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Post by Shark on Nov 9, 2019 22:19:55 GMT -5
Just got back from the Detroit show - here's my quick thoughts:
The movie was great! No Retreat, No Surrender was a hoot, a wonderful choice for MST3K. The riffing during the movie was very, very, funny. I laughed out loud a lot, which is something I don't often do. This was better than every single episode of season 12 put together. Still an over reliance on "doing voices" instead of simply making comments, but I'm nitpicking.
The stage show alternated between cringy and cute. Sorry, but I don't find the Synthia character useful or funny on TV or live. I liked Crow's little songs and while they were used often, it never felt like they were running the joke into the ground. As mentioned in an above review, the whole production felt a bit smaller and stripped down, though I love all the stuff they were able to do with the 'bots. The first live tour had taped intros from the mads, and most of the main cast. Last year was exciting because Joel was back and they added a character who appeared in the new season. This was ok, but it ends in a confusing way. Do we have a new host or not? And putting a smaller stage show into a titanic venue like Detroit's Fox Theater was a strange choice. I wonder if all the more size-appropriate theaters in the area were already booked? The audience was nowhere near full. But I don't really care because the seats at the Fox were cushy and nice, I couldn't take those seats at the Royal Oak Music Theater again.
I'll continue to harp that it's a huge opportunity wasted, them not reusing these scripts and movies for an episode in a season or DVD release. Argoman was funny, The Brain was funnier, and NRNS was even funnier.
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Post by kmorgan on Nov 14, 2019 0:12:42 GMT -5
May I ask for an opinion?
As I noted elsewhere, I really enjoyed the shows at the State Theater in New Brunswick. I've since checked and two more shows are coming up more-or-less in my general region. One is in Reading, PA and the other is in Montclair, NJ and I can reach both of them. The downside is that both are scheduled for early March, 2020. At that time, we'll still be in winter, and I have a pretty massive phobia about winter driving, especially on unfamiliar roads. I could wait and see and try for a last-minute ticket, once I'm sure of the road conditions, though. And I don't have to go to both of them, since each show is a single with "Circus of Horrors".
What would you recommend?
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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 Megalon on Dec 10, 2019 14:20:06 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. I don't know, the whole thing sounds so artificial to me. It reminds me of the way they introduced the 1980 cast of Saturday Night Live, with everyone coming out and introducing themselves in relation to the old cast: "Hi, I'm Charles Rocket, I'm the new Chevy Chase ... and I'm Gail Matthius, the new Jane Curtin," etc.
Personally, the only thing that would make me happy at this point is the return of the original cast members.
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Post by BoB3K on Dec 11, 2019 10:58:24 GMT -5
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. I get all these points, but there are a lot of ifs up there that probably wouldn't have ever happened. 20 eps really isn't a lame duck, especially when Joel is in charge. All of Cinematic Titanic's 5 year run was only 12 eps (13 if you count the bootleg release of Astral Factor). And, then, even if they stayed at Netflix, they had already been forced to do a 6 ep season of Netflix picked movies. The next season could have been anything.
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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 mylungswereaching on Dec 11, 2019 12:29:39 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. I like the idea of the live show crew being the new cast. They have worked together. It's like a touring band vs a studio band.
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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 BoB3K on Dec 12, 2019 12:48:31 GMT -5
This is all very interesting. Just to be sure I looked it up, Cinematic Titanic did live riffing a good year before RiffTrax did a Live. I'm not sure if MST3K was ever done live at any conventions or anything, but let's say that CT established live riffing, which means Joel as usual was the originator/creator of the concept, just as he was with the original mst3k concept.
And he obviously likes the live stuff. He pushed CT that way, and now he's pushed (been pushed?) the new MST3K that way.
My point being, from that point of view, it's weird that he did end up going with such a heavily produced, very unlive process for the new MST3K.
So, of course the big question now is, did Joel actually learn anything from all this, and IF he ever gets a chance to do more produced seasons of MST3K, will he adjust accordingly.
Oh, and then of course there's the other issue -- WE all think that the fresher, more immediate version is better, and I would even wager that it really is objectively better, as both the skits and the theater segments simply fit a live/live-to-tape format, like a comedy skit show -- But that doesn't mean ANY version of MST3K, even the best, would ever be popular enough to pull in a large enough audience to make someone like a Netflix happy. My personal guess is no, that there is an upper limit to the appeal of MST3K, and that limit is around healthy-niche size.
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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 Diet Kolos on Dec 12, 2019 14:33:20 GMT -5
Live riffing goes further back even than that. They did MST Alive! in Spring 1992 and riffed World Without End. Half of it is available on YouTube. That was the initial test run to see how riffing would work in front of a live audience, as at the time they were in the early planning stages of The Movie.
There was also an MST Alive event in 1989 before the show went national, but it was more of a sketch show and I don't think they did any riffing.
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Post by Megalon on Dec 12, 2019 16:13:03 GMT -5
In the late 70's, midnight screenings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show often included some form of riffing. In fact, I've heard it claimed that the word "riffing" itself is derived from "Riff Raff," one of the characters in the movie.
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Post by majorjoe23 on Dec 12, 2019 19:28:33 GMT -5
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Post by BoB3K on Dec 12, 2019 23:53:23 GMT -5
Yeah, that's what I always thought, it was the same as the musical term of throwin' out a rhythm or melody while we're all jammin. I think I had even heard it used in analogy like for idea brain-storming -- yeah we were just riffin' on a topic.
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Post by Broadsword on Dec 17, 2019 21:30:03 GMT -5
Bought my tickets for the last show in Orono Maine in March. Can't wait.
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