Slashdot Mirror
Former Host and Writer of MST3K Launches RiffTrax
dougman writes "Today James Lileks mentioned his 'friend and all-around comic genius/good egg Michael J. Nelson' called, to tell him about his brilliant new project, RiffTrax. Here's the pitch:
'...free-lance commentary tracks. Bottom line: Mystery Science Theater 3000-style commentary for big famous beloved movies like Titanic or The Matrix. The hitch: you have to provide the movie. It's genius: no worries about copyright. You buy the commentary tracks for $1.99, rent the movie or get it out of your collection, load the commentary on your iPod or burn it to a disk, then watch them together in true you-got-peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate bliss. ... The first movie is Roadhouse."
Cool! I voted for The Matrix as the next one to be riffed." While I (and many others I know) preferred Joel, Mike was not without his share of funny moments too. Without Crow and Servo it just might not be the same, though.
Stay frosty, boys, we've got a flame war coming! Joel vs. Mike seen on radar, heading straight for us! Batten down the hatches, prepare all escape pods, brace for impact!
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Are there any sites with free commentaries? It seems like Podcasts would be a good technical match, rather than this. And are there any video players with commentary integration (eg, noticing that you're watching a movie and doing an online lookup for commentaries, offering to stream it while you watch the movie)
Surely you mean you prefer Michael J. Nelson!
Might be better than your typical fan-made one of these, but there are other examples. One of which, I think the one I went looking for, was called DVD Tracks, but it seems to have went away... Here's a /. article about this though.
The site mentions the possibility of having other people join Mike on the commentaries. As far as we know, Mike has kept in touch with Trace Beaulieu (Crow S1-7), Bill Corbett (Crow S8-10) and Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo S2-10) and is still on good terms with them, so it's not impossible.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
I seriously thought everyone just liked Joel more. Perhaps I'll be enlightened. ;)
But really, regardless of whether its Joel or Mike or has the robots or not... comedy really does need more then one person.
I think this is really great, but sometimes my favorite parts of MST3K were jokes they played with the silhouettes on the screen. In one of the Godzilla movies, there was a bird's-eye-view scene of some Japanese soldiers with round, white bubble-helmets on. Joel stood up, knocked on one of the helmets, and the soldier looked straight up into the camera! :D Classic.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
The commentary on videos was always the best part of that show. As I was editing my own wedding video, I actually wished I knew someone who knew Mike Judge so he could come in and provide commentary. How cool would that be?
"Dude, he's gonna score tonight."
"Huh huhh uhhuhhuh huh huhhuh... you said score."
...of Wizard People, Dear Reader, a similar one-off project by Brad Neely; it's an audiobook-style replacement narrative for the first Harry Potter movie that, when synched up with the DVD (or DivX or whatever) makes for a freaking awesome movie.
Well, damn it. Buy them. Fast and all!
Maybe some money will drag Joel in from whatever strange mountain cabin he's retreated to....
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
it could get a trifle complicated if they put out a commentary to go with "The Wizard of Oz"...you know, playing the movie, the commentary AND "Dark Side of the Moon".
This should make all those movies on Oxygen channel easier to watch...
Funnypics
They used to have a radio show that did voice-overs for Star Trek in the LA area.
Actually, I seem to remember this being one of the comments in an early MST3K episode... I'll go ask Google...
They typically floundered for a few minutes until they'd settled on a plot premise (always extemporaneously, they claimed) and then they would get on a roll. They were incredibly creative, kept everybody in stitches -- and when Sammy Davis Jr. did a commercial for I-forget-what schlocky consumer product, they outdid themselves.
rj
Don't forget you can use ShareCrow to sync these commentaries easily if you have a Windows machine that uses compatible DVD player software.
...)
(And check Commentary Central for a bunch of freebie alternate commentary tracks, including my own for Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I love MST3K, see my screen name, but MST3K is dead. They should stop trying to re-package it into something less than the original. I'd be ecstatic if the full cast and crew got back together for more MST3K, but this feels desperate.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
MST3K was great, but the hillariously bad movies were half the fun.
Maybe not
He should do "Beter Off Dead" next, since he wants his two dollars.
-Peter
PS: Remeber kids, there is no "-1: I don't get it." moderation option.
Didn't everyone have this idea? It was so obvious to do when podcasting was getting underway. Only now, it's easier to sync to the DVDs.
Sorry...
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
I suggest you read Slashdot
It is illegal to tell your friend that Bonds hit a homerun to left center in the bottom of the 7th.
I'm very very interested in this..
.. the best way to get the commentary in would be something like imovie and its linux equivalents... for that you can't have DRM.
I think they should do the harry potter series..
I don't consider my improv particularly good, but I kept my friends in stitches riffing on that schlocky piece of crap.
Anyway..
so plz.. NO DRM okaaay?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
This raises a good question: what if the MST3K folk were to release their commentary as a file that, when combined with the correct DVD player, would place their overlayed silhouettes over the movie. BAM! All the advantages of MST3K, no copyright worries over the movie.
Imagine the fun the bots could have with some of the real stinkers that have been released too recently to be available to them: MST3K of Waterworld, or of, well, any Adam Sandler movie.
www.eFax.com are spammers
You're seeing them because you, genius, don't know how to adjust your reading threshold.
...torrent?
This seems like a good idea, and I will definetly give it a try, however I don't know how profitable it will be. These tracks may be enjoyable, but they will never be the same as MST3K, especially without the other characters that made the show what it was. Mike Nelson did some audio commentaries for Legend Films which are quite funny, but definetly lacking the atmosphere that MST3K had. I'm sure I'll prefer MST3K, and if anyone hasn't seen the show, I highly suggest getting a few episodes.
Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer
No worries about copyright? In today's environment?
If a "cut-list" for a DVD is considered possible copyright infringement as a "derivative work", you can sure as hell bet that a voice-over commentary intended for a DVD can be considered possible copyright infringement by today's overzealous copyright holders.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
Hey, speaking of amusing but uninformative MP3s (just kidding, guys... :-) ), when are you guys at Slashdot going to restart Geeks In Space, or at least restore the archives? In case you haven't noticed, many of the old MP3s are missing from thesync.com. It's wierd, some of the MP3 files seem to have been replaced with a tribute page for a deceased person sometime in 2004.
Can you please host the whole archive of shows again?
And new shows would be good, too. I'd love to hear Cliff rant on about the name Wii, or Taco get cranky over Vista.
And to not be totally offtopic... I can't be the only one who thinks it won't be the same without the shadows in the corner. Especially not without the robots. What I would love to see, though, is a group of totally insane people like the cast of SeaLab 2021 commenting on the movies.
Right here, baby.
Oh, and you might need to read the summary for that article to get the full effect, etc.
Without actually embedding them in video feed youre not reproducing the work
There are also numerous examples and case courses resolved against copyright holders in cases of parody and criticism.
Nelson has a mountain of case law on his side, but youre right, i wouldnt put it past these people.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
As seen above: http://www.sharecrow.net/?p=Crows
it's windows only, in that respect it may as well be written in sandskrit.. neeext.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
http://www.softpawmagazine.com/
HTH HAND
I was appalled when I saw how MST3K was made, that they have a group of writers sitting around brainstorming moment by moment what comment to make off the wall, then put it all in sequence to a script, and then rerecord the whole things with the shadow puppets and styrofoam. I was like, you got to be joking...
I do this peanut gallery shit in realtime, the first time, every time, and more often than not my warped sense of snide and slapstick humor makes the MST3K stuff seem lame like a spagetti noodle (sometimes they have their moments now and then and I bust the crap out laughing). I'm sure there are plenty of college students out there that can best or even top me... some really warped redhead girls...
I stopped watch MST3K because its soooo long and boring for the most part. You want to watch good comedy that moves at a pace thats not glacial, go for the AdultSwim mix stuff... Sealab, Drawn Together, Aqua Teen, etc...
MST3K had a good idea, get really corny movies and add a peanut gallery, but frequently the movies just aren't corny enough, or the main problem, they show the WHOLE THING start to finish. Some serious editing needs to be done to cut out a lot of the deadzones and keep the laughter going...
For example, Prince of Space. Prince of Space started out hillarious as hell. But then it just went on and on, like a David Letterman joke, and after a while you were like oh stop already... god this sucks...
einstein
http://rootpassword.com/
admittedly a latecomer to the series, I missed it during its actual television run, of all the episodes i've since acquired I find the Mike ones are preferable in comedy and cohesiveness to the Joel ones. /em ducks the incoming fire :)
Devil bunnies! I snort the nose! Lucifer! Banana! Banana!
While the bit of MST3K news is interesting, I am amazed that the source for this article was Lileks. More accurately, I am amazed that anyone has managed to read through one of his "Bleats".
Gallery of Regrettable Foods: Entertaining
Everything else on lileks.com: Not so much
As anyone good Austinite knows, The Sinus Show guys have been doing this for a while now, and while they aren't MST3K (for copyright reasons), I've never left a Sinus Show without a stomach ache from laughing so much.
