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IIRC Bill has said that they've become aware over the years about how some of their more poorly-chosen jokes came off (the transphobic stuff in particular), and have been making a conscious effort to do better. Being a suburban Midwesterner of a certain generation can make one insulated from the consequences of their more thoughtless gags, unaware that they're hurting real people -- fans, even -- and it's to their credit that they're abashed and trying to do better than cheap gags at innocent people's expense. Patton Oswalt, someone closely aligned with them, has had a similar journey, I think. Quite a bit of his early poo poo is cruel in retrospect, and I'm sure he's embarrassed by it too, but he's also trying to do better. Plus he's always developing new material (almost never tours without an entirely new set) and that pushes you away from old comfort zones and lazy jokes. Unless you want to be some sad balding masturbating pervert coasting on an overrated movie and insisting that the same "she-male" jokes you told in 1986 still kill, it's just those drat PC kids getting in the way.
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Jul 28, 2021 01:21
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By popular demand posted:Honestly there's hardly any of that just in comparison to the long meandering scenes that go nowhere. That's exactly what Scott Shaw does, though; he pretentiously calls it "zen filmmaking" and is under the impression that it makes for High Art. If you check out trailers for some of his other films like The Roller-Blade Seven/Return of the Roller-Blade Seven you'll see dialogue he seems so inordinately proud of, like (paraphrasing from memory): "My sister... who became... your sister?" "Yes, our sister's sister." (or maybe "sister-sister" who knows, it was all filmed with ambient sound of course) There's like, maybe one line that could get a chuckle in an entire movie (someone mentioned "For entertainment purposes only!", and Rollergator had "hosing down the clowns"). But most of the time it's just bad amateur improv. Since so many of them involve Donald Jackson they also get a lot of mileage recycling the costumes/prosthetics from Hell Comes to Frogtown.
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Aug 10, 2021 18:20
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I'd be very interested to know how RiffTrax got the rights to Rollergator and Baby Ghost, since Shaw is notoriously very defensive of his Art, sensitive to mockery, and extremely aggressive with the DMCAs.
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Aug 11, 2021 00:33
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Davros1 posted:And god help me, but I find myself actually enjoying "The Teen-Agers" films. Not just Bridget and Mary Jo's riffs, but the actual films themselves. They land some solid gags and the actors have some real (if old-timey) acting chops, especially among the Lois Laneses. Too bad they grind to a halt every time they foist one of Freddie's songs on us, but that was the style of the time I guess. Definitely fun little time capsules overall.
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Oct 14, 2021 22:50
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If you must watch one industrial-accident short with multiple sensuous tomato-eating (and licking) scenes, please consider that one.
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Oct 27, 2021 14:46
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To me the most disturbing thing about the short is that only the titular character is depicted in the original comic's distinctive angular/geometric style; the other characters (including and especially the hobos) are done in a much more generic and boring animation style of the time, where the heads are significantly larger and more rounded. So what was, in print, the whimsical adventures of a naif comes off in animation form as a tragic microcephalic who is simply being indulged by everyone around him, probably because he only has two more weeks to live or something
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Dec 14, 2021 03:23
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They have such a natural rapport and really do sound like close longtime friends, it's so charming to hear. MJ's simulwatches on her Twitch channel are fun times too, for really off-the-cuff riffing.
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Jan 6, 2022 21:03
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I just can't stand the "Of the Bride" movies. There's just nothing stand-out or memorable about them other than the occasional appearance of An Actor You've Heard Of, the characters are paper-thin archetypes, most of the male characters are interchangeable nonentities -- nothing about them feels like an actual family other than getting a bunch of C-listers together who are roughly all the same age as a framework to force hackneyed domestic drama onto. OK so one of the kids is a nun despite the family never demonstrating any religious tendency in any other context, but the "pregnant nun" drama was too good to resist (Children of the Bride of Christ). There's a daughter who's the "rebel" and you know she's a rebel because she says so in tedious expository speeches, smokes(!), and occasionally wears a black mesh top. One of the sons hits on people a lot, another one, like, works on cars and lovingly calls his wife a "bitch", whatever. The only saving grace is hearing Bridget and Mary Jo crack each other up. Anyway someone needs to unearth the other Teen-Agers movies.
