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RODDY PIPER'S THEY LIVE BACK IN THEATERS, MST3K VS. BATWOMAN, CLASSIC SANTO FILMS ON BLU-RAY & MORE

Former NWA World Champion Dory Funk Jr. release his official autobiography, The Last of a Great Breed: True Stories From A Career in Pro Wrestling, next week on 8/22.

Alamo Drafthouse theaters will be playing Roddy Piper's classic They Live over the next few weeks.  Check your local theater listings.  There will be digital screenings as well as 35 mm film depending on the date and market.  If you've never seen the film on screen, it is well worth the effort as Piper does a great job as John Nada, John Carpenter's direction is great and the fight scene with Piper and Keith David is one of the all time best fight scenes of all time in any film.

The fine folks at Mystery Science Theater will release the latest episode of their new season tomorrow 8/19, Batwoman - no relation to the DC Comics character.  The film features "a wealthy socialite/masked wrestler turned unlicensed Caped Crusader confronts a mad scientist building an army of killer fish men."  Yep, this is exactly the type of film you'd expect to see riffed by a host and their robot sidekicks while trapped in outer space.  You can check it out at www.mst3k.com tomorrow.

Enter Santo: The First Adventures of the Silver-Masked Man will be released on Blu-Ray and DVD for the first time ever in the United States on 12/5.  Promotional material for the release notes, "Immediately recognisable by his distinctive silver mask, the heroic wrestler known as El Santo (‘The Saint’) was Mexico’s most popular luchador, becoming a folk hero and the star of a hugely popular series of action films. Enter Santo: The First Adventures of the Silver-Masked Man presents the two earliest cinematic excursions of this icon of Mexican popular culture."  The set will feature 1961's Santo vs. Evil Brain and Santo vs. Infernal Men.

A new book slated for a June 2023 releaseToxic: The Story of Nine Famous Women in the Tabloid 2000s by Satah Ditum appears to have a chapter on the late Chyna set for the book as promotional material notes:

Welcome to celebrity culture in the early aughts: the reign of Perez Hilton, celebrity sex tapes, and dueling tabloids fed by paparazzi who were willing to do anything to get the shot. It was a time when the Internet was still the Wild West, and when slut-shaming, fat-shaming, and revenge porn were all considered perfectly legitimate. Celebrity was seen as a commodity to be consumed, and for the famous women of this era, they were never as popular—or as vulnerable—as when they were in crisis.

Toxic tells the stories of nine women who defined the hell of celebrity in the 2000s and explores how they were devoured by fame, how they attempted to control their own narratives, and how they succeeded or (more often) failed. These women come from all walks of fame—pop music, acting, reality TV, and WWE wrestling. Some of them you think you know already, and others will be less familiar, but Toxic reveals these women neither as pure victims nor as conniving strategists, but as complex individuals trying to navigate celebrity while under attack from a vicious and fast-changing media. Their portrayal has shaped the way that all women—famous or otherwise—are viewed today, and their experiences preempted the now-universal condition, especially thanks to social media, of living under the public gaze.

In this book, Ditum brings readers back to a time before second chances and redemption arcs, and traces the ripple effects that came in the wake of spending a decade vilifying our idols. We’ll see how these women’s stories intersect with the birth of YouTube, the rise of Internet pornography, and the emergence of Donald Trump as a political force. It’s time to come to terms with how those cultural events shaped the way we see ourselves, our bodies, our relationships, our aspirations, and our presence in the wider world. We are all products of the toxic decade.

Thanks to Jess McGrath.

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