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.

Open Hangar Doors!!

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!

Re:Open Hangar Doors!!

Stay frosty, boys, we've got a flame war coming!

Nothing sadder than a bunch of Slashdotters competing to be "Alpha-dork".

Not an original concept

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. [slashdot.org]

The dream of an MST3K reunion

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.

Sometimes silhouettes were funny

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.

This reminds me...

...of Wizard People, Dear Reader [illegal-art.org], 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.

No worries?

It's genius: no worries about copyright.

The track still seems like a derivative work to me. It wouldn't be legal for somebody to release diffs (or say an ed script such that it contains none of the unmodified code) for the linux kernel under a GPL-incompatible license; isn't this product analogous to doing that?

Re:No worries?

All this is, is an additional commentary act. The original sounds of the movie are coming off the dvd that you provide. There is nothing that should stop me from sitting in a room, making a recording on my comments of the movie, and then releasing it. Granted, entities such as Major League Baseball are currently trying to prevent people from providing their own sportscasts of baseball games. Not sure all the details there, but this maybe, eventually, could be prohibited. Let's hope not.

Re:No worries?

IANAL. However, my completely IANAL-ish opinion is that these are not copyright infringement, and fall in the realm of fair use. I say this because I believe this type of work is nearly the same thing as writing a review of a movie, or posting some facts about a movie.

Most movie reviews are very similar to an additional audio track, save for the fact that one is designed to be synced up to the movie, and the other is written on paper. Reviews often comment on aspects of the film, such as a specific scene or a recurring theme or something. The only real difference an audio track has is, once again, the fact that it is designed to be played along with the film.

Posting facts about a movie is also considered fair use. You can say "this movie is two hours long", or "the lens looks messed up in these scene", and this is not infringement. An audio track seems to be very similar to this.

Other types of media also follow these rules. It is not infringement to say "this painting is ten feet tall", or "Mark Knopfler used a Gibson Les Paul when he recorded 'Money for Nothing'". It is also not infringement to say "Charles Dickens sucks".

There's even prior art: Dark Side of the Moon [wikipedia.org].

Spend your money!

Well, damn it. Buy them. Fast and all!

Maybe some money will drag Joel in from whatever strange mountain cabin he's retreated to....

Re:Spend your money!

Maybe some money will drag Joel in from whatever strange mountain cabin he's retreated to....

I hear his bosses didn't like him, so they... shot him... something something.

And for the multiple-tracked among us...

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".

I suspect

This should make all those movies on Oxygen channel easier to watch...

Remember SIMUL TREK?

They used to have a radio show that did voice-overs for Star Trek in the LA area.

Deja vu

We had something like that here in the Denver area in the Seventies, in the form of a program called High Street that ran weekly on a small FM rock station. The performers were four students at the U of Denver (located on High Street, and yes, the double entendre was apt). It ran in the same time slot as the late-evening movie on a non-network TV station, and the idea was to turn the TV sound down and let the High Street guys provide the audio.

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

Share Crow with ShareCrow?

Don't forget you can use ShareCrow [sharecrow.net] to sync these commentaries easily if you have a Windows machine that uses compatible DVD player software.

(And check Commentary Central [commentarycentral.co.uk] for a bunch of freebie alternate commentary tracks, including my own for Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro [terrania.us]...)

This raises a good question....

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.

It's Not the Same

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.

The moview were half the fun

MST3K was great, but the hillariously bad movies were half the fun.

Two Dollars?

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.

No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

Sorry...

Michael J Nelson reads Slashdot

It appears that Mike Nelson must be a fan of Slashdot too.... http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/30/145824 8 [slashdot.org].

There are fans who do MST3K-style riffing, something like "commentaries". It would be cool to download some formatted overlays.

it is in an open format right?

I'm very very interested in this..

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.. .. the best way to get the commentary in would be something like imovie and its linux equivalents... for that you can't have DRM.

so plz.. NO DRM okaaay?

No DRM

Anyway.. .. 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 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.

Nice, but not quite the same

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 [legendfilms.net] 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 [crowtrobot.com] a few episodes.

No worries about copyright?

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

Parody and Criticism exceptions to the code.

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.

EDLs are still A-OK.

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.

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 [newsblaze.com].

There's a pretty good analysis of the verdict on FindLaw [findlaw.com], 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 ... [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.)

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 [findarticles.com], 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 [clearplay.com] (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 [forbes.com], 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.

Speaking of which...

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.

Oh look I called it...

Right here, baby. [slashdot.org]

Oh, and you might need to read the summary for that article to get the full effect, etc.

as for who was better

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 :)

Lame

As anyone good Austinite knows, The Sinus Show [sinusshow.com] 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.

Joel vs Mike... Sigh...

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

I had this idea awhile back...

...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.

Re-subbed movies much better.

I've been doing this both alone and with my buddy Jack [myspace.com] for a few years now, using Asian films as the base. First I pulled off a 6 hour marathon turning We're Going to Eat You! [imdb.com] into We're Going to Eat Jack for his birthday. Here's a short clip from some facially deformed man originally singing some fairly normal song, with timecodes, etc removed:

A fucking bell? It's part of the birthday party... This is Jack's Birthday song with blood and gore all night long and drink until you all fall down Watch me wave my penis wand with five speeds it goes on and on Bang it on my gong and stick it up my crack Once you've seen this movie there is no going back From a tape deformed man, Happy Birthday Jack! Solo!

Next up was Battle Royale [imdb.com], which we both worked on for another friend's birthday, turning it into a kill or be killed game show. Those of you familiar with this movie will recognize the early section where they are watching the explanation video.

Time to watch the video. Don't fall asleep now... bitches. The Idiots Guide to Fight a Battle Royale! With Dayna Charlton! By Nintendo. WHASSUP, Japan Finals Team!! SUP, Ho! The survivor of this round, will advance to the World BR Championship! Good luck! -Fuck you! This Arena has a few new rules, that I'll be explaining to you! Pay attention, maggots. What you don't know can kill you!!! Japan's Arena is a deserted island that looks like this! lt's about 10 miles around, fully equipped with cameras, and the Hell-o-Chopper will be circiling the arena!! l said no whispering! All right, move, move. What did I say? Huh? Don't fuck around. Girls #18 Chatty Cathy Dead 41 To Go. Shaniqua! Asshole! -Benito! Benito! Shit! OK, back to the video! The Arena's divided into many Zones. Your host will inform you about which... 4 times a day! ...Zones the audience has selected to become DOOM ZONES lf you're in those DOOM ZONES, you should leave quickly... ...because DOOM is Fucking Nigh... OK, about the necklaces you're wearing. They're 100% waterproof and shockproof. .. ...and totally mooseproof! lt monitors your pulse, informing us... ...of your location and movements. So if you linger in a DOOM ZONE... ...or cause trouble, we can identify you, and transmit radio waves... ...And blow your fucking head up! BOOM!!! Fucking Crazy!!! lf you try to rip it off, it explodes too, and your pitiful friends will cry.

We figured that trying to redo an entire audio track would be too time consuming, have to replace all sound effects and everything. This method works much better since none of us speak anything but English anyways. We just started on Godzilla: Final Wars a month ago, and have started turning it into some kind of religious zealot war. These things have a life of their own, we never know how the story is going to turn out.

Jonah HEX

Why don't they look?

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.

so let me get this straight

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.

odd timing...

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.

Men in black MST3k easter egg

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.

Special Media Player?

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.

This isn't anything new...

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. :)

Mike vs Joel?

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.

Hercules returns

Did this [imdb.com] movie ever get beyond Australia? Same kind of concept, as cinema owner realises the soundtrack to his classic print is stuffed.

Roadhouse

Looks like I really WILL be having a Patrick Swayze Christmas this year!

Wizard People

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

Clerks 2 already did it/is doing it

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.

How ballsy will they be?

I dare them to do something like "Munich" or the upcoming "World Trade Center".

Do "The Passion Of The Christ" and I'll actually pony up the dough.

Sucks

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.

