The Fairfield Company Target Wrestling Mystery Repack Box Review Break
By Paul Rudoff on May. 27, 2017 at 11:30 PM in Wrestling, Mystery/Blind Bags
Undoubtedly, if you've been to a Target store, you've seen the "cards and collectibles" section at the end of the checkout lanes. It's where you'll find all of the sports cards, Garbage Pail Kids, Wacky Packages, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and all of that other overpriced junk. I almost always look at what's there, but rarely every buy anything as I can't justify the prices - especially considering the "blind bag" nature of these things. If I'm gonna spend $4 to $5 on a few measly cards, I at least want to know what I'm buying.
On a recent visit to my local Target, I saw these red Wrestling mystery repack boxes from The Fairfield Company (a division of Excell Marketing), which I expected to be priced at $15 or $20 each. Imagine my surprise when the price checker showed them to be a mere $4.99 each. I bought all four boxes that my local Target had, as well as another box at a different Target. So, five boxes in total, at a total cost of $25.00 (plus tax). The big draw for me were the Teenymates packs, which my Target was also selling individually for $3.99 each. Getting TWO packs for $4.99, PLUS three packs of cards, and two packs of erasers was a much MUCH better deal than just one pack of Teenymates for $1.00 less. (Note: The photos accompanying this review were taken at different times, so they may not show everything I mention in my text.)
Each one of these boxes contains the following:
- 2 packs of WWE Teenymates (2015) (regularly $3.99 each)
- 2 packs of WWE Eraseez collectible puzzle erasers (2015)
- 2 packs of Road To Wrestlemania 2014 cards
- 1 pack of random WWE cards (2010/2013/2014 series, in my case)
WWE 2K17 Video Game Welcome To Suplex City Trailer Easter Eggs
By Paul Rudoff on Sep. 27, 2016 at 11:29 PM in Filming Locations, Wrestling
WWE and 2K released a new trailer for the new WWE 2K17 video game (due out in two weeks), and as I was watching it last night on Raw, I couldn't help but notice a bunch of Easter Eggs. I knew that I would have to get an HD copy from the web in order to even try to catch them, and BOY were there some good ones that you would miss unless you went through this sucker frame-by-frame like I did. I'm also tagging this as a filming location article because I actually identified one of the central locations used in the trailer. That was completely unintentional. Sometimes I'm just that damn good. Lots of images after the jump, click on them to enlarge.
Rest In Peace, My Mother - Linda Rudoff
By Paul Rudoff on Nov. 30, 2015 at 8:42 PM in Tributes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Page 1 - Introduction
* Page 2 - The Funeral
* Page 3 - A Life In Pictures
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm going through a bad case of deja vu. Last year I lost my father, and last night my mother, Linda Joyce Rudoff, passed away at the age of 67.
I really don't even know how it got to this point. She originally took ill on September 9th, but was continually making progress every week, with the occasional setback. If anything, she seemed closer to death when this all started than she has been recently. This was completely unexpected. Those of you who follow me personally on Facebook will have been following along every step of the way these past eleven and a half weeks. In lieu of writing more to this blog post, I'll just repost all of my Facebook updates, which will show you the highs and lows of this whole ordeal.
Halloween Treat 2015 - Who Shot Roger Rabbit & Arcade Movie Scripts
By Paul Rudoff on Oct. 31, 2015 at 8:34 PM in Miscellaneous
For a few years now, I have done Halloween Treats on my Ghostbusters website, Spook Central. I started off this site/blog with a Halloween Treat last year. While I can't promise that it will be a regular feature on this site, I do have a treat for this year. In fact, I have two of them!
I have a small movie and television script collection, which is mostly Ghostbusters-related. However, two of my scripts have nothing to do with Ghostbusters, and so they wouldn't really be appropriate to use on Spook Central. I figured that I'd post them here as the Halloween Treats for this year. I scanned them in, and you can download the PDFs by clicking on the images below.
The first one is "Who Shot Roger Rabbit" (third draft), which later hit the screen as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". This script features a lot of elements that were dropped from the final film, making it a MUST READ for Roger Rabbit fans. The second one is "Arcade", a 1993 direct-to-video release from Full Moon Pictures starring Megan Ward, Peter Billingsley, A.J. Langer, John DeLancie, and Seth Green. It probably won't be of interest to as many of you as Roger Rabbit, but it's a fun little early-1990s "virtual reality" sci-fi flick. I rented the VHS from Blockbuster around 1993, and my friend Mark and I *loved* the film. I loved it so much that I actually bought the script direct from Full Moon for $20, signed on the protective cover by Full Moon head honcho (and the film's executive producer) Charles Band, and stored it in a binder with full-color cover art and a four-page sell-sheet! The cover art is included at the head of the PDF, and the sell-sheet is included at the end of it. The signed protective cover was irrelevant to the script, so it wasn't scanned in.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is available on Blu-Ray, 2-Disc Vista Series DVD (alt url), and the original letterbox 1999 DVD with the original "no panties" version of the movie. Arcade is available on individual DVD and in the Full Moon Classics Vol. 1 DVD Box Set. You can also read a plain text copy of the "Who Shot Roger Rabbit" script at The Daily Script.
Back in the late 1990s, I hand-transcribed the Arcade script, as well as the scripts for Men In Black and The Wizard Of Oz. I gave copies of them to one site and one site only - and that site is no longer online. However, other people have taken the three scripts and placed them all over the internet. The good ones kept my transcribers credit intact. The bad ones removed it. You should have no trouble finding any of the scripts using the Google search engine. Sci-Fi Scripts is one of the good sites for The Wizard Of Oz script.
