UPDATE! — In Frank’s first post, he walks us through his five favorite riffs from “The Oozing Skull.”
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CT Redesign and Frank’s First PostThe Cinematic Titanic site has been redesigned…and has added forums!
33 Replies to “CT Redesign and Frank’s First Post”Commenting at Satellite News
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jesus thats a hideous website. did they get Mallon to help them out?
I wonder if Joel and the crew will post on the boards.
I know they’re doing old movies, but did they have to take their clean and modern looking site and send it back 15 years in time? Blechh!!
OH…MY…GOD!
I AGREE. HIDEOUS.
And somewhere, a webpage designer is crying. I don’t know jack about webpage design, but it seemed fine to me. Just fill it with good content(accent first syllable) and I am content(accent second syllable).
I, for one, like the new site design a lot (ooh colors!!) but the forums are pretty fugly. Hope they fix that.
I’ve seen worse sites but I think the redesign is a bit disorienting and would work if it were a bit cleaner. I suppose sometimes as human beings we do get a little spoiled with nicely designed websites. Still the thing that got me is already someone has brought up that age old beat it into the ground issue that won’t be talked about.
Objection stupid hat!
By brought up I mean in the forums.
It’s not the look of the site that bothers me…it’s the lack of new content. CT, Film Crew, MST3k.com all seem to be dead in the water. I thought they would be doing more to get the fan base excited.
I have a feeling that those four Film Crew episodes are all we’ll ever get.
CT is just starting out.
MST3K is offering new – and by new I mean old – content (video clips.) the MST site just doesn’t excite me at all. I think it’s hard to keep it fresh when none of the original writers have anthing to do it. It’s like a Van Halen reunion concert without David, Ed, Alex, Michael, or Sammy.
I like the new layout. I’m just happy that we’re finally hearing from TV’s Frank, I’ve been waiting for two weeks.
And I liked the menu at the top…”The Trailer, The DVD, The News, The Hell?” Clever.
Consitering MST3K riffed on exactly 200 films (198 episodes, plus the movie and the home game) I’m guessing that they might be hard-pressed to find stuff (especially since the Film Crew took away four other potential titles.) I think the people in the forums gave some pretty good suggestions. Seeing as the only old B-movies I’ve ever seen I saw on MST3K, I can’t contribute much to the suggestions.
They’d never be able to get it but it’d be great if they did Killdozer. The movie. Not the band. :)
I keep hearing people saying (as does #10) that MST3K.com doesn’t have any of the original writers. The shorts are written by Jim Mallon and Paul Chaplin, who are hardly johnnies-come-lately to MST3K.
I just got the DVD and loved it but the site is totally garish and looked much better before. The loud color selection is the worst because it makes it hard to read. Odd since I remember Joel’s gizmonic sites looking cool. What gives?
Actually MST3K only did like 190 or something films since they did all those Sandy Frank movies twice.
Geez. Whine, whine, whine!!! They’re website was dead for two weeks, so now they’re giving the people what they wanted. I for one was excited to see a new format with new features added. Are we all such internet wizards that we can’t stow the negativity and give ’em a chance?
No! Complaining is what the internet is for! Well that and the porn.
Why you think the Net was born?
Hey. anyone notice that #16 is whining himself. Stop your whining Drew!
Practice what you preach. Take a look in the mirror and begin with yourself. Whining about whiners is still (gasp!) whining!
Bread and Butter.
#19 whining about #16 whining about all the whining is starting to sound a lot like a Monty Python sketch. :mrgreen:
It’s still a fugly website, BTW.
Who cares about what the site looks like. We should all be rejoicing about the DVD that we all watched over the weekend. Joel’s first new material in over 14 years. All I got to say about the oozing skull DVD is FREAKIN SWEET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My DVD still hasn’t arrived! (May I whine about that, please? I ordered first day.) PS–I like the colors/graphics on the website, but you have to highlight some of the text to read, which is a bit unfortunate.
The movie is good but far from perfect. As I said on the forums over there, the lack of a backstory is surprisingly noticeable. There are times when the movie lags a bit, just like in almost every MST 3K episode. But your mind never wandered far because you had the suspension of disbelief – the guy is there watching a movie because he is being forced to. With CT I found myself starting to stray and ask myself why are these guys here doing this? Is it some kind of experiment? Is it some sort of futuristing archiving?
I hope all this is rectified on the next show.
anyone notice that there was not tom servo or crow in the movie. what gives? where are the robots?
Andrew (and any other other newbies playing along),
The ‘bots are the property of Jim Mallon (aka BBI) and are therefore no longer able to be used by Joel without permission (and presumably $$$). Besides, Joel clearly is interesting in doing this new riffing from a different perspective anyway.
Aww, quit your complainin’. :wink:
I just watched the “pilot” episode of CT and thought is was GREAT! My wife turned to me at the end of the ep and asked why was there a shadow of a feminine product and what was put into it? Anyone know what the heck that thing is at the end!?
The riffing on this is absolutely top notch. But what would you expect from such a veteran cast? :grin:
I wonder what Mike, Kevin and Bill are goping to do with The Film Crew now….CT is is an awesome competitor. I can’t wait for more eps to be released. Buy it if you’re on the fence and can’t decide; it’s worth every penny. :mrgreen:
mine hasn’t come either. someone got to watch theirs over the weekend…that sucks…
CHF,
I think what you were looking at was Trace’s time capsule which I guess CT will use at the very end of every ep. It appeared on CT’s website a couple of month’s ago and it showed Trace putting it together. ALL Misties should be happy now adays with the new CT scheme and also last year’s release of a few DVD’s of Film Crew. I would like to tryout Rifftrax but I am not a tech guy. I would rather just buy DVD’s.
I liked CT’s first outing, but I have to say there were “too many notes…”
I just watched “Oozing Skull” last night. It was a decent first outing. I had the same feelings after first watching “Hollywood After Dark” by the Film Crew. Not bad, but could be better. Give them a few more episodes to tweak things and to knock off the remaining rust, and it will be great.
I too would like a backstory as to why the CT crew are doing this as Scott P. mentioned earlier.
DVD menu image:
http://img250.imageshack.us/img250/8851/cinematictitanicdvdmenuxy2.jpg
CINEMATIC TITANIC 01
THE OOZING SKULL
First, I’m glad to see this and I want to see more. The warm sense of reunion is a fairly good substitute for genuine entertainment.
But, it was something of a let-down. Maybe my expectations were too high. MST3K is one of my favorite things. This production feels as if it was done either as a bored lark or in desperation. It is not inspired. It has the feel of a relic… a leftover… serving a niche market-within-a-niche market. The jokes refer to such a wide span of pop-culture eras, it’s practically a sure thing much of the audience will be baffled at any given time during the show. MST3K referenced a more narrow window of familiarity.
The absence of Mike Nelson as head writer is keenly felt. Mike, Joel, and the rest made up a wonderful team. That team is now fragmented. RIFFTRAX, uneven as they are, are on average much funnier than the CT-riffed OOZING SKULL. The FILM CREW’s version of HOLLYWOOD AFTER DARK is much funnier than OOZING SKULL’s riffing. The ideal riffing entertainment experience was provide by Joel as front man with Mike as the best brain. We may never get that combination again, which is too bad.
In CINEMATIC TITANIC, There are too many on-screen riffers. Each riffer has relatively few jokes. The riffers are shown from such a long shot it’s difficult to get any sense of their presence and gestures. The whole thing looks like a post-production “cheat”, not that there’s anything wrong with that. The riffs could very easily have been recorded comfortably in advance, and various takes of the silhouette guys just standing around could be combined in editing and compositing. The simple immediacy of three clearly-seen guys in seats offered by MST3K has been replaced in CT with a less visually-involving presentation. There are long sequences in CT 01 in which individual silhouette characters appear to be held frames.
Mary Jo is hardly used. She has few lines. And while it sounds sexist, it is not easy to understand the typical female voice compared to that of a typical male voice. Mary Jo’s voice is perfectly lovely, gorgeous even, but it doesn’t have the edge that makes it easy to understand in a riffing situation. Her lack of lines and the difficulty in making out what she’s saying suggest that she should be the first casualty among CT’s onscreen characters.
The assaulted movie, retitled here as OOZING BRAIN, was an excellent choice. It is prototypical MST3K material and presents more than enough opportunities for witty derision. Unfortunately, many of those opportunities were missed by the CT gang. While I understand the need to let a riff session “breathe”, there are many dead spots in this first episode – incidents which cry out for obvious jokes and receive none, and long stretches of silence from the riffers while hilarious incompetence unfolds on the big CT screen. Five riffers should make for more riffing than three riffers, and there was certainly room for more riffing. Instead of a high-speed barrage of appropriately deadly jokes offered in the best episodes of MST3K, CT 01 gives the viewer a painfully relaxed, almost disinterested stream of moderately funny observations. There are very funny moments, and I’m sure you know what they are, but there aren’t many of them. It appears the group wasn’t really giving its fully-focused effort.
Both the FILM CREW and MST3K have a structure that provides a pleasant rhythm: the silhouette/voice over sequences are peppered with host segments that serve as a resting place, some eye relief, a useful summation, increased familiarity with the riffing characters in sketch material that amplifies the riffing humor in a setting that offers more freedom than the commentary offers alone. CT (and RIFFTRAX) does not offer this pleasing, desirable, interlude. The complete lack of any explanation of why the little silhouette guys are stuck in an auditorium riffing on movies is disorienting. MST3K wrapped up the entire reason for its existence nicely in a short theme song. CT offers nothing. Beyond the instrumental theme, there is no wrapper material. No extras. No explanation. What the dang heck anyway.
I hope CINEMATIC TITANIC is successful and there are many more CT shows. It has to get better, and it’s great to hear these people work together again. This first show, however, is way off.
In terms of value-for-money, CT 01 is a bust. I don’t need to rehash the oft-repeated complaints about CT’s despicably shoddy packaging and extremely high price. DVD replication and packaging is surprisingly inexpensive these days, so the corners cut here are baffling.
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Addressing one of the more foul-smelling elephants in the room: piracy may slightly affect the bottom line of CT. It’s impossible to believe in a 100% lost-sale correlation, as put forth by MPAA/RIAA. Each copy downloaded via P2P does not result in a lost sale. Most downloaders wouldn’t have bought what they download at any price, even if piracy was completely eliminated. It is possible, however, that a small segment of the potential market, one that might have purchased CT 01, downloaded it for free instead in a moment of ethical weakness. The exact impact of illicit digital acquisition will never be known, but this may prove interesting to the idly curious:
I will ignore, for the moment, binary newsgroups, IRC, FTP sites, and emule, and stick to discussing the popular bit torrent protocol. I have over 200 bit torrent sites bookmarked. Just for kicks, I searched every one for CINEMATIC TITANIC. I found several torrents, and removing all redundant hits from aggregating sites, I found that torrents for the show have been grabbed over six hundred times. Assuming each torrent resulted in a download, that’s six hundred pirate copies of CT 01. Many P2P users dupe downloaded video for friends. Let’s wildly claim that 20% of CT downloaders did that. That would make 720 illegal copies generating no revenue for Joel and The Gang. How much does the CT crew get for each copy? That’s private info and we can only guess. Let’s guess that EZTRAX keeps more-or-less 33%, and that CT receives about $10 per disc. IF we accept the plainly fallacious assertion that each downloaded copy is a lost sale, from bit torrent alone, that would mean $7200 lost. That’s not so bad, really. If an entertainment company can be damaged by a $7200 loss, it’s not doing well.