Tag: Rifftrax

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

This Week At The Cinema: Outflix Kicks Off and Rifftrax Conquers Krull.

Writer/director/actor Jim Cummings and Kendal Farr in Thunder Road

The movie week starts off with a bang tonight, as Indie Memphis presents the Grand Jury Prize winner from this year’s South By Southwest film festival. Thunder Road is an expansion of an acclaimed short film by writer/director Jim Cummings about parenthood in the wake of loss. It’s at Malco Ridgeway tonight, and you can buy tickets here.

 

Thunder Road Feature Film Trailer from Jim Cummings on Vimeo.

This Week At The Cinema: Outflix Kicks Off and Rifftrax Conquers Krull.

Ouflix season officially begins tonight with a preview party at Crosstown Arts’ 430 N. Cleveland space. They’ll be previewing this year’s lineup and presenting three works for their new short film competition. One of the shorts, “Conway Pride”, is by filmmaker Stephen Stanley, who made his first films in Memphis before embarking on a career that has taken him to Hollywood and, currently, France. He made “Conway Pride” while teaching film at the University of Central Arkansas. It tells the history of a colorful LBGT couple who organized the first gay pride march in the rural college town, and the fight to save their house after they passed away. The free party begins at 6:30 PM tonight, but bring your dollars to buy passes for the main Outflix festival September 7-13.

Conway Pride 2017, Excerpt from the documentary "Conway Pride" from Stephen Stanley on Vimeo.

This Week At The Cinema: Outflix Kicks Off and Rifftrax Conquers Krull. (5)

On Wednesday, Indie Memphis screens a second South By Southwest winner, this time in the documentary category. The Work takes audiences inside Folsom Prison, where inmates in a group therapy session delve deeply into their past. This moving documentary is sponsored by Just City Memphis, and will include a Q&A with Memphis activist Josh Spickler. Tix here.
 

This Week At The Cinema: Outflix Kicks Off and Rifftrax Conquers Krull. (2)

Wednesday at the Paradiso, an anime comedy take on After Hours. Director Masaaki Yuasa’s Night Is Short, Walk On Girl is a romantic farce centered around an epic night on the town in Kyoto, Japan. Check out this amazing trailer:

This Week At The Cinema: Outflix Kicks Off and Rifftrax Conquers Krull. (4)

In case you didn’t get your fill last Saturday at the Time Warp Drive-In, Thursday night offers a so-bad-it’s-good film experience. Krull dropped in 1982, during the height of the post-Star Wars sci fi fantasy boom. It’s got some really fantastic pre-CGI effects, and…well, the effects are nice. And the production design is kinda interesting in places. Then there’s the scene with the giant spiders, which is pretty cool…

OK, fine. It’s awful. A total crap pageant. The point is, the Rifftrax guys are going to tear Krull a new Glaive-hole, 7 PM at the Paradiso.

Also, it’s usually a bad idea to revisit obscure sci fi fantasy movies you liked as a kid, unless you enjoy disappointment.

This Week At The Cinema: Outflix Kicks Off and Rifftrax Conquers Krull. (3)

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

When Geeks Icons Collide: RiffTrax Takes On Doctor Who

Tonight and next Thursday, August 24, at the Malco Paradiso, Doctor Who gets skewered.

A still from ‘The Five Doctors’ featuring four Doctors, one of whom is an imposter. It’s just a disaster, really.

The longest running sci fi TV series in the world—indeed, one of the longest running TV series anywhere—is Doctor Who. It originally ran from 1963 (its premiere was interrupted by BBC’s reporting on the assassination of President Kennedy) to 1989, and was then revived in 2005. You don’t run that long without making some changes, and one of the things that makes the character of the Doctor so compelling is that he always changing. When Time Lords are injured or old, they regenerate into a new body—a device thought up by the producers to keep the show fresh and allow them to do periodic reboots. Originally, the Doctor was allowed twelve regenerations, but that rule seems to be no longer operative, because the show’s fans were just energized to learn that the thirteenth actor playing the Doctor will be Jodi Whittaker, the first woman ever to take up the Sonic Screwdriver.

One of the cardinal rules of Doctor Who-style time travel is that you can’t meet yourself. But, like everything else in sci fi fantasy, that rule is subject to change. In 1983, the show celebrated its twentieth anniversary by bringing together all of the actors who had ever played the role for one giant adventure. But the show, known as “The Five Doctors”, was famously a giant trainwreck. First of all, the best and longest-running Doctor, Tom Baker, nursing hurt feelings over being forced out of the role two years earlier, declined to appear. Instead, the producers cut in scenes filmed from an unaired Tom Baker episode called “Shada”. So really it was kind of the Four-And-A-Half Doctors. William Hartnell, who originated the role, died seven years earlier, and was replaced by a lookalike named Richard Hurndall, which makes it Three Doctors Plus A Ringer And A Half Doctor. Even though the show was in the midst of a period when it had some of the strongest writing ever (“The Caves of Androzani”, which a recent fan poll named the show’s greatest episode, appeared the next year.), the highly hyped “The Five Doctors” crashed and burned.

This epic fail did not go unnoticed by former Mystery Science Theater 3000 stars Mike Nelson, Bill Corbin, and Kevin Murphy. Expect them to mock the show mercilessly in a special RiffTrax event, broadcast to theaters this week and next week. Here’s the trailer:

When Geeks Icons Collide: RiffTrax Takes On Doctor Who

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Mothra at Paradiso

The iconic name is first spoken by a wounded native living on the atomic bomb-irradiated Infant Island. The bearded old man, weak and wounded by machine gun fire, struggles to climb what appears to be an enormous stone altar. “Mothra!” he calls out. Thunder rolls! The rock face crumbles! The island’s mighty protector is revealed! It’s a moth egg.

After Godzilla, king of the monsters, Mothra is the most famous giant creature to emerge from the vast catalog of Toho studio’s “strange beast” films. The eponymous 1961 release, which stars Japanese comedian Frankie Sakai as a newspaper reporter bumbling his way through the entomology story of the century, is also easy pickings for anybody who likes to riff on old movies, Mystery Science Theater 3000-style. In fact, anybody who wants to know what MST3000 alum Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy have to say about the killer egg that turns into a killer caterpillar that turns into a city-dwarfing moth that flattens buildings with the beating of her giant wings can find out when Mothra is revived on movie screens around the country this week. Nelson’s RiffTrax company broadcasts live, snarky commentary from Nashville’s Belcourt Theatre direct to Memphis’ Paradiso.

Mystery Science Mothra

With its mix of weird, slapstick comedy, Spielbergian sweetness, and social comedy, Mothra is a quipper’s goldmine start to finish. Even though Infant Island has been subject to nuclear tests, the big beast is only summoned after exploitative Japanese businessmen steal the “Mothra fairies” — miniature twin “beauties” whose bizarre language sounds like organ music and church bells. The natives have priorities.