Film is Pwn

This might actually be funny enough to oneday re-watch Titannic (with the Rifftrax commentary, of course):

A movie I kinda liked, Terminator: Salvation.  See the sample here.

The live show — broadcast in theaters nationwide — ruled.  “Weird” Al Yankovic’s appearance was one comic bit and he joined the crew on riffing one short, on the joys of pork of all things.  The rest was a calvacade of short films most involving insane Santa Clauses or creepy Christmas cheer being riffed endlessly.  The highlight was a 1940s, animated Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, that features Santa propositioning Rudolph in his reindeer bed with the phrase, “Rudolph, I need you tonight!”  It riffs itself.  Classic stuff, I laughed ’til I hurt.

Here’s clips from random shorts, not all the shorts presented tonight:

Wednesday Rifftrax will be presenting their second live event broadcast to theaters nationwide, this time mocking a batch of Christmas related short films with special guest Weird Al.  I’ll be catching the Thursday encore – join me, won’t you? Here’s a link to find a theater near you:

Monster Squad.  Monster Squad is a relic from the late 80s resuscitated in modern times due to nostalgia, prompting a 20th anniversary DVD release in 2007 with hoopla and fanfare for the grown up child stars and the director, whose most recognizable credit since Monster Squad is the towering achievement that is Robocop 3.  I was not one of the kids who grew up watching Monster Squad and getting a tattoo of the signature line like “Wolfman’s Got Nards!”  I had better things to do growing up in the 80s, like T-ball, playing with G.I. Joes, and repeatedly replaying every single Chevy Chase and/or John Candy movie ever made. (more…)

Yes, we’ve done it again. While many of our readers likely stop themselves from watching bad movies. We here are Film is Pwn take our bad movies very seriously.

Dozens of watchings, hours of discussion — all so we can mock it passionately and completely. Our latest victim or rather the film that most recently took us as victims is Monster Squad. The movie is great in the way that many children’s movies from the 80s are great. It’s impossibly ridiculous, fraught with sickeningly bad fashion, ridiculous dialog, and it has that kid from “The Wonder Years” (no not Fred Savage, the other one … no not Josh Saviano the other one… no not Danica McKeller either, the OTHER one). The truth is though that it was fun to watch. Many of the types of movies we suffer through have no redeeming qualities, which of course amuses us. This however genuinely amused us. So we decided, “why not make a good bad movie better?”

So, check out our iRiff Monster Squad and enjoy. Let us know what you think.

Last week I spent a lot of time and multiple posts mocking the big movie of the week, the world is going to end (or just get really, really wet) 2012.  Friday’s new release is worthy of being ridiculed as well, the second of the sparkly, angsty vampire saga, Twilight: New Moon.  Unlike 2012, I will not watch this in theaters unless I inexplicably partake of an Extreme Truth or Dare contest, but I will watch it when it comes out on DVD and Rifftrax does a hilarious commentary, like they did for the first feature.  Clips of which are here.  Enjoy: (more…)

I just finished watching one of the latest Rifftrax DVDs, a wonderful, cheesy, low-budget tale of strange astronauts stranded in a strange land, Planet of the Dinosaurs.  This now ranks as my second favorite of the Rifftrax DVDs, right behind the classic send-up of Plan 9 From Outer Space, and I highly recommend it. The link to purchase the DVD is here, for those interested (and not friends planning on leeching borrowing the DVD from me in the future).

Here are two vids to give you some idea of what goodness Planet of the Dinosaurs contains, the first being the Rifftrax original song for the DVD menu, put to images:

The second is clips from the film itself put together by a fan on Youtube:

Film Is Pwn’s first iRiff was for a fun little, no-budget turd of joy called Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, which got great feedback and a spot on the iRiff top seller list (thank you very much)  The next movie we wrote and recorded riffs for was 80s fun/bad classic Monster Squad, which is still in the can because we decided to shelve everything to work on our most ambitious project, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  We figured we’d have our Transformers 2 iRiff up and running early in the week, sit by the pool, and wait for that elusive six figure Rifftrax residuals check.  ‘Twas not to be.

In retrospect, writing and editing a nearly 2 and a half hour blockbuster with no-nstop robot fights is particularly challenging when you have wacky things like jobs, families, and softball teams.  After a long Friday night and morning, our Transformers iRiff is up Saturday morning, sadly after the Rifftrax pros Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett put out one of their own on Thursday. *Sigh* (more…)

It’s Tuesday, October 20th, the big day that Transformers Revenge of the Fallen is released on DVD.  This was the biggest box-office hit of the Summer,  and since I don’t think Sherlock Holmes is going to knock it off its perch this Fall, it’s safe to say it’ll be the biggest money-maker of the year.

A lot of people hate Transformers Revenge of the Fallen, and I can understand why.   If you’re like me and regarded the 2007 Transformers movie as a great nostalgia trip, you’ll probably still like the sequel, as it’s ostensibly an extension of the original, albeit louder and longer.

This blog was going to be my “in defense of” Transformers Revenge of the Fallen, but I’ve changed my mind.  Film is art, even if it involves giant transforming robots fighting on top of Pyramids, and art is subjective.   Some folks loved the movie, some enjoyed it for what it was (I fall in this category), some kind of liked it at first though changed their minds on a second viewing (Tom is in this category), and some found it torturous to watch the first time through (Brian falls in this category).  Instead of “in defense of,” I’m going to write about what it would have taken to make Transformers Revenge of the Fallen better, so there will be spoilers aplenty herein, be forewarned if you’re the one guy who wanted to see this but didn’t make it to the theater all Summer. (more…)

For those who missed the live Rifftrax show, featuring live riffing of a great short called “Flying Stewardesses” and the Ed Wood classic Plan 9 From Outer Space, tomorrow night some theaters will be showing an encore, which will presumably be the exact same show the rest of us saw except for the technical difficulties.  Alas, I can’t go myself (darn softball game which I prefer to go to!), but check out this website for details. Now, in the meantime, enjoy this “Best of Rifftrax” for a cinematic oddity known as The Room: (more…)