MST3K ON HULU!!!

That's right: If you live in America and can watch streaming online video, LIFE JUST GOT BETTER!!!

The amazing and wonderful and hysterical Mystery Science Theater 3000 is NOW ON HULU!!!

The timing of this is a bit odd for me because I have been watching MST3K DVDs for a month or so lately. Netflix has a great selection of them, plus I own several of them already. And after several weekends of MST3K, my li'l bro' and I (naturally) moved onto Cinematic Titanic DVDs and RiffTrax (both the MP3s that you listen to while you watch your DVDs, and the DVDs they have available, too, because Netflix has some of them and because I bought some of them recently)!

So to log into Hulu and find that they are now carrying MST3K was AWESOME!!! So now I might be able to watch some of those flicks that weren't released in the DVD collections! (I'm still dying to see Time of the Apes! I have a bootleg from their KTMA days, but I never saw the Comedy Central version, and Netflix doesn't have it.)

Also, if you're a fan of Shawn of the Dead, you can watch the BBC series that first introduced us to the genius of Simon Pegg and Edgar Weight: Spaced!!! :D Edgar wasn't a writer on the show, it was written by Pegg and co-star Jessica Stevenson, but you can totally see how the comedic collaboration on Series 1 & 2 of Spaced evolved into the cinematic genius of and Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz! The TV show has that same irreverent, frenetic sensibility of the flicks that would come later. :D

Sad news for my Gnomey-Goddess, though: It appears that Hulu can only be accessed in the States. :(

I had mentioned it to her a couple of times, but she didn't seem to know what it was, then I recently read something (it may have been the Wikipedia entry) that said that Hulu was limited to the U.S., which is a bummer. There is so much GOODNESS on there, we should share it with the world!!!

But then, I supposed that would compromise distribution rights (or something boring like that).

And that's kind of a shame, because I would like nothing more than to maybe Skype my Gnomey and set up a date night where we both watched an MST3K together or something! (Nerd? Me?)

Still...my little world just got a bit brighter! :)

And I hope yours will, too!

MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, FTW!!!

Ray Jay's Vacation Blog!!!

Day 1:

Dear Vacation Diary,

My vacation is going ever so swell!!! :D

Actually, I started celebrating Sunday! I got a text from my Gnomey-Goddess!!! (She loves me, by the way.) Then Sunday night, after I had woken up a bit, I continued the celebration in earnest with some RiffTrax Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope and Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Very funny stuff!

Then I woke up tonight (Monday night) as late as I please, and started in on some RiffTrax Jaws!!!

Brian got home and I chatted with him a bit, and now I have the option of finishing Jaws, watching Rifftrax take on Tron or watching their take on Jurassic Park!

Seriously, RIFFTRAX!!!

Okay, one superwonderfulamazing thing about RiffTrax is that you get the MST3K experience with big-budget movies!

Which is cool enough!!!

But another fantasticalicious aspect of the RiffTrax experience is that it takes those DVDs you've watched over and over again (until every scene you watch simply reminds you what's going to happen 3 scenes from now) and turns them into a new viewing experience!!!

I don't think I would ever listen to RiffTrax in a cinema, because it would be impossible for me to stifle my laughter at wildly inappropriate moments for the rest of the audience (who paid their money to watch the film as the filmmakers intended)! (Plus, the first 15, or so, times I watch a movie, I prefer to have the experience the filmmaker intended.)

But I think RiffTrax is an AMAZING way to get more use out of the movies you've already watched a bazillion times!

For instance, I read Jurassic Park back in 1991, not long after it came out. The buzz for the movie started a year or so before the flick was released; people who hadn't even read the book were going "Stephen Spielberg and dinosaurs?!! I'm so there!!!"

Then I saw the movie in the cinemas 3 or 5 times, because I just couldn't get enough of it! (Plus, this was back when movies stayed in cinemas for months and months if they were making decent money.)

Then, when the flick came out on VHS, I (and everyone else) snapped it up and watched it dozens of times. They produced so many copies of the VHS that after a couple of years, you could get a free copy in your breakfast cereal.

Then we switched over to DVD, and I distinctly remember that the major impetus for my finally (begrudgingly) buying a DVD player -- and rebuilding my considerable film library from scratch again -- was this specific set of Jurassic Park and Lost World: Jurassic Park that included the CD soundtracks to both films! (I had only recently bought my first CD player because you couldn't get Delerium's Karma on cassette.)

So that was another couple dozen viewings of Jurassic Park.

I ended up having to pawn $500 worth of DVDs in the early 2000s to make rent one month, and I lost that set. But then a few years ago they released another set, this one including Jurassic Park III (which I had missed when it was in the cinemas)!

So there's another 5 or 6 viewings of JP!

