August 31st, 2009

Sadie Corre, RIP

If I said the name Sadie Corre to you, you probably wouldn’t recognize it. But as soon as I showed you this photo…

most of you would know her immediately. (Hint: “It’s just a jump to the left!)

What I didn’t know until now is that she apparently was inside “Hugo the Dummy” (uncredited) in the movie in episode 818- DEVIL DOLL. She was also an Ewok, and she was in “The Dark Crystal,” “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” as well.

It seems she passed away on Aug. 26 at the age of 91. There’s a nice obit here.


August 31st, 2009

Frank Podcast Interview

Frank is interviewed on the “Battleship Pretension” podcast, the hosts of which clearly did exactly zero research ahead of time. This leads to very familiar questions being asked. But Frank himself hasn’t offered his perspective on these often-asked questions, so it’s nice to get that. It’s also nice to get his take on the formation of Cinematic Titanic.

The interview does break a little news: Frank says they are looking at creating a pilot of “Cartoon Dump,” saying it might be good for a channel like Adult Swim. We agree!

The podcast then wanders off into a discussion of bad movies and bad TV in general, and Frank offers some very erudite thoughts.


August 29th, 2009

Weekend Discussion Thread: Most Memorable Crow Moments

I can’t believe we haven’t done this one!

Next weekend at Dragon*Con, Bill and Trace will take part in a panel that I guarantee will take place in too small a room: “Crow vs. Crow,” in which the two actors that portrayed Crow Tiberious (”the”) Robot will discuss the character they played. In preparation for that, Trace recently tweeted a request for suggestions of the most memorable Crow moments (so they can put together a video featuring them). I was going to tweet back with a link to the Weekend Discussion Thread that SURELY (don’t call me Shirley!) we must have done! Then I checked and realized we hadn’t done one!

So, to help them out, let’s settle on the best Crow moments. You get to choose TWO and TWO ONLY moments from the Trace years and two from the Bill years.

Me: For the Trace years I’d go with the “I don’t get you” bit from “Monster-A-Go-Go” and “Am I qualified?” from “King Dinosaur.” From the Bill years: “Turkey Volume Guessing Man” from “Riding with Death” and “Mike becomes a werecrow” from “Werewolf.”

What are your picks?


August 28th, 2009
August 28th, 2009

Cinematic Titanic Returning to Chicago

Just a couple of weeks until Cinematic Titanic’s three-night stand at the Lakeshore Theater in Chicago.

To quote a scary clown chimpanzee I once saw: Get your tickets here! Get your tickets here!


August 27th, 2009

Mike Interview

David Hill of Examiner.Com interviews Mike.


August 27th, 2009

Episode Guide: 803- The Mole People

First shown: 2/15/97
Opening: Crow’s goofy eyes make him a “space child”
Intro: The space child is overthrown. While Bobo suffers through the 32nd Annual Lawgiver Daze, Tom offers baked goods and Crow takes a fall
Host segment 1: Mike tries an imitation of the goofy professor. It brings everyone down…down…down…
Host segment 2: Tom tries–and fails–to sing a ballad about what he’s been up to
Host segment 3: Crow the archeologist, searching for evidence of a previous him, has a breakthrough
End: Crow believes there’s life beneath the floorboards…and he’s right Meanwhile in Deep Ape, The Lawgiver is presented with a hunky gift
Stinger: “The Load” hits the wall
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (106 votes, average: 4.1 out of 5)
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• We’ve had a number of examples where the riffing is good and the segments are good but the movie just drags everything down. Well, let’s also note when it’s other way around. I think this episode is a good one, but I think a lot of the credit goes to the wonderfully stupid movie. I mean, you got The Gesture Professor, Ward Cleaver, Alfred the Butler, John Agar and Nestor “The Load” Paiva. And you got ropes and asses, whipping the mole and all sorts of outlandish stuff. The segments are okay and the riffing is good, but I think it’s the movie itself that puts this one over the top.
• References explained here.
• Mike’s take on this episode can be found here.
• Pearl’s float is not very convincing—it’s pretty tough to approximate a full-scale parade in about 10 square feet of set space.
• The strange blue light still suffuses the set, and it’s especially strong in segment 2.
• The concept of “the sketch that never really gets started” is a long tradition on this show (see “The Emotional Scientist” or “The Life of Fu Manchu” or “Joel wants to be a soda jerk”). This episode has not one but TWO such segments—Mike’s attempt at being the gesture professor and Servo’s aborted folk song.
• Crow finally remembers who he is, and who Mike is. At last.
• Crow’s voice begins to settle down a bit in this episode.
• Robert Smith was the first actual guest star for the show. He would not be the last.
• Ward E has a list of the pastries in the intro segment.
• Daddy-O notes: That huge underground cavern and those Mole People should look familiar to you…they were briefly (and incongruously) seen in episode 515-THE WILD WILD WORLD OF BATWOMAN.
• He also notes that this movie’s original ending had Dr. Bentley and Adal happily strolling off together. The studio insisted that a new ending be shot two weeks after filming was completed, because there was reluctance to imply an inter-racial relationship. After all, Adal was a Sumerian. So she got clobbered with a column instead.
• He also notes that Dr. Baxter, the gesture professor, was a University of Southern California professor of ENGLISH, not science.
• That’s Paul and Patrick, of course, as “pale day players.”
• Somebody asked last week about the absence of “annoying commercials.” The copies of the show that I have for the first half of season 8 were screeners provided by Sci-Fi Channel, and they had no commercials. Sometime in the second half of the season they got sick of sending ‘em to me and I returned to taping. When I get to those, that item will return.
• Fave line: “Disney’s Dominatrix World!”


August 26th, 2009

Cinematic Titanic Sale

Starting tonight at midnight Eastern Time, all Cinematic Titanic DVDs will be 25% off when bought from the CT Web site. “Time Tube Tour 2008″ t-shirts will also be available for $10.99. The sale runs through this Sunday, Aug. 30th.


August 25th, 2009

New Short from RiffTrax…Unless You Went to RiffTrax Live

This is the short that was riffed during the RiffTrax Live show last week. The riffs here are about 85 percent what we saw that night.

Download it here. Free sample here.

And while we’re on the subject of RiffTrax Live, a few more straggler reviews on the web here, here, here, here, here and here.


August 25th, 2009

Dump Day

If you’re in the L.A. area, “Cartoon Dump,” starring Frank Conniff, is tonight at 8 p.m. at the Steve Allen Theater, 4773 Hollywood Blvd. Tickets are $10. Tonight’s special guest is comedian Rick Overton.