MST4K?
October 31, 2007
Fred is right, it’s a good time to be a MST3K fan, what with several new movie-mocking projects in the works from different sets of the MST3K cast. The really exciting news is that Joel is reuniting with Trace Beaulieu, J. Elvis Weinstein, Frank Conniff, and Mary Jo Pehl to work on a project called Cinematic Titanic. Details are scarce, but I think it’s interesting that the first show will be open to members of ILM/Lucas Arts. Will Joel have deep pockets (or access to them) this time around?
Elf and I have been listening to RiffTrax and getting the Film Crew DVDs, all of which are fun but aren’t quite what the old show used to be. I love RiffTrax because they get to work with movies they’d never have the legal right to riff directly (300 is especially funny), but it can be a technical pain to set up. The Film Crew is almost as good, but they’ve traded the charm and the sheer cracked silliness of the Satellite of Love and its puppet show for watered-down Dilbert-like corporate-humor sketches by moving the show to the basement of a DVD factory.
So I’m eager to see what Joel has up his sleeve, and I hope the crew can be reunited for another excellent production.
Until then, though, I suppose we’ll keep circulating the tapes.
Posted in Entertainment
content rss
October 31st, 2007 at 4:52 pm
I’ve been slow to listen to the RiffTrax commentaries simply because I don’t have those movies at hand, and every time I go looking for them at the local library, they’re not there. And it seems like all the local video stores have now closed. I guess I could get them from Netflix, finally returning that movie I’ve had out since like April, but that would be too easy. So far, I’ve only listened to the track for Star Trek 5. Funny stuff.
One of the other nice things about that project, by the way, is that they can much more easily bring in guest riffers (semi-celebrities like Fred Willard or Neil Patrick Harris), who they might not be able to get for a more complicated “shoot.”
The Film Crew stuff has been much better with the actual commentaries than with the interstitial stuff, but I think even that has gotten a little better as they’ve gone along. It’s questionable whether or not there’s going to be anymore of those movies — rumors of bad blood, or even lawsuits, between them and Jim Mallon — but I’m hopeful.
There’s a lot of wait-and-see right now. Lots of interesting projects coming down the pike. Hopefully they’re as good, and as funny, as they are interesting.
November 3rd, 2007 at 6:00 am
We just watched the Giant of Marathon, and the sketches were a lot better on this one. I guess I’m something of a minority MSTie, the sketches were some of my favorite content. So I’m sorry to see them lacking so much.
The more I read about the bot cartoon, the less I like the idea. And Joel’s scaffolding idea is weird. I want to see how that plays out.
What really matters, though, is that the Joel team and the Mike team are really pushing the envelope as far as participatory art and alternative distribution channels are concerned.