Now, when I want the Jurassic Park experience, I'll pretty much replay the movie in my mind or reread the book. (Although, I've read that book so many times I have it more or less memorized, too. But I still re-read it every year or so because it has scenes that haven't made it into any of the 3 films, yet.)

HOWEVER...

For a mere $3.99, I can download an MP3 that makes the movie a brand new thing for me!!!

How wicked-awesome is THAT?!! :D

AND...

If you've taken a couple of days off from work to relax and enjoy yourself (but you're not rich enough fly somewhere, or even go meet your friends fro dinner or a movie or something) (and, you know... you keep vampire hours and your day begins when your friends are settling down to dinner, and continues on while they're asleep), you can enjoy enjoy a fun double- or triple-feature with some of your MST3K friends!!!

Hmm...

I fear that last paragraph made me sound the slightest bit pathetic...

Anyway...

Okay, so that's what I'm going to do now. I think I'll finish Jaws, then probably move on to the dinosaurs, then wrap it up with Tron.

Sounds like a plan.

PARTY!!!

:D

Cheese, Glorious CHEESE!!! :D

I don't know what it is, but I like me some B-Movies!!!

I think part of it is that since B-Movies can't rely on star power, they rely on genre. So people might not, say, watch a movie just because it stars Greg Evigan, but they might watch it because it's a Sci-Fi/Horror flick. (Or because it has a dinosaur on the movie poster/DVD cover, which means it's a Sci-Fi/Horror flick.)

Another aspect may be that since they don't have the money to give special effects or monsters much screen time, they have to fill those frames with character.

One more aspect: A major studio production wants to get as many people watching their films as possible, so they may "soften" or dilute any ideas that might prove too provocative or controversial for the mainstream. But low-budget flicks know they're not going to have many viewers, and their films cost so little to make that they don't need many; so they don't shy away from controversial or provocative ideas, and let their audiences find them.

Bottom Line: I think the well-meaning B-Movies have to try harder. And I guess that's part of what draws me to them from time to time.

Part.

The rest is... I don't know! Some of my fondest memories are of TV mini-series -- like the original V and it's sequel mini-series V: The Final Battle and Stephen King's IT and Stephen King's The Stand! Then there were these classic made-for-TV movies like Dark Night of the Scarecrow and Duel! I guess -- particularly when I was younger, and couldn't necessarily go to see every movie I wanted to -- I liked the fact that some "big events" were willing to come to me. And then, as I got older and fell in love with filmmaking, maybe I saw similar traits in some of these schlocky old B-Movies that (before the straight-to-VHS, and later straight-to-DVD markets) were made to go straight to the drive-ins, or before that -- during the days of doubles features in cinemas -- the movies that showed after the animated shorts, news reels and this week's installment of the current serials or chapter-plays, and before the Main Attraction (or the A-Movie). The low-budget films always seemed to be trying a little harder to surprise you and shock you.

But that's all retcon. I don't know, for sure, what my primal draw is to these red-headed stepchildren of the Hollywood hierarchy.

I just know that when they're done well -- when the filmmakers are really trying to do their job right -- these things can be a genuine pleasure to watch!

Now, not all low-budget movies are created equal, mind you.

There are the H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds out there, "knockbuster" hack jobs that seem to the viewer to be an exercise for the filmmakers in what it might be like if they really were filmmakers. These movies leave the audience feeling ripped-off, like someone tricked them into wasting their money/time. A viewer gets the impression that the filmmakers are either the victims of guileless incompetence, or are maliciously callous confidence "artists" (no pun intended there) who want to make money, regardless of who suffers.

The above category isn't just for knockbusters, either. there are films like American Nightmare that aren't trying to cash in on anyone else' viral buzz, they're just inexperienced and/or unskilled. But the effect is the same. You just feel ripped-off and disappointed.

Then there are the Troma-type lazy low-budgets. I have a deep, dark pit of rage that seethes for filmmakers like this. By "Troma-like" I mean films that are ostensibly Comedy films shot on a low budget, making Farce out of film genres. The reason I hate these so passionately and so thoroughly is that I believe the term "Farce" is really just a mask for creative laziness and/or incompetence. I have only seen a handful of Troma films, so I'm not really talking about that studio specifically. (The few films of theirs I have seen definitely fall into this category, but since I haven't seen a majority of their work, it would be unfair to claim all or most of the filmmakers who work for the studio are equally cynical or incompetent.)

What I'm talking about is filmmakers who are afraid to stick their creative necks out and/or put in the time and effort required to compensate for their low budgets, and just slap together 90 minutes or so of mediocre-to-poor footage and call it a movie. Then they cynically cover their story holes and gaps in logic by throwing in some ineffectual slapstick, and claim the movie is a Farce.

