Mystery Science Theater 3000: C/D, S/D.

Time to start downloading. (I have now snagged all the KTMAs and am extremely happy.)

urgent and key info:

i work with dr clayton

! So THAT'S the show you're working on.

technically i don't work on the show but rather an affiliated company. but the dude works about twenty feet away from me.

Neat. Friendly dude, I assume? The reports I've seen of various con appearances and the like indicate he's a sensible feller.

i haven't met the guy yet, but soon i hope!

Recent RiffTrax -- The Fifth Element and now Star Trek V -- which was the subject of a actually not that bad fake MST3K effort some years back. This RiffTrax take is of interest in that it is both Mike and Kevin Murphy.

Partook of the Star Trek V commentary this evening. It's GREAT, even just for nostalgia factor alone. I love the fact that they can work a little bluer than they could on MST3K, it's fun to hear the oversexed jokes that you always knew they wanted to do. Granted, it's a little slow in parts, but overall I'd say HOORAY! I'm keen to try out Fifth Element now...and I see that he's working on Cocktail. HEHEHE!

aww man i want to hear that but i've got reservations about paying for it.

star trek V i mean.

I hear you, that's why I haven't downloaded it yet.

Cocktail? Oh dear!

What price nostalgia?

Trust me, the download pays for itself the moment you hear Kevin & Mike together on the same audio track.

You gotta do it!!

My dear VegGrrl, downloading the track on its own to listen to is one thing, but I actually need the visuals to go with it, see. ;-)

[insert forehead slap]. I'm so retarded sometimes. Sorry.

Your concerns are justified, given that Star Trek V is certainly not the kind of movie a right-minded person should be expected to pay for. It'd be like buying a copy of Bloodlust.

In which case, I sympathise. Luckily I had the foresight to marry a Trekkie-in-denial, otherwise I'd probably be in the same predicament.

I loved loved loved MST3k when I was a kid, and I'm finding myself getting back into it now with the intornet and all that. I have yet to see an episode from seasons 2 through 6 that wasn't worth the two hours, although the skits are often a total crapshoot. I always long for more skits drawing from the movies - surely one of the reasons Pod People is so classic is that you get "Hideous Control Now" AND the hysterical "You are magic, aren't you Trumpy?" sequences? In fact, I'd say Pod People is my all-time favorite, despite some really dull sections. I haven't re-watched too many of the ones I loved as a kid, so I hesitate to rate Santa Clause Conquers The Martians or Fugitive Alien - but, aw, heck, let's go ahead and give Fugitive Alien four stars. No episode that spawned "He triiiied to kill me with a forklift..." can be bad.

Just now finished up Samson Versus The Vampire Women, which has some surprising dead time (they could have done a lot more with the wrestling sequences) but redeems itself with the absolutely hilarious use of the old professor. The impressions they do of him are dead-on and add so much to the movie. "Now I want you to come back tomorrow, and leave immediately!"

Never could muster the interest to download/rent/otherwise be exposed to anything sci-fi related. It's not knee-jerk Mike hate (although I vastly prefer Joel) - just that everything I heard sounds so WTF. Dr. Forrester's mom? What? Great, more hammy villainy in Deep 13 is totally what the show needed....

Altogether, classic as entertainment on its own, probably dud in terms of what it spawned; as several people observed upthread, the world did NOT need another excuse for nerds to think they're clever in public places. Sons of bitches nearly ruined Snakes On A Plane for me. I don't think it changed anything one way or the other in terms of how we watch or consume anything - I mean, it was the 90s, postmodernism and cynicism and backtalk were hep generally, not to mention the tension between ironic appreciation and genuine camp love.

Am testing out one of the KTMA episodes, Superdome, on my new Mac mini -- thank heavens for increased processing speed and the like -- and I had forgotten how hilarious this line from Crow about the ever-gravelly David Janssen was:

"He's got a voice like a body being thrown through a bus window."

Is the Cube retired?

It is (CD drive finally stopped burning and I used that as an excuse to finally upgrade). Allegedly Cubes actually fetch a good price secondhand? If so, handy.

My favorite ep was "Time of the Apes."

Tons of Rifftrax have come out over these last few months and I've barely touched any of them (because I need to get around to getting hold of the movies or renting them or something). Shame on me. I suspect their Phantom Menace demolition will be something.

Speaking of, in part, there's a new interview with Mike up recently here worth a read if you have some time for it. One of my favorite bits:

QS: Of the ones you've done so far, are there any that were particularly hard going for you?

NELSON: I really, really, truly hated Star Wars: Episode I. I can't even describe how angry it made me.

QS: Had you seen it prior to that? Did you follow that whole debacle in real time as they were released? Or did you know enough to avoid them even then?

NELSON: I think Kevin at the time called me up and said we should go at the premier of this new Star Wars movie and laugh at the people. And I said, "That sounds fun." I think we couldn't get to one... they were all sold out, so we had to get to the one where only like 20% of the audience is dressed up instead of 95%.

QS: That'll keep down the light saber battles before the show starts.

NELSON: Yeah, you keep getting poked in the eye with light sabers and stuff. So we went to that and it was in the middle of the day, and I don't know why but I fell asleep during the middle of it. And I also, it was so loud, it was the loudest experience I'd ever had outside a Who concert. It was so loud that I couldn't even comprehend what was going on. So the memory of it was not coherent.

QS: Don't worry, neither was the execution...

NELSON: (laughs) Then when I saw it again... I just could not believe how incompetent it is in every way. Storytelling - non existent. Acting - god awful, horrendous, terrible acting. It's just astounding how bad it is.

QS: And yet made so much money. Do you ever worry about your fellow man when you view some of these huge successes?

