So I finally got my copy of the first Cinematic Titanic release The Oozing Skull a.k.a. Brain of Blood which naturally means that I have to compare Joel “the Original” Hodgson’s riffing product with Mike “the Like” Nelson’s Rifftrax.
Cinematic Titanic is much more ambitious than Rifftrax. Joel is apparently getting online distribution rights to the films he is riffing and then putting on a major production. This means you buy the complete DVD with everything on it (downloadable versions are anticipated but not available yet). They use the same Shadowrama technique as MST3K but have a kind of… um… I’m not sure what the set is supposed to be (it’s tiered!). He’s got four other riffers on his team: Josh “the original Tom” Weinstein, Trace “the original Crow” Beaulieu, “TV’s” Frank Conniff, and Mary Jo “Pearl Forester” Pehl.
On the flip side Rifftrax offers simply MP3 commentaries which the viewer has to synchronize. This does mean that you need some kind of MP3 player in the same room as the television you’re watching the movie on. They are offering a Rifftrax player now which synchronizes the MP3 with the movie for you, but this is strictly a solution for watching on computers. In Mike’s corner are regulars Kevin “Tom Servo from season 2 on” Murphy and Bill “Crow on the SciFi Channel Episodes” Corbett. Occasionally other riffers are brought in for a one or two movies.
So immediately Cinematic Titanic has the advantage in ease of use and production. Both riff products are humorous but the CT’s large cast means that they tend to be very active. Also they occasionally froze the film to perform very short sketches (which weren’t really that great but I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt since it was the first time out).
The immediate big advantage for Rifftrax is timeliness. They have had Rifftrax out day and date with DVD releases (for 300), they regularly go after the recent big budget films, and can even take occasional pot shots at the odd ball ones (The Star Wars Holiday Special). Since the MP3 commentary can be done relatively quickly and cheaply compared to the production of Cinematic Titanic they manage to do about twenty-five a year. Rifftrax has also been at it longer so Mike has his format set in.
One serious problem with Cinematic Titanic is the customer service. They went with a company called EZ Takes for their “Burn and mail” physical releases and the job they did with this first release was abysmal. First it took four weeks between ordering and receiving. I got an e-mail telling me they had overwelming demand but it costs less than a dollar for mass DVD duplication services. If the demand is that high then eat some of that cost, get them out fast, and make a good first impression. The second thing is that I received the disk in a plain paper mailer and that was it. No case. No protective sleeve. Not even an invoice. I would not use their “Burn and mail” distribution method again after this; any releases that they offer that they do not have download for I’m going to skip.
So wrapping up I think there’s room for both of these guys. CT is going to be hitting older films, particularly oddball exploitation films. Rifftrax is going to be chasing the current big budget crap fests.
I wish I would’ve saw this thread earlier but I stumbled on to Cinematic Titanic through fark and just ordered the DVD this morning.
I also bought tickets to the live show that they’re putting on in Minneapolis next month.
I’m doing such a little happy dance now.
One other contender you forgot in the war is “The Film Crew” which has Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy and you don’t have to do the synching.
I wish a network would just pick up one of these shows and we could see it that way (it’d be a hell of a lot easier on my wallet).
The Film Crew stuff was shot several years ago even before Rifftrax started and then sat in a vault for a while before finally getting a recent release. It lay dormant so long that Mike, Bill, and Kevin said “Forget this!” and did Rifftrax instead. So the four releases that are out now are all there will ever be of The Film Crew.
My money’s on Rifftrax. I like Mike’s style of riffing better than Joel’s and Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett are familiar voices from the episodes of MST3K I’ve seen. Plus, I like the focus on more mainstream movies; the MST3K Oscar specials are among my favorites.
I think there is room for both, though, and I hope both groups have some success. But I’ve already bought a handful of Rifftrax and I keep an eye on their site for new releases. The Cinematic Titanic trailers didn’t really impress me.
“When RiffTrax and Cinematic Titanic fight, who wins? --The American viewing public!”
