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From RiffTrax: Bridget and Mary Jo’s Christmas Special54 Replies to “From RiffTrax: Bridget and Mary Jo’s Christmas Special”Commenting at Satellite News
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Okay, that’s it: I don’t care if it was a PD movie for free, I don’t care if it cost a nickel, and I don’t even care if it was even just lying around the closet–
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off the ol’ Lone Ranger, and you do not…you DO NOT…riff the 1952 Alastair Sim Christmas Carol.
It’s not even in the same category as “Well, isn’t it like when they riffed Hamlet?” You can riff the crappy 30’s versions, but when it comes to Alastair Sim or George C. Scott, some things are just considered sacred.
(I can’t even envision any scenario where RT-can-do-no-wrong fans can shout back “Aw, c’mon, it’s old and it has it coming!”, unless it’s fans who’ve never seen the ’52 version in their life–In which case you’ve got a homework assignment over Christmas vacation.)
Come on, Rifftrax has done good riffs plenty of movies I enjoy by themselves (their Avengers one is a riot) and the Alastair Sim Christmas Carol does seem a bit stilted and melodramatic now. I’m willing to give this a shot…
Forget it, Jake. It’s EricJtown.
The Dean Martin segment was kinda weird. What was actually going on with those “dancers”?
It’s simple; Bridget was banned for rubbing up against Dean-o. :)
@EricJ; it’s okay, man. It’s fine to make fun of things that are commonly accepted to be good. Seriously; it’s not a big deal.
It seems a lot of people who post here don’t really pay a lot of attention to MST3K’s theme song if the past couple of days are any indication.
What are the chances all these Mary Jo & Bridget shorts will be combined on one DVD for sale??
If they are, that’s my next RT purchase.
“Oh, shut up and drink your gin.”
I actually have to concur with Eric on this one. The general purpose of MST3K commentary and Riff Trax as well, is to supplement a film that otherwise you would never watch in the first place. If you honestly need comments on top of the entertainment of Casablanca or A Christmas Carol then you must really have a low opinion of cinema as an art form. I don’t necessarily condemn them doing this material, but I can’t believe they couldn’t find some cheesy movie to riff in its place.
Again, it was Public Domain…And if It’s A Wonderful Life hadn’t been bought back by the studios (putting hundreds of local stations out of their misery), RT would be selling that one right about now. As it is, Free PD Alastair Sim has now had to replace Expensive Royalty-Licensed Jimmy Stewart in our mass Christmas culture.
I’m just wondering why BridJo would be attracted to it…What, did they pile on the “Dysfunctional house-slave Mrs. Cratchit” jokes just because she had to cook dinner for an ungodly number of Victorian pre-birth-control offspring?
(And as for whether RT has a “low opinion of cinema” in general….oh, nooooooo. Heavens.)
So, that’s to be Mary Jo on the left there?
Oh, I Don’T Think So.
If this was the full version of the Alastar Sim Christmas Carol, I would be questioning it. But, this is the hacked to hell Castle Films version. They took the an 86 minute movie and smashed it down to 6 to 8 minutes.
Wow, what a couple of dorks. (#9 and #10) Seriously, get a grip, get a date, get something.
I normally don’t respond to insults by those who don’t even know me, but I really have no idea why Anthony would post that. I am not one to troll these boards…I just happen to have an opinion that is not popular around here. Is that allowed?
Congratulations to Bridget and Mary Jo for continuing their successful partnership and producing their own special! The Alastair Sim production of “A Christmas Carol” is probably not one that I would have chosen as a riffing target–there are too many positive feelings associated with it, and I still think it’s one of the best productions of “A Christmas Carol” ever made (I also like “An American Christmas Carol,” the underrated 1979 reimagining of the story starring Henry Winkler). But tastes vary, and as was said of “Hamlet,” the riffing doesn’t do it any harm.
Brandon, love the Chinatown reference. Spot on!!!!!!!!! :cat2: :cat: (just wanted to put a couple of cats on my comment, sorry)
The Alistair Sim version is a definite UNTOUCHABLE, in the top 3 of my all time favs. I guess when you mash it with Dean and a religious drama, it maybe gets a pass?
#11: Meaning?
Mary Jo, I’m sure it was his attempt at a Magritte “Cesi n’est pas une pipe,” style riff, but he just doesn’t understand how French or humor works.