IAALS.
CowboyNeal *DOES* know that Mike was a writer on the show from season 1 on, and the head writer starting season 2, right.
That's one thing that I've never understood about the Joel vs Mike thing.... The writing staff was pretty much the same for both (with the huge exception of Frank Conniff leaving. Things were never quite as.... surreal afterward).
jf
...though it was well before I became a MST3K fan. Woody Allen's What's Up Tiger Lily? was my inspiration. The only real problems with the idea were that 1) this was before DVD was a serious concern, so the idea of commentary was pretty new (my idea was to sell audio tapes, and play them in your stereo while watching your VHS movie), 2) No one ever took me seriously, and most inportantly 3) I have no real comic talent of the caliber actually needed to make money off this.
I'm quite glad that Mike Nelson (and hopefully he'll drag in as many MST3K alums as possible, plus anyone good he's met since then) has taken up the torch. (You all do realize that while Joel was the initial public face, Mike was the head for the entire run of the show, right? It's a pointless war which one was better!) It's an idea that needed to be tried, and he'll do a far better job than I ever could have.
and some scotch tape.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Where are my mod points when I need 'em?
Give TWIT some competition!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Jonah HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Frank! Glad you could make it to the clam bake.
I am not a lousy butler!
That nosewheel feels mushy!
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
The master will not approve!
I accuse my parents!
Hirohito Gamera! Hirohito Gamera!
No Lupita! No!
There was no monster!
It was after the apocalypse...
Daddy, I want a coke!
It stinks!
Hi, I'm Max Keller.
Master Ninja Theme Song!
Frank, push the button.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
Why is he such a good egg anyway? because he's so normal and smug? He was really bad at being all faggy. I like how Joel Hodgson would get all faggy. I think that's what made the show successful. Just goes to show!
In your comment about the "cut list" I think you must be referring to the 'cleaned DVDs' topic of a few days ago, and I think you're misunderstanding that ruling.
... [they] failed to win on this affirmative defense, because they were not just dealing in the hard copy, but rather making copies of it." (Emphasis mine.)
What was prohibited in that case was the reproduction that Clean Flicks was doing in order to produce the edited versions. They were taking a movie, editing it, and then selling the edited version -- yes, they were selling each edited version packaged along with an unedited version, but they were reproducing the film just the same. That's where they ran into copyright problems.
Other companies who took a different tactic towards the problem, and avoided the reproduction step (by delivering to the customer an EDL that would cause the player to fast forward through various 'offensive' parts) were allowed under the ruling.
There's a pretty good analysis of the verdict on FindLaw, which isn't too long and is worth reading. In particular: "The defendants also argued that they were protected by the so-called "first sale" doctrine
If you're willing to spend some more time reading things actually written by folks who have law degrees, I recommend this substantial article from the Georgetown Law Journal, which was written in 2004 and examines the viability under copyright law of several video-censoring technologies, including old-school razorblade tape splicing, CleanFlicks-type digital editing, and EDL-based 'skip over' systems.
Although CleanFlicks no longer offers the edited copies of DVDs, another company, ClearPlay, still offers an EDL-based product (which IMO is a much more elegant solution to the problem anyway, since it lets you pick what types of smut you personally dislike), as can be seen on their website.
This type of on-the-fly editing is legal, and was clarifed as such by President Bush's passing of the "Family Movie Act of 2005," which specifically allows you to make changes to an authorized copy of a motion picture, as long as you don't create a fixed copy of the edited version. The best part of the law? It's not limited purely to obscenity edits; according to one Forbes article, it could be used just as easily to protect a fan's removal of the more obnoxious parts of Star Wars Episode 1 as it could the removal of Kate Winslet's nudity from Titanic. (Sadly, apparently the technology can't replace Jar Jar Binks with a naked Kate Winslet. Yet.)
So the next time you think that G.W. hasn't done anything for you, it seems that he may have let some good slip through after all.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I just downloaded Road House from the site and it's in MP3 format. I doubt you have to worry about any DRM getting in the way.
"While I (and many others I know) preferred Joel, Mike was not without his share of funny moments too."
Apples and Oranges; Abbott and Costello; Laurel and Hardy; Ralph and Norton...
Two different approaches to humor; both were exceptional at what they did.
Joel would tend to come up Rube Goldberg-like complex analgous scenarios to explain a situation, whereas Mike would fall back on naievely simple ones.