I for one am delighted at the sudden glut of choice. On the other hand, I’m just a little depressed at the thought that the MST3K team is now competing against each other. I never followed the gossip back then (got online way too late), but I wonder if these arrangements somehow reflect creative or personality conflicts carried over from the old show. I remember that when Joel left, the announcement emphasized that the split was entirely amicable. But it seemed odd that he didn’t contribute to the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide. But then of course he and Frank did a guest appearance later on, so I suppose things must have been cool after all.
I guess I assumed that, if they all ever got back to doing this sort of program, it’d be all together. It seems kind of weird to have half here and half there at the same time. Not really a complaint, just an observation.
One thing’s certain: I really need to pick up Cinematic Titanic. Trace and Frank were really a classic comedy team.
I saw the flagship for Cinematic Titanic last weekend, and I liked it okay. The format’s certainly more accesible than RiffTrax, which is a plus, and the larger cast should, in theory, allow for a better joke-density than the usual two-to-three man performances on RiffTrax, but at least with the first show, I found that not to be the case. There were long stretches where no one was saying anything, leaving me with nothing to pay attention to except the movie itself. And considering the calibre of the movies that will be showing up on CT, that’s not a winning strategy. At least with RiffTrax, if they can’t think of any lines for a scene, I’m still likely watching something like Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Still, they did have some great lines. “Hey, my skank detector works!” Heh. Anyway, I’ll probably end up patronizing both crews. No need to play favorites, here.
I haven’t looked at any of the Cinematic Titanic stuff, but I’ve listened to two of the Rifftrax and enjoyed them immenesly. I still find myself randomly quoting some of the jokes from the commercials of The Star Wars Holiday Special. “It’ll be fun for approximately 3.7 seconds!”
This may be a bit of hijack, but I ran across (Slashdot, by way of the SA Forums) this interview of Joel that suggests the split wasn’t quite so friendly.
The implication is that Joel is talking about Jim Mallon, but later in the interview he leaves a question about Rifftrax unanswered.
I have to say, Rifftrax has made my life better. The riffs for Road House, Star Trek 5, and Point Break were brilliant. I mean, they’re all good, but those three were my absolute favorite.
I know that Mike and Kevin have some pretty severe hostility toward Mallon, too (they’re certainly angry over some residual issues).
It’s hard to work out what happened behind the scenes in these cases but I do get the impression that some of the cast dislikes some of the rest of the cast (in a Mike/Joel split) from both party’s refusal to even compliment each other.
You’ll forgive me if I’m dubious on that. The Rhino releases have been plagued problems with film rights right from the beginnig. Multiple times they’ve had to recall one because they didn’t make the correct arrangements.
There probably will be some films it will be impossible to obtain the rights to (Sandy Frank refuses permission for the Gamera films because he was offended by a song making fun of him in one episode, for example), but it will be interesting to see what Shout! Factory does with the franchise, since some of their stuff is very interesting.
I’ve been a big fan of Rifftrax, but I’m more than happy to watch CT as well. I love me some bad movies. (Actually I don’t need the riffs; half the time I find I’m tuning them out. Sad, isn’t it?)
In the deep sub-basements of the internet, there are people who put together pirated movies with the matching Rifftrax (pirated as well). Too bad it’s so hard to do that for real.
It’s not. It takes me a couple of simple tools. I take an extra fifteen minutes to add menus. Most of the rest is just CPU time to rip the DVD, potentially recompress it to fit on a single sided DVD, and encode the audio so it synchs. Now it does require a little more technical skill than, say, opening a word document but the bulk of the stuff is just point and click.
And yes, I only do this with the DVD’s I own. In fact I went out and bought Batman & Robin today for the next Rifftrax…
I agree. I’ve synched several movies and Rifftrax (all for DVDs I own) and the process is fairly simple. Yeah, it isn’t automated so you do have to put a bit of effort into it but nothing difficult and everything you need is available as freeware.
Heck, the tutorial for doing this, along with all the requisite freeware tools necessary, is on the Rifftrax forums. It’s made Rifftrax much more entertaining, but due to the prep time involved and the legal issues I haven’t been able to do it as often as just hooking the iPod into external speakers.
I can’t definitively answer the OP, but recently I saw Rifftrax live doing Plan 9 From Outer Space and it was the funniest thing I’d seen in a long time. If you get a chance to see a live show of theirs I highly recommend it. Being in the theater while it is happening just adds so much to the experience.