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Post by Udvarnoky on Aug 31, 2019 9:00:44 GMT -5
I'm rooting on direct releases from Shout at a lower budget and back to the original format. When and if Netflix drops MST3K, the business model behind direct releases will be an interesting thing for Shout! to sort out. Certainly, the prospect is way more viable than it was twenty years ago when Rhino reviewed the idea of new episodes release on VHS and decided it couldn't work. Rifftrax is a useful success story one can point to, but it's not quite an apples-to-apples comparison, as the MP3 releases incur almost no overhead. Rifftrax is additionally able to pull off three live shows a year, but only if the fan base subsidizes it. Still, I can see Shout! being able to make the numbers crunch on a wholly independent MST3K venture, which in my imagination looks like a limited number of tightly budgeted episodes as a supplement to annual touring. Not too different from what we're getting now, really. But there may be a cast turnover and the pledge drives may become routine.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Aug 31, 2019 8:34:59 GMT -5
The idea of releasing a KTMA episode as essentially the bonus feature of a re-riff is intriguing. The riffing in those episodes is so rough that it really wouldn't feel like going over old ground so much fulfilling untapped potential. Some of those movies were ripe for a treatment that the team was not yet ready to deliver in 1988 - and you can tell the Brains thought along similar lines when they gave some Gamera films another crack in Season 3. Heck, I'm still waiting for ROBOT HOLOCAUST redux from Rifftrax or any of these successor teams.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Aug 30, 2019 14:32:31 GMT -5
I'm desperate for an update on the rumored Vol. 40. With the Vol. 12 re-release dropping in October, it seems now should be about the time for at least an announcement. If it is really coming out this year, anyway.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Jul 19, 2019 10:15:00 GMT -5
Logistical issues aside, the bigger argument against recreating theater segments in HD in my view is that it is revisionist, resulting in something other than what the show was when it was made. We should be watching the episode as it existed when it got submitted to the network. We should be watching the same cruddy, tape-based masters that the Brains were when they riffed them and framed the sillouettes against them. I don't think it is appropriate to revisit that.
As has been pointed out, it was not uncommon for some of the riffs to comment on print damage. Off the top of my head a number of remarks in Screaming Skull would no longer make sense if you overlaid a nice print. And as travis points out, there is literally nothing to be done with the host segments, which are locked in at standard def, so after all the effort that would go into remastering the theater segments in the way proposed (an effort which I think is being grossly underestimated, but I won't get into it), and in addition to the other concerns, you'd be left with such a distracting inconsistency so as to render it pointless.
I mean, it's a neat idea hypothetically, but I don't think it goes the distance in terms of being a worthwhile pursuit.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Jul 19, 2019 9:43:24 GMT -5
Impressive work from Shout! in getting through all the Rhino volumes. Bring on the official word of Vol. 40.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Jun 6, 2019 12:29:57 GMT -5
William Sylvester takes the cake. Worked with Kubrick and appeared in three MST3K films -- sufficiently ubiquitous among the experiments to get a host segment devoted to him. Respect.
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Post by Udvarnoky on May 3, 2019 15:23:26 GMT -5
I envy this woman's free time.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 30, 2019 9:44:56 GMT -5
Complaining about the fact that they want to get the rights in order is absolutely baffling. We are STILL, and will forever be, dealing with the problems caused by the problem of movie rights for the episodes of the original show. The idea that they should not bother to future-proof the new episodes to save cash would be boneheaded and irresponsible on Shout!'s part.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 26, 2019 19:07:36 GMT -5
If it really is Joel's farewell then I am OK with him hogging the spotlight, but it doesn't feel like a great sign that the revival cast is missing in action here.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 26, 2019 14:41:21 GMT -5
I like the reboot, but I do think something important was broken with the choice to pre-record the riffs. For the sake of finely controlled audio mixing and the ability to do sight gags with the puppets, a certain immediacy is lost that I think is retrospectively way more important than those other advantages. The proof is in the live shows, which did not suffer from that sense of remove. You can just feel it in the studio version. The whole show is effectively ADR, which utterly kills that homey "hanging out" vibe that made MST3K so special.
I also think there is something strangely regressive about the camerwork in the host segments. The first time MST3K left its tiny warehouse and went HD, with the feature film, it is telling that the Brains embraced that freedom by exploring the SOL in the form of legit, three dimensional sets. While I respect Joel's choice to stick with the classic "backdrop" approach, which is more suited to the show's Svengoolie-like roots, there is something very wrong with the fact that the camera moves less than it did even in Eden Prairie. Everyone commented on how the SOL bridge scenes were bolted down in Season 11, and the "fix" for Season 12 is that...the camera consciously shakes more? Kind of a lateral move. There is no panning to other ends of the ship, which even Season 1 had, for cripes sake. It just seems visually flat.
So, yes, the revival is good, it's funny and it's improving. But the live shows have shown us the real potential of this team that the taped episodes have so far failed to live up to. If the old show was more ramshackle, it was also more authentic. If the new show is more polished, it's also more sterile. I hope they get some of the old mojo back, but it means getting out of their comfort zone and recording "live to tape" again. The fact that they were patting themselves on the back for recording in the same sound booth for Season 12 is a bad sign. The bar for this show should be much higher than Honest Trailers But Less Smug.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 24, 2019 17:40:32 GMT -5
Not that I'm an expert, but I don't think it was unheard for direct-to-video films to obtain an MPAA rating out of sheer convenience. In looking into the subject, I found this LA Times article from 1988 that is kind of interesting.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 24, 2019 13:06:07 GMT -5
If Shout! did indeed track down Delta Knights, I wonder if they will go the extra mile and release the uncut movie as well. If any film ever needed a Blu-ray, it is the one that revealed staples to have been an invention from classical antiquity.
Although, would an HD version even be possible? While the movie was no doubt shot on film, its direct-to-VHS intentions make it probable that only a standard def master exists. That we may never behold The Magic Cyst Of Archimedes in 1080p is more tragic than the fate of The Magnificent Ambersons, if you ask me.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 24, 2019 12:29:18 GMT -5
I am prepared to blindly trust that riffs per minute data as accurate, and doing so I can see it only as interesting trivia. The idea of using it as evidence of writing burnout is pretty out there in my book, for a number of reasons and to a degree that I had better just leave it alone. The only thing I will say on the subject is the most obvious, and made especially relevant by the primary criticism of the show's revival seasons: quantity is not quality.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 24, 2019 12:13:23 GMT -5
To swerve for a second, I've noticed Mike has expressed bafflement on more than one occasion (DragonCon 2002 and his intro to the Rifftrax release of Screaming Skull) about the fact that Sci-Fi cancelled MST3K only to keep broadcasting it for five more years. His position seems to be, if you liked us enough to keep us on the air, why not have fresh episodes as well?
It is kind of funny that Sci-Fi re-ran the show for so long, which would have required extending its agreement with BBI aka giving Mallon money. But I think the re-runs were performing reliably well relative to the expectations of an extremely undesirable Saturday morning time slot to justify whatever tiny amount Mallon could have possibly demanded. Though I share Mike's frustration, you can't compare that cost to the price tag associated with producing new episodes. As we know all too well, Sci-Fi wasn't spending one red cent to re-aqcuire movie licenses, so whatever money they were earning from ads at 8am was almost overhead-free.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 24, 2019 11:23:33 GMT -5
Respectfully, I find that view wholly unconvincing and over-reliant on projection. Besides which, there are bonafide classics in the back halves of both Season 9 and Season 10. I mean, if Final Sacrifice was made during a period of phoning it in, then they should have made every episode disengaged.
Do we even know when in the production timeline they were told that Season 9 was not going to be 22 episodes, or that they were renewed for Season 10, or that they were cancelled? The belief that 1004 was the last episode produced before they got notice is based off of Mary Jo's ACEG write-up, but in it she only says that they didn't know they were cancelled at the time they wrote 1004. It is not implied that they therefore found out immediately afterward. Fans came up with that conclusion on their own.
It is more convincing to me that the cancellation notice came only after BBI had produced at least eight episodes of the tenth season. The evidence is the copyright dates, which suggest that 1001-1008 were produced in the fall of 1998, with the remaining five produced in 1999 (Hamlet is the first episode with that year stamped on it) after a long production hiatus. The announcement of the cancellation came on February 24th, 1999, and we know that Diabolik was produced in April. Therefore, it seems almost certain that they were well into the back half by the time they were told there was no pick-up.
Now granted, that is only when the pink slip became official; BBI could have seen the writing on the wall well before then. But that brings us too far into the area of pure speculation to draw any confident conclusions about the mindset of the team when they were making certain episodes. It also assumes that awareness of a falling axe would necessarily be a detriment to quality. I know many fans who cite Season 7 as a high water mark, and it seems like BBI knew when they were fulfilling that six-episode order that it was the Comedy Central valediction.
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