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Cinematic Titanic Review: "Alien Factor"

Another Cinematic Titanic offering! Today is "Alien Factor", a pretty crummy late-70s low-budget alien movie. To be perfectly honest, it was almost like rewatching "The Giant Spider Invasion", except the riffers' voices were completely different.

The riffing was pretty solid through the movie, and I enjoyed it. At one point though, the riffers even acknowledged that the movie was difficult in spots to riff, as Josh broke what little of the fourth wall existed to state, "This is why riffing is hard!" while one of the characters was involved in an oft-seen repetitive action. There were a few spots where I was just begging for a riff to be said, but unfortunately there were no callbacks this time. (Dangit, "This is where the fish lives!" C'mon, Mary Jo, you watched that heap of parrot droppings!)

The live audience still does terrifically in helping the mood along, and there were a couple of riffs (one by Trace, and one by Frank with comments by Trace) that got the crowd going. I also enjoyed that the riffers broke up over both the movie itself as well as a couple of the riffs that were happening. I suppose that one of the disappointments with MST3k is that the riffers sometimes seemed as if they were just tossing jokes and there was really no interaction between the jokes and human reaction, as if there was a mandate that they had to be silent. Well, this is definitely a strength of the Cinematic Titanic franchise, especially apparent in the live episodes.

Last note; I saw the trailer preview they did for East Meets Watts. I feel completely vindicated when I noticed that they ended the trailer on Josh's Journey riff. There were a couple other spots in the movie that they could have shown, but that Journey riff was the culmination of some good riffing, just like a big guitar hit and the final chorus.

Minor mainentance note: Blogger is discontinuing FTP publishing. This pretty much means that the blog itself has to be hosted outside the www.nabiki.com/mst domain, and if anyone has bookmarked this page (?, yeah right...) they will need to adjust their bookmarks once I finish transitioning to a Blogger-approved domain. I will post more details when they come available, and my deadline for this is 1 May 2010.

Cinematic Titanic Review: "East Meets Watts"

Quicker than promised, too! Recently, I had a chance to check out the latest Cinematic Titanic offering, "East Meets Watts". As stated before, it was a bit of a fusion film, joining both the HK chop-socky action genre with the blaxploitation genre with the 70s genre. The film itself deserved the riffing, yet would probably be decent cheesy 2AM viewing otherwise.

This is the first Cinematic Titanic offering that I have watched, and it did take a small bit of getting used to. Of course, you finally get to hear Joel, Trace, and (for the REAL oldsters) Josh riff the film, and you get the added bonus of Frank and Mary Jo also riffing. I've got a few of the S1 MST3k tapes (Thanks, Meg!) and it's really a blast from the past to hear the original crew. This film was riffed and recorded live, so you see all five of them around the side of the movie... which isn't actually all that distracting, to be honest.

If this is your first Cinematic Titanic experience, give it a bit of patience. All MSTed movies and fanfics have spots that lag and lull, and unfortunately I think that one of these spots happened from the beginning of the film and lasted for a bit. (It started getting better when the Chinese guy was departing from the boat, with Josh's Journey line). To be honest, I was not overly impressed with the beginning, but when the riffing picks up it shines. To be honest, it was even closer to the MST3k experience than Rifftrax is, if only because you can see the riffers and don't have to jiggle around a movie or a track, and you get the whole "cheap movie" phenomenon to boot. However, I'm glad that there's now two flavors of MST3k rather than just one (or, really, zero).

Riffing live was another good decision, I thought. Having a crowd there was terrific, especially when you could hear the reactions to certain jokes. Josh cracked a riff about twenty to thirty minutes in that took the crowd five seconds to process, but you could hear the laughter ripple once they got it. I also enjoyed hearing the cheers from the MST3k fans when the riffers did a few callbacks to the original MST3k, accompanied by Frank's (faux-)outraged splutter, "Pandering!"

Overall, this was a terrific movie and well worth checking out. I hope that they do more live shows, that was fun to see and hopefully the riffing will continue to shine. Considering the creators behind this, I can only believe that it will.

Short games review, school, and AMFAS update.

Not much new or interesting to report through the last couple months... the latest MSTing is still going through a painstaking editing process, and we're pretty close to completion. Thankfully, Megane and I had hammered out a consistent time to get together to write these MSTings on a regular basis, which is better than it has been. It's a good thing we did too, because school and work and family is already a huge chunk of my life, and I just started playing three new games too: Dragon Age, Tropico 3, and Sim City 4 (the old-school $6 bargain game).

