Riffstarter 2017: Here We Go Again...And MST3K Gets A Start Date

A couple of weeks ago, details started leaking out that Rifftrax's new batch of bad movies would be coming April 13th, and the first movie would be Samurai Cop, which is a popular selection at the Rifftrax website. I already have a review of this "gem".

Now, the gang is asking its fans once again to chip in to help mock bad movies from somewhere in Tennessee.
They're asking 250 thousand dollars, and fans are already well on their way to hit the goal maybe within a week or two.The only question is what kind of stretch goals will be offered.

Aside from Samurai Cop, Rifftrax will have a "summer shorts" show in June similar to the Christmas shorts show they had a long time ago. Hopefully "Summer Is An Adventure" won't be included because Summer is actually quite boring in that short. It will include the Riffing Housewives, Mary Jo Pehl and Bridget Nelson, plus unknown others.

The big event will happen in August. The name of the movie is unknown right now due to legal red tape, but it could be anything from Twilight to Catwoman. It's expected to be revealed when the 250K goal is reached. The gang will only say it's a bad movie that's never been riffed.
There's a section where people can suggest what movie to, er, respond to. The latest list includes a Barbie movie, a TV movie version of Dr. Strange from 1978, a knockoff of The Incredible Hulk, and Beastmaster 2 (which would be a great idea because it was a riff in "Bride of the Monster"). La La Land is also there, but that was due to fans of Manchester By The Sea.
We do know, though, Rifftrax will take on Rogue One eventually. Might be due to K-2SO being more of a wit than Crow and Tom Servo combined.

Anyway, you can chip in to Rifftrax's new season by going here.

Meanwhile, Easter Weekend will have extra meaning this year. The Kickstarter page, namely Joel Hodgson, says Mystery Science Theater 3000 will return April 14th, Good Friday (and the day after Rifftrax's show). This will be available to Netflix subscribers and those who dropped at least 40 bucks to get the eleventh season. Thus, the show can now identify with two holidays, Easter and Thanksgiving.
And....we have a cast photo:

The new SOL looks more complicated, but at least it's better lit than the Sci-Fi Channel years. Gypsy looks a bit more streamlined with a narrower head, but that was mentioned at Comic-Con last summer.
Kinga's hairdo suggests that maybe she's Pearl-ish but she wants our money instead of the world. However, white lab coats? Where's the green labcoats? The white goggles, though, are a nice touch.
Otherwise, meet the new experiment, just like the old experiment except in widescreen and HD (except for the movies, still analog and cheesy).
So if Peter Cottontail is a bit late this year, this is why.

Enough of Trump! I'd Rather Talk Oscars

We're getting closer to the 2017 Academy Awards, where a non-Broadway musical could win the big prize for the first time in nearly 60 years and some fans fear the show won't be interrupted by another pointless fight between Matt Damon and Jimmy Kimmel.

I've seen all but one of the Best Picture nominees but I am hoping to see Hacksaw Ridge eventually when it's finally on Redbox along with Manchester By The Sea next week. It's pretty clear La La Land will take the big prize because of its direction and story, and Emma Stone. Her win at the BAFTAs pretty much gave her enough of an edge over Natalie Portman to win.
Viola Davis has Supporting Actress locked down thanks to Fences. I still say she should have won for The Help, but this is her year.
Mahershala Ali, who I first knew from Luke Cage, should get enough to win Supporting Actor, mainly due to his win at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. That category has been interesting because Aaron Taylor-Johnson got the Golden Globes but isn't in the Oscars, while Dev Patel won at the BAFTAs for Lion. Patel could upset, but Ali may win out.

Actually of all the films I've seen, Lion had the best story and acting that could give La La Land a run for its money. So could Hidden Figures, the story of some unknown space travel pioneers who finally got their due. Manchester By The Sea has great performances from Casey Affleck and Lucas Hedges in a story about a family trying to recover from several tragedies. Moonlight gives an interesting story about an African-American boy dealing with his own sexuality and drug abuse within his family.
Still, feel-good movies always get the edge from the voters. That's why La La Land will take Best Picture, Actress, Director and maybe Original Screenplay along with a few tech awards. Manchester could upset in Original Screenplay.
Adapted Screenplay is a very tricky race, but my guess is Hidden Figures will win as a reward for the story and the cast. I still wish Deadpool was in there, even if it would have lost. Finally giving any comic book movie at the Oscar table is important, especially if it's some of the major awards. The ghost of The Dark Knight is still there.

As I said, Emma Stone will get Best Actress for La La Land over Natalie Portman, mainly due to her win at the BAFTAs. Casey Affleck has been unstoppable, despite Ryan Gosling's charm and ability to learn the piano. He'll at least sing the Best Song winner, "City of Stars."
I also saw Elle with Isabelle Huppert as a rape victim who is determined to find who did it...and even when she does, the story takes a lot of different turns. To be fair, the movie has a different outlook because it was made in France. Also, Huppert's character has a very interesting past, and makes some unusual decisions. It's enough to get a Golden Globe, but that's it.

Best Animation did look like a lock for Zootopia, aka How We Wound Up Electing Trump. With Kubo and the Two Strings winning at the BAFTAs, that movie's story may give it some momentum, but not enough to win.

Let's hope for an entertaining Academy Awards, even if the guys from The Man Show are involved. If there's ever a time for Kimmel to prove he's in the league of Johnny Carson in more ways than one, it's Oscar night.

Saying Good-Bye To A Brother.

Around 8:30 last night, my mom called me with news we expected but didn't want to hear: my brother Andrew died at Renown Hospital at the age of 54. He had been in the hospital for an operation to remove a beningn but troublesome brain tumor. It was affecting his vision so much he had to stop driving a truck, which he had been doing for several years. He was living in a mobile home with my mom in Fallon, 60 miles east of Reno. They were having a good life.

