Joel and Original Cast of MST3K Riding the Cinematic Titanic

AugstWest writes "Unfortunately it's in separate projects, but just after Jim Mallon (the man who owns all things MST3K) announced that he would be bringing back Tom Servo, Crow and Gypsy in animated Flash shorts on the web along with Paul Chaplin (a writer from the original MST3K), Joel Hodgson, the series creator, has announced that he will be launching a new venture called Cinematic Titanic. It will feature horrible movies riffed by the original cast of MST3K, including Josh Weinstein (the original Tom Servo), Trace Beaulieu (the original Crow), Frank Conniff (TV's Frank), Mary Jo Pehl (Pearl Forrester) and, of course, Joel himself. They've already got the rights to 12 movies, and will be releasing one a month starting in December for DVD purchase or download."

MST3K?

[avij]

The obligatory clarification links (from Wikipedia) -- some of us have never heard of MST3K:

Mystery Science Theater 3000 [wikipedia.org] , often abbreviated MST3K , is an American [wikipedia.org] cult television [wikipedia.org] comedy series created by Joel Hodgson [wikipedia.org] and produced by Best Brains, Inc. [wikipedia.org] that ran from 1988 to 1999.

Mike Nelson has already been doing this

[elrous0]

Actually, Mike Nelson has been doing this for some time already with Murphy and Corbett (the later Servo and Crow) at Rifftrax [rifftrax.com]. Looks like we've got a Joel/original-bots vs. Mike/new-bots slapfest a-brewin'.

Rifftrax, and now this!

[cblack]

I think this is great and will definitely be checking these out. I am a huge mst3k fan and am really pleased that many of the people that were involved with the show are putting out new material. For those who don't know, Mike Nelson and friends also have a project called RiffTrax [rifftrax.com] where they do more popular and high profile movies like The Phantom Menace, Daredevil, and Cocktail. Also, I don't care if I'm starting a flame war: I prefer Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy as Tom Servo :)

They forgot to mention

[antifoidulus]

that the "final" crew of MST3K(onstage anyway) is involved in yet another project(well, projects): The Film Crew and Riff Trax, both lampooning movies. RiffTrax is interesting in that you buy mp3s of the riff online and play them over the dvds of the films. The Film Crews is closer to MST3K in that it comes in 1 package and even has some filler sketches in it....

The return of the original Mighty Voice!

[Tetsujin]

Man, just think of all the babes, the hot oil, the mango juice!

The summary is a bit confusing given that it lumps the two announcements together... There seems to be a bit of confusion about who's doing what and how...

Story 1: (announced earlier) The cast from the end of the series are doing some animated web shorts, using the MST3K characters
Story 2: (new) The cast from the beginning of the series are doing some live performances and DVDs and such of movie riffing - with no details yet on the exact format...

Re:No question at all.

[aberkvam]

Jim Mallon [wikipedia.org] is hardly "some random schmuck". He helped create MST3K back in its Minnesota UHF days, directed almost half the episodes, and played Gypsy in seasons 1-8. Joel may have provided the original creative force but he hardly could have created it alone.

Joel left in the middle of season 5. MST3K continued until season 10 and released a feature film. I am not sure what this "demise" is that you speak of...

Re:Don't have the MST3K DVDs, but I'd like this:q

[aberkvam]

Some of the DVDs do come with un-riffed versions on the flip sides of the DVDs. I don't recall which ones though. Also, I don't think it is worth viewing the movies without the riffing.

This list [mst3kinfo.com] shows which releases come with the original movies.

Wanna catch up with old MST3K episodes?

[g_adams27]

Wanna see what all the MST3K fuss is about? Old episodes (just about all of them, except for those that are commercially available) can be found at the Digital Archive Project [dapcentral.org]. Old episodes of the show encouraged viewers to "keep circulating the tapes", and the DAP guys are doing just that. For legal purposes they pull down any episodes whenever Rhino decides to package and sell them, but otherwise, just about everything is there.

Most episodes were encoded years ago in MPEG4 format, but there's an impressive (and growing) number available in higher quality DVD format.

Re:MST3K?

[MSTCrow5429]

Joel likes Mike, supported him as being the new host. MJP worked with Mike on Rifftrax. I don't see sides, just different groups of the same former org going off and doing slightly different things. Yeah, I'd like some people swapped, want Bill Corbett as Crow, and Paul Chaplin as Pitch, but our prayers have been answered, MST3K is coming back, and Joel is doing his own great thing too. We now have Rifftrax, MST3K 21st Century, Cinematic Titanic, and Cartoon Dump. What more could you want on that front?

Re:MST3K?

[AceCaseOR]

Geography, from what I understand, more than anything else. Mike, Bill, and Kevin are, IIRC, in the Minnappolis (sp) area. The Cinematic Titanic crew is in the Los Angeles area. Finally, from what I understand, Jim Fallon is not, IIRC, on the best of terms terms with Mike, Bill and Kevin after he sued them to kill their Film Crew project in, IIRC, 2002.

Re:MST3K?

[Cheesey]

You can find some classic full episodes on Google Video. I recommend searching for "MST3K 0820 Space Mutiny". Generally the show is good, but you do have to be in the mood for laughing at an awful sci-fi movie, and some episodes are much better than others. You might also enjoy "Prince of Space", "Puma Man", and "Overdrawn at the memory bank", my personal favourites.