Monday, February 23 – 12:03 P.M. (CT)

-Mickey Rourke was robbed! I watched Milk before the Oscars yesterday, and while Sean Penn delivered a strong performance, Rourke came through with a much more memorable showing in The Wrestler.

Penn may have been on to something when he joked about the Academy being "commie, homo-loving, son of a guns." Of course, I wouldn't use those exact words to describe the situation, but Hollywood loves its liberal-themed political message movies (in the interest of full disclosure, I consider myself a moderate, but I lean left more than I did eight years ago).

I enjoyed the story of Harvey Milk, and I'm ashamed to admit that I knew little about the man whose life it was based on. Yet given Hollywood's love of all things liberal, I remember thinking to myself that Rourke was in big trouble the moment I watched Penn kiss another man in the movie. I'm only half joking.

Rourke's performance was outstanding. I can't imagine another actor playing the part of Randy "The Ram" Robinson as well as Mickey did. Meanwhile, Penn's performance was also strong, but it won't stick with me the way Rourke's will. Penn played the part well, but I never got the feeling that another actor couldn't possibly play the part as well as Penn did.

If nothing else, the right movie won best picture. Slumdog Millionaire was awesome and I can't recommend it enough. I didn't see all the movies that were up for Best Picture so I can't say whether The Wrestler should have been nominated, but I enjoyed Slumdog more than The Wrestler and Milk.

Now back to your regularly scheduled pro wrestling programming...

-The big question this week is whether WWE and TNA can maintain the big audiences they drew for Raw and Impact. The advertised match of Shawn Michaels vs. JBL for the right to challenge Undertaker at WrestleMania 25 doesn't do much for this viewer, so hopefully that won't be the main focus of the show.

I assume we'll get a scathing commentary from Chris Jericho about Rourke failing to win an Oscar, and perhaps a live appearance from Triple H. His sit-down interview on Friday's Smackdown was well done, but I'm holding out hope for some fresh material from Hunter tonight.

Meanwhile, the TNA creative team showed more focus over the last two weeks. They did a good job of showcasing the Sting vs. Kurt Angle feud, and they're slowly building up the Ultimate X match for the Destination X pay-per-view. TNA has delivered some flop pay-per-views since Bound For Glory, but Destination X is shaping up to be a quality show.

-Speaking of TNA, I'm still looking for a regular Impact tapings correspondent. If you attend the tapings on even a semi-regular basis, please contact me at dotnetjason@gmail.com.

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