NELSON: It does trouble me. It troubles me. But I fully accept that there are certain things that I am immune to. And I try not to make judgments on those. I am immune to the charm of comic books. And I understand that very many talented and smart people make them and read them, so it's something in me. But with Star Wars, I don't think I can be that charitable. I can maybe go halfway on that.

Other snippets: meeting Burt Reynolds and being fascinated by his wig and why Kevin Smith horned in on Mike's turf with the Roadhouse commentary.

Vol. 11 DVD set of MST3K out in a few months; no word of the contents yet. Also, apparently the rights have expired to all the films on Vol. 1 if you've not got them already, but doubtless your friendly neighborhood torrent will have you covered.

How could "the rights" to The Creeping Terror ... um, even exist?

That was a seriously rambly and unfocused interview.

The high points are definitely scattered throughout. Dude interviewing him needs to just sum it up in a story rather than a straight transcription.

man, my bf has been trying to get us to watch 'the horrors of spider island' like 3 times now and we (me) keep falling asleep!

one of my in-laws sent me this, just shot at her office apparently

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmrqfUuGHkY

oh my god, thanks to this thread, i just found out about rifftrax

THANK YOU x385749872398472398472398423

And the newest RiffTrax is on Attack of the Clones. This oughta be good.

Ah right, as the YouTube refers to, etc. Rah.

i never realized how impossibly GIDDY i could get at the prospect of watching "point break"

My husband sent me an email last week to specifically tell me that there is a Rifftrax available for the 2 hour pilot episode of Lost. Can't wait.

Rifftrax for Roadhouse = beyond funny.

Update on the mst3k.com website:

---

The Film Crew--Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett and Mike Nelson--will release their first in a new line of B-movie send-ups, under the Shout! Factory label, on July 10. And, unlike RiffTrax, these DVDs will even have a vaguely MST3K-like premise in place: Determined to provide a commentary track for every movie, the guys settle into the dank basement of an office building, where, each day, their boss, entertainment mogul Bob Honcho, calls them on speakerphone and tells them which bad movie they will riff. There'll be breaks in the riffing action for sketches and, best of all, no worries about whether they can eat and breathe!

As you probably know, four episodes have already been shot--Giant of Marathon (1959, starring Steve Reeves), Hollywood After Dark (1968, starring The Golden Girls' Rue McClannahan), Killers from Space (1954, starring Peter Graves) and The Wild Women of Wongo (1958)--and fans were given the chance to vote on which episode would be released first, based on votes at filmcrewonline.com.

Well the votes have been tallied and the winner is....Hollywood After Dark! (By the way, Killers from Space came in a close second, Wild Women of Wongo followed a bit further back and Giant of Marathon brought up the rear, with a little less than half the votes the winner got.)

The release date is July 10 and the price will be $19.99. The rest of the titles will follow during the rest of 2007. If you'd like to preorder the first two releases, please follow the following links:

Hollywood After Dark
Killers from Space

---

A 1968 sleazo Hollywood movie with Rue McLanahan? They have to be lurking here.

I'm sort of tired of hearing about Rifftrax, but have to admit I am curious about the one with Neil Patrick Harris.

I just got Star Trek VI, but haven't watched it yet.

wait a minute, they did star trek vi?? that's not a bad movie!

There are a lot of not-all-that-bad movies involved in rifftrax, but then the same also went for MST3K.

such as? Marooned?

aka Space Travelers

Hell, the Coleman Francis trilogy says more to me about masculinity than 300.

"...Coffee?"

"Where is it, your coffee?"

how long has this been the rolling 2007 ruin the good name of mst3k thread

at least joel has the decency to keep off this shit

Joel was really cool when donut and I met him the one time after a taping of The TV Wheel. I get a sense he's just doing what he wants and not looking back; good for him.

i work with the guy who played salem on sabrina the teenage witch & he told me some great stories about working with 'magic joel' in the first season - apparently he was really into making sure that as much of the magic/witch stuff was slight of hand instead of camera trickery, which is awesome

After "a" taping? Was there more than one?

To Ethan: Nice! I always liked when he did things like that on MST3K but obviously that's even more of a vehicle for it.

I had forgotten this:

http://www.mst3kinfo.com/satnews/brains/20q.html

Casuistry: yes, the pilot was filmed at least a couple of times -- remember since it was all live I think they wanted a few runthroughs to see which was the best/had the sharpest timing etc. Apparently the one we attended was the one actually broadcast.

My favorite Rifftrax tend to be the major studio disasters - The Wicker Man, Island of Dr. Moreau, Firewall. They do well with completely incomprehensible films that just defy logic. Crossroads is still my favorite, so much material. Overall these are not as enjoyable as MST3K, the lack of skits and characters hurts. But I'm not complaining, great to have new material even if it's not quite at the level of its former greatness. High hopes for the Film Crew.

Nice enough NY Times article on various things. Meantime, RIP Bart Fargo.

i'm gonna try the LOST season one pilot, but the fifth element was seriously lacking.

I've only seen the ones for Roadhouse and Firewall; Roadhouse worked a lot better, perhaps because it was a far worse film. We have the Rifftrax for The Matrix and X-Men, but just haven't found time for them yet.

It turns out I have seen most of these movies in the non-MST3K version, now that I'm starting to watch it. I feel somewhat unrewarded after they took all the tedium after them---I've spent maybe 400 hours of my life watching these without the added funnies and I feel cheated somehow, that they made it easier for everyone.

“Misties always said the sketches weren’t important and the premise wasn’t important,” said Mr. Cornell of the fan Web site, adding that the digs at movies were primary.

This is, basically, horseshit.

I dunno, I watched Star Trek VI and it was ok but my basic feeling afterwards was "yeah yeah, I've seen MST3K too, just like you guys have, so what?" It was fine and I laughed at times but without the sketches and premise there's just no way to get involved.