So far, Dragon Age is shaping up well, though I must admit that I'm completely unfamiliar with the interface. I'm used to console RPGs like the Final Fantasy type, rather than pointing and clicking on which enemy to deal with. (I'm so horribly out-of-it at times...) I'm enjoying the graphics and the game though, even if I can only install it on one computer (my laptop is the only one good enough to run it).

Tropico 3 is an updating of the original Tropico, which I still have. It's not a bad update, though I just started playing it and haven't really entered into the changes as of yet. The biggest one that I am glad of is a transportation setup; in the original game, people had to *WALK* to the various locations which always took forever. This was a problem because if you wanted to build tourist buildings, you either had to do it immediately or forget it, as builders would take months or years to get their lazy little electronic butts to the worksite, work for a few seconds, and leave. Hopefully this will make it a bit easier.

Sim City 4 is actually not too bad. The biggest issue I'm not impressed with is the fact that there's only a few regions loaded onto the game, and only two random ones. This, combined with the fact that building your own region would be a six- to ten-hour undertaking, is a major drawback. The gameplay is interesting though, even if it seems that this Sims is just as bad at times with simulating the actual game... I've had people tell me that traffic is bad even though they live one block away from their destination (in this case, their commute).

School is another matter, though... I can see why professionals get into the specially-designed degree mills, even if I think they're loads of crap. I had to skip a level in macroeconomics due to the fact that they did not have either an afternoon OR an evening division open. And now that I'm in advanced macroeconomics, I'm really finding a hard go of it. I'm using calculus that is either 12 years old or that I didn't have in the first place, and the professor is not helping matters much at all. Therefore, studying has been difficult at best too, because it seems that there's just no flow to the processes being introduced. I understand that college isn't the place to spoon-feed knowledge and information, but having a professor skip around haphazardly and call it "teaching" is incorrect as well.

Soon: A review of Cinematic Titanic's new(ish) offering, "East Meets Watts". Joel and the gang tackle the combined HK Action/Blaxploitation offering, but live!

We're still here.

Rifftrax is coming out with another theater presentation of Rifftrax, this time with Christmas shorts in mid-December. Even so, I still miss the old MST3k with the songs and the characters. On the other hand, it was a mini-success for ten years, so maybe in another decade someone else will give the concept a go. By that time, we can get all of the 80's schlock (at least, the stuff that may not get covered by Rifftrax) up onto the MST3k screen.

Megane and I are still working to get another MSTing out. Thankfully, my schedule has finally shaken out a bit better to be able to write with him. I will likely be casting about for another target shortly though, as the one that we're doing is coming close to first-edit completion.

Seven years after getting my bachelor's degree, I'm back to school. It really is amazing... I have a family at home, and a regular 8-5 job, but when I walk onto that campus for my masters' degree courses I feel a rush of nostalgia for the days when I was pursuing my bachelor's degree. And all the free time. Wow, that was a ton of free time. Boy, do I miss it a ton too.

One of the major ways my schedule is getting better is a new laptop. I commute to work on the city bus, which is no mean feat in Detroit, MI.... home of the automobile. This means that a twenty-minute drive turns into a seventy-minute bus ride, not to mention the walking involved in getting to and from bus stops. However, the laptop has enabled me to write where it was not very possible before; has anyone really tried writing on a bus (NOT a train) where the best you can hope for is for not many bumps? (Have I told you about Detroit roads? There's lots of cars, to keep it simple...)

Anyway, this means that I can *hopefully* up the output from my side as well. There's been a bunch of recent hits as far as real life is concerned, but they were like driving over a very bumpy road rather than spinning out into the ditch. In other words, I'm still going forward, though more shaken than before. At least I still have employment, and I'm still going forward as far as career goes, and therefore I will see about writing some more to get these ideas out and recorded rather than keeping them all in.

For the few fans of MST3k still out there, keep circulating the tapes. It's so wonderfully low-tech around here, with the monochrome website, videotapes going into VCRs to see below-zero grade special effects... if anything in this world can be labelled simple, even if it's mid-90s technology, it is in the joking protest to pop-culture that MST3k has at its heart... the ability to point at the Emperor because his junk is hanging free, for all to see.

Lastly, thank you all for your support.

New MSTing & QnD Rifftrax Reviews!

Greetings!

Hallelujah! Zoogz and I have finally completed a new MSTing! Yayyyy! To check it out, visit the following link: http://www.nabiki.com/mst/recent/find3k1.txt

Also, I've completed work on no less than sixteen new Rifftrax QnD reviews which can be accessed below. Any and all feedback is much appreciated as always!

Sincerely,

Megane 6.7

"Drugs Are Like That" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- I really have to question the wisdom of producing an anti-drug short featuring two kids COKED OUT THE ASS. Seriously, these kids HAD to be on something as they struggle towards a coherent thought and barely mumble their way through some sort of bizarre analogy with Lego and drugs. Apparently, much like patriotism, drugs are everyone, everything, everywhere. They are the alpha. They are the omega. They are... like that. As for the Rifftrax, it's pretty decent with the riffers being frequently bewildered with the short and quickly losing patience with the brain dead brats. Recommended.

"Buying Food" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- Yes, apparently people had to be told how to food shop back in the day too. What's next, Centron? A short on how to scratch yourself? Actually, at this point, that wouldn't surprise me. Anyway, this is another hilarious short that makes a excellent companion piece with 'Cooking Terms' as food is hastily bought, cruelly wasted, harshly judged and subjected to a staggering amount of superfluous investigation. Very highly recommended.

"The Trouble with Women" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- Ever see that old episode of Family Guy where Mr. Weed shows Ms. Ironbox the work training film from the 1950s that was blatantly sexist? Well, that's pretty much this film in a nutshell as it tells us that women are a huge pain in the ass to train on the job but it's still YOUR responsibility to do so, so suck it up, man. As you might expect, the trio just go way over the top with this one mocking the attitudes and characters in the film "You probably left bra marks on the table!" and it makes for a short but very amusing Rifftrax. Highly recommended.

"It Must Be The Neighbors" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- For some reason, I keep thinking of the phrase 'It Must Be The Pretzels!' whenever I see the title. Anyway, this short features fugly neighbors bickering over who's the least responsible for the possible influx of mosquitoes, rats and bugs due to their combined laziness. Naturally it's up to their super kids to keep the peace by forming a mob and cleaning the fuck out of everything till their parents get their collective butts in gear. After all, without video games and cable TV to entertain them, what the hell else were kids gonna do back then? The riffing for this was pretty good and I was entertained. Recommended.

"Going Steady" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- This was yet another short on dating, this time asking if going steady is worth the hassle or not. Surprisingly, most opinions expressed in the short seem to lean toward the negative, even the parents of the middle aged kids. This Rifftrax was all right for the price, nothing special but not bad either. Recommended.

"You And Your Family" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- This brought back fond memories of the MST3K classic short 'A Date With Your Family'. And while it's only 7 mins long, it was pretty funny and I think worth checking out. Highly recommended.

"Primary Safety: In the School Building" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- Ahh, this was great. I remember having to watch films like this back in grade school. Of course we welcomed any chance to take a nap back then. Seriously though, this short was almost non-stop laughs as some poor kids is forced to pass judgment on his classmates for minor infractions to achieve the greater good of nurturing future generations of anal-retentive neurotics. Very highly recommended.

"Cooking Terms" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- I watched this short before 'Buying Food' and I have to say it's one of my all time favorites. Poor little Margie is cruelly lectured by the narrator when she makes a mistake on her husband's dinner/dessert and shamed into learning proper techniques like how to sheep, boil water and the all important soft ball lesson of cooking. Needless to say, the trio pummel this short mercilessly with hilariously scathing sarcasm, making this one of my favorite Rifftrax shorts. Very highly recommended.

"Casablanca" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- Mike starts off this Rifftrax explaining that he, Kevin and Bill took on this classic film as a personal challenge to test their skills, which I can relate to and greatly respect considering some of the fanfics I've MSTed over the years. And how did they do? Pretty well actually. The riffs here are definitely more of the light and playful persuasion than the sarcastic and brutally funny humor they save for movies like 'Twilight'. They did rely on random pop culture references a bit too much in some spots but I found it mostly forgivable considering the difficulty of riffing one of the greatest films of all time. In conclusion, this Rifftrax makes a nice companion piece to the film, just be sure to watch the film first if you've never seen it. Recommended.

"The Room" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- "Oh hi, Rifftrax fans!" Hoo boy... this film is pretty much a glorified softcore porn, elevated by a mind-bogglingly goofy script and starring a long haired Euro weirdo with an accent even more incomprehensible than Jean Claude Van Damme, Tommy Wiseau. Tommy is apparently aspiring to be Orsen Wells by also writing, directing and producing this film but he's far closer to Ed Wood Jr., despite the lack of any crossdressing... that we're aware of. The man simply exudes limburger with every line he utters. All three of them. Over and over and over again. "Oh, hi, repetition!"

Anyway, you would think this would make for a pretty funny Rifftrax. And yeah, for the most part, it does. They tend to riff on Tommy Wiseau a bit too much, not that it isn't well deserved but it does get a bit tired after a while. Where I felt the Rifftrax really stumbled though was whenever they had to riff any sex scenes. I realize it can be difficult to riff on basically the same sex scene repeated about five or six times over the course of the film with little variation and that Mike Nelson is personally uncomfortable with scenes involving sex and nudity in them but their solution of having Disembaudio show up over and over with his friends and family being as loud and obnoxious as possible was frankly downright painful to listen to and I really hope they can come up with a less irritating solution next time they tackle scenes like that.

Overall though, I'm still recommending 'The Room' Rifftrax for the price and the movie as a whole but you might find yourself turning the volume down at times. Fair warning.

"Back to School with Joan Miller" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- Girls Gone Plaid!

This is another short that would've worked well on MST3K as we're forced to watch model after model smile through their pain as they parade their hot naked wrists for our pleasure while draped in endless variations of plaid, the epitome of high fashion... if you believe Joan Miller who couldn't even be bothered to show up for this thing. The short runs twenty minutes and is generally repetitive but to their credit, the riffers do a pretty good job keeping things interesting and funny throughout. Recommended.

"The Bill of Rights in Action" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- This is one of those shorts that asks a question and expects you to come up with an answer. In this case, does freedom of speech grant a Nazi the right to praise Hitler while standing in front of a Jewish temple? The short is pretty straight forward and not really all that goofy, and while the riffers do get some funny lines in, I found it an odd choice for a Rifftrax. Still, I did enjoy the jokes, so recommended, I guess.

"Shake Hands with Danger" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- This short from the 70s is apparently still in use today and shows the dangers of being rock stupid on a construction site, with each work related accident being followed by an addictive little song that you'll have stuck in your head for weeks afterwards. Trust me. It's also cheesy as hell and the trio do a great job riffing it. Very Highly Recommended.

"The Tale of Moose Baby" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- Oh MAN... normally I'm not a fan of films involving animals but the first few minutes of this short had me laughing so hard, I thought I was going to pass out! That made it worth the 99 cents right there. The rest of the short wasn't quite as gut-bustingly funny but still good overall with the editing jokes, constant ribbing of Moose Baby and the last minute or so had me giggling for another five minutes straight. Very Highly Recommended.

"Flying Stewardess" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- Wait, they used to have pull out BEDS in airplanes!? Bring them back! NOW! OK, OK, to business. This 1950 short basically tries to convince women how wonderful and fulfilling it is to be a stewardess instead of a dumb old pilot. And according to the short, most stewardesses get married within a mere THREE years so apply now, you lucky dames and be sure to brush up on your sailing and ping pong if you ever hope to land a man! Sarcasm aside, this 11 min short is nicely roasted by the trio. Recommended.

"Constance Bennett's Daily Beauty Rituals" w/ Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy & Bill Corbett. -- Five minutes of watching a woman putting on makeup and taking a ba? Sure, why not? And who the hell names their child, Constance? Anyway, this woman is more than happy to lead us through her morning routine, but before you know it, it's a quarter of eight and she's dressed to serve her lord and master (her exact words) also known as her son. Yikes. While this short's pretty short, the riffing is pretty damn funny for those five minutes and worth checking out for 99 cents, IMHO. Highly recommended.

Rifftrax Reviews

Hi, just wanted to post here and say that my Rifftrax Reviews are still being updated semi-regularly, you can check them out at http://www.nabiki.com/mst/zoogz/mst/blog/2007/03/really-quick-n-dirty-rifftrax-reviews.html

Also, Zoogz and I will hopefully have a new MSTing on the site before too long, we've had less free time to work on MSTings of late but we are still active and we hope you'll enjoy our other works in the meantime.

Sincerely,

Megane 6.7