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Post by someoneinatree on Oct 12, 2018 18:28:29 GMT -5
Am I mistaken, or did Joel say we were going to get at least one B&W movie this season? I guess that could be the mystery movie, but maybe I'm totally dreaming about the B&W thing. I don't think he ever confirmed it. I want to say that that was something they were considering before they were officially renewed.
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Post by someoneinatree on Oct 12, 2018 17:12:17 GMT -5
Regarding the length of the episodes, I have a few friends who are not that big of fans of the original series that really loved the recent season. They told me that what they liked about The Return over the original run was that it had a faster pace and the references were more relatable to them (roughly a 1000% increase in video game references). And though they didn't say as much, I'm sure the fact that most of the movies featured in season 11 were much better than what they showed on the original series probably helped. I was concerned that they would be showing Sharknado, but it looks like most of these titles fit right in with things you'd expect to see on MST3K. That Corman comparison to Asylum is pretty spot on.
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Post by someoneinatree on Sept 1, 2018 13:26:19 GMT -5
We've really become a culture of "Best Movie Ever" and "Worst Movie Ever." If one can discuss in the grey area in between then an actual conversation can happen, but if you only deal in extremes and absolutes then I don't find it's worth the time put into it to even try. But alas, most fans think that in order to be "true fans" you need to be willing to be outraged over something petty. This is actually a problem I've had with film criticism for ages, and I always love to see it brought up. There's a weird pressure to not let things just be "okay". I mean, I'd rather watch something good than something okay, but I think there's value in saying that something's just okay instead of having to take a side between "really good" and "awful". I fear that MST3K might have inadvertently contributed to this mindset. During the Q&A session for the Rifftrax Reunion show, one of the reporters asked the cast how do they feel knowing that they heavily influenced film criticism discourse on the Internet. And even though this reporter was meaning to flatter them with this question, the panel seemed uncomfortable with such a declaration. They explained that they never saw what they did as legitimate film criticism, that they were doing a comedy show. But if you look online, there are people who look at Channel Awesome and its former contributors as critics and their output as reviews even though they are basically like (lesser) MST3K episodes, a variety show built on bad movies or other media.
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Post by someoneinatree on Jul 13, 2018 9:17:03 GMT -5
They've gotta be shooting for Turkey Day or thereabouts for the drop date, don't you think? I'm not sure how much Netflix cares about the importance of Turkey Day to MST3K (though the renewal was announced last Turkey Day), but the timing does seem to suggest a premiere around that time. I'm going to guess either October or November.
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Post by someoneinatree on Jun 11, 2018 0:17:19 GMT -5
If true, I'd say that's a good selection. It's well known in bad movie circles, but not so much so that it would be overdone if featured on the show. And since it's clearly derivative of a far more popular movie, that also fits comfortably with the show.
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Post by someoneinatree on Jun 7, 2018 10:07:20 GMT -5
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Post by someoneinatree on Jun 1, 2018 20:32:45 GMT -5
"Good news! 8 fewer episodes!" That's what latest kickstarter update sez in plain language. Okay, they put it like this: "The next season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 will be SIX EPISODES long, and written to encourage binge viewing!" Which is pretty good spin. Hate to see the glass as half full, but, well, it's actually 3/7ths full. In it Joel says that 14 two-hour shows is a lot to binge. So? Is that really a problem? Do people not watch a show because it might take them more than one session to finish it? "Hmm, couldn't finish the entire season tonight, so I guess I won't watch any of it." I don't think that happens. Wouldn't three nights of binging be just as good for the viewing numbers as one? Maybe even better? Okay, bitching over for the moment. I'm happy we're getting something.... A lot of it has to do with the Netflix model. According to their statistics, people tend to watch only one show at a time on their platform before moving on to another, so that's why they push the concept of binge watching. I'm not going to pretend that I understand it, but that's how they operate and it looks like it has mostly worked out for them. I'm hoping that the smaller episode count will allow them to shoot them at a more thoughtful pace and won't necessitate them to combine takes through bubble technology.
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Post by someoneinatree on Jun 1, 2018 16:33:15 GMT -5
I have no problem with six episodes since I felt that season 7 was one of the most consistent in the original run. Hopefully this will lead to a quick turnaround after shooting and lead to future seasons being produced faster.
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Post by someoneinatree on May 21, 2018 20:05:17 GMT -5
But.... didn't that come from Josh himself in an interview many years ago? No. Before the Ken Plume podcast, Josh would hint at behind the scenes drama, but never said anything about difficulties adjusting to writing the riffs. Also, the narrative of him not being able to handle writing for the show makes no sense when you take into account that he went to Hollywood and found great success as a writer.
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Post by someoneinatree on May 21, 2018 18:57:23 GMT -5
I did not know until today that Jim had lost his daughter while the show was still going on. For whatever reason I had mistakenly understood that this occurred in the years after the show went out of production. With regard to the financial disagreements, I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle, although I still find the position of the performers more credible. This is the first time the financial petitions from the performers have been characterized as “severance.” Jim makes it sound as though they just wanted him to cut a big fat check that the company’s coffers could not support. In that light, his position to deny them the request seems reasonable. The problem is, his version doesn't pass the sniff test. I think what the performers wanted, because they’ve pretty much said as much, was some sort of stake in the company, and therefore royalties/residuals. It is possible they were attempting to get retroactive stake as well, which indeed would have meant an immediate payout. Perhaps that part would have been unrealistic. But the fact remains that the performers ended up with no stake in even the continued revenue the show earned for subsequent licensing deals. That’s got squadoosh to do with what the Best Brains bank account looked like in 1999, is a reasonable grievance and is pointedly something that Jim did not address. I also think there’s another side to the story where the AMC offer was concerned. Jim says that the performers elected not to pursue the offer because of their desire to move on to other projects. I have no doubt there is some truth to this, but I suspect it was a coefficient rather than the whole equation. I think if the performers were on better terms with Jim where the business side was concerned, they might have felt more incentivized to continue the show. I think after ten years of being Jim’s employees rather than his partners, they decided it was enough when he still refused to budge, especially if they felt that they were doing more to produce the show than he was at that point. Josh, Trace, and, I believe, a few other cast members have made pointed references to the paltry paychecks they made on MST3K. Josh’s beef was more specific than the fact that his paycheck was paltry – everyone’s was, relative speaking, at the time. But Josh was the only holdover from the KTMA era who was not cut in at all when Best Brains was founded (Joel and Jim had 45%, while Kevin and Trace got 5% each). It is objectively true that Josh made as much a contribution to the show at that point as Kevin and Trace did, yet the choice was made not to reflect that on paper or in attitude. As to why he was being treated as less than a peer, Josh was given the line that he was very young, had not yet paid his show business dues, and should have felt grateful to be there. (It also seems clear at this point that Josh was seen as an annoying teenager by a team that was on average a decade older than him.) Things came to a head when Jim mistakenly left payroll information on Josh’s desk, and Josh discovered that he was being paid not only less than the other performers, but less than the secretary. (Josh was paid $200 a week.) This ended up in a blowout fight between Josh and Jim. Josh left, and Jim told the rest of the Brains that Josh had been snooping around the files. The gang was inclined to believe Jim’s version because, again, there was very likely some ageism going on with Josh at the time. That said, the rest of the Brains are as implicated in this as Jim is, in my mind. What is interesting about Josh’s departure story is the way it echoes Joel’s. Obviously it was on a different scale, as Joel created the damned show and that schism was over something more fundamental, but the themes are the same. When Joel talks about how he left because Jim anointed himself as the director of the movie, he makes a point of saying that Kevin, Trace and the others seemed to be going along with Jim's idea. If Joel’s peers had been more inclined to stand up for Joel’s role in the show, and there was more than Joel resisting Jim, things might have gone a different way. But you can throw that logic right back at Joel: if he had stood up for Josh’s role in the show all those years earlier, perhaps Jim wouldn’t have had the seemingly unilateral authority he grew to have at Best Brains. Josh’s situation suggests that there was a certain attitude at the studio from day one that possibly could have been confronted before things got to the point where key creative players felt unappreciated and found it necessary to leave. My take is that there was some real skeeviness with the Best Brains power structure right from the beginning; it was just convenient to look past it when the guy getting stiffed was the punk kid no one really got along with anyway. But it’s telling that pretty much everyone ended up having perceived equity issues aimed at Jim by the end of the show’s run. (If you haven’t heard Josh’s side of the story, he gives it between 1:02:10 – 1:21:16 in this interview. As you’ve probably guessed, he puts to bed the spin that he left MST3K on good terms. He also says that the stories about him resisting the scripted approach to the riffing the show took after KTMA are equally false.) One other thing I’ll say in quasi-defense of Jim is that, unless things changed over the years, he had no more ownership of MST3K than Joel did. That means Joel is just as guilty of holding out on the other Brains, yet you never see the finger pointed at Joel, only Jim. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Joel is seen as more deserving of his stake in MST3K. We tend to be more sympathetic to the creative guys than the business guys. I shouldn’t speak too confidently without knowing exactly how much control Joel had after he left, but I doubt he was utterly powerless to do anything but collect mailbox money from the DVD sales. As always, these things are probably more complicated than they are portrayed. At any rate, this was a fine interview. It's alwas nice to hear Jim talk about MST3K, since he side usually gets the least playtime. And I’m happy for him that Blood Hook is now on Blu-ray in what sounds like a lovingly crafted release. I didn’t necessary anticipate that we’d get a reference quality transfer of Blood Hook, but I’m pleased that we did. Again, I'm not going to defend the way Best Brains was set up to only benefit management, but if Mallon only had limited involvement with the last two and a half seasons of the show because he was mourning for the loss of his daughter, it's pretty callous to be critical of him scaling back his commitment to a silly comedy show after he suffered the worst loss a parent can possibly have. Unless there’s some particularly appalling statements I’m not familiar with, I would counterargue that it is callous to frame the grievances of the performers in this way. The objection, as I understand it, is that Jim was the only one with any stake in the program. Perhaps his stepping away cast that disparity into even sharper relief, but considering that Trace has stated that arguments with Jim over ownership were a reason he left the program, I think it’s fair to say that this friction with the cast predated Jim’s horrible personal tragedy. I should have clarified my memories of this interview I can no longer find. It was conducted circa 2003-2006 and the subject implied that Mallon's lack of involvement and engagement might have played a part in the show ending. Perhaps this person was one of the Brains who wanted Mallon to pursue the AMC offer. I should have also taken into account the extant grievances they had with Mallon leading up to that. Unless I missed it, I'm surprised the interview didn't touch on Mallon's time with mst3k.com, which, to me, demonstrated that Mallon was really out of his element in figuring out what to do with the brand and how to keep it relevant. It didn't help that around the same time that both Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic were out giving fans what they wanted (riffing) and the website was offering Flash cartoons three years after people stopped caring about Flash cartoons. I have no doubt that Mallon had the best intentions in mind, but it seemed clear that Best Brains was inadvertently holding MST3K back.
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Post by someoneinatree on May 21, 2018 12:30:04 GMT -5
Part of the reason why it's difficult to empathize with Jim's "we had a low budget, and couldn't afford to pay royalties or severances", is because he *has* had moments where he seems to not like the idea of others possibly making more money than him, or at least making a lot of money from other business ventures. For example, he turned down Trace's suggestion of producing a show idea of his because they only had enough money to produce MST3K. That's totally understandable. What *isn't* so excusable is, after Trace expressed interest in leaving the show to produce his show idea elsewhere, Jim told him, "You can't do that either, because your idea is now intellectual property". That's a pretty dick thing to do, and was one of the reasons for Trace leaving the show after Season 7 (the other reason, I believe being family-related issues). Regardless of all that, I do feel bad for what happened to his daughter, and can't imagine what losing a loved one in a tragic incident would do to a person, but that incident happened *after* Trace's departure. Also, didn't Jim initially have an issue with Mike, Kevin, and Bill starting up Rifftrax? He had issue with Rhino handling The Film Crew while they were also releasing MST3K box sets since he believed that they were too similar, prompting Rhino to drop the releases and Shout! Factory to pick them up. A year later, MST3K also found its way to Shout! I can understand his motives, but ultimately think that all he did was hurt The Film Crew and the fans. I think he might've also pursued action against smaller riffing groups for having names too similar to MST3K.
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Post by someoneinatree on May 21, 2018 2:44:52 GMT -5
Please forgive me as I do a fair bit of assuming ahead, but I'm guessing the "we" Mallon is referring to is Consolidated Puppets Incorporated, the company Best Brains became after Shout! purchased the MST3K property. It is very possible that Mallon is the only person associated with CPI and that it's merely a holding company or tax shelter that had to be set up in order for Mallon to receive his payout. In the documentary on the season 11 boxset, someone with Shout! talks about acquiring MST3K and makes reference to "Best Brains" and "they," not Jim Mallon. It might just be a legal way to recognize that this is seen as the actions of a company and not a person, even if it's highly possible the company is just a person. I wish that the interviewer asked a follow up question about the nature of Mallon's contributions to the new series, but I'm going to hazard a guess that Mallon himself might not know the full extent. He probably had to turn over legacy resources or documents and might not know what impact, if any, it had on the new show. Mallon has never been that expansive on the interviews I've seen or read, so I don't fault the interviewer for that.
Personally, I don't think Mallon's comments on severance pay are anything other than what was probably accurate of the time. He said they never had the budget to have that set in place and I imagine that was the case. The show's national run had been on two small cable networks that only exploded in popularity after MST3K was no longer producing episodes for them. Josh, Trace, and, I believe, a few other cast members have made pointed references to the paltry paychecks they made on MST3K. The show's popularity exploded after the initial run, which is how Mallon was able to use it as a golden parachute for so long. Keep in mind that I don't agree with how the cast did not receive royalties and residuals, but I imagine any sort of severance Best Brains could have offered in 1999 would have been minuscule.
Here's what I think comes off as dark: I could be wrong, but haven't a few former cast members expressed their frustration with Mallon's lack of involvement in the last few seasons of MST3K, basically saying he did none of the work while enjoying all of the benefits? I could be misremembering, which is why I'm not identifying the folks I think have made comments given the delicate nature of the situation. Again, I'm not going to defend the way Best Brains was set up to only benefit management, but if Mallon only had limited involvement with the last two and a half seasons of the show because he was mourning for the loss of his daughter, it's pretty callous to be critical of him scaling back his commitment to a silly comedy show after he suffered the worst loss a parent can possibly have. I can only hope that this interview will make Mallon a less divisive figure in the community, but I don't think that will happen. Hating Jim Mallon in 2018 is kinda like hating Batman & Robin in 2018. In 1997, it looked like Batman & Robin killed off the superhero movie genre, but now we know that's not the case. We can still be critical of it, but condemnation is going a bit far.
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Post by someoneinatree on May 20, 2018 16:15:11 GMT -5
m.youtube.com/watch?v=SWMDzjhSgGc&feature=shareIt looks like one of the veterans from the MSTiecast recently interviewed Jim Mallon. I hope I'm not stepping on any toes posting this here (he said he was leaving the fandom after posting the Wade Williams interview), but since it's been online for a few days, I figured I can't be accused of stealing anyone's thunder by directing them to the interview. I have said some harsh things about Mallon over the years, but I do think he gets an unwarranted amount of hate in the fan community, especially since MST3K is back and most of the show's former stars are still out there performing.
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Post by someoneinatree on May 20, 2018 13:09:04 GMT -5
There are some sequences and riffs in this one that I think are the strongest in the season, and one in particular that is one of my favorites of the entire series ("Never did catch the talking chimp that did it."), but the tone of the movie threatens the fun a lot. It took me a second viewing to realize that 20% of the movie is extreme closeups of Markov's eyes.
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Post by someoneinatree on May 20, 2018 13:02:18 GMT -5
It’s always fun when people are figuring out for the first time the process of how Netflix makes shows. I guess another thing I should have mentioned is that Ivan said that since Netflix is involved, they have to go through an approval process before they can share anything, which is not unusual. They shared a bunch of preproduction stuff before the Netflix deal was announced and they only had one post about shooting the show, which happened a few months after the deal was finalized. We'll see the fruits of their labor soon enough.
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