On the Cinematic Titanic blog, Joel has announced that the CT team is going to take “a much-needed break for the rest of the summer,” though they are working on a new title they’ve just acquired.
He also announced that the team has signed with talent agency APA, which is “the agency I worked with when I was a young stand-up: they helped me land my first bookings on SNL and Letterman as well as being the company that helped make that very important MST3K deal back at Comedy Channel. It’s great to be back working with them, and they will be representing Cinematic Titanic for theatrical gigs as well as bringing our live shows to various media too.”
Finally, he also revealed that “we’ve decided not to record our last three live features (‘East Meets Watts,’ ‘Danger on Tiki Island’ and ‘Alien Factor’) in the studio, as I previously announced. Instead, we will continue to present these features in future live dates.”
On the other hand, Rifftrax are awesome, but also very hit-and-miss. Some of them are incredibly funny and right in the groove, others sound like the had a difficult time writing the riffs and deliver them without much gusto.
True, but they produce so much stuff, at such reasonable prices, that if one misfires, there’s always the next.
CT produces so little that the pressure to be GREAT! each time is much much stronger.
BTW, for great Rifftrax of modern movies, I’d suggest “300” and “Eragon.” Both are laugh-out-loud-’til-you-can’t-breath funny.
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“breath” = “breathe”
Damn figners!
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@90
Yes you can. Concert bootlegs have been around practically since they invented recording equipment. I’m bringing my little pocket-sized mp3 recorder to Plan 9.
I’ve done some field tests and it won’t be CD-quality, but it’ll be good enough for jazz.
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@afrgarga – I guess that would be interesting to listen to for the material that’s exclusive to the live show, but the short is going to be posted on the site after the show and Plan 9 is already available.
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This blows chunks! Ah well, CT wasn’t my bag anyways. I just rerent the complete DVD set of ‘Webster’.
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The bottom line is, if they want to keep making money-they HAVE to respond to the market. Since about 80% of that market is nowhere near where they perform live: it’s DVDs.
Completely understand about travel: they’ve all got families-and are getting older (like everyone else). Could also be a euphemism for “We’re having creative differences” or “We’re not making the bucks we thought we were; we need to retool NOW.” Not everything is as it seems (remember Joel leaving MST? Turns out it was heated arguments over the movie and other stuff with Jim Mallon.)
What will happen is other than some really devoted fans-folks will move on. I think their alter ego Rifftrax gets this: they release at least a short every couple of weeks. That keeps fans checking their website and staying into what’s going on.
CT…well, haven’t been on their website in literally months.
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to MiqelDotCom:
Dead-on words. You hit the nail on the head.
Regarding both, here’s two more cents worth…
CT – They come together every few months for a release/project. If you work with someone sparingly then the chemistry may be lacking. Also CT has a “we’re just doing this to fall back on since our individual projects aren’t taking off” feel to it (in my opinion).
RT – Better chemistry but their release are sometimes hit/miss. I realize they like hitting Hollywood blockbusters and some films deserve it, but their choices sometimes fail. For example I dare anyone to watch their riffing of the Star Wars X-Mas special and not prolapse their colon laughing. On the other hand they riffed The Empire Strikes Back and bombed. They need to remember that bad films provide more ammo than a blockbuster with a halfway sober continuity editor.
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