For another Halloween Treat, check out Spook Central where you can read about the time that Spider-Man teamed up with the cast of Saturday Night Live.
I have a small movie and television script collection, which is mostly Ghostbusters-related. However, two of my scripts have nothing to do with Ghostbusters, and so they wouldn't really be appropriate to use on Spook Central. I figured that I'd post them here as the Halloween Treats for this year. I scanned them in, and you can download the PDFs by clicking on the images below.
The first one is "Who Shot Roger Rabbit" (third draft), which later hit the screen as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". This script features a lot of elements that were dropped from the final film, making it a MUST READ for Roger Rabbit fans. The second one is "Arcade", a 1993 direct-to-video release from Full Moon Pictures starring Megan Ward, Peter Billingsley, A.J. Langer, John DeLancie, and Seth Green. It probably won't be of interest to as many of you as Roger Rabbit, but it's a fun little early-1990s "virtual reality" sci-fi flick. I rented the VHS from Blockbuster around 1993, and my friend Mark and I *loved* the film. I loved it so much that I actually bought the script direct from Full Moon for $20, signed on the protective cover by Full Moon head honcho (and the film's executive producer) Charles Band, and stored it in a binder with full-color cover art and a four-page sell-sheet! The cover art is included at the head of the PDF, and the sell-sheet is included at the end of it. The signed protective cover was irrelevant to the script, so it wasn't scanned in.
 (Sep. 2, 1986) (6.2 Mb) |
 (Nov. 6, 1990) (6.7 Mb) |
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is available on Blu-Ray, 2-Disc Vista Series DVD (alt url), and the original letterbox 1999 DVD with the original "no panties" version of the movie. Arcade is available on individual DVD and in the Full Moon Classics Vol. 1 DVD Box Set. You can also read a plain text copy of the "Who Shot Roger Rabbit" script at The Daily Script.
Back in the late 1990s, I hand-transcribed the Arcade script, as well as the scripts for Men In Black and The Wizard Of Oz. I gave copies of them to one site and one site only - and that site is no longer online. However, other people have taken the three scripts and placed them all over the internet. The good ones kept my transcribers credit intact. The bad ones removed it. You should have no trouble finding any of the scripts using the Google search engine. Sci-Fi Scripts is one of the good sites for The Wizard Of Oz script.
For another Halloween Treat, check out Spook Central where you can read about the time that Spider-Man teamed up with the cast of Saturday Night Live.
Shot On Site - Married To The Mob Train Stations
By Paul Rudoff on Aug. 2, 2015 at 8:32 PM in Filming Locations
This is an article 25 years in the making, and one that is extra special to me.
You see, what I'm going to write about today was my very first filming location identification. I had a friend in high school named Kevin Gondek who was a big train enthusiast. We studied this scene in the early 1990s on VHS and determined which two stations were used. I don't remember how we made the determination. Most likely, it was Kevin who figured it out.
After 25 years, I finally visited the two train stations on Fri. July 17, 2015 and took photographs to match as many of the movie shots as I felt was necessary. So, with all of that backstory out of the way, let's get right to it. Please note, this article has almost 30 images in it, so there may be a little bit of load time.
1,001 Classic Commercials DVD Review
By Paul Rudoff on May. 26, 2015 at 12:00 PM in Home Video
This review was originally written on May 26, 2015
Quite A Healthy Collection Of Vintage Commercials, With Only A Few Things That Don't Belong
Quite A Healthy Collection Of Vintage Commercials, With Only A Few Things That Don't Belong
This review of 1,001 Classic Commercials (Mill Creek Entertainment) (also available in a Collectible Tin) is dedicated to my father, Joel Rudoff. I started watching this DVD set with him back in January 2011. We got about halfway through Disc 1 when Hurricane Sandy struck at the end of October 2012. The storm destroyed a lot of our personal property, including lots of irreplaceable family photos and mementos, and also many items in our DVD and Blu-ray collection, such as this DVD. We repurchased it (again from Target for $5.00) in 2013 after we moved into a new house. Sadly, we never got back to watching it again before my father passed away in January 2014. Now, in May 2015, I finally was able to watch the entire DVD set with other family members.
Shot On Site - A To Z / Laverne & Shirley California Apartment
By Paul Rudoff on Feb. 16, 2015 at 8:31 PM in Filming Locations
At the beginning of Laverne & Shirley's sixth season in 1980, the ladies leave Milwaukee for the warmer weather of Burbank, California. They are seen moving into an apartment building that was supposedly located at 113 1/2 Laurel Vista Drive.
Shot On Site - Mulaney Apartment Building
By Paul Rudoff on Feb. 12, 2015 at 8:30 PM in Filming Locations
For the 2014-2015 television season, Fox premiered a show called Mulaney based on the stand-up routines of its star and creator, John Mulaney. Although the show is still airing as I write this, I doubt that it will last past the season. I stopped watching after the first five episodes, but not before I could identify the location of the apartment building Mulaney and his friends live in.
Shot On Site - Crash and Bernstein John Marshall High School
By Paul Rudoff on Feb. 9, 2015 at 8:29 PM in Filming Locations
Here I am again with the (should be) final Shot on Site article about the Disney XD series "Crash & Bernstein". This one is about a location that has appeared in so many different movies and TV shows, that I recognized it as soon as I saw it.
Shot On Site - East Pavilion Hospital Stock Footage
By Paul Rudoff on Feb. 5, 2015 at 8:28 PM in Filming Locations
Today's Shot on Site article will be a little different than the rest. Instead of focusing on a TV show or movie and ID'ing the locations used within, I will be writing about a piece of stock footage I've seen in a few different shows.