”Arena (1989)” - An Evil Penguin in Sloth’s Corner & Raimi’s ”Doctor Strange”

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CatBusRuss returns to his blogging roots. This episode is dedicated to "Arena" from 1989. Our host wrote a review for this Charles Band produced feature back in 2019, and it caught the attention of one of the premier nerdy minds in the Champaign/Urbana metroplex, Tim Bates of Evil Penguin Games. Tim has had a big influence on his fellow retail geeks, like friend of the show Kodiak Thompson, by exposing them to media like the "John Dies at the End" franchise.

Tim and Russ have essentially been working together the past six years, but it was not until the CatBus shared his review of this feature on Facebook did the two expand their conversations from complaining about customers to movies. "Arena" was one of Tim's favorite movies growing up and at one time he owned a VHS copy of it. As for our host's relationship with the film, it took him 30 years to get around to it.

His fascination with gaudy, low-budget faire had only started in 2009. But he remembers growing up on early eighties "Star Wars" knock offs. Add in a tournament fighting element, and Russ wishes his cinema snobbiness had passed decades prior.

This is not to say that Russ has totally abandoned being a cinematic elitist. He still is a tired of a lot of big-budget studio films, but he knows dissing the mere concept of them may not be fair. Russ liked the first three phases of the MCU, so despite the fatigue towards the series, the fear of being too judgmental means he must continue with MCTuesday. For this installment, the feature he takes on is Sam Raimi's "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness".