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Post by Udvarnoky on Mar 28, 2020 15:19:08 GMT -5
There seems to be an assumption here that these are never-before-released episodes being touted. But there are a number of episodes that Shout! was able to release on DVD that have never seen digital releases. The Universal episodes, for example.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Dec 31, 2019 10:18:27 GMT -5
Joel's constant pointing to the "100% on Rotten Tomatoes" statistic is beginning to grate. Very reminiscent of Jay Leno always pointing out that his Tonight Show was "number one" in the Nielsen ratings.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Dec 16, 2019 12:54:25 GMT -5
Jim did seem to be attesting to having all the KTMA masters tapes in the 2008 interview he gave to Satellite News, and the clip from K03 would seem to put beyond all doubt that he had that episode in his hands...at that time. But who knows what happened between 2008 and Shout!'s acquisition of MST3K. I mean, when K01 and K02 were unveiled, Joel described finding them in some "final boxes," suggesting that the BBI tape library didn't exactly make it to Shout's LA headquarters in a particularly organized way.
If there was some way to contact Jordan Fields, he would probably be more of an authority than Joel about the assets, which surely must have been collated by now. We still never got a straight answer about why the KTMA host segment compilation got cancelled aside from a vague reference to quality concerns. Regardless of their condition, it would be nice to know if Shout in fact has all twenty-one master tapes. We don't even know that much, and I don't get why.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Dec 12, 2019 13:49:32 GMT -5
MST3K was indeed performed live at conventions. This includes a live riffing of THIS ISLAND EARTH that was performed in part to sell Universal executives on the idea of the feature film. (The Brains literally were able to show the studio the product before they bought it, which is Reason #867 why the subsequent meddling and micromanaging was so galling.)
Also, while the first Rifftrax Live Fathom Event was 2009, Rifftrax Live as a concept really dates back to at least January 2007, which is the first time the team riffed live at SF Sketchfest. I think Cinematic Titanic debuted at the end of that year. Joel in no way invented live riffing, but then I don't think it really needed to be "invented," as it is a pretty natural extension of the form.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Dec 11, 2019 14:18:16 GMT -5
Thanks for the ongoing updates on this, guys. What's unfolding here is potentially the most interesting development on the MST3K licensing front in years.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Dec 11, 2019 14:05:37 GMT -5
I think the "touring band" is qualified, but what irks me is that back when the "studio band" was still being invited to also be the "touring band," the shows were also good and markedly better than the Netflix episodes. This tells me my issue with the Neflix version isn't the cast or the writers. It's the way they actually produced the episodes. Pre-recording the riffs in a sound booth was an absolutely fatal mistake on Joel's part*. It killed the immediately and the "hangout" vibe that was so important to the old show (and still there in the live shows) by giving the theater segments this weird, pre-processed feeling.
If the Netflix cast had recorded their theater segments "live to tape" as they had been for ten years, I strongly suspect that all these issues people have raised about the rhythm of the riffing in the new seasons would never have cropped up -- or at least would have resolved themselves in short order, because it would have been unsustainable and would not have felt natural to the performers. By doing everything in a sound booth and editing it together later, the performers never get a chance to feel whether the riffing is unnatural, because it's not being recorded naturally in the first place. What sucks is that Jonah, Baron and Hampton may never get the chance to prove that.
*I point the finger at Joel because the buck stops with him, and because I strongly suspect that his infatuation with the puppeteering aspects of MST3K, which he doubled-down on for the new show, instigated all of this. It complicated the process of shooting the theater segments, and I don't think he understood what he'd be breaking by doing so.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Dec 11, 2019 12:20:53 GMT -5
When the revival was still brand new, Joel mentioned many times that he intended Jonah to last one hundred episodes. Even accounting for hyperbole, I cannot imagine a twenty episode run was anywhere close to the game plan.
Obviously, getting cancelled wasn't part of the game plan either, and all bets are off now. But if we accept the premise that the live show cast are the new inhabitants of the SOL when/if MST3K returns (which may not end up being the case, but it is certainly the signal the tour is putting out), then it does end up making the Netflix talent a kind of interim cast. I am only saying that if it does indeed play out that way, it implies that Jonah/Hampton/Baron are dispensible in a way that is, at minimum, awkward.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Dec 10, 2019 12:09:26 GMT -5
I thought the latest live show was fantastic (NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER), but I share in some of the ambivalent feelings about the show's host segment "narrative" and the cast, which Joel explicitly calls the future of MST3K. When and if the show returns, it certainly sounds like this is the group who will be featured.