We started this at The Floor Is Sticky

The Floor Is Sticky [thefloorissticky.com] 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 [thefloorissticky.com] shows are free!

Mr Sinus Theater

These guys [mrsinus.com] 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.

Joel vs. Mike? they are friends!

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.

Sorry if this has been posted already

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 [legendfilms.net], 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.)

Classic MST3k

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!

Report

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'."

Re:Good idea but...

Maybe a MythTV plugin would be in order.

Record the show and wait an hour or 5 before playback and you could have Henry Kissinger pitching snide remarks to Gretta Van Susteran while watching War of the Worlds.

Wait a month and you could have some really cool total-replacement sound tracks of Bush calling a world cup game.

Re:Thanks in Advance

Actually, I seem to remember this being one of the comments in an early MST3K episode... I'll go ask Google...

Re:Thanks in Advance

You're seeing them because you, genius, don't know how to adjust your reading threshold [slashdot.org].

Re:Good idea but...

Well, there's Wag the Movie [blogspot.com] but they're so-so and audio only. Dumb college kids.

Re:Lileks?

I usually skim over Lileks columns in the Strib. They're almost as painful to read as the movies on MST3K are to watch. Somebody should start writing commentaries to Lileks columns that people can download, print, and read along with his columns.

Re:No one thought of PAL vs NTSC?

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.

Re:Good idea but...

You're seriously going to argue that video players on windows have any ability to compete on easy of use with Linux video players? If you are, you're a fucking moron are ignorant enough as to make no matter.

Re:BOOTBLACK!

Just because you have the attention span of a retarded gold fish doesn't mean MST3k sucks, it's just not for you.

However I believe your affection for Adult Swim is misplaced, you can only find those shows funny if you have suffered severe brain trauma or you're abusing some schedule IV substances.


HESH WANTS MARRIED SEX!

Try "DVD PODBLAST"

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/ [blogspot.com]

Re:Red-State Edition DVD Commentaries

It works just as well for blue states- I love the McSweeney's commentary of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky on The Fellowship of the Ring. Some choice bits:

Zinn: And observe the map device here -- how the map is itself completely Gondor-centric. Rohan and Gondor are treated as though they are the literal center of Middle Earth. Obviously this is because they have men living there. What of places such as Anfalas and Forlindon or Near Harad? One never really hears anything about places like that. And this so-called map casually reveals other places -- the Lost Realm, the Northern Waste (lost to whom? wasted how? I ask) -- but tells us nothing about them. It is as though the people who live in these places are despicable, and unworthy of mention. Who is producing this tale? What is their agenda? What are their interests and how are those interests being served by this portrayal? Questions we need to ask repeatedly.

Zinn: You view the conflict as being primarily about pipe-weed, do you not?
Chomsky: Well, what we see here, in Hobbiton, farmers tilling crops. The thing to remember is that the crop they are tilling is, in fact, pipe-weed, an addictive drug transported and sold throughout Middle Earth for great profit.

Zinn: This is absolutely established in the books. Pipe-weed is something all the Hobbits abuse. Gandalf is smoking it constantly. You are correct when you point out that Middle Earth depends on pipe-weed in some crucial sense, but I think you may be overstating its importance. Clearly the war is not based only on the Shire's pipe-weed. Rohan and Gondor's unceasing hunger for war is a larger culprit, I would say.
Chomsky: But without the pipe-weed, Middle Earth would fall apart. Saruman is trying to break up Gandalf's pipe-weed ring. He's trying to divert it.
Zinn: Well, you know, it would be manifestly difficult to believe in magic rings unless everyone was high on pipe-weed. So it is in Gandalf's interest to keep Middle Earth hooked.

Zinn: After Gandalf falls, you get another view of the so-called terrorist Orcs. You know, the regrettable side of the Orcs does occasionally come out. The violence. It doesn't help their cause when these distinct, individual Orcs take it upon themselves to lash out at the inequality of the system. But notice that even these violent Orcs don't seem happy. They're not pleased with themselves. It's a violence borne of necessity.

Chomsky: Sure. They're trapped in a cycle of violence.