This theme of pro wrestling as a destructive lifestyle is the basis of the 2010 documentary, “Card Subject To Change,” one it lifts from Darren Aronofsky’s critical darling, “The Wrestler,” starring Mickey Rourke.

This documentary, directed by first-time feature director Tim Disbrow, is impossible to watch and detach from that fictional representation of the same subject material.

“Card Subject To Change” is more of an overall portrait of small-time independent pro wrestling than a clear narrative, mostly existing to show all of the things that happened to Rourke’s Randy The Ram actually happens to real people. This is a lifestyle that people become addicted to, and it either becomes or ends their life.

There are three main story threads running through the film. The first deals with Johnny Falco, a veteran wrestling promoter who owns National Wrestling Superstars, which runs independent shows in the VFW and bingo halls of New Jersey — similar settings to that of “The Wrestler.” The second focuses on Kevin Sullivan, a veteran, semi-retired wrestler who owns a gym in Florida and is revered as a legend in the wrestling business.

The centerpiece of the film is the footage dealing with the late Michael Verde, who was 25 in the film’s earliest footage and began wrestling as “Trent Acid” at the age of 14. In the film, Verde is a talented and charismatic wrestler, popular in the East Coast territories, who has the looks of a WWE star. His personal demons and a downhill struggle with drug addiction keep him from moving up to that level.

Verde’s tragic struggle and downfall to drugs is this movie’s core.

If the film has a theme, it is addiction, and that wrestlers get just as addicted to pro wrestling as drug addicts do to drugs. Several wrestling veterans in the film, particularly Jim “Kamala” Harris and Terry “Sabu” Brunk, swear that they are just about to retire for good, that their bodies cannot take it anymore, but continue to wrestle to the present day.

Sullivan encapsulates the film with the statement, “You are born and you die on the independent circuit. You start there and you end there, and if you are lucky you have a run in between.”

There are several other notable appearances in the film, including Bill Moody, better known as “Paul Bearer,” and Dylan Summers, “The Necro Butcher.”

Summers can be remembered for being Rourke’s opponent in the pivotal “hardcore match” scene in “The Wrestler,” and his footage in this film is no less gruesome. At one point he is lifted off the mat after a piece of barbed wire tore a chunk of flesh out of his triceps, leaving a hole in his arm the size of a golf ball divot. All in a day’s work.

Brutal and heartbreaking, “Card Subject To Change” is also an unfocused, inelegant and meandering film that succeeds on its subject matter rather than the filmmaking technique used. This film is perhaps best viewed as supplemental to “The Wrestler” — you’ve seen the sad story, now see the sadder reality.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Licari, a Shelby Township sophomore, organized a drive to register bone marrow donors Tuesday in the Bovee University Center Rotunda.

“I know that’s what he would want, and that smile on his face when I told him I would do it, that just replays in my mind all the time,” she said.

Licari became friends with Kyle Nicholson while they were both attending Eisenhower High School. After graduating together, they both decided to go to Central Michigan University as freshmen in the fall 2010 semester, and were placed in rooms across the hall from each other in Sweeney Hall.

In February of this year, Nicholson was diagnosed with acute myeloblastic leukemia. His hope fell on finding a matching bone marrow donor for a transplant.

After his diagnosis, Licari and 11 of Nicholson’s other friends, dubbed “Team Kyle,” organized several fundraisers and three bone marrow donor registration drives, which registered more than 700 potential donors, and found matches for four leukemia patients needing bone marrow transplants.

“I’m going to try to make this an annual thing,” Licari said of holding registration drives at CMU.

Despite finding three matching bone marrow donors, Nicholson was never healthy enough for a transplant. He died July 7 at age 19.

“He was an absolutely fabulous person who touched people’s lives,” said Elaine Nicholson, Kyle’s mother, in July. “He was a very special person in a positive way.”

Licari said she was with Nicholson the day he died, and until that day she believed he would beat his leukemia.

