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Weekend Discussion Thread: Oscar-Winning Movies that Should Be RiffedOur pal Timmy suggests:
My now-disbanded private riffing group once did “Gone with the Wind” and “Gee!” it could definitely be done. But my pick would be “Oklahoma.” SO much to work with. What’s your pick? 96 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Oscar-Winning Movies that Should Be Riffed”Commenting at Satellite News
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I’ll probably get in trouble for this, but how about ‘Iron Lady’? From what what I’ve seen, Meryl Streep’s performance was over-the-top and cringe-worthy, not unlike a high school play. :struggle:
2001: A Space Odyssey –
I know it would take a double episode to do, but think of the space (ha!) in this movie for riffing. Heck, the first words aren’t spoken until fifteen plus minutes into the film! Ape jokes, monoliths as phalluses jokes, why the shuttle flying into the space station scene is a gold mine of sexual innuendo by itself! I wonder what could be done with the whirling color transmutation scene. Hmmm.
The Towering Inferno. Because, c’mon, it’s The Towering Inferno. It won 3 Oscars, was nominated for several more, including Best Picture, but IMHO it was just early disaster porn.
since they were the source of so many riffs, either ‘Apocalypse Now’ or ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’
Shakespeare in Love, since everyone still thinks it really owns the Oscar “Saving Private Ryan” earned
Come to think of it, doesn’t Rifftrax have a long list of Oscar-winning movies they’ve riffed, from Casablanca to Star Wars?
Two of the more obvious are “Crash” and “Gladiator” because they are arguably the worst films ever to win Best Picture. Although musicals are naturally tough, my choice would be “An American in Paris” NOT because it’s bad, it’s actually pretty good. But the overall set-up is ripe for riffing.
“The Sound of Music” has long been my choice for the worst picture to win an Oscar. Rifs, especially given how lame the kids are, would be plentiful.
The Greatest Show on Earth won best picture for no good reason, except perhaps having a great train wreck in the climax. The MST3K crew knows how to riff circuses, whether they are on ice or involving scary clowns.
Well, since we’ve mentioned apes and frequently-riff-referenced films, what about Plant of the Apes (1968).
:monkey: GET YOUR DAMN DIRTY HANDS OFF ME, &C….
:monkey: YOU DID IT, YOU FINALLY DID IT &C…
:monkey: IT’S A MADHOUSE!!! A MADHOUSE!!!
:monkey: And of course – CHARLTON HESTON!
A while back, I figured a great crossover project would be to have RT and CT riff on “Gone With the Wind”, with one group riffing on the first half and the other riffing on the second. A coin flip would determine who gets which half. I figure you could do the same thing for “Cleopatra”.
Any chance they could bring back the “Little Gold Statue Preview” for the revival?
I saw it once in the theater during its initial run but I seem to remember “The Artist” not having much dialogue in it. Plenty of room for riffing!
#10 – That is BRILLIANT! I would add Bridget Nelson to the mix too, and have Mary Jo Pehl riff alongside her as much as possible. Their Rifftrax shorts are magic.
Actually, the quote is, ” Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape!” Other than that, I agree with you!
Matthew J. Elliot did a great riff of that, BTW (available at Rifftrax).
After they did Casablanca, I was hoping they would do Citizen Kane.
the seven faces of dr. lao Probably has some potential, though it is a comedy. Plus it’s Joel’s favorite movie.
“Gladiator”, definitely. It takes itself way too seriously, and really isn’t any better than your average action movie. No idea why it won best picture.
KANE: I’m Charles Foster Kane!
MIKE: I’m Spartacus!
SERVO: I am Malcolm X!
CROW: I yam what I yam and that’s all what I am!
Every Palm Sunday when I watch ‘The Ten Commandments’ (which won an Oscar for special effects), I think what a rich bounty it would hold for the SOL crew.
I stand corrected, sir. Thank you!
I should mention that several months back I and my four sons had our own amateur riff-fest with this sci-fi classic…. granted we are not trained professionals and probably should NOT have tried it at home. .. but BOY did we laugh a lot! :laugh:
I would love to see what they do with the “The Godfather”. They have done ethnic humor before however they probably would be too concerned with ending up “sleeping with the fish”.