I just purchased and finished watching Bridget and Mary Jo’s Christmas special. I thought it was fun. And I liked the artwork for the non-movie parts. They would make neat t-shirts. For all those bent out of shape a out the riffing on the Alistair Sim “A “Christmas Carol”, you should all be blaming Castle Films’ cutdown and editing of it. It really was a GIF version of the classic. Briget and Mary Jo make a cool riffing duo. Merry Christmas, ladies. :-)
Back in the ’90s the Upright Citizens Brigade did a redub of “It’s a Wonderful Life” which was pulled before broadcast for reasons of sacrilege. It doesn’t seem to have hurt Amy Poehler’s career any.
What, the short one? Yeah. ;)
(And okay, so it was the Castle-short hackup, because they do all PD Castle shorts regardless of topic. Crisis averted, stand down.)
Mary Jo > blonde > figure on right
Bridget > brunette > figure on left
I can’t wait to watch this, I have been loving the Bridget/Mary Jo shorts, this looks like a lot of fun.
Also have to give a shout out to the Reginald Owen version of A Christmas Carol which is my personal fave (Alastair Sim, also great though).
Of course it’s allowed. But be prepared to get shot down if it’s an unpopular opinion, and don’t take it so personally. I’ve ripped on people here and threw out some apparently unlikeable ideas, many disagreed with me and let me know. I took my licks and moved on and didn’t act like I was living in a fascist police state messageboard.
Never seen the Alastair Sim film people here seem to revere.
So riffers made fun of a movie some people like? Kinda like This Island Earth…
Let me quote Tom Servo from MST3K The Movie, “whoopdee $#!t”
Making humorous comments is not insulting. The movie is just a backdrop for making witty jokes and funny observations out loud as the movie rolls.
I realize that not everyone has a fully developed sense of humor, but too many folks these days are unable to differentiate between an insult and a humorous observation.
The Alistair Sim version of “A Christmas Carol” is my favorite version. And it seems to me chopping it down to about 8 minutes is a far greater offense than making a few harmless jokes. Castle Films has a lot more ‘splainin’ to do than Bridget and Mary Jo.
Love the retro-style cover art.
Which EricJ would know IF he watched it, but he didn’t because he HATES anything to do with Rifftrax, but that doesn’t stop him from going off on something he knows nothing about.
Once again EricJ – Why do you even spend a nano-second on things that you clearly HATE so much? Life is TOO short for you to waste ANY of your time on things you abhor.
Go to the other post and spend your time being happy that the reboot of MST3K has been funded in a big way and that many notable actors are willing to lend their talents to it.
Shoo! Go on now! Go post about things that make you happy.
I think EricJ is not familiar with the concept of a roast. That’s why you’d riff a classic film, if they were riffing a full classic film. And George C. Scott is my favorite of all Scrooges, but I wouldn’t be against a riff of that. This is comedy we’re talking about. Riffing is not about slamming movies, it’s about having fun at the expense of a movie. Good or bad. EricJ’s post reads very similarly to a certain account of one Dennis Miller.
In theory–and certainly in many of Joel’s interviews regarding The Kickstarter Show–it’s supposed to “not be ridicule” and just a fun celebration of The Mind Rebels with bizarre movies.
That theory got a little, err…warped over the years when show director Kevin Murphy thought it was about letting your impatient un-PC anger out and screaming like a maniac at it, when Mike thought it was about making nerds and annoying washed-up celebrities cry like wusses by snapping locker-room towels at them, and Bill Corbett trying to be Just Like The Old Days by saying “Hey, guys, ‘This movie sucks!’, is that funny?”
If CT picked on a good movie, which they probably wouldn’t (although I’d love to see their collective stares of shock at Robert Zemeckis’ outhouse-rat-crazy ’09 version, or that clinically-insane “Nutcracker 3D” with Einstein and the Nazi rats…) it would be Oh, All Fer Fun. When RT does a movie, I’m afraid you’re a bit naive, and so are they.
You were not a writer, performer or producer on MST3K. You don’t know any of them personally. You don’t have access to their thoughts. Your conclusions are at odds with reality. That is all.
It seems appropriate to repeat a sentiment that I have personally heard Joel, Trace and Frank endorse. They don’t believe in riffing actual good movies or movies like Sharknado that are bad on purpose. Obviously Rifftrax has no such prohibition. In general I agree with that idea but people like EricJ shouldn’t be surprised that Rifftrax would do something like this, I mean they did Casablanca!