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Feb 7, 2022 17:17
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I quite enjoyed the famed Tudor architecture of Olde Towne Seattle (founded by Spanish conquistadors in 1600). They were absolutely squatting some other movie set for, like, a historical drama about the War of the Roses or something. Baffling that they would try to turn that into Seattle of all places, but fair play, Americans basically do the same thing to any non-US city, let the Canucks have a go at us.
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Mar 17, 2022 16:19
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At the second Conventio-Con, Mike was dismissive of it just as a concept, specifically citing 'It's a Wonderful Life' as an example ("What are we going to say, 'oh, ha ha, he hit the sore ear!'"), and three decades later they did exactly that movie (albeit just the weird truncated public-domain edit)
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Mar 19, 2022 13:54
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Dawgstar posted:If we're being honest I think Mike was talking about the stuff they'd do in that big movie trailer special because I'm pretty sure they saw a lot of funny stuff in, say, Titanic. (And the JtJ for Titanic was pretty great.) This (the 2nd Conventio-Con) was just before the Sci-Fi era (in fact it was even where they announced that SFC had picked up MST3K after Comedy Central cancelled), so at least a year before the first Summer Blockbuster Review. To be fair though I think the question was actually phrased as "would you ever riff a good movie," and opinions of whether Titanic or especially Batman & Robin are good movies are very much up in the air.
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Mar 19, 2022 23:00
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Ah I forgot about that part of the answer, the 'sore ear' part was what stuck out the most. (As well as what happened after some dorkus malorkus asked if Bridget was single) I would say the dividing line might be where the movie depicts a real tragedy that affected real people, but they did go after Titanic. But on the other other hand, the movie left itself wide open for dark humor with the part where some guy's head clangs against the propeller, so
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Mar 20, 2022 00:03
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She has a PayPal and Venmo for people to donate whatever they feel like it's worth, and I would hope she gets money from Twitch subscriptions. Personally I like the format of the show, it's loose and varied and feels more like a friendly, participatory thing rather than just passively watching others riff. In short, this is her niche, and it's entirely fair that it's not going to click with everyone.
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Mar 20, 2022 16:32
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TVs Ian posted:I wonder if Lowtax’s kids get some kind of residuals. Ditto for the live shows with the Shmorky shorts. That might be a reason to keep it around. Had the same thought. At least we'd know the money isn't being misused anymore.
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Aug 30, 2022 14:21
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It's mime time, fuckas
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Aug 30, 2022 23:49
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I rewatched Zindy a few weeks ago because I saw it in my library but had completely forgotten everything about it. And while it's inexcusable to forget something that batshit, I'm glad I did because taking that journey all over again really was something.
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Oct 3, 2022 22:55
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To be fair, "The Owl and the Pussycat" (the late-19th century Edward Lear poem "marryin' turkey" came from) was a mainstay through at least the first half of the 20th century, but it could have been worse.
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Dec 12, 2023 00:17
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By popular demand posted:I think you mean unequivocally better! Yay, yay!
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Dec 12, 2023 14:25
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With respect to filmmakers with an outsized sense of self-importance, I'm amazed that RiffTrax was ever able to license a single Scott Shaw movie (Rollergator) considering how litigious, pompous, and protective he reportedly has been. There has to be some kind of story there.
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Jan 28, 2024 03:28
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MassRafTer posted:Buying a DVD of Time Chasers to see what wasn't in the episode and finding the racist cabbie and an extended bike chase really stands out in my mind. Rifftrax did a live riff of it that kept those scenes.
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Feb 22, 2024 17:00
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