Great topic! So many bad Oscar winners. I nominate some of the lesser-knowns:
Butterfield 8 — Elizabeth Taylor only won the Oscar in a sympathy vote. A stunningly bad, stupid picture with stunningly bad, stupid dialog.
The Goodbye Girl — Richard Dreyfuss’s performance now actually hurts to watch. Plus, all that ’70s cheese to riff!
Gigi — ah, yes, return with us to the days when a movie about grooming a child to be the mistress of a rich old man was fun!
True Grit (1969 version) — a sanitized, stilted version of a good book, with John Wayne chewing the scenery as only he could
On The Waterfront (Brando is just too easily mockable)
Crash (a lot of people acknowledge that it was a mistake that this won)
As good of a movie as it is, Rocky would certainly lend itself well to riffing. Between Stalone shots and references to how many Rocky movies there are, you have a good base to start from.
Hamlet, Best Picture 1948.
Nah, never mind. Nobody in their right mind would riff on a film of Hamlet. ;-)
One of my favorite movies, The Vikings! with Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, and Ernest Borgnine as the
definitive Hollywood Viking. Actually great cinematography and music, and some great riffing material including
the fortune teller, coincidences galore, and riffs on English tortures;,
Lord Egbert: “We have a form of torture which is amusing in a noisy sort of way.”
Ragnar (Ernest Borgnine): “What’s that?”
Lord Egbert: “Nothing much. Just a pit full of wolves. Half mad with starvation and trained to appreciate the flavor
of human flesh.”
Ragnar (to Einar): “You see. I told you the English are civilized.”
I’d choose either Lawrence of Arabia or The English Patient, both of which I find Oscar-winning snore-fests. Maybe the crew could make them watchable?
Marooned!
But besides that, the one that seems like it would be really fun is The Adventures of Robin Hood. Great movie, but they’ve made so many other movies like it work for them.
Logan’s Run (nominated for two Oscars, won a Special Achievement award). Over the top sci-fi with bad dialogue and cheesy (by current standards) special effect? It just might work…
Because it’s not that great? Around the World in 80 Days would be a great choice, since its Best Picture win is still hated to this day, and the gang would have a blast riffing on the mountain of celebrity cameos.
The Golden Compass won for Visual Effects and is generally a terrible movie. There’s a lot of potential riffing material for MST3K/RiffTrax.
Because it is that great? Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men. You know how Joel/Mike and the ‘Bots would give a quick yell of “AHHH!” any time that they were startled? Imagine the SOL crew doing that for every surprise appearance of Anton Chigurh. And the opportunity to riff on the country-fried accents would be too good to pass up.
They would also have a great time with There Will Be Blood (winner for Best Actor and Best Cinematography) because of Daniel Day-Lewis’s over-the-top villainous performance.
‘The Sound Of Music’ could use a good riffing. I’ve heard even Christopher Plummer couldn’t stand the film.
No Country for Old Men – awesome!!! – They could do a sketch and call it “No Country for Old Women” where they each play a member of the cast of Golden Girls (is see Gypsy as Bea Arthur)…
“Forrest Gump”: As Servo says in “Jack Frost”, while the feather thrown to the wind by Ivan is floating around, “Please find Forrest Gump and stick him in the eye!” Totally agree.
“Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?”: Ah, plenty of ’60s angst and conflict boiled down and seen through the sanitized and stereotype driven Hollywood lens. I think they could put it through a blender and have a lot of fun with it, like what was done with “The Brady Bunch” a few years back.
In his book “A Year at the Movies”, Kevin mentions how much he dislikes “Forrest Gump”. I’m surprised RT hasn’t tackled this one already.
Coming Home or The Deer Hunter. would be interesting to see the Nam jokes in those films.
Kramer vs Kramer would be an interesting film too to riff.
For those which were merely nominated, there’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Bogart’s cringe-worthy overacting alone makes it suitable for riffing), 12 Angry Men (notable for its thoroughly illegal jury deliberation), and Dr. Strangelove (though this one has the issue of deliberately being a comedy).
For actual winners, I’d go with The Sound of Music.
