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Post by Mighty Jack on May 30, 2021 2:55:12 GMT -5
And I got the second to last thing off my Blog to-do list. I wasn't going to attempt to review every Rifftrax since 2014, but I grabbed a selection of highlights (off the top of my head) and put together a page of short write-ups. Current Rifftrax Favorites (Late 2014 to 2020)Movies included on that page... R.O.T.O.R. / Godzilla (1998) / Hideous Sun Demon / Julie and Jack / Hillbillys In a Haunted House / Replica / Day of the Animals / Rifftrax Live: Samurai Cop / Oblivian pts 1 & 2 / Invasion of the Animal People / A Talking Cat!?! / Santa's Summer House / Attack of the Super Monsters / Lovely But Deadly So, that leaves a review for Janet & Cole's Dreamscape, and I think that's it, the Blog is up to date, to a point. Phew, I'm tuckered, it's been a busy bloggy month of May.
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Post by Mighty Jack on May 31, 2021 5:11:10 GMT -5
So I went through K14 Mighty Jack, and yup, another Beatlemania reference. at about 1:18 into it, as Fritz is about to point a gun at his father, Servo says "It’s Adam West, isn’t it?" and Crow responds with that shows tagline, "No, an incredible simulation" I also thought it was funny when the reporter/spy enters the store and strikes up a conversation, Crow says "He looks like Frank Conniff" (does he?) - so they were aware of him in Feb 1989. I know he came to Minneapolis in the mid-80s to rehab - was doing stand-up, and befriended Trace and Mike and others. Just interesting to hear the name-drop, a full season and a 3rd before joining the series.
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Post by Mighty Jack on Jun 1, 2021 8:02:17 GMT -5
I played K01 in the background during work - riffing was really light, no Beatles, not even when Yellow Submarine was heard during the movie's end credits. Tom did sing "Smoke Under Water" during one scene, so they were doing reference material back then. Just not a lot of it.
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Post by TV's Cowboy on Jun 1, 2021 19:58:01 GMT -5
Not a riff but spotted on the jukebox in Girl in Gold Boots. Attachments:
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Post by Mighty Jack on Jun 1, 2021 22:06:10 GMT -5
Maybe I'm amazed, that's some good eyes Cowboy, added the photos and the credit. And more nostalgia - So after some additional digging, I've established Mighty Jack's history a bit more firmly. I found a posting from late Nov 2009... "MJs makes its mighty return: It's hard to believe I've been running this site for 7 years - and what a fun ride it's been. MJs started off as a lark, a single page of reviews jotted on free space provided by WebTV. Later -when I noticed old MST3K sites disappearing- I thought I should do my part to keep the fires burning for this amazing show. So I expanded the reviews to give each episode its own page - complete with trivia, quotes, riff explanations, awards (grades), and more. After 2 years I moved to Geocities and gave the place a complete makeover and added the "Who's Who" link posted on the banner.
Year 7 saw Geocities close its doors in October, which meant another move and another address.* March 2002 Mighty Jack's born and open to public viewing on WebTV (March was always in my head, but I was able to confirm that) * In 2004 I change the banner to the TV with slideshow images around that time I decided to expand the site and moved to Geocites, probably in early 2005. I thought I had a permanent home until they stopped website hosting in October 26, 2009 * From Nov 2009 to August 2014 Yahoo hosted the site, free for a spell, then they started charging. I stayed until a price increase * Aug 9, 2014, I make the move to Google Blogger and then retire. Briefly adding to the KTMA page May 24, 2018 - go away again until May 2021 to do massive updates. * sometime around Oct 2010 I change the banner to the current one with Glenn Manning. So, that makes me happy, to finally have that history and that means next March 2022 will be the site's 20th anniversary! * I also attempted to try and find some old review sites, but aside from The MST3K Journal (from forum member Oldmanmerton) at the Wayback, I came away empty. They know of Ator's site but don't seem to have any captures. Hugh Beaumont's host went away and took his reviews with them, nothing survives from Bobby Knightmare's place either. Sad I see Skenderberg's Fan Guide is still around, though he quit in 2011, and nothing new has been posted since
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Post by Mighty Jack on Jun 2, 2021 22:55:02 GMT -5
