MST3K, Rifftrax, and the rest

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Mothra
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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Mothra » Wed Feb 22, 2017 12:47 pm

Yesssss

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Thad » Wed Mar 01, 2017 12:19 am

Joel's latest update is public (as opposed to backers-only). It's got some information on Gypsy (she'll actually be voiced by a woman this time, and will appear in some theater segments), a picture of one of the new robots, and some other hints.

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Thad » Sat Mar 18, 2017 11:44 am


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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Thad » Thu Mar 23, 2017 10:55 am



Reptilicus, Starcrash, and Time Travelers confirmed. All of them were on the episode list that's been circulating for the past couple months, so that gives the rest of the list some credibility.

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Mothra » Thu Mar 23, 2017 12:20 pm

Fuck
y i s

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Thad » Fri Mar 24, 2017 10:31 am

Kickstarter backers ($25 and up) will have a 24-hour window to stream the premier on April 9, and ($85 and up) the full season starting April 11, and download them all starting April 13; watch your inbox for a redemption code.

(But Joel reminds you that watching on Netflix is probably a good idea to show interest in the show and get a 12th season greenlit.)

(EDITED to fix the date. Joel repeatedly says "Sunday, April 8" in the backer update; Ivan Askwith notes in the comments that he meant Sunday, April 9, not Saturday, April 8. Not sure why they haven't corrected the OP.)

Meanwhile, the latest Rifftrax Kickstarter is wrapping up (tomorrow's the last day) and, much like the last one, if you contribute even at the $1 level you get a bunch of shorts.

3300 Backers: The Tiny Astronaut (UNLOCKED!)
3450 Backers: On Guard, Bunco! (UNLOCKED!)
3600 Backers: Choking: To Save a Life! (UNLOCKED!)
3750 Backers: The Snob (UNLOCKED!)
3900 Backers: Buying Food (UNLOCKED!)
4050 Backers: Goodbye, Weeds (UNLOCKED!)
4200 Backers: Improve Your Pronunciation (UNLOCKED!)
4350 Backers: Making Sense with Sentences (UNLOCKED!)
4500 Backers: Cooking Terms (UNLOCKED!)
4650 Backers: Shapes We Live With (UNLOCKED!)


(And if you already have any of these, you get $1 credit on your Rifftrax account for each one you've already got.)

Plus some upcoming just-the-jokes riffs:

5,500 Backers: HUGE Multi-Riffer Tandem Just-the-Jokes Riff of a Blockbuster that YOU will help decide! FREE to ALL Backers! (UNLOCKED!)
6,250 Backers: MOTHRA Just the Jokes Riff! FREE to ALL Backers! (UNLOCKED!)


With more to come depending on how many backers they get (as of this writing they're at 6345):

8,000 Backers: Just-the-Jokes WESTWORLD Riff! FREE to ALL Backers!
9,000 Backers: STAR WARS - THE LAST JEDI Riff! FREE to ALL Backers!
10,000 Backers: IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE Riff! FREE to ALL Backers!

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Thad » Tue Mar 28, 2017 12:46 am


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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Thad » Sun Apr 09, 2017 1:36 am

Facebook's got a Q&A with Crow and Servo. They didn't actually bother to mic any of the Qs, so you can only hear the As, and the first three and a half minutes is an empty stage occasionally broken up by new robot Waverly coming on and saying that Servo and Crow are coming, but once things get rolling it's pretty good; these guys are good in the roles, good opposite each other, and good at ad-libbing.

Also, Servo's arms move now.

Anyone else watching the backer stream of the premier episode tomorrow?

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Thad » Sun Apr 09, 2017 7:15 pm

The premier met my expectations. This is MST3K, all right. I like the new cast, the host segments were fun (and one of them had a song!), and there are commercial bumpers even though there are no commercials. (I noticed that over one of them, they played Tom's Canada Song from Final Sacrifice; I expect there were probably songs from other episodes over the others that I didn't notice.)

I look forward to the rest. Only a few more days. And in the meantime, Rifftrax does Samurai Cop on Thursday.

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Mothra » Sat Apr 15, 2017 10:54 pm

Really enjoying the new stuff. Great movie choices, great riffs.

I'm a little annoyed by how rapid-fire the riffing is. Definitely does feel like it has a lot of cooks in the writing room, with Jonah and the bots delivering lines bumper to bumper to bumper. Loses that illusion from the old show that they were just there watching the movie, commenting to entertain themselves.

New voices took some getting used to, but after you watch them in the theater for like 15 minutes, it fits. I absolutely love Hampton Yount as Crow. He's got a different style from Corbett, but it's really sassy and endearing. Jury's still out on Baron Vaughn as Servo - he's as good as the rest, but the three of them tend to sound really similar. Definitely doesn't have quite the difference of styles that Corbett's Crow had in contrast to Murphy's Servo.

New Gypsy design is super cute. Love her VA, love how she drops in to the theater once in a while to deliver one single really good riff.

Jonah's a solid host. Not blown away by him, but he does the trick. I really really really like the look of the ship, the moon, the costumes, and especially the Skeleton Crew. It all has a playful, cheesy MST3K feel.

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Thad » Mon Apr 17, 2017 2:07 pm

Your complaints about the similarity of the voices and the pace of the riffing seem to be common, from the reactions I'm seeing elsewhere. I've still only seen the first ep; I've seen comments that the pace settles down a bit later. Not sure about the voices.