Though perhaps they could also go with the suggestion Bill made at ComicCon 08 and do Schindler’s List.
As some know, I’m quite lenient about appreciating movies (I happen to think that if you have to watch 70’s disaster, Towering Inferno is the best way to do it, but Earthquake, OTOH, is ripe for riffing…) and I still remember laughing myself SILLY in the theater at the wretched excess of “Born on the Fourth of July”.
And if I say “I can’t imagine anyone taking it seriously”, I don’t mean the politics, I mean…oh, just take a look at the darn thing. You wouldn’t believe me if I described some of the scenes. This was back when Oliver Stone was still on his post-Platoon meal-ticket where we believed he’d sweep for showing up, and the revolutionary idea that he was an immature melodramatic 60’s-stoner hack was five years ahead of its time.
I haven’t seen Crash (THE most hated BP winner in history), but….same reasons. People in LA-land going to the theater to wonder what it’s like for people in the other 49 states to have consciences.
It’s a hard question for most, since it was only after 2004 that Picture nominees stopped being classics. But if we must have the vindictive RT mantra of a movie “having it coming”, oh, was Benjamin Button just askin’ for it on a silver platter.
I always liked Christopher Plummer and I completely agree with his opinion of “The Sound Of Music”.
Well, it’s no “Firehead”.
A number of the movies that people have mentioned, I riffed while watching. In fact, I watched them for the sole purpose of heckling them MST3K-style. I would also recommend putting Mary Poppins in front of Mike, Servo and Crow. Seriously, that movie takes itself WAY too seriously.
here’s one:
the Airport film series.
Did THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE win anything? That seems to be the poster boy for deranged 70’s disaster cinema…
Ohhh, nononono…If there was one movie that sadly, and with ripe riffable silliness, spelled the end of the Irwin Allen 70’s Disaster Movie, it was “When Time Ran Out”. (Remember the “Cross this log and you’re in the club” scene from Women of the Prehistoric Planet? Imagine if it was the central half-hour climax of the movie.)
As luck would have it for the discussion, it was nominated for an 1980 Oscar, for Best Costume, and nobody knows why. So it qualifies.
@41
it did for The Morning After.
while we are at it, how about Golden Globe’s too. would like to see someone do Butterfly.
I don’t remember if Forrest Gump won any Oscars or was even nominated, but I’d love to see them riff that.
Y’ever see a movie and, right after seeing it, think it was great — but the more time went by, the more you thought about it, and the less you liked, until you finally decided that it was really pretty lame? Well, that was my timed-release reaction to Forrest Gump.
I never saw Gladiator, but I do recall — back in ’00, was it? — a whole lot of people talking about what a stinkburger it was, and how astonished they were that it was even nominated.
Of course, given some of the pictures which were nominated/won in the intervening 15 years, Gladiator probably wouldn’t seem so bad now.
has James Franciscus who was in Finder of Lost Loves.
Tom Hanks won Best Actor for Forrest Gump by the way.
Hey, lighten up on Bogart, man. You’re treading on hallowed ground. I thought Sierra Madre was a helluva picture — nowhere near as awesome as Casablanca or African Queen, but, still… “Pardon me, but could you help out a fellow American who’s down on his luck?” has got to be one of my favorite Bogart lines of all time.
Oh, please, please, please, guys, PLEASE riff Schindler’s List. That’s got to be some of Spielberg’s most insufferable tear-jerking, emotionally manipulative, rip-my-bleeding-heart-out-and-show-it-to-the-whole-friggin’-theater excess of his career.
“OOOOOOOOOOhhhhhhhh, give me MORE of THAAAAAAT!”
-Tom Servo, First Spaceship On Venus
Thanks for refreshing my memory, there. I knew Gump nabbed a little gold statue for something that year; I just couldn’t remember what.
Actually, I thought he was way better in Apollo 13 — but then, I’ve always been a hopeless sucker for a really good space movie.
the musical Brigadoon would be interesting (or any musical from that era).
i know it was a Golden Globe nominated film but The Jazz Singer with Neil Diamond.
i know it didn’t win anything, but The Mouse That Roared seems like a nice fun movie to riff. –
Chariots of Fire was awful. Not sure if it would be riffable.