I just heard this! I am excited.

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Mike Nelson and company are also doing "The Film Crew," which has as its mission "providing commentary tracks to movie DVDs that lack them."

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I b'leev the difference between The Film Crew and Rifftrax is that The Film Crew give treatment to films they're able to get the rights to and thus can release the whole thing on DVD; Rifftrax is the way they can get around copyrights by just providing the audio. Could be wrong on that one, but I remember that's how it was explained to me.

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I ponied up for all four of the Film Crew dvds. Giant of Marathon is a delight, and features copious amounts of man ass, much to the chagrin of Kevin Murphy.

(Sent an email to Kevin, and received a nice reply. He hoped I would agree that Giant of Marathon, as opposed to 300, presented a simpler, more natural version of well-oiled Greek.)

I also highly recommend Hollywood After Dark. Some spectacularly eye-scorching shots of Rue shaking her McLana-cans.

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Let me be frank about Frank: I am excited as heck about the gig with Joel. The animated adventures of the bots, well, that could be bliss, could be death. Can't decide yet.

Last winter we spent a lot of nights watching RiffTrax and drinking in front of the fire--I believe it may be time to start that up again.

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Let me be frank about Frank

Nothing but sweet lovin' Frank!


I do agree that bringing the bots back to do ... uh, stuff ... might be a misstep and shows who still has the copyright pants in the Best Brains group. I find myself examining the rift between riffers rather interesting.

You've got Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett in one group, who were together at the end in the Sci-Fi years. Bridget Jones comes along sometimes too, but she's married to Mike so she's got that attachment. Weren't these three also responsible for the short-lived Timmy Bighands website, or did Trace help with that, too?

In another group you've got Joel Hodgson, Josh Weinstein and Trace Beaulieu, who were the original cast back in the KTMA days, accompanied by sweet floppy Frank and Mary Jo Pehl. Frank of course is a wonderful human being and for all the shit that Mary Jo Pehl got for appearing in the show, she always was a darn good writer (I think she wrote Gypsy's one-woman show "Gypsy Rose Me".)

And then you've got Jim Mallon, who I do believe had quite the falling-out with Joel way back when, and Paul Chaplin, who was a great writer and I guess kept in touch with Jim.

Huh.

Almost like Starcraft here.

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That's all fantastic news!

So when is the original crew of Mystery Spatula Theater 11 (Fringe, Spatch, Pete, and Andy Bell) going to announce that we're regrouping to finally finish Robot Wars in 2008?

Gotta love them sweater puppies.

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Holy happy crazy wow! This is awesome news!

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Rock on. I've seen a couple of Rifftrax, and they're pretty great (well, not really, but that's more the fault of the movie that's behind them. Overdrawn At The Memory Bank > Battlefield Earth.) Can't wait to see what the other gang can do.

Someday soon, I may finish The Projected Man. Stay tuned.

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The films that MST3K had the most success with were the dull films with long bits of silence in between dialogue or what have you (and some, like Manos, had longer bits of nothing than others.) That way they could get the riffs in. Something as loud and chaotic as Battlefield Earth just doesn't lend itself well to ongoing heckling unless you turn the sound way down. But at that point you're not going to be able to riff on the dialogue, but mostly on the visuals.

I was one of the foolhardy who championed for Battlefield Earth at the 2000 Sci-Fi Marathon because I knew if ever there was a crowd who could rip apart such a piece of crap, it'd be the audience who routinely chants "That film sucked! That film sucked!" at the end of a stinker (or, after watching a particularly horrible Eastern European film, stood up and sang "God Bless America".)

However, when the film screened, it was so loud and boomy and stuff that you couldn't get a good line in if you wanted to -- and before it, we watched both Barbarella and Galaxina (yowsa) so we were all sorts of exhausted from the hooting and whatnot.

So yeah. Quieter films equals more gooder for the riffing.

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What you say is true.

Also, Overdrawn was a better movie than Battlefield Earth.

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Raul Julia as the voice of a gorilla versus John Travolta in platform shoes? Oh hell yes, Raul Julia all the way.

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All of this just goes to prove what I believed all along: That was the sweetest job that has ever been or will ever be.

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