The trouble with shooting the entire season before premiering is that there's no way to adjust to fan reactions. I expect if there's a season 12 we'll see the most common criticisms addressed.

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Thad » Wed Apr 19, 2017 10:53 am

Watched the second episode. I think it had a better movie than the first, though the first had better host segments. I still don't feel like the Mads are being used very effectively (though cribbing from Patton's Fudgie the Whale standup bit was good), and the voices are still too samey in the theater. But I really enjoyed it despite those quibbles.

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Mothra » Wed Apr 19, 2017 11:55 am

Yeah, not floored by the mads yet. They're solid. Patton Oswalt's one of my favorite comedians, but he doesn't really get to do a whole lot besides deflate.

I'd probably be a lot more forgiving if they had a similar dynamic to the original mads, where they were both endearingly incompetent, one cocksure and the other dim-witted - Felica's character so far hasn't really given off any of that kind of doofy vulnerability. Saw this issue with Pearl back in the old show too, but they eventually settled in on a nice "eye-rolling casino-loving cigarette-smoking bachelorette neighbor" character. Hopefully the same will happen here to flesh out Day's comedic role and get the dynamic working a bit better.

Again, I really like the skeleton crew and the idea that the mads have this entire base of goons under their thrall - bond villain-style - so I'd love to see more done with that angle.

As for the eps, I've seen about five so far:

Reptilicus: Great movie, great riffing. Definitely a little too rapid-fire.
Cry Wilderness: Amazing movie. Loved this one. Riffing was good. Still too rapid-fire, but whatever.
The Time Travelers: Good movie. Tonally all over the map, which I loved, so definitely felt like classic MST3K. Riffing was decent.
Avalanche: Super boring movie. Couldn't finish this one.
The Beast of Hollow Mountain: Same.
Starcrash: Movie is ridiculous, but a bit too fast-paced and dialogue-heavy to work well as a MST3K flick. Riffs were eh.

So, two great eps, one good ep, three middling ones so far.

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Thad » Fri May 05, 2017 5:54 pm

Complete Cinematic Titanic set available for pre-order; $40 for a dozen movies. (The last three they did on tour were, sadly, never recorded.)

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Thad » Sun May 28, 2017 4:13 pm







There's been no announcement of a second/twelfth season, but I'd say ongoing promotion of the show by Netflix is a good sign.

Also, there's a live tour starting in July; they're doing Eegah and a "Secret Surprise Film!"

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Thad » Sun May 28, 2017 4:24 pm

And:

Thad wrote:Complete Cinematic Titanic set available for pre-order; $40 for a dozen movies. (The last three they did on tour were, sadly, never recorded.)


That's mostly true, but not entirely. Via a couple of commenters at Satellite News, somebody in the audience made an audio recording of Astral Factor, and somebody's synced that recording up with the video:



Dave "Gruber" Allen (usually CT's warmup act) is sitting in for Josh Weinstein, who we now know was fighting kidney cancer at the time (he's okay!).

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Mothra » Sun May 28, 2017 4:48 pm

Finished the new series - overall it was okay, but not amazing. Glad it's back, and the team has potential, but yeah, way too rapid-fire and forced, with not enough recurring bits that span across the movie. Would be interested to hear what a newcomer to the series would think.

Movie selection, at least, was awesome.

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Thad » Wed Jun 28, 2017 6:05 pm

Update from Joel on the live tour.

Firstly: Baron Vaughn is unavailable (he has a kid on the way), so one of the show's writers, Tim Ryder, will be filling in. (I HATE TOM SERVO'S NEW VOICE!) It's just for the tour, not a permanent change; Baron will be back if they get another season.

The rest of the update is very MST3K; Joel is very enthusiastic about making custom spring snakes for the live show, and also to have a brand new transfer of Eegah from the original negatives.

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Thad » Sun Aug 06, 2017 2:01 am

Volume 39 announced; includes The Amazing Transparent Man, Girls Town, and Diabolik.

I've never seen Amazing Transparent, but Girls Town is a stone cold classic, and Diabolik is a fitting note to go out on as it's the last episode of the original series.

And yeah, "go out on" because this is going to be the last collection of previously-unreleased original-series episodes for the foreseeable future. There are 11 more (non-KTMA) episodes that have never been released (plus Godzilla vs. Megalon, which was released and then pulled), but Shout says its prospects of getting the rights to them are not good.

Which brings us to disc 4, which is made up of the host segments from those 12 episodes. A nice consolation prize, I suppose; include the material they can.

(Pirates, as always, are unaffected.)

In the past I've recommended buying from Rifftrax and not Shout, because Rifftrax shares its proceeds with all the writers/performers of the old show. I should amend that recommendation, because now Shout does too; since buying the rights to the show from Jim Mallon/BBI, it's shared profits with the original writers/performers too. So feel free to buy a DVD set with the knowledge that everybody's getting a taste.

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Re: MST3K, Rifftrax, & sundry

Postby Mothra » Sun Aug 06, 2017 2:36 am

Saw MST3K live at the Wilbur here in Boston. It was solid, and I loved seeing everyone on-set and in real life. I don't know why they picked Eegah of all movies - it's bland and boring, and they didn't have much to work with.

Overall, eh. Cool in concept, though.

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