“I didn’t know this until after he died, but he lied to me about what kind of leukemia he had … because it was the kind with the worst outlook,” Licari said. “I noticed he was getting worse, but again I never thought he wouldn’t make it through”

Licari said the day Nicholson died was the hardest of her life.

“There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about him,” she said. “I try to kind of live my life like, ‘Would Kyle like it if I did this?’”

Licari registers donors for bone marrow transplants through DKMS, a German organization that registers donors around the world. More information can be found at http://getswabbed.org.

Sault Ste. Marie freshman Sam Strahl was one of about 75 new potential donors registered Tuesday.

“I saw chalk on the ground and thought, ‘Why not?’” Strahl said. “My dad’s friend was saved by a bone marrow transplant. I thought if I could do it, then why not? I mean, I don’t need all of it.”

Members of team zombie watch a 'jam' during the Day of the Derby Dead Saturday evening at Spinning Wheels Arena, 1241 N. Mission Road. (Jeff Smith/Photo Editor)

The Central Michigan Roller Derby League hosted “Day of the Derby Dead” at Spinning Wheels Arena, 1241 N. Mission Road.

The event, an intra-league roller derby scrimmage, saw the Central Michigan derby women split into two squads — zombies and vampires — to duke it out in front of a crowd estimated at 250 to 300 by Central Michigan Roller Derby founder Lily Angiolini.

“It gives us an opportunity to skate against each other, and we also had about 10 guest skaters from other leagues,” said Angiolini, a Rosebush resident who skates under the moniker “Rosie The Pivoter.”

The two teams made themselves up to look like their monstrous namesakes. Many were wearing tattered, bloody clothing and members of the vampire team sported plastic fangs. The referees got into the fun as well, with one dressing as a werewolf and the other wearing a banana costume.

The zombie team overcame an early deficit to squeak out a win, defeating the vampires 102-101.

Angiolini said the scrimmage gave everybody in the league a chance to skate, as compared to the 14-skater roster used during official derby competitions.

The event also served as an opportunity for girls trying to get on the roster to prove themselves, she said.

“We invest about 20 to 30 hours a month into this, so it’s important that our families get to see what we are doing,” Angiolini said.

Holly Hansen-Watson, a Harrison senior who skates as “Holly Fourbarrel,” said the mood of playing against skaters who are normally her teammates was different.

Mount Pleasant resident Amanda "Hannibal Hipczyk" Tomczyk of team zombie hugs teammates after winning 103-101 during Day of the Derby Dead Saturday evening at Spinning Wheels Arena, 1241 N. Mission Road. "It was so much fun, and we won!," Tomczyk said. (Jeff Smith/Photo Editor)

“It was kind of hard not to root for your teammates on the other team, I caught myself cheering for them,” Hansen-Watson said. “I feel like I played the same, but I … didn’t see as many hard hits.”

Mount Pleasant native Jennifer Jones, who resides in Georgia and watched the derby while visiting friends, said the experience made her want to try her hand at roller derby.

“I thought it was awesome,” Jones said. “It’s something that’s really interesting to me.”

Central Michigan Roller Derby will next take to the track on Nov. 5 against Flint City Derby at Spinning Wheels.

It had lead actors that historically do not have the star power to draw big numbers. Co-leads Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx have been struggling to find a smash role since “300” in 2006 and “Ray” in 2003, respectively.

Even worse, it was released in the cinematic wasteland of October.

Although not some hidden gem that was buried and never given its dues, “Law Abiding Citizen” is a well-paced, entertaining 100-minute diversion.

Directed by F. Gary Gray (“Friday,” “The Italian Job”) off a script by Kurt Wimmer (“Equilibrium”), this is a revenge film where the victim is not just a criminal, but the entire justice system.

Butler stars as Clyde, a mysterious man who, in the first fifteen minutes of the movie, sees his wife and daughter raped and murdered, and the primary perpetrator getting off light after turning on his partner and striking a plea deal.