Here is the thing: this cast is excellent. And if Emily Marsh, Conor McGiffin, Nate Begle and Yvonne Freese are indeed going to be replacing the established Netflix cast, I truly am excited; they are going to do an excellent job. They might even be superior at the job - many of us have said from the beginning that the show ought to be made up of relative unknowns when instead we ended up getting Friends Of The Nerdist Present MST3K.
It's the circumstances that make this uncomfortable for me. If I find the bots better in the live shows, it's because they don't suffer from the sense of remove that the Netflix episodes do. It's not a commentary on Baron and Hampton, who I think would be just as good as these (presumably cheaper) guys if they were the ones controlling the robots. It was having the voice performer and the puppeteer being two different people that was the problem.
What bothers me is that it feels like Joel is doing what should have been done in the first place because budget cuts eventually forced him to, and Jonah/Baron/Hampton are now casualties of his initial miscalculations. I feel like they are going to end up becoming, in retrospect, a twenty episode lame duck SOL cast, through no fault of their own. As convinced as I am that the show's future is in good hands, I do feel really weird about that. I would like to have seen what a Season 13 with the Netflix cast would have looked like with the pre-recorded approach jettisoned and the energy of the live shows injected into the production. I think in its post Netflix incarnation we are going to see the quality of the show improve on that very basis, but I don't believe the seemingly planned cast turnover was a necessary part of that journey.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Nov 27, 2019 13:23:54 GMT -5
Hah! It would be hilarious if MST3K bounced from one streaming service to another, each season themed after its current home's catalog. The Gauntlet sort of set the template, in the sense that it was the Netflix Binge season. And the first batch of episodes of Season 8 could be thought of as The Universal Drive-in stretch. You could do the horror season on Shudder, a family entertainment season on Disney+, a Warner Bros. season on HBO Max... It is the perfect way to adapt MST3K to a world where every media company has its own streaming platform.
Alas, it seems like a pipe dream for the following reasons: no company would give Shout! a year-to-year exclusivity deal, which would be necessary to ensure no lengthy hiatuses between cancellations, and every swap would orphan the episodes of the prior season. Still, I love the sheer promiscuity of the idea.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Nov 27, 2019 12:49:01 GMT -5
I do think there should be a feasible way for Shout! to produce episodes directly, at low volume. They could probably come up with decent projections of how well a volume of four brand new episodes might sell, and reverse engineer a budget. It would no doubt be a fraction of the budget of the episodes of The Return or The Gauntlet, but it should nevertheless be possible in a way that was not when Rhino ran the numbers twenty years ago.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Nov 26, 2019 21:32:41 GMT -5
Way I see it, we conned another 20 episodes of this weird show out of some media executives, and that's a win. This show has proven that it isn't really capable of dying, even if it is known to have dramatic interruptions. But between 200+ back episodes and the combined libraries of Rifftrax, The Film Crew and Cinematic Titanic, we have something like eight trillion hours of quality movie riffing to subsist on until the next harvest comes. We feast even in famine.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Nov 26, 2019 19:29:16 GMT -5
Shout! inked their deal with Netflix back in July 2016, so we're already three-and-a-half-years into whatever exclusivity window they agreed upon. Could it really be longer than that? I don't know that Joel is necessarily implying we're years away from the next relaunch, but if we are, it's worth considering that there could be reasons for that aside from some kind of Denver boot on Netflix's part. None of us really know the situation here beyond Netflix passing.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Nov 26, 2019 9:50:55 GMT -5
During the breaks, the channel shows extended clips from other episodes. It is indeed confusing at first. When I peeked last night they were on ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE, so you catching WILD HORSES seven hours ago checks out. They are running through all their cleared episodes in chronological order and are on Season 6 right now.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Nov 6, 2019 8:58:05 GMT -5
As we know from the fact that the official Youtube channel also has a clip from ROCKETSHIP X-M, this doesn't necessarily signal anything, but it is nice to see some reference quality video of a DELTA KNIGHTS theater segment:
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Post by Udvarnoky on Sept 1, 2019 11:08:31 GMT -5
Considering that Hampton and Baron were not even offered enough to make the tour worthwhile for them, I'm not entirely sure the current cast is the big expenditure we are assuming them to be. For all we know they're being as paid as much as nobodies would be and are working below their rates out of love for the show. And considering the crazy schedule the reboot apparently produces the host segments on, Patton and Felicia's on-screen work might only amount to a week per season.
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