'Let's set our car on fire and say it's performance art!' by Kara
Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at 4:06 PM

And yes, in case you've been living under a bigger rock than mine, Rock Band will indeed be offering lighting and smokiness. So now, thank God, we can make the concert experience even more realistic by making it so I can't be there.

(Although, in all serious, more power to the people who like, get, and use these. Really. It's my usual 'endearing' snark coming through. Apparently endearing, anyway.)

So I got the first (currently only) Cinematic Titanic DVD in the mail on Monday, and since I was tired and ill and unable to focus on anything that involved reading, I watched the first 45 or so. The Oozing Skull was their starter of choice. Personally, I liked it. The new setup (having the riffers offside instead of down front) was actually pretty neat -- not because they didn't want to block anything, but because they seemed to need stage space for some bits.

My main bother was the idea of not having the host segments like in MST3K to break things up a bit. However, it seemed like this idea bothered them, too, because they've already had two host-segment-like breaks where they pause the film (usually at a particularly gory or unfortunate spot, the way I somehow always manage to do) and do a bit. One involved an impersonation of some deceased personage, and the other was an unintentional gripefest stemming from one or two seconds of footage. So basically what they did on MST3K, but still in silhouette.

I've talked about RiffTrax before, which is where Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo) went, but I realised that what was bothering me is that it was missing that tween-scenes breakup. So I get the idea that RT is easiest to sell, download, and turn over quickly, but CT is more like what we missed and why we wanted this stuff back. Never mind that that's where the old-schoolers (Joel, Frank, Trace) and better bits (Mary Jo, Josh) went, so the patter just feels a little more right and cleanly put-together.

The only unfortunate bit so far is that it came in a mailing envelope without a shiny lovely DVD case. I chalk them up to just launching this thing and not being sure how big a pressing would be feasible. So if you like MST3K, go buy. There's a second one about to come out, The Doomsday Machine, and I must say I'm looking forward to it. Buy! Buy! Give them money, pleeeease, because I want more.

If you have been, that's ridiculous.