Clyde then decides the whole system is broken, as declared in many just-barely-in-an-American-accent diatribes by the Scottish Butler, and his character development ends here.

Clyde then goes on a rampage of destruction, killing the criminals that wronged him, as well as the lawyers and officials that helped them avoid justice. His ingenious methods of murder boggle the police and thrill the audience, as he manages to continue his killing spree after even being locked up in prison.

Jamie Foxx plays an ambitious lawyer in the District Attorney’s office who is trying to put a stop to Clyde’s crime spree, after having been Clyde’s attorney during the trial of his family’s murderers.

Foxx plays stoic and confident well, but when he is supposed to be shocked and terrified, as in most of the action scenes, he looks like somebody told him a horrible secret about his mother and a farm animal.

It is very obvious from the beginning this movie is basically a revenge procedural. Clyde’s family is dead within two minutes, and the rest of the movie focuses either on cops and the DA office trying to stop Clyde, or blowing up after falling into Clyde’s traps.

With the aim of the film clear, the pacing is rather tight, providing ebbs and tides in the action in just the right places.

The script sputters more than it shines, though.

All the ranting about the “broken” justice system is heavy-handed and overdone, and the revelation of how Clyde is killing people from jail is something a competent investigator would have figured out within 10 minutes of screentime from when he is first imprisoned.

However, people watching a film like “Law Abiding Citizen” are probably getting just what they expected; a visceral thriller that plays out like “Saw” meets “Death Wish.”

Basically a well-casted exploitation film, it is fun if inconsequential.

Foxx and Gray will be teaming back up, joined by Bruce Willis, for 2013 game-based crime flick “Kane & Lynch,” and if it is more of this “Direct-to-video on the big screen”-style fun, it could be worth a watch.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Stay right there, entire city of Mount Pleasant. You had better hear this too.

The whole “lip dub” thing, where you film a large group of people lip synching a song — it is really lame.

I know, it’s hard for you to hear. It worked so well for Grand Rapids earlier this year, and got them national recognition, so why not film one for Mount Pleasant? Heck, why not film one for Central Michigan University while we’re at it, too?

I’ll admit, Grand Rapids pulled off something special.

Lip dubs were already passé by the time Grand Rapids had filmed theirs. The fad originated in 2006, peaked in 2009 with The Today Show’s lip dub to “I Got A Feeling” by The Black Eyed Peas and were enough of a dead fad for “The Office” to poke fun at the idea in 2010.

Grand Rapids pulled it off with massive support from the community, notable local personalities and, oh, a $40,000 budget.

Now this is going to be hard to hear, so sit tight: We are not Grand Rapids.

It is the second-largest metropolitan area in the state, with a strong local culture and is a state center of business, health care and manufacturing.

Mount Pleasant is just not that. We are a great town; I love this place. We are a small, blue-collar town supported by a few large businesses.

Not only is recording and releasing a lip dub video now jumping on a bandwagon from a few years ago, but it reeks of “me too” in relation to Grand Rapids.

Internet fads are a hard thing to manufacture; there’s no telling what will catch on, when or why. If you do something the exact way they did, it is almost a guarantee you will not be as successful as they were.

It will be okay, guys. Mount Pleasant is a great town, and if we want national recognition, we can find a way to get it on our own terms, and it will be better that way.

Have you thought about this “planking” thing?

Now he is rapping about Sour Patch Kids candies.

The song and corresponding video, “World Gone Sour (Lost Kids),” sees Mef interpolating statements about how tough he is with rhymes about delicious child-shaped candy. The surprising part is the song is actually pretty fun to listen to.

The video works as an announcement for an upcoming Sour Patch Kids video game called “World Gone Sour.”

Anyone expecting the game to be as cool as Method Man trying to be tough while rapping about gummy candies with happy faces, however, will likely be disappointed.