Favorite line (from "Sidehackers", hosted by Joel):
Misogynist Biker (after beating up his woman): "Honey, what would you do without me??"
Crow: "Heal??!!"
Favorite Concept: Mike mimicing "Erkel", and a Robert Burnsian harmonious universe of characters (from numerous episodes past...) sharing in the uncontrollable sarcastic ha-ha's...
I don't think they have to do the show every week; with reruns and DVDs, I think it would be great just to add to the library with a new addition for the holidays; that would give them plenty of time to come up with the perfect material and lines, would not burn them out, and would be just occasional enough to leave the public always wanting more...
Instead of having friends over to watch a movie and comment on it, you can now buy a soundtrack with people pretending to be your friends, commenting on the movie, and still keeping all the beer to yourself!
It's a win-win situation!
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Although PAL opperates 10Hz slower (but with superior Quality) than NTSC (Never The Same Colour) the actual move plays at the same rate (IE 1 second NTSC(60Hz)=1 Second PAL(50Hz)=1 Second 8mm (24Hz)) The Biggest issue will come from when you find the UK edition was differently Edited to the US version.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
What a coincidence, I just finished watching the MST3K Skydivers episode. I hadn't watched an episode in awhile and sort of grabbed it out of the blue.
The first DVD I ever owned was a MiB special edition that I won in some competition about a year before I actually got a DVD player to watch it ... One of the fun eggs on the DVD is the audio commentry by Tommy Lee Jones and the director done MST3k-style - the subtitles track is them sitting in chairs in silhouette, pointing things out and just generally watching the movie. This is a very cool hack and can be done because the subtitles on a dvd is not text but a smaller movie overlaid and synched.
"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing." -- Salvador Dali
That is actually wrong.
Since NTSC effectively has arprox 30 frames pr. second, that means movies (which are natively around 24fps) are encoded using some interlacing tricks, and has the exact same timing as the original movie.
PAL however has 25 fps, and no interlacing tricks in the world will allow you to get a 24fps source looking good & smooth while remaining proper timing. Thus movies in PAL format actually play faster.
The PAL version of a movie is effectively shorter/faster than the NTSC version. The GP has a valid complaint.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Slashdot readers - Love fair use when it is MST3k, hate it when it is trimming naughty bits.
Shows what a bunch of wankers are trying to run the revolution....You think the ACLU likes supporting flag burning? They just do it because it is the right thing to do.
That is incorrect. PAL is about 4% faster than NTSC. They just do pitch correction to ensure it sounds normal.
Honestly, look it up. NTSC runs about 30 frames/second (29.997 or something), and PAL is 25 fps. Movies are 24 fps, and so for NTSC conversion they just add some duplicate frames to get it to 30 fps. For PAL however, they just run it at the faster rate.
It's not noticeable but it does mean that audio podcast commentaries like for Battlestar Galactica go out of sync while watching tv in countries using PAL - which is a pain, unless you modify the file yourself.
What we really need is a special media player that can play the comentary track on top of the DVD in your computer, so that the sounds will be synced properly. Also, you would need a little threatre seat outline at the bottom of the screen overlayed on the video to add to the full effect. It might be nice to include a file that would turn the sound of the actual movie up or down to accomodate hearing the commentary during noisy parts of the movie, without cutting out all the sound to the movie. This could be a great concept, and a nice break from the director commentary we are used to seeing.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The PAL colour system is usually used with a video format that has 625 lines per frame (576 visible lines, the rest being used for other information such as sync data and captioning) and a refresh rate of 50 interlaced fields per second (or 25 full frames per second)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL
Thank you for playing, but better luck next time.
My boys over at the Sinus Show have released audio recordings of their live shows to be synced with DVDs in the comfort of your home. There is also a really cool retelling of Harry Potter and the Sorcorer's Stone out of Austin that is hi-frickin'-larious called "Wizard People, Dear Readers." I hope there isn't much of a legal effort to try to protect this ground because it's only inevitible that more people will try this on. Hell, I'd love to do it for Commando and Roadhouse. :)
So they're not the first, so what? The more, the merrier. They won't be any less funny for not being the only ones doing it.
I remebering hearing about this idea on NPR a while back, but making it political: Red-State Edition DVD commentaries. Here's a transcript of one for Aliens.
Here's a great section:
COULTER: Again, here: Burke in a very natty red tie. And he really fills out a pair of chinos. ...
D'SOUZA: We're watching how he tries to help Ripley help herself, by convincing her to get back on the bike and revisit an alien-infested planet. Just in case anybody thought that conservatism and compassion couldn't go hand in hand
COULTER: Burke?