Well, I'm about done with the KTMAs, and have only heard an Ebony and Ivory riff on Time of the Apes - halfway through K02 and none so far. And that's it we are done for the classic era. But somebody loves it, don't they? I'm going to test this out here - it's an idea for an article I had, where I search for fans of experiments that received an Angry Glenn. Angry Glenn's are for below-average episodes, and that can be due to several things... not making me laugh a lot of course, but the unevenness of an episode (like good short, weak movie), or that the film kills the joy. Bottom line, anything I go out of my way to avoid or only watch in sections receives an Angry Glenn. Excluding KTMAs and Season 1... * Sidehackers - My primary complaint, movie pain - but this has quite a few fans. Torgo considers it a classic and calls it.... fun? Don and Forrest both gave it 4.5 at The MST3K Review* HellCats - Not the worst, but a little on the lesser side of the ledger - the The Fan Guide gave it 3 stars, not glowing but solid marks. * Stranded in Space - a dry and barren movie, J&TB do their best but it's so/so - on the other hand, Don considered it a must-see and gave it 4.5 out of 5 * Castle of Fu Manchu - My primary complaint - Sloppy, crappy movie, spotty riffing - It does have one big fan, Sampo at the Satellite News Info Club declared, "I LOVE this episode!" * City Limits - Not rotten, but a bit below the average IMO, mostly me'h, movie is a snore - Andrew's gave it passing marks B-, and called it "not bad" - the Fan Guide gave it 3 stars. Torgo called it "good" - so, no love, but several fans felt it was decent to good. * Hercules Against the Moon Men - Not very funny, below average, One of my 2 least favorite experiments, however, Sampo calls it "the funniest of the sword-and-sandal movie episodes, and an all-around great episode." Torgo considers it a "delight". * Swamp Diamonds - Primary complaint - great short, boring movie - Torgo mustered up enough enthusiasm to deem it "good" * Invasion USA - My primary complaint, not a terrible experiment, but Glenn's anger comes from the movie being a letdown after a stellar short, + the movie angers me, mind manipulation angers me - But the Info Club was more receptive to it, and Don thought it was a GREAT episode, he gave it the full 5 out of 5 Crows. * Racket Girls - My primary complaint - Unevenness, great first half-hour, tails of dramatically during the movie, not a terrible, but below-average - On the other hand, the defunct MST3K Journal graded it an A- (unfortunately the write-up wasn't preserved at the Wayback Machine), Sampo at the Info Club called it "a lot of fun." * Incredibly Strange Creatures... I hate, hate, hate, hate, HATE this movie! Plus, the riffing is uneven, but it has a LOT of fans. Sampo - Torgo, and Don and Forrest gave it high marks at the MST3K Review* Quest of the Delta Knights - My primary complaint - M'eh riffing, m'eh movie, one of my bottom 5 - But Ray at the MST3K Journal gave it an A-, which is the highest grade I've seen for it on websites and blogs * Horrors of Spider-Island - My primary complaint - not a lot of fun, light on the laughs, a movie I don't enjoy sitting through, one of 5 my lesser experiments - Torgo called it "good", iHorror listed it among their favorites from season 9 and 10
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Post by Mighty Jack on Jun 3, 2021 7:24:19 GMT -5
Oops, I forgot one.
The Unearthly - most pages and blogs say the same thing, great shorts, dull as dirt movie (we are split on the host segments, some luvs 'em, some like me, found them fair at best). But Don got a little more out of it, and he gave the experiment 4 stars (5 for the short, a passing 3.5 for the movie). I'm not sure what I'll do with this, how I can form it into a piece. Personally, I recommend you see them all, every last one, and I hope you enjoy them all. Even the one's I dislike, "So look, here are these other people, and they loved it." Lastly, in my mind, I group the Angry Glenn's into little subgroups... Unearthly goes with other episodes like Racket Girls, Invasion USA, and Swamp Diamonds, where I'll watch and enjoy the start of the experiment, but once the movie gets rolling, I'm just as likely to lose interest and quit on it. Then there are those I've taken out of my rotation (Hackers, Delta Knights, Spider Isle, Moon Men, Strange Creatures) And finally, those dancing on that thin line (Batwoman and Hamlet are a step in the positive and received next level Glenn's, whereas City Limits, Stranded, Hellcats, a small step backward and got that mad face). It's all stuff and nonsense, for sure, but enjoyable to puzzle over. (At least I enjoy puzzling over it. HaHa)
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Post by sol-survivor on Jun 4, 2021 20:08:14 GMT -5
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I like Hamlet. So there. I'm currently increasing my Beatles collection. Right now I have either the CD or Amazon downloads of Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road, 1, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, The White Album, and all three parts of The Beatles Anthology. I have The John Lennon Collection and The Best of Dark Horse on CD. I bought Double Fantasy on vinyl just a week before John was killed. I had Please Please Me and the Red and Blue compilations on cassette but now I can't find them and I don't have a cassette player anymore, anyway. I am in the process of acquiring pretty much the rest of what the group put out and should have them next week. On DVD I have The Beatles Anthology, which I watched and enjoyed on TV when it premiered but I haven't watched much of the discs. Not sure if there's additional stuff on the discs that wasn't on TV. The only movies I've seen were A Hard Day's Night and Yellow Submarine but I haven't seen either of them in a long, long, time and I remember very little about them. I also have a very vague memory of the Saturday morning cartoon but that's it, considering I was about 5 when it premiered. It's entirely possible when I was checking out episodes there was something I completely missed if they were referencing something I hadn't seen or heard before.