He was the guy who convinced me to get a warehouse job in Fernley, and later Reno, after I had an awful time trying to get a job after losing my overnight job at KFBK in Sacramento. At the very least, I credit him with helping me find a new life after more than 20 years in radio.

It was looking for a while that he was going to recover. He was even home long enough to get me to buy him a beer he was planning to enjoy on New Year's Eve. For all I know, the beer is still in the refrigerator. However, when he mentioned he had problems going to the bathroom, he started to decline. He had liver problems over the years, and that had a role in his health problems.

We tried to be close although we had been living in different parts of the country after I graduated from college. At least his hospital stay gave us a chance to reconnect. I also got to be reunited with two of my brothers, too. It felt good, but it would have felt even better if he had recovered completely. From what I was told, the end was a relief for him.

Over the past 25 years, I have lost two older siblings along with Andrew. I still have an older brother who I keep tabs with, but it's always difficult to lose a family member. My mom is about to turn 85,and I have to prepare for the fact that she'll also be gone, too.

Anyway, I will miss Andrew and be grateful for the family I still have,

Checking Out Hidden Figures and a Mourning First Lady

As movie award season kicked off early, I decided to check out three movies over the past two days. One was a second watch of Rogue One, which became the #2 movie of 2016. To be honest, I wanted to see it just for the final scene where the plans for the Death Star were given to someone who could wind up providing hope. If you've seen the movie, you know who it was.



I also just had to take a look at Natalie Portman's portrayal of Jackie Kennedy in Jackie. However, it wasn't in midtown or downtown Reno. It was at a shopping center eight miles away that was just as luxurious as the Galaxy Theater in Sparks, but the cost was cheaper thanks to Cinemark's Tuesday discount.

It was worth the extra drive because the movie takes a different look at Jackie that surprisingly no one thought of before....how she dealt with the assassination of her husband including her grief and the planning of his funeral. In between the days after his death, the movie shows her classic tour of the White House that was televised in 1962, and an interview she has with an unnamed reporter played by Billy Crudup. Through this, we see the many faces of Jackie Kennedy:  First Lady, grieving widow, and a woman facing an uncertain future.

Portman has Jackie's breathy voice and mannerisms down pat it's really spooky, but two scenes that were done very well shows how deep Portman got in this role. The first is seeing Jackie changing her clothes several times, as if things hadn't changed, while "Camelot" was heard on the record player. The other was her extensive discussions with a priest played beautifully by John Hurt.

Peter Skarsgard was also very good as Bobby Kennedy, who tries to keep the government and her sister-in-law together. This is especially true when he suggests she march at the procession by the side of her husband's coffin. There's also a great scene where she's angry at Bobby because she wasn't told Lee Harvey Oswald was killed.

It looks like the Best Actress races, which will really get underway when the SAG Awards happen late this month, will be a showdown between Portman and Emma Stone in La La Land. What the Oscars need is a really competitive race, and this could be it.



Meanwhile, there was a movie that certain people couldn't remember at the Golden Globes. It's about the secret behind NASA's success in getting man into space:  three African-American women whose stories weren't even known until recently.

Just after I saw Hidden Figures, I overheard two men who thought it took more than 50 years to reveal the story because the women were sworn to secrecy, almost like the Bletchly code-breakers in World War II. Actually, it's just that, according to Margot Lee Shetterly (who wrote the book that became the movie), the women just did their job and didn't seek fame.

Still, the sagas of Katherine Gobel Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) should be told because it showed that women did have a role in the space race. Johnson's skill as a mathematician got her a building named after her, Vaughn helped NASA transition to computers, and Jackson became one of the first female and African-American engineers.

The movie is smart to divide the girls' stories into three pieces. They're all working moms, but Katherine tries to impress the others with her calculating skills, Vaughn goes to great lengths to figure out the new IBM system and make sure she and her fellow calculators aren't out of a job, and Jackson is determined to break the color line to have the right to take college courses in an all-white school to advance. It's great to see Mary tell a skeptical judge it's in his best interests to let her in those classes.

Some people may dismiss the movie as a cross between The Help and The Right Stuff, but co-writer and director Ted Melfi makes sure to get the story right, even talking to Johnson, and producing an inspiring movie. Henson is really good as Johnson, who is shy at first but lets her numbers do the talking. However, she does get some resentment from the guys, including Head Engineer Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons). Thanks to support from the head of the Space Task Group (Kevin Costner) and even John Glenn, she proves her worth.

There's some talk Spencer may get in the Supporting Actress race, but her role as Vaughn is too similar to her award-winning role in The Help. Henson is actually a little better, especially when she tells her boss she can't be at her desk because the building has no "colored only" restrooms. It's no wonder why it just edged Rogue One for first place last weekend.

My Worst Vacation

Spending a couple of days in Sacramento in January is a bad idea, especially when a series of big storms rolled in. It has taught me that I should not leave town between November and March. I just wanted to see the new Golden 1 Center up close.

This is in between Kings games, but once the city gets ice hockey, it should be busier. Despite the fact it was an off day for the Kings, they had their big scoreboard in operation, showing a high school game for some reason:

I was also interested in seeing how far the city's gotten in building its new shopping hub called Downtown Commons, or DoCo. It'll have lots of restaurants and more movie screens. It was estimated it would be ready by the new year, and naturally it was not. There is still the sign:

Worst thing about the vacation was I-80 closing overnight. If not, I would have gotten back to Reno when I was supposed to. I had to stay an extra night. The only upside to it is that I got some nice winter pictures from I-80:

Now I am back in Reno, and ready to get back to routine, and also seeing movies I didn't get a chance to see in Sacramento...because there's no movie houses in downtown Sacramento, and won't be for a while.