A Taylor Sheridan reality series about reining!
This documentary-competition which currently spans six seasons showcases the lives of various horse reiners as they prepare and compete in the Taylor Sheridan created "Run For a Million" tournament. What is horse reining? It's being able to ride your horse out into an empty arena and then doing a set pattern with it involving spins both ways, circles of various speeds, and the sliding stop signature move where the faster you go the harder it is to be accurate where to stop but the more points you might get. Much like figure skating, judges then give a score and whoever has the highest wins! If you watched Yellowstone you would have seen some of this as some of the reiners make an appearance there!
It's nice to see the tournament evolve in later seasons as it gets more popular to also include cow-horse (now you do that pattern on your horse while forcing an often non-compliant cow to also do it with you), cutting (there's a herd of cattle in the arena, separate one out and keep it from returning to the herd for as long as you can), and bareback (get on a wild horse and hang on for 8 seconds).
We do like the people the show focuses on too, as its great to see them evolve as people not just competitors. It's not a plot related thing, that's just life. The producers also use a good technique of rotating focus of riders per season, because all these people keep showing up again which means in later seasons even if a rider isn't heavily featured, you know exactly who it is when they get called into the arena. Awesome show and one I hope to see more of! Recommended!
Wednesday, 22 July 2026
The Last Cowboy (TV Series)
Sunday, 14 December 2025
Karate Kid: Legends and Physical: Asia
Shows about physical competition!
Karate Kid: Legends
Li (played by Ben Wong) loves kung fu but is forced to give it up to move to New York with his mom. There's a moment where it looks like it will break the familiar formula of every Karate Kid movie before it which is exciting, but no. There's a girl, a rival, and a karate tournament which he needs to train for.
Lucky his sifu (played by Jackie Chan) knows someone that can help with that training montage: the original Karate Kid Daniel La Russo (Ralph Macchio) last seen in Cobra Kai. Overall just an OK entry to the Karate Kid universe but I can't help but feel there was a potentially better movie hiding here if the script writers / producers just had enough balls to go for it.
Physical: Asia
This next installment of this series features eight teams of six from various countries in Asia (more like Asia-Pacific given Australia is one of the teams). Like previous seasons the very first episode is a lot of introduction but its easier to remember people this time around as there are only 48 in total?
Some good personalities in this one!
Teams then perform "quests" to knock each other out / survive the competition which involve a good amount of team work, skill, and grit. The editing is again spot on for each episodes cliff-hanger, but if you haven't gotten used to the reaction-rewind-reaction#2 style of Korean TV this will put you through that ringer. :P We found it very entertaining and are even more in awe that many of the contestants from different countries have since become friends! The strong positive vibes make it super cool. It's like Masterchef Australia, but with athletes instead of cooks. Thumbs up!
Monday, 7 October 2024
Hunted (Australia TV Series)
It's a big game of hide and seek!
This currently three season reality contest sees around 10 contestant pairs act as criminals on the run, with each pair getting a discrete camera operator on their team as they try elude capture for about 20 days at which point they need to extract to win a share of the prize money (which they may or may not be carrying on them, depending on the season).
There are other limits imposed on the contestants, like they can't leave the state during "the game", they have to move every x number of days, they can't load up with loads of cash pre run and so on.
Meanwhile the Hunter force is made up of four two man ground units (+camera man) and an office of techies, ex-cops and ex-soldiers who use everything in their cheat mode level power to track down and tag the crooks to get them out of the game. It's actually really cool to see the numerous tools they have at their disposal.
Yes it's heavily edited, but its in that that makes the episodes exciting. So exciting that we ended up binge watching every available episode! While it might not be to everyone's tastes, I definitely enjoyed this one (the Australian series anyway. Other countries also have Hunted)!
Tuesday, 22 July 2014
Neverwinter Online: Fire up your Foundries!
This might be the time to give the foundry a try if you haven't already, and if you require help or knowledge then feel free to ask and I will try help to the best of my ability.
Just a quick run down on the main requirements:
-one entry per Author, must be new quest (easy)
-include the Cult of the Dragon (easy, just plan for them to be included)
-adhere to Foundry EULA (easy, just stick to D&D, don't add people from Star Trek or Warcraft etc. and don't make it too "sexual")
-average duration of 15 minutes or more
That last one will be what makes or breaks your adventure as a contender. The only way to get that time balance right is to play test a lot, which means actually having something to test BEFORE you submit your finished work to the official thread. Doing too much of one thing for 15 minutes will also lower the enjoyability so you'll need to be smart!
As a slight bonus: Your mission will get plays, even if it is just from other contestants gauging the opposition. That is one of the hardest things when making a mission - advertising and spruiking it, so it's best to take advantage of the official spotlight while you get the chance as foundry contests do not come about very often!