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Post by Mighty Jack on Jun 5, 2021 0:45:20 GMT -5
I don't mind Hamlet, it's not a top 100 episode for me, but still a decent mid-range one.
And I'm a total Beatles nut -- make a list of my favorites things and Beatles would top it, even ahead of MST. We may have missed something here and there, I know folks have added one, even after I watched said episode, so things get by a person. And I never would have caught that Ruttles riff in Humanoid Woman, that was a show I saw when it first aired and then pretty much forgot about it.
But I think we covered it pretty well.
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Post by Mighty Jack on Jun 6, 2021 3:49:10 GMT -5
The more books and articles I read for the blog (or back when it was a website), the more sadness I find. From the tragedies in Willis O'Brien and Al Adamson's lives, to recently discovering that Paul "Hi-Keeba" Gilbert didn't die from a stroke as was reported, but suicide (as revealed by his daughter, Melissa Gilbert - apparently he was in a great deal of pain at the time). Sorry to hear this. * I've been updating, adding photos, info and videos, and sprucing up the write-ups for a few experiments. Women of the Prehistoric Planet (pictures, added to review, and made it the last season 1 ep in the index) The Crawling Hand (added the commercial that inspired "I thought you were Dale" with link to further backstory on the origins and mix-ups with the riff) Wild Rebels (included a fan video on how the stinger might have looked, according to ACEG) King Dinosaur (I made and posted a screengrab of Joey, added a bit of info on a couple of the actors) While it's not quite like the good old days (things have changed), I feel a little like a time traveler, going back to days when I visited the forum frequently, watched several episodes in a week, and worked on the website daily.
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Post by Mighty Jack on Jun 12, 2021 5:53:47 GMT -5
New additions to The Mads and Bridget & Mary Jo's pages for... The Lost Missile and Lucky Day Both of them were very funny, IMHO.
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Post by Mighty Jack on Jun 13, 2021 11:46:11 GMT -5
MST-earworms. There are episodes that stick with you long after they're over. I watched one of my favorites "Teen-Age Stranger" and now I've got that counter-culture song following me around. At the grocery store "Yipe stripes, don't forget the cheese" while getting gas, "Yipe stripes, they raised the price again!", while in the bathroom, "Yipe Stripes, I should have skipped the tacos", and on the job, "Yipe Stripes, wish I'd called out sick" Oh, and Mikey, what a joy! You and Yipe Stripes and the short made this a winner in my book. I had Hamlet on my mind, so I gave it a re-watch. It must be my most overanalyzed experiment. I often get tangled up in the how's and whys of it after a viewing. I also always felt it had fewer riffs than the norm, and recall actually counting them a decade or so ago just to see (in chunks, between host segs) and I believe it was indeed a little lighter. But as I watched this time out, it struck me that they were trying especially hard not to talk over the movie, taking care to place riffs between the dialogue. And because it's such a talky play, that might have contributed to this. As for the film, it is gutted Hamlet, they cut a lot out of it, and yet, it's such a familiar tale that I was okay with that (it had to happen, to fit in the shows time constraints). When Hamlet first aired a lot of fans were calling it the worst episode ever, but now as I look around, several, like myself, have softened that stance. ("I like it better now", type comments) Today I see it as a solid mid-range episode. Not their worst by any means, but also not their greatest. It might have been made into a classic if done in say, Season 5, when they were at the peak of their riffing powers. (I don't think the work here was smart enough. There are those snot, fart, condom, type of schoolboy quips, which was par for the course in season 10. Though, to be clear, that's not all they do - the anachronisms, in particular, were funny - it's only that I wish they had locked into the play and its history, and took full advantage of this unique opportunity...) I appreciate the final skit with Fortinbras, and there was a riff that made mention of the Globe (and other) theater's "groundlings" (MST never fully gave into the toilet humor and to the very end offered up clever material), but they could have done more, and I believe Hamlet would have received stronger work from an earlier season. Regardless, I have "Meet the Beatles" and the "cut his throat in a church" bit. That stuff was hilarious. BTW: my favorite Hamlet adaptation comes from Russia, 1964, directed by Grigori Kozintsev. He later filmed an incredible King Lear
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Post by Mighty Jack on Jun 14, 2021 5:02:20 GMT -5
Another thought on Shakespearean adaptations - is it funny that my favorite versions don't automatically come from England (though I do admire Olivier's Henry V and others) bur rather from Russia and Japan? Kozintsev and Kurosawa are epic talents, so it's no surprise you'd get great Shakespeare out of them, but language and rhythm is so important to the purists, and Japanese, Russian and in MSTs case, German, aren't traditionally thought of as romantic languages.
Though I will say there is a lyricism in the Russian language. in their fairy tale and animated features, the narration is spoken in a lower voice, very sing-song(y) in peaks and valleys inflections, pleasant to the ear, engaging in storytelling - sure, like any other country, they have character actors who do quirky (even irritating) voices, but narration wise, whether spoken by men or women, I've always liked the sound of it.
This should start at the 53 second mark, and you can hear and example of what I mean... (or watch the whole thing, it's pretty good - Losharik (1971)
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Post by sol-survivor on Jun 24, 2021 23:48:56 GMT -5
I finally got around to picking through my newly expanded Beatles collection. I have read that many people prefer Revolver or Rubber Soul over the later stuff, but now after finally hearing both of them in their entirety, I have to say I still prefer Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road, and The Beatles. Apparently I must like their psychedelic side better. It could change, but I think my favorite of their songs right now is "Helter Skelter". Incidentally, I did see the Peter Frampton/BeeGees movie Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band at one of our now long gone drive-in theaters, and I have the vinyl album put away somewhere. The movie came out the year I graduated from high school, and I saw it soon after it was released. That was actually my first experience with hearing a lot of their songs. Until I started earning some of my own money babysitting pretty much the only music played in our house was my Dad's old-time, and I do mean old-time, country music and Mom's Broadway show-tune albums, plus several Disney soundtrack albums that my five-years-younger sister played over and over and over and over again. To this day I could probably sing the entire soundtrack of The Aristocats, Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, South Pacific, Guys and Dolls, and almost anything from Hank Williams Sr. (among other old country stars) from memory, if I wanted to inflict my absolutely terrible singing voice on anyone. It's funny I can't sing now when I was actually in a couple of choirs in grade and Jr. high school, but when puberty hit I lost any ability to stay in the same key for more than two words at a time. I kind of started getting my own musical tastes, if you can call it that, going in the late 70s-early 80s, but almost completely stopped listening to music halfway through the decade. I started getting back into it in the late 80s-early 90s and started building a cassette collection, including Please Please Me, Sgt. Pepper, and The Beatles. I had always liked Queen from the time I first heard Killer Queen in 1973 when it came out, but I had never bought any of their stuff until maybe a few months before Freddie Mercury died, when Phase 1 of The Collection started with all the cassettes. Some of those I had to replace with other cassettes when I wore them out. Eventually I got a CD player and bought everything all over again for Phase 2 of The Collection, which also includes some DVDs and Blu-rays. I ripped all of my CDs when I got my first laptop so now I have all the MP3s on my MP3 player. I also have a smallish collection of classical music I like to listen to every now and then. I even recently located a CD I forgot I had called Bugs & Friends Sing The Beatles, which features, among other things, Bugs and Taz singing Penny Lane, Daffy Duck singing Yesterday, and Elmer Fudd singing Fool on the Hill. I definitely think they missed an opportunity by not having Elmer sing Eleanor Rigby.
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Post by Mighty Jack on Jun 25, 2021 4:55:30 GMT -5
I've never been that in love with Peppers as a whole, I like certain songs, and A Day in the Life is genius, but a lot of them are fair at best for me (Fixing a Hole, Getting Better, Mr. Kite, Within You Without You, When I'm 64, She's Leaving Home). Of the psychedelic albums I prefer Magical Mystery Tour (though it wasn't a true album at first -it was an EP in the UK- but it eventually became the one Capitol LP to supersede the band's intended format and be included as part of their core catalogue).
Revolver, Rubber Soul and Abbey Road are my top 3
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