D'SOUZA: Yeah, look at him. He's clearly got Ripley's best interest in mind.
COULTER: I think so.
Personally, I think a Crow vs Crow flamewar would be much more interesting. The day Trace Beaulieu left and Crow was "replaced" was the day the show got a lot less funny for me.
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Syncing audio and video isn't a trivial problem by any means...back when I was playing around with DVD ripping using tools that processed the audio and video independently, I had a lot of trouble getting things to sync back up at the end -- and that was using files that came from the exact same source material at the beginning (so you'd think it would be easy to do). The best method I ever found was, if you know they're supposed to be the same length, to paste the video on top of the audio track and have Quicktime scale the video's length to make it even. Even then, this was iffy.
These 'commentary tracks' are going to have to be careful to state pretty explicitly which version of the movie they're designed to work with, because they're not always the same. Even if two movies are listed as being the same, there can be subtle changes (say, the length of the black between the studio logo and the beginning of the film, etc.) that would cause an audio track to get desynced.
I think the best solution would be to produce audio tracks that had some kind of timecode awareness (the MPEG GOP timecode) and/or chapter markers to stay in sync. The easier method is simply to use elapsed time (which on a Mac can be grabbed with AppleScript), but I'm not sure how much I'd trust that.
Are there any good Open Source / Open Format audio formats that include support for metadata tracks running along with the audio? (So that you could easily transmit audio + timecode?) All the formats I can think of are proprietary studio stuff. I guess the poor man's way to do it would be to distribute an audio file (say an MP3) and then have a text file along with it, which cross-referenced the timecode inside the audio file -- the MPEG frames or something -- to the timecode of the video. A suitably designed player could take the audio, video, and metadata file, and keep everything together.
Or the really ugly way would just be to distribute a stereo audio file, with the commentary in mono on one channel, and regular SMPTE timecode in the other channel. If you can find a way to equate SMPTE timecode to the GOP timecode that's part of the DVD video stream, you're set.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Modded -1 overrated? This is a serious problem (PAL movies playing faster than NTSC movies). I'd like to see RiffTrax not consider America the only country that exists (World Series baseball anyone?). PAL is not an uncommon format, and is used just as much if not more than NTSC is.
Did this movie ever get beyond Australia? Same kind of concept, as cinema owner realises the soundtrack to his classic print is stuffed.
Looks like I really WILL be having a Patrick Swayze Christmas this year!
... But having the Brains in the theater would be enough for me: after Joel left the whole prop thing was kinda lame, and after Trace and TV's Frank left the whole everything-else-deep-13-related got pretty useless.
If it were just Joike and the bots, with maybe a few pauses for intermissions, I'd be very happy.
What about the underground success 'Wizard People' (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor yId=4582190)? Basically, a performance artist, Brad Neely, created a voice overlay for the movie Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. If you have not heard it, you should download it. It is hilarious! He would do live performances of his work with the original movie playing with the sound turned off. He was threatened with lawsuits from the studio saying that any use of their film that deviates from the original would have to be evaluated and approved.
Even though Neely thought that his use was legal, he decided not to fight. I hope Joel all the success in the world, but there is a good chance that he will get sued. Especially if they decide to do a live, or public version of one of his riffs.
-Matt
Kevin Smith has already recorded a commentary track (granted, not a funny one like this MST3k type thing, but a commentary none the less) for Clerks 2 that will be available on iTunes soon.
The thinking is that you can see the movie once to actually see the movie, then go again with your iPod and listen to the commentary while in the theater.
Pretty smart thinking, actually. And while I'm sure KS doesn't mind the additional money it would bring in, it's actually a pretty cool thing for him to do. I doubt a lot of directors would do something like this.
Do "The Passion Of The Christ" and I'll actually pony up the dough.
They're a few months old, but they already picked several appropriate movies to blast: Catwoman, Fantastic Four, Gigli, and others. The problem is that you have to actually be seen renting these turkeys.
http://dvdpodblast.blogspot.com/
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
The sample track totally sucks without Crow and Tom Servo.
Joel was way better than Mike. Mike is your typical "writer who came out from behind the curtain because his ego couldn't stand not getting the laughs personally like he did when he was the class clown in high school". His delivery is flat; Joel had an actual on-screen personality. Mike may be a good writer, but he should have stuck with that.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
So. At what point did I miss anything? Exactly where did I go wrong? 50 interlaced frames pr. second = 25 full frames pr. second. So, what are you complaining about?
