DANTETV WRESTLING PRESENTS

Founders Undisputed Championship Elimination Matchup – March 6th-7th 2010

From around North America and over the Atlantic, teams have gathered together to battle in this double elimination matchup for the coveted (O)~DanteTV Undisputed Championship Belt!~(O)

Using monks from the island of Cocabango, we randomly shuffled the teams together for the first round:
[ Round 1 ]

Queens Lads vs Royal Rovers
The polite and nice Queens Lads from the UK meet the Nova Scotian brawn of the Royal Rovers.

The Alternate Reality vs Clownz
TAR has been the unofficial champion of the North Ladder for the last three years and are the first to face the newcomers from the newly formed Southern Ladder league in the form of Clownz.
Not much is known about Clownz due to contract negotiations so we’ll wait and see. But both teams seem to be smiling all the time and keep saying ‘Put On A Happy Face’ . So this should be clean
fun and wholesome family entertainment.

XXX vs Flying Frogs
Axes and ice picks is all we’ve seen from this blood feud that comes from two teams in Southern Ladder for whats shaping up to be a gruesome grudge match.
Due to contract negotiations, not much is known. However, earlier this week, a shaky webcam YouTube video surfaced of a match held in Los Alamos, Nevada.
From that video, all I can say is that there will be NO CARS ALLOWED IN THE RING or HAND GRENADES. This is a professional match up and not a street fight.

Fait Au Canada United vs Brick City Outlaws
The FACU, claiming to be the preeminent Southern Ladder League team, takes on New York City’s finest in a Bats, Bells, and Barrels matchup.

Matches start at 7pm at the DanteTV Arena.

Bracket Matchup Here:
http://dantetv.com/forums/rivals.php?action=tournaments_brackets&tournament_id=2

Synopsis: Dave Rife goes under cover in one of his White Castle restaurants. However, things don’t go as easy as planned when he accidently mishandles some of the bakery equipment. -TV.com

The first segment of this episode I felt were too obviously staged. Sure, you have a film crew following you around that is documenting entry level employee job opportunities. But I felt that compared to previous episodes of Undercover Boss, this episode kinda crossed that suspension of disbelief for the viewer.

Personally, I love to see the inner workings of these companies and have peeks at behind the scenes. That’s what makes the show cool for me. I’m hoping for a glimpse at Hershey’s or perhaps a Canadian company like Tim Hortons. I also like the unsung heroes in action. I just felt like either the editors didn’t blur the line enough for the audience or they felt the need to script something with that first store. Maybe if they shuffled that first segment to the end after the packaging plant, it wouldn’t have felt so unusual or out of place.

The Hooters episode is still my favorite to date, given how much stigma the company has to deal with and how hard it is to run a company like Hooters.
Even the 7-Eleven and Waste Management episodes flowed better.

But while I love White Castle and was ecstatic when I got my first sack o’ sliders, I do not rest the shortcomings on them. I just hope the Undercover Boss producers take away from this episode to give more consideration in future to story layout. As an audience member, I don’t mind planted scenes to work into a planned corporate idea so long as they are smooth all around. I’ve watched Apprentice, Dragons Den and a slew of other series over the years to accept that sometimes they’ll put together a happy string of events for a bold new promotion for the company. But the ‘healthy wellness’ segment smacked too much of scripting glue. Maybe it started out as a coincidence and editors ran with it as a tie-in to Mr. Rife that subsequently blossomed into a beautiful campaign idea for White Castle.

Good idea. Just too early for a TV audience I feel.

I have to admit, I really wasn’t sure about how this series was going to last.

Sure, you have Raimi and Lucy with a few other stars mixed in. A lot of T&A never hurts either. But after a (LONG) while, it becomes repetitive. The fights blurring together, no real plot forwarding save a few scant threads. If True Blood was back on, I’d probably would have dropped Spartacus to the way side.

Until this episode. I LOVE John Hannah as Quintus Lentulus Batiatus! The vile and evilness he conjurers. Even though I keep having The Mummy flashbacks, this episode cinched him as one of my favorite bad guys. This episode single-handedly hooked me back into the series. Sure, his sodomizing of a slave while his wife watched in the pool as they discussed evil deeds was pretty darn hot. And the orgy with the gladiators and whores was great as a background for Spartacus’ plotting.

I even liked the slap that Lucy Lawless’ character gave the slave to instruct her on what the slave had seen. I half-wondered if it was improvised.

But the ending… I am at a loss for words. That look that John Hannah gave and the way Lucy Lawless’ character tried to explain things away… was MAGNIFICENT.

If you fell to the way side a few episodes back, now would be a time to come back in. I thought this was going to be the level of Rome initially and was disappointed when it seemed to rely more on the blood and effects to magically manifest a plot than to have a plot to begin with. But this episode is the spice that sets everything aglow.

For those new to series, watch it all the way through. You will not be disappointed.

spartacus blood and sand - lucyl_johnh

Test commercial we did for Tim’s Magic Box. Coming this Fall!

I was filming a gamer documentary. However, this session had an ulterior motive with a secret plan weeks in the making for the GM. She never saw it coming…..

Well, not quite totally starting over….

I spent the last two weeks off work, the longest I’ve been sick in 20 years. After watching more TV in three days than I had in six months as I couldn’t focus to work, I started thinking about what direction I wanted to go in with DanteTV.

DanteTV itself has seen many incarnations over the years. But lately, I just felt like I’ve been spinning my wheels and not really finding a format or direction I wanted to go in. I still don’t have the full picture of what I want. But I do know the things I wish to keep.

So for starters, I cleared out all the old pages from the site. I then set up a Coppermine Gallery for my photos and media and imported them from my old site.
I have plans for a depot and I will keep the arcade.

And pretty much, this is as far as I have gotten. In a way it’s sad. But I’d rather not go around in circles again when I can build something.

More updates as they come along.