Looking over them, all of EricJ’s posts could be replaced with “No! I -know- the RiffTrax people are STUPID and EVIL because of my PSYCHIC POWERS!!!!!!11111!!!!111ONE!”, basically.
Because that’s all he does. Ascribe the most negative, mean-spirited, vicious motives to them with no more proof then “That’s the way it SEEMS to me, okay?” :-P
1. Again, they didn’t riff the Alistair Sim Christmas Carol, they riffed the execrable Castle Films 8mm home movie 8-minute travesty of the Alistair Sim Christmas Carol. That’s a rather big difference, if you care about accuracy; if you only care about being mean to Ms. Pehl and Ms. Nelson, then rant on.
2. I’m beginning to think Brigitte and Mary Jo can do no wrong. The only thing is, I wish we could watch them sitting around riffing during those chats between riff-pieces, instead of looking at a lobby card, fashionably retro though it might be.
3. Though I had no problem streaming the special, I tried to burn it multiple times to disc, only to have it freeze up and die. Anyone else?
The Warped World of Eric J:
The following would need to have happened for Eric J’s posts to make a lick of sense:
Critical acclaim and fan support eroded after Mike took over. The show was cancelled shortly after Mike took over hosting duties and failed.
What actually happened:
1) The show ran over FIVE and a half seasons after Mike took over, continued to garner acclaim and produced many landmark episodes that frequently rank among the series’ most beloved. To name a few: Santa Claus, The Final Sacrifice, Space Mutiny, Werewolf.
2) After the show was cancelled, fan support for Mike (and Kevin & Bill) remained so strong that he was able to create a thriving new movie riffing endeavor that has produced more “episodes” than MST3K and is still going strong.
3) FIFTEEN years after its cancellation, love and nostalgia for the show remained so fervent that the Kickstarter campaign to bring back MST3K was the most successful film/TV campaign in crowdfunding history. Mike’s episodes were featured equally to Joel’s throughout the campaign.
4) At every turn, Joel has praised the work Mike did as host.
If you completely ignore these incontrovertible facts and pretend that the hypothetical of the show failing after Mike took over actually happened, then EricJ’s posts make perfect sense. But, that’s actually the exact opposite of what happened so his posts make zero sense.
I totally heard that the best way to ignore a troll is to write a long essay about how wrong he is.
And once again I say to you, you are projecting! If Rifftrax so adamantly believes the horrible things you say about them, why do you keep setting up strawmen and quixotically knocking them over in a futile attempt to convince anyone else? You are a ridiculous person. I think you’re way past due for a smiting with the ban hammer.
I get the feeling EricJ is going to win us all over to his way of thinking any day now.
I get the feeling EricJ is going to win us all over to his way of thinking any day now.
He just needs more exclamation marks.
And maybe ALL CAPS would be more convincing.
Nah, I don’t think banning is in order.
EricJ still provides a service. Free entertainment.
Really? That actually sounds awesome! I have several of those old, cut down, 8mm films. I may have to get this even if there *isn’t* a DVD image. (I just like the extra polish compared to having to make my own.)
Watching a schizophrenic’s delusional freak-outs isn’t entertainment.
[citation needed]
Wild Rebels is so entertainment!
I’d like to second a call for a ban on EricJ. I respect a right to one’s opinion but Eric takes it to a borderline insane level of ascribing malicious intentions to the cast and crew and he does nothing but spam and disrupt every discussion these days. I’ve been on a lot of forums and message boards over many years and don’t think I’ve seen a fan who loudly hates their chosen entertainment and tries to fervently convince others to feel the same way quite like EricJ.
Ha! :laugh:
While in spirit I tend to agree with Eric here (yipes — must get my sanity checked) I actually wouldn’t have minded the riff IF it was funny. Like nearly all Bridget and Mary Jo ones I’ve previewed, though, I didn’t even find ONE laugh.
It was this kind of thing that made me VERY worried about the MST3K reboot — that riffing nowadays has gotten so mean spirited and off track that it only appeals to millenials or even Gen-Xers but not anyone of my generation. ANYONE can make snide comments about things — being cynical is what passes for “cool” among young people and I’m sure there will be some equally snide comments here — but the charm of MST3K was that it took a sort of “what?!?” attitude about the films they were riffing, as if they really WANTED to like them but just couldn’t.