Last week, The A.V. Club finished their second season of “A.V. Undercover,” where the editors and readers compile a list of 25 songs, and then invite bands to their office to choose a song and record a cover of it on video. The results have been good, bad, weird and heartfelt, but always interesting. However, with over 70 videos on the various “Undercover” pages, it can be hard to sift through.

Through extensive watching, listening, arguing and being subjected to an excessive number of Starbucks advertisements, Jay Gary and Brad Canze have compiled a list of the five best and five worst “Undercover” performances.

Top Five

5. Peter Bjorn & John performing “Try A Little Tenderness” by Otis Redding

Probably one of the most daunting songs on the second “Undercover” list, the Swedish trio of Peter Bjorn & John attack this Otis Redding classic fearlessly and brilliantly.

The massive amount of energy on display by the band, specifically in the singing and dancing of singer-guitarist Peter Morén, make this cover hard not to love. They manage to bring their own indie-rock sensibilities to the song while maintaining the soulfulness of the Redding version.

4. Ted Leo And The Pharmacists performing “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” by Tears For Fears

This was the first song recorded for the first season of “Undercover,” and it is a wonder that all the other bands didn’t just pack it in and leave after hearing this.

This is a natural choice for the band; Ted Leo’s vocals are a great match for the original Tears For Fears version. That similarity allowed for the band to completely rearrange the instrumentation into something much more rocking and experimental than the original New Wave tune. At the end of the song, the band lets its attitude fly off the rails with a soaring guitar solo that was not in the original version, but should have been.

3.  Bob Mould performing “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” by Sugar

It was a precedent set by bands such as Superchunk and They Might Be Giants that if your band had a song on the “A.V. Undercover” list, you picked a song by another band. Bob Mould, formerly of the bands Hüsker Dü and Sugar looked at the rules, looked at the precedents, gave them the finger and played Sugar’s “If I Can’t Change Your Mind.”

Mould creates something entirely different from the original he did with Sugar nearly 20 years ago. This version is older and wiser, but also rougher and more aggressive, a description that could possibly be given to Mould himself.

Even better, A.V. Club was unsure whether or not Mould’s cover counted, and allowed The Decemberists to cover “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” the very next week, and they just look like chumps in comparison.

2. They Might Be Giants performing “Tubthumping” by Chumbawumba

They Might Be Giants takes one of the goofiest pop hits of the 90s and absolutely revels in it, creating a cover and a video that are just over-the-top fun.

Enlisting 16 AV Club employees to be packed into the performance with them to all sing the chorus, TMBG create not only a great cover, but an experience to behold. Musically, it sounds like signature TMBG, and the gang vocals on the chorus just lift it up to another level. This is the most fun video to watch out of all the “Undercover” performances.

1. The Clientele performing “Paper Planes” by M.I.A.

During the first season of “Undercover,” this was maybe one of the most challenging songs on the list. Who would dare try to recreate M.I.A.’s massive hip hop-pop hit, and how would they do it?

English band The Clientele were brave enough to step up to the plate and, with the aid of a two-woman string section, came up with a blindingly original version of the song. In turning the original hip-hop beat into a quirky funk jam, it is obvious the band put a lot of thought and effort into how to perform this song in the best way possible, and had a lot of fun doing it.

Bottom Five

5. Baths performing “All My Friends” by LCD Soundsystem

Some songs are immune to minimalism.

Few people would ever be foolish enough to attempt power-rock masterpieces like Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out Of Hell” or Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” on an acoustic guitar. Similarly, LCD Soundsystem’s lush electro-rock opus “All My Friends” is just too much song for one piano.

If the way-too-minimalist rendition wasn’t bad enough, it is accompanied by a man drumming on his lap and stomping on the floor to provide percussion, which is both way too precious and distracting.

