| Customer Comments |
| Reviewer: anonymous on 12/22/07 |
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| In the not too distant future, this moving f'n rocks. |
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| Reviewer: Drewsolo "lunchpail" on 12/22/07 |
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| OMG OMG OMG its here WOot, looks good so far in preview, can't
wait until I get it at home! |
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| Reviewer: anonymous on 12/22/07 |
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| The riffs are great!! Everything is really neat! |
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| Reviewer: Roscoe Vacant on 12/22/07 |
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| Please make this available in the UK Joel! |
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| Reviewer: Fireball on 12/22/07 |
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| Seems a bit pricey for an old movie and a Riff. Also only a 4:3? No widescreen of this cinematic masterpiece? giving it 4 until final copy is here for full review. We'll see if it's up to RiffTrax, Film Crew, and old school MST3K standards. Looks promising, just pricey. |
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| Reviewer: zombienutz on 12/23/07 |
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| I just ordered this and can not wait to get it. I am giving it four stars based purely on the work of the previous work of Joel and the crew. I can't wait to get this bad boy in the mail. Quick and easy ordering process as well. |
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| Reviewer: Bill on 12/23/07 |
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| Just plain awesome. |
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| Reviewer: ukfan on 12/28/07 |
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| PLEASE PLEASE - we need to be able to get this in the uk
Anyone fancy buying a few copies and putