I went to a Cinematic Titanic live show a few years ago, where Joel, Trace, Frank, etc were live on stage lampooning the movie and it was pretty great. They did a meet and greet afterwards as well.
I like Joel as a comic more than I do Mike because his delivery is so fantastically deadpan, but I prefer Mike as a comedy writer. But the involvement of Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett is what makes the Rifftrax crew better in my opinion. Also, I find Mary Jo Pehl to be just grating and unfunny, so her frequent involvement with Cinematic Titanic was a big turn off for me.
p.s. I’m not actually going to the live presentation in which the guys are in person. I’m seeing it one of the theaters in Chicago that gets the live transmission. Someday though. Someday.
I’ll be watching Rifftrax live as well (from Denver)! Can’t wait!
I never liked Mary Jo on MST3k but she was very funny with Cinematic Titanic. She worked a lot better as a fellow riffer than in the sketch bits she did with MST3k. Keep in mind she was also a show writer, so that funny Mike line might have been written by her.
Watching The Final Sacrifice again. Rowsdower is one of the best things ever.
Saw the Sharknado debactical thanks to the Rifftrax event. Dragged my daughter along for the show, more for my benefit than hers: she could hardly thank me, although she tried, until I brainwashed her into accepting the idea that never before had she and never again would she experience the like again.
Turns out it’s worth showing up early if you like the little touches. The pre-show music was good, for one thing (I think that was Nelson singing Yankovik tunes?) and I appreciated that the live audience ambiance in Minnesotta was present from the start, and the slideshow was well-done. Then the boys appeared on stage, and proceeded with 20 minutes of official stuff before finally kicking off the film.
About the film, I don’t have much to say that wasn’t already well-said by the AV Club. Yes, as I anticipated, it is an intentionally bad film. The makers knew it would be so. But it wasn’t nearly as artful as Troma films are by comparison, much more crude and casual and careless, which ultimately, I think, made it more Riff-worthy. As huge a fan of these guys as I am, the experience taught me that I vastly prefer the riffing in MST3K – where it’s all in character in a more controlled setting – over the live venue where the actors are laid bare on stage and the script-reading is transparent.
Focusing on a one techincal thing: the audio was not so great, and I wonder how much of that was due to the feed and how much was due to the film itself and how much was due to the theater I was in (a pretty typical mainstream theater where audio is often not balanced well.) I found the voices of the guys to not only be too dominant over the film vocals on many occasions, but their treble was often jarring and distracting in general.
All that said, I still had a blast. Definitely a unique experience, might sign up for another one day.
I watched Sharknado last night in a theater in the Denver area. Our audio quality was not a problem. I agree that the slides leading up to the show were terrific. They hadn’t done those in past shows I saw (Starship Troopers and Manos).
The movie is terrible, of course. And you know they intentionally just didn’t give a crap. This kind of thing can really ruin a riffing in most cases, but I thought what made it work pretty well was that (to the credit (?) of the Sharknado makers) they made sure the actors were always always taking things with the utmost seriousness. No winking here.
I do think this is the first movie I’ve seen that I can describe as having an “anti-editor.” The editing really was the biggest offender in this film. No fucks were given.
I was at last night’s live broadcast in the Chicago area. The theater wasn’t packed, but it was still a nice sized crowd. I’ve been to almost every one in the last 3 years or so and they’re always a blast. I actually don’t mind the live presence of the gang while they comment, but I can see where it might be distracting for some fans of old.
The movie was truly awful. But Coily was the main attraction anyway.
“Bow to your dark lord!”
Although I did love the Tara Reid dig when they entered the liquor store at one point.
“Hello gin, Tara’s home!”
I’m building a Tom Servo using a kit I found online. Probably about 50% done, not counting the extra heads I’ll end up with afterwards. Will report back when I’m done. Learning about the components used for the bots and their histories is pretty fascinating.
Now that’s fandom! How much does the kit cost you?
It all started when I couldn’t find a miniature or bobble head.
The parts for all the bots and Joel’s “Big Head” were commonly available for a long time, and the process involved obtaining 4-6 different main components plus supporting parts and tools. If everything were available today, total cost for components, parts and tools would probably be around $100 if you’re lucky. But these days, some of the components are so hard to find, it’s not really worth trying. Some might not even be possible to find after spending years on it. (For example, good luck finding one of these for Tom’s hands.)
At one point, some of the builders started replicating certain components, and soon this became standard for a few critical pieces. In the late 90s, the community circulated a guide outlining the build process in great detail, including the replication steps. But this is where someone like me has to decide how much time and energy I want to put into it. Do I buy the stuff I’d need to duplicate Tom’s barrel body, for instance – assuming I can find someone who can loan me an original or a template – or am I willing to buy a replicated body that someone else has already created, as well as a few other components I’d need to create myself. So I looked around and found a kit for $150, and it’s perfect for my needs. Same guy sells a fully-built version for about twice that.
Painting, cutting, gluing and other assembly tasks are still fairly complicated – especially considering the documentation I’m working with is limited – but I’m slowly making progress. Also had buy a few replacement heads on Amazon after screwing up a couple of steps, and learned along the way that not all heads are created equally.
From 2013 but probably still worth representing:
- The Starfighters, 1964
- The Skydivers, 1963
- Invasion of the Neptune Men, 1961
- The Creeping Terror, 1964
- The Slime People, 1962
- The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, 1964
- Red Zone Cuba, 1966
- Manos: The Hands of Fate, 1966
- Monster a Go-Go, 1965
- The Beast of Yucca Flats, 1
Oh… Monster a Go-Go. Dear God…
I think I must be one of the few who finds Manos oddly visually compelling. It’s awful, but somehow so vivid and appropriately appalling.
Looks like the collected sets are going to be issued on Blu-Ray soon, so if you missed the runs of the first DVD sets, this will be your chance.
“But the only way to experience what The Beast of Yucca Flats is really like is to either see the film or actually wander around the nuclear test sites of Yucca Flats until you mutate.”
— Alan
The Beast of Yucca Flats from the year 1? “Well, Christ has been dead for a year, so I guess it’s safe to release our crappy movie now.”
Kickstarter for new MST3K episodes. No original cast, just sound-alikes. Joel seems to think that the format alone was what made the show great and that the actors can all be replaced. I’m not so sure but willing to be proved wrong.
Jeez nobody checks for threads anymore. (I am not excluded from this).
Sound alikes? I think you missed the point.
So this is new: https://mst3k.org/
First big project is a fundraiser that Joel Hodgson, Bill Corbett, and J. Elvis Weinstein are running for a local charity that was damaged in our recent civil unrest. It looks like they’ll be riffing on a new short and maybe more, depending how it goes.