You got to be trolling. Oh wait. Anynymous coward. Right. You are.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
The Floor Is Sticky released the first commentary to Star Wars: Episode I back in April... We need to do another one soon!
I guess it wasn't as original idea as I thought, although The Floor Is Sticky shows are free!
What, me worry?
I sort of agree with what you're saying, but I feel I have a slightly different angle on it.
MST3K was done. It came, it had its time, and it left. We even got a movie version out of it. I don't think it needs to be done again. Part of the fun of the show was its novelty, and that's basically spent.
These efforts to come back and do more MST3K-ish stuff sort of send the message "this is all we're capable of". (Well, really this "message" is just the impression I get, my own interpretation...) That's a little disappointing.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
These guys are funny. You basically go to a movie theater and watch a movie to which they make comments over a PA and stop the movie from time to time to perform a live skit. They are from Austin, Texas, but I have seen them numerous times in Houston. Movies viewed with them so far: Karate Kid, Pretty in Pink, and Dirty Dancing.
Click here or here.
Joel created the show, but Mike Nelson was his head writer all the way through. He was still the head writer when it ended. I thought the jokes feel mor natural coming from Mike anyways, probably because he wrote them. This is a great idea. The money will be when they do it for movies in theaters and people will go in with an mp3 player and headphones. I can't wait.
For those of you who are worried about it "not being the same," it's not. But it's still really funny. Nelson has already done several DVD commentary tracks for Legend Films, including Carnival of Souls, House on Haunted Hill (the original), and Plan Nine from Outer Space. While not quite up to the verve and energy of the original MST3K, Nelson is still a very funny, very clever guy, and the commentaries are a joy to listen to. These DVDs are well worth checking out.
(The DVDs are colorized, but also include the original versions of the film, for concerned purists.)
Mike: And then the drunk guy says, "I can't help being an idiot; I'm Canadian."
Crow: Hahahaha. You're right! They're so pathetic, Mike!
Mike: Right, exactly.
Servo: Enough! There's been too much Canada-bashing for far too long. I say no more.
Mike: Don't you mean, "No more, eh?"
Crow: Good one, man! They are so stupid!
Servo: Stop it now! Instead, let us offer our northern brothers and sisters this song of tribute. Oh, I wish I was back in old Canada, a land which I never shall lampoon. How I pine for the ice covering Lake Manitoba and the beauty that is Saskatoon.
Mike: Oh, I got one. Oh, I wish I was stuck in the hills of Alberta drinkin beer with some big, dumb guy trapping fur.
Servo: Hey!
Mike: As he scraped and he chisled all the moose dung off his boot, I would learn that he's the prime minister.
Servo: Oh, stop that.
Crow: Oh, I wish I was in the land that gave us Peter Jennings, Alanis Morrissette, Mike Myers too...
Servo: Ah!
Crow: No, I take that back, I wouldn't go there even if you paid me! Oh, Canada, you are a place I must eskew.
Servo: Now this is not in the spirit that I intended.
Mike: Oh, come on. Give in. I mean, they gave us Ed the Sock... and Rush.
Crow: Yeah, what are you defending? They're such feebs!
Servo: Okay, I'll try.
Mike: Alright, good man!
Servo: Oh, I wish I was blowing up Prince Edward Island, then going on to bomb Ontario. Hehe. The destruction of Canada and all of its culture is by far my favorite scenario.
Mike: Okay, I think that's a little strong. You can back down...
Servo: Oh no, you were right, Mike. This is much more fun! Just where the hell does Canada get off sharing a border with countries far superior to it?
Crow: Yikes!
Servo: Why, you lousy, stinkin', Francophonic, bacon-lovin' bastards, your country's just a giant piece of sh...
Crow: Woah, woah, woah, woah! Geez!
Mike: Okay, I think that's enough! I think we've punched it. Cambot, okay. Thanks. Alright.
Servo: Sorry.
Crow: Wow.
Servo: I have no sense of proportion. I'm a disgrace to my uniform.
Mike: I know. That's, that's okay. Now calm down now. Mustn't hate, mustn't hate...
Crow: At least so overtly.
Mike: Exactly, right. Must disguise our hate. Just a little, okay? We'll be right back. Shh, shh. It's okay now, Dudley. Calm down, calm down.
Servo: Pardon é mois! Pardon é mois!
I bought the one for The Fifth Element. Best line goes something like this:
"Imagine what it'd be like to make out with Milla Jovovich and get a mental image of Carrot Top. Talk about 'collapsing the circus tent'."