4. Smith Westerns performing “American Girl” by Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers

Smith Westerns lead singer Cullen Omori was too busy trying to look cool to hit the right notes, wearing sunglasses indoors while hiding his face with his hair in a manner that can only be described as “trying too hard”.

At least the band tried to do something different with the Tom Petty classic, but they chose to do it by slowing down the chorus and changing the melody, which leaves this performance sounding less like “American Girl” and more like a sack full of woodland animals in a trash compactor.

3.  Retribution Gospel Choir performing “Kokomo” by The Beach Boys

This cover is bizarre. The band obviously knows this is a goofy song of dubious quality, as evidenced by the interview preceding the performance. But when they actually play it, they do it without any irony or sense of humor.

What results in a plodding and disappointing yawn.

To be fair, whichever band chose “Kokomo,” almost without question the worst single The Beach Boys ever released, was going to have to do something very special to not end up near the bottom of the list. As it is, this performance does not even muster what it takes to be mediocre.

2.  Parts And Labor performing “Runaway” by Kanye West

Parts And Labor ran into a perfect storm of poor song-choice and poor execution on their cover of Kanye West’s instant-classic rap-pop ballad “Runaway.”

First the band decided to strip away the verses, leaving only the introduction and chorus to be covered. Then they decided to replace the clean piano track repeated throughout the original with a fuzzy, distorted, abrasive keyboard sound. Along with the low-key vocals and unrepentant repetition, this sounds less like a pop ballad and more like a funeral march for a robot.

1.  Rise Against performing “Sliver” by Nirvana

For a radio-oriented hard rock band like Rise Against, covering Nirvana was not only an obvious choice, but also a very bad one.

The entire reason the original “Sliver” worked was Kurt Cobain’s vocal performance. Otherwise, this is a weird, goofy little song about a kid spending the night at his grandparents’ house.

Completely soulless and joyless, Rise Against here sounds like a bunch of kids in a garage learning to play their first Nirvana song.

That is the name Netflix chose for its DVD-by-mail rental service, which is being set up as a separate company from its online streaming service, which will maintain the original name.

Netflix CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings detailed the change in a blog post on Sunday night.

The announcement the two services would be separated, and would each cost the $7.99 it originally cost for both services, is a couple of months old. The news here is the name change.

First and foremost, the name is just not good. “Qwikster” sounds like either a failed 1999 dot-com startup or the AOL Instant Messenger name of a kid who really loves NesQuik.

Taking the service on which you built your company and brand and taking the original name off of it kind of feels like they are planning for the DVD-by-mail service to fail.

As more and more of the film industry moves online, physical media as a whole seems to be on the chopping block. It may take a few years, but Netflix is far from the only company planning for that eventuality. Internet-ready televisions are one of the first precursors to the fall of physical movie media.

However, making it so obvious that they put very little thought into the name change is not good PR for the company.

If you need proof of the hasty decision, take a look at Twitter.com/Qwikster. The Twitter account belongs to one Jason Castillo, whose near-incomprehensible tweets are mostly concerned with smoking weed and eating tacos.

Sure, Netflix/Qwikster will probably buy the account from Castillo for a considerable sum that will probably almost immediately be transferred over to his dealer. But not dealing with this before announcing the name to the public is a massive lack of forethought on the part of Hastings and his cohorts.

If this does not result in a massive failure and a quick dissolution of Qwikster as a company, it will not be because of the name change, but because the company is also now offering video game rentals by mail through Qwikster as well. In the next couple of years, though, either Qwikster or Gamefly, whose entire business is games by mail, will close their doors.

No matter whether this turns out to be a good business decision or a bad one, this still remains true: “Netflix” makes me think of movies via the Internet, whereas “Qwikster” just really makes me want chocolate milk.

“Marwencol” is a documentary about coping with trauma, art and individuality and the heavy emotions on display hit the viewer before they even know what’s coming.