I don’t get that from any of this (and, frankly, I find the same thing about most RT efforts nowdays). I own ALL of the RT shorts done by Mike, Bill and Kevin, but even those have started to take on a tone that just isn’t fun anymore).
For all of you (much younger) people who enjoy this — Merry Christmas. My wife and I will stick to the MST3K Christmas shows (although, to be fair, both RT’s and CT’s “SCCTM” are quite good as well. And the RT Live show we saw with the Christmas Tree as well as the unscripted laugh over “Santa Needs You!” was perhaps the best thing I’ve seen in terms of Christmas riffing ever)
Tonight we’ll be *trying* RT’s “Santa Claus Live” that I bought (we missed the live show last year) but I am approaching that with trepidation. While we have, in the past, attended the RT Live shows we kind of gave up in the last few years again, due to that snide/rudeness over charming and delighted sort of comments that used to be what passed for humor. We’ll see if this was money wasted again.
Yes. This is something I always need to explain to newcomers to MST3K, especially those who are already familiar with Rifftrax, who see the episodes that I find hilarious as somehow “tame” because they weren’t sour and cynical and trashing the movie at every opportunity. If you read a Twitter-length synopsis of MST3K, you might get the impression that it was all about “punishing” or “ridiculing” the movies, but if you look at it less superficially, there’s very evident affection for many of these movies (or at least for the kinds of bad movies that they were, if that makes sense). That’s something that the show wandered away from in the later seasons, and it is almost completely absent in Rifftrax.
During the publicity for the Kickstarter campaign, Joel did a lot of interviews in which he talked about what made MST3K so special. I got the impression that he was speaking not just as the creator of the show (although that certainly helped), but as someone who has given prolonged thought to the show’s entire creative output, both the episodes he was personally involved in and the ones that Mike hosted after he left. Frankly, I think 2015 Joel understands MST3K even better than 1993 Joel did, because he’s had all those intervening years to reflect on it, to see what other people have done with movie riffing, and to separate in his own mind what works and what doesn’t work.
In any case, his remarks make me believe that he understands the tonality problem that you’re talking about. He seems determined to position MST3K to fill that void in today’s riffing universe by embracing the style of humor that it had in its earlier years, while still updating the show and making it something more than just an imitation of the past. The good news is that you don’t have to be older to prefer the “classic” MST3K style of humor over Rifftrax’s snarky and cynical smartass style–I’m 39, which places me squarely in the Gen-X age group, and I know which style I enjoy more–so I’m hopeful that the new show will take the right approach and find a loyal audience of people who enjoy movie riffing but are increasingly turned off by the harsher tone that riffing has taken in recent years.
Well, I backed the reboot (I got the $85 electronic thingee) so Joel must have convinced me it will be right (then again, all the updates and KS videos really had that same “feel good” flavor that made me think it won’t descend into the snarkiness that I’ve grown to hate).
Just to be clear, though, while I agree with you almost 100 percent I will say that RT has not always been so cynical and pandering to their audience. From “The Film Crew” to the early days of RT in both their shorts and live shows, some of the stuff was every bit as good as anything MST3K could produce, even with Joel. I do think that having someone like Conor (clearly a youngster) be a major writer for them pretty well ruined it for me. As Mike did less and less writing (I doubt whether he writes at all nowadays) the tone got harsher and harsher. And for this old guy, less and less funny. We stopped going to the live shows a few years ago because it had stopped being any sort of fun.
And, as I suspected (and worried) my wife and I couldn’t even get through the “RT Santa Claus Live” that I bought — got most of the way through the short and there wasn’t even one laugh (from us — the young audience liked it). I’m kind of sad that the people I cared so much about seem to have lost their way.
But I’m VERY optimistic about the reboot so we have that to look forward to. It’s going to be an interesting tightrope that Joel will have to navigate through, since the audience is going to be a lot younger and (I’m guessing) will expect the kind of humor RT is delivering. Time will tell.
And I won’t comment more here, nor will I go on any of the other RT threads (unlike Eric :>). There’s no point in disagreeing with people who are so much younger than I am that we will never see eye to eye (I’m still a LOT older than you but I’m glad we can agree mostly ).