Real Farce is incredibly smart and subtle, and takes even more creative effort than the genre or subject you're spoofing. It also possesses the same emotional satisfaction as the genre being spoofed. Easy jokes that fail to actually make the audience laugh, slapped in a series of random scenes poorly conceived, poorly acted and poorly shot do not make a Farce.

I suspect this category of "filmmaker" (they do make films, in the technical sense, but they are not the artists that real filmmakers are) possesses the technical and business savvy to collect the pay check, but they hide their creative insecurities behind a facade of "Comedy" -- if you don't really try, you can't fail, can you?

So when I talk about B-Movies, I'm not referring to hacks collecting a paycheck. I'm not talking about filmmakers who don't really care if audience enjoy their work, but just want to make money off us.

When I talk about B-Movies, and my love for them, I'm talking about the filmmaking underdogs, those cats who just never caught the breaks Spielberg, Lucas, Bay, Scorsese, Soderberg, Hitchcock, Hawks, or any of the number of directors or writers whose names you know caught, and so they do the job and get none of the acclaim (and just a sliver of the money) of their famous counterparts.

I'm talking about folks who love their job and try their hardest to make movies that audiences will have fun watching! The work horses! Not the American Dream, but the American reality!

THESE CATS ROCK!!!

AND... I find that I enjoy the fruits of their labors!

Granted, I'm more likely to hit Walmart at 12:01am to picks up a copy of Iron Man 2 instead of 100 Million BC, but that's just because Iron Man 2 has better press.

Which brings me back to why I wrote this entry...

This weekend is another weekend dedicated to hard paranormal work. I have hours and hours of audio and video to review by Monday morning. HOWEVER... my mom is in town this weekend, and this was the night she dedicated to seeing her boys! :) So I'll be a diligent psuedo-scientist Saturday and Sunday, but TONIGHT is for FUN! :D

And, for whatever reason, tonight I'm in the mood for some B-Movie goodness!!!

My day started with me waking up un-goddly early (I set my alarm for 4:00pm, shudder) so that I could hose my rocks off and have clothes on by 5:00pm.

But then the day got immediately fun when Mom picked Brian & me up and we went for a couple of hours of conversation and culinary orgasm to Red Lobster. (Say what you will about chain restaurants, but I have never had a less-than-excellent meal at Red Lobster!) (Shrimp Fettucini... Mmmmmmmmmm...)

When Mom dropped us off, I made a run to Walmart to buy a few essentials (so I don't have to leave my cave at all over the weekend), and to browse their DVD isles.

I wasn't looking for a mainstream release. I was looking for a knockbuster.

What I found was -- so far -- GOLD! For $5.00, they had a double-feature of Journey to the Center of the Earth and 100 Million BC!!! IT HAD DINOSAURS ON THE COVER!!! :D And they both star Greg Evigan!!! (My last memory of him was in the made-for-syndicated-TV movies based on William Shatner's TrekWar novels, and they had that fun, cheesey B-Movie feel to them!)

And did I mention...? $5!!! :D

There was also another DVD that intrigued me: It was called Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus, and it occurred to me that SFX might be far enough along by now that even a low-budget movie may be able to pull off this type of slick by now! :)

I mean, it's gonna be bad, sure. But maybe it will be bad in that Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack way, right?

But this flick was, like, $7.50.

So I can drop $12.50 for all 3 movies, pay $7.50 for just the 1 movie, or pay a mere $5.00 and get 2 movies.

No contest, right?

I also bought this 2-disc DVD set of 1980s Saturday Morning Cartoons. It's like a sampler set with full episodes of the Mr. T show, Chuck Norris's show, the Ed Grim show and the like! I HAD TO buy this, also, because I knew Brian would flip out over it!

Brian has to be at work early tomorrow, so I got home, popped the first disc of the 80s Toons in and watched the first few episodes until he crashed. Then I retired to my room with the Asylum Double-Feature disc (the one with the dinosaurs on the cover!) and started watching.

I started with Journey to the Center of the Earth and I'm diggin' it, but I keep wondering about this Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus!

And then an idea hits me! "I wonder if Netflix has the movie in their Watch Now selection."

THEY DO!!!

So here's my plan for tonight:

1. Drink a lot of beer as I
2. watch Mega Shark Versus giant Octopus on Netflix,
3. then finish Journey to the Center of the Earth,
4. then watch 100 Million BC!!!

It's BRILLIANT, right?!! I'm an entertainment GENIUS!!! I should be getting paid a bazillion dollars a year to tell cable channels what to air on their stations!

That's my Friday Night!

I hope yours is actually cooler (if that's possible), and if it's not, make the rest of your weekend THE AWESOME-EST!!! :D