Directed by Jeff Malmberg and released in 2010, “Marwencol” tells the story of Mark Hogancamp, a man struggling with recovery after being beaten nearly to death outside a bar in 2000. Left severely brain-damaged and without any memory of his previous life, Hogancamp began to create his own reality to cope.

Using dolls, toys and building models, Mark created the town of Marwencol, a fictional town in World War II-era Belgium, in his backyard. He populated the one-sixth scale world with soldiers, townspeople, plenty of girls, and representations of himself and the people he knows in the real world.

Hogancamp began playing out stories, scenarios and fantasies in Marwencol, and meticulously documented everything with photographs. Eventually, Hogancamp, his photos and the world he has created caught the attention of people within the art world, who want to display his photos.

The film itself is laid out almost as meticulously as Hogancamp’s tiny, hand-built world. Told primarily through interviews with Hogancamp and his friends, neighbors and acquaintances, the film slowly unfolds this man’s complicated psyche. Troubled before the beating, Hogancamp saw the loss of his memory as a chance to start over and create the reality he wanted to live in.

Interspersed throughout the film are photographs and stop-motion animation using the dolls in Hogancamp’s town. It is a fascinating way to tell this story and examine this man as he deals with trauma by building a world around him.

The technique, pacing and subject matter for this independently produced film are all top-notch and fascinating. This is a greatly affecting film that has earned the indie-film buzz built up around it.

“Interacting with people is the biggest thing,” said Rockford sophomore Ryan Darby, a desk associate in the Towers. ”Just helping people, and being comfortable with conversations.”

Sault Ste. Marie sophomore, Nicholas Modglin, laughs while telling Livonia senior deskie, Sarah Bartosik, a story about working at the desk, Tuesday afternoon. "This is my first job" said Modglin, "It is really nice to meet lots of different people." (Charlotte Bodak/Staff Photographer)

It is the job of “deskies,” as they are commonly known, to provide services to the residents in their halls, but also to assist them in getting information about the residence halls and the university at large.

“Our main thing is customer service,” said Towers Desk Manager Amanda Johnson, a Warren junior. “We get questions, ‘Hey, can you help me with this homework?’ We get lots of crazy questions.”

Johnson said although most of their work is customer service, sometimes it is also parental assurance.

She said the parents of residents will often call to ask questions, asking for confirmation their child is behaving and going to classes.

“They’ll call and check up on their children,” Johnson said. “I had to tell someone, ‘No, your son is in the building. He’s standing right here.’”

Dillon Stanco, a Romeo junior, said he took a job as a desk associate at Saxe/Herrig/Celani for several reasons, ranging from convenience to future opportunities.

“I applied to be a (resident assistant), and if you’ve already been a desk worker, it looks a little better,” Stanco said. “Also, I like living on campus. I like not having to walk or drive to go to work.”

Stanco, a disc jockey and PSA director at Modern Rock 91.5, said while working late-night and early-morning shifts is difficult, it allows him to do some man-on-the-street publicity for the student-run radio station.

“All the customer service experience I’ve had helps me talk to everybody,” he said. “And I cheaply plug Modern Rock constantly while I’m working.”

Stanco said unless a Detroit Lions game is on while he is working at the desk, the radio dial is always tuned to the station of his other on-campus job.

Johnson said odd situations come up sometimes while working the night shift, but she tries to take them in stride.

“I was new, didn’t know what to do, and a guy all the way from Thorpe (Hall) came in taped to a bed,” Johnson said. “He was sober and he had his ID, he was just taped to a bed. About 10, 15, guys were carrying him up to Wheeler (Hall).”

Johnson said while she allowed the resident in since he had is ID, resident assistants quickly saw and reprimanded the resident taped to the bed and those carrying him.

She is now in charge of training desk associates for the Towers, and said doing so helps with her career aspirations of becoming a teacher.

“It’s interesting, trying to come up with different ways to get people to retain information,” Johnson said. “This job definitely prepares you to deal with all sorts of personalities.”