the vampires is killed they just spray a load of white goo, hardly terrifying or funny. In fact one must ask, where the hell were the jokes in this 'comedy'? Horne and Corden were one dimensional, both just playing their characters Gavin and Smithy, Corden was reduced to passing off swear words as gags. Lesbian Vampire Killers is sh*t, don't watch it!

HK day 2

After last night’s elimination of Wil, a number of the boys weren’t too pleased at having to spend at least another day with Seth. Day 2 started with an early wake-up call for the contestants, they were assembled outside HK where they viewed the wasted food from the previous night’s service. But Ramsey must have been in a good mood because he didn’t make them swim in it, instead the two teams had to find fish out scallops from a couple of tanks, unfortunately for Colleen, she got very intimate with the scallops.

The challenge was for the contestants to extract the scallop meat, the winning team being the one who could produce the most scallops that met Chef Ramsey’s approval. The boys won by a single scallop. The girls were left to rue their loss as the boys were set to go off on a boat ride. Shortly before the guys were to set off, Ramsey called in Big Robert and advised him that he would not be able to travel with the rest of the team because there was a 300lb limit per person on the boat. I thought this was a little tacky in the sense that this could have been done off camera, making the fat guy feel bad wasn’t really the way to go. But Chef Ramsey appeared to soften by allowing Robert to meet the guys at the Island by taking the ferry across. So we cut to scenes of the boys having fun with Gordon and Seth being extremely scary with all his Ramsey related knowledge. Meanwhile Robert crosses in to the island via the ferry only to be met by the boys and Gordon and told that they are heading back! What a pointless task? Why make Ramsey look like a dick for picking on the fat guy?

Meanwhile lazy Lacey felt the wrath of her teammates when she failed to come down for her team’s punishment. As the teams cleared up after the prep work, Ji twisted her ankle. La was concerned for her team mate, what she should have been more concerned about was the fact that she had been cleaning the floor seconds before the accident occurred, it was all her fault I tell you! During service Colleen got her customary bashing from Chef Ramsey and I have to admire Colleen’s resolve in the face of such criticism. Meanwhile Ji soldiered on despite being in excruciating pain helping her team finish a full service. The boys did likewise and were declared the winners.

Back in the dorm the bitch fest began, Carol went on the attack against Lacey, but truth be told, Carol was not great shakes in the kitchen, at least Lazy ass Lacey has shown some potential. The girls elected to put Lacey and Ramsey’s favourite Caollen up for nomination. But the twist came moments before Ramsey was about to fire Colleen (well he didn’t say it, but we all know he was itching to get rid of her), Ji asked to go as the pain in her ankle was too much. Ji got a send off that’s usually reserved for presidents, whilst Lacey and Colleen live to fight another day!

The Shield

I've finished watching series one (I know I'm so behind when it comes to some shows!) and it was pretty awesome, it's no holds barred and it has the same kind of edge The Wire used to have. One thing I'm still split on is Vic Mackey, the main man of the show. The problem with Mackey is, he doesn't just bend the rules, he's a law unto himself and in the very first episode he shoots dead a cop. Later on we find that he has links with local drug lord Rondell. My favourite ever cop has to be Jimmy McNulty, he liked to bend the rules in order to get the job done and he was a pain in the ass but he never over stepped the mark. Mackey has his good qualities, he looks out for his boys, he's a family man and he does more good than bad.

His war with Aceveda is an interesting one, even though Aceveda is looking to get Vic by the balls, he's having to work with Mackey because he knows, Vic is one of his best cops and without him Farmington would be a very dangerous place.

Personally my favourite character has to be Dutch, he's a bit of a nerd (Like Prez and Lester of The Wire) but he's damn good too! When he busted the serial killer, it was a defining moment for his character.