Raw recap & reactions: Random Monday in June
Apologies to anyone who showed up here looking for some half-witticisms and irreverent humor about one of their favorite wrestling programs. We'll get to that, I promise, but there's something I need to get off my chest.
As of this writing, WWE hasn't acknowledged Pride Month. The same year in which they didn't acknowledge African American History Month, they're giving Pride the same no vaseline treatment. It was commonplace for them to give a cursory hat tip to months that mean something to so many on their roster and their audience. I was a lot more irate about this before the sun went down, and maybe I'll have more fire for it later, but it's sad that the company stopped doing something they did pretty regularly but seemingly stopped because of a supposed cultural backlash.
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People show their true colors in moments like this, so yeah, it would seem WWE is stating pretty loudly through deafening silence who they are and what they're about.
Soapbox moment over, back to your regular scheduled sports entertainment wrestling program.
Bash money
This was a weird episode of Raw that, honestly, didn't give me much to work with. I mean, El Grande Americano is in the Money in the Bank match. Yes, Chad Gable's alter ego is wrestling for the briefcase as opposed to CM Punk or AJ Styles. I figured El Grande's only purpose was to take a pin, but apparently not.
Look, I get part of this. Seth Rollins' crew has beef with Punk, and they showed some AJ their teeth prior to the main event. And this is part of Jey Uso's story too. If they put Punk in jeopardy, Jey & Sami would come a-runnin.' Punk helped Jey & Sami when Seth interrupted their tag match with Bron Breakker & Bronson Reed, so it only made sense for Jey to return the favor.
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GUNTHER is a part of this as well. Thankfully, we're no longer doing the whole 'Jey isn't good enough for the title' bit that's older than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich sitting in the Sahara on a summer day. Instead, GUNTHER is pointing out that Jey is running himself ragged and not being strategic. He's not wrong either. Jey is jumping into every battle that doesn't concern the gold around his waist. This also happened to him:
The man ate several Tsunami sandwiches for dinner. And I'm sure most, if not all of them come with a severe bout of indigestion.
All of this is fine. It's sound storytelling that reveals character and branches together easily.
But it didn't do anything exciting. Money in the Bank is a big deal event, yet this felt like a random Monday in June rather than go-home show for one of the territory's biggest events of the year.
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I'm still looking forward to MitB, but I'd love a sense of urgency several eves before a big show. Make me really want to see it rather than taking my patronage as a given.
Deep Cuts
Stephanie Vaquer's road to dominance started with a win over Ivy Nile and Liv Morgan. This was her first match on Raw as a member of the red brand roster, and also one that put her in the final spot of this year's Money in the Bank match. Ivy was there to take the pin, as Liv's got potentially much bigger fish worth a fish fry down the line. It's wild Money in the Bank is this weekend, right?
Rusev is down for the fight. Sheamus is down for the fight. Sheamus' message to his old friend? 'I bully bullies.' Doesn't have the poetry of Rusev's promo but still effective. This will be a key indicator of how the territory sees Rusev. There's some meat (no pun intended) on the bones of him and Sheamus, and I hope they keep playing on their history, along with Sheamus' storied history with the Nelson Muntz types.
Roxanne Perez offered her services to Liv. Liv said nah. Instead, she lent her considerable hand to Finn Balor & JD McDonagh. Very fun and dope tag match between the two Judgment Day members and the War Raiders. Still not a fan of that Judgment Day music though. Take it out back and shoot it.
Really liked the Lyra Valkyria and Becky Lynch's segment. Lyra looks and sounds like a hot babyface, while Becky sounds more and more like a selfish, conniving heel. Becky's 'I don't fight in Tulsa' line made me fall out. It was all in the delivery. A brief skirmish broke out between them, making Becky go back on her word almost immediately. Looking forward to this match when money inside banks is on the line.
Kari Sane & Dakota KAI might have their sights set on some tag team gold. The former defeated Raquel Rodriguez thanks to the latter having her back once Liv got involved. Liv wants Dakota's championship but I'm sure a program between all four women is percolating.
The biggest thing that happened this week is Stephanie Vaquer's debut and her subsequent meeting with Mami. That's. It. Maybe that's a symptom of doing Saturday Night's Main Event so soon after Backlash and so close to Money in the Bank. I can't call it. But this just wasn't an exciting television show.
What say you, Cagesiders? Will Stephanie win the women's ladder match?
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'Pride & Prejudice' directed by Joe Wright He added: ''Then there is an orchestra that starts coming in, but it's not the orchestra in the room, there's something new at that point that comes into the story between the two of them. This music is drifting into the room, from someplace very far away, maybe they hear it, maybe they don't, who knows?'' If you ask any fan of the film what their favorite moment is, more often than not, the answer will be when Mr. Darcy walks out of the morning mist in the field. This scene is gorgeously shot and paced, and it is a perfect combination of the breathtaking photography, Mr. Darcy's love confession and Marianelli's theme Your Hands Are Cold which is a higher, more epic reprise of Liz on Top of the World. Marianelli said, ''That particular scene when he is coming through the mist, that moment of butterflies in the stomach and the excitement, at some point it has to calm down. And they're in front of each other, eventually they will be holding hands, you know it's very British, there's actually no kiss, it's proper, they can't kiss.'' He added: ''I remember we were recording the music, I was in the control room of the studio with Joe, and Benjamin Wallfish was conducting the music, and I had to tell him 'You have to cool it down, you can't be too emotional now, if you overdo it, they're gonna kiss and we can't do that' which was a bit surreal because obviously the movie was already shot, they couldn't kiss even if they wanted to. But it felt like the music shouldn't push them too hard, it should be suspended, really, and make you feel like you weren't sure which way it was going to go.'' Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet No, there is no kiss between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet at the end, at least not in the original version. However, an alternative ending was shot for the U.S. audience, where the two main characters kiss -which is not something one could have found in a Jane Austen novel.- ''I think we really recorded two different versions, I vaguely remember both versions to score, I mean they were very similar, I can't remember the details but the one with the kiss was probably a bit longer. There was always that moment of release at the end where we could go back to the music that opened the movie. At the beginning it doesn't go that high, at the end it goes higher. But in my mind that was the release, the piano piece at the beginning should also come when the film ends.'' He added: ''But it's funny, I think the British audience wouldn't have been happy with a kiss.'' Marianelli declared that his main goal was to write a score that would feel fresh and modern. He said, ''Liz on Top of the World is no longer in that kind of late 18th century music language, it becomes more modern.'' So what was the first image that was on Marianelli's mind when he got the call for the job some 21 years ago, and what kind of atmosphere did he want to convey through his music? He said, ''You just reminded me about the atmosphere, the first time I went to see the film when it was shot, something really rare happened, which is that Joe convinced everybody to see the movie without any music at all. Usually when we go watch it for the first time, they put music on top of it, classical music from the time, and instead, he projected the film without anything. And that was the most beautiful thing, because it was a really gorgeous movie, so beautiful, and also you coud get a sense of the atmosphere of the scenes, before anybody made you try to feel something with the music. So, there were these empty spaces to go in and fill up with my ideas. That was quite beautiful, it happens so rarely. Actually it's only with Joe, that I'm able to watch the film without any music that had been put there as a temporary soundtrack.'' Composer Dario Marianelli won his first Oscar for 'Atonement' directed by Joe Wright Joe Wright and Dario Marianelli have worked together on four occasions, Pride & Prejudice, then Atonement, which won the composer his first Oscar, Anna Karenina, all three movies starred Keira Knightley and finally The Darkest Hour. The 20th anniversary of Pride & Prejudice is truly an event, the film was recently re-released in theaters and Marianelli's score got a special deluxe vinyl edition on top of all the merchandise released for the occasion, which is a testament of how timeless and beloved this film and Marianelli's score are. ''I'm sure that the scores that I have written and attracted the most attention were all the scores I have written for Joe, and it's his fault! He's just very precise about the space that he leaves in the films for the music. He doesn't make the film, and then calls the composer to paint it over, to decorate. It's absolutely the opposite of decoration, he's already thinking what the music is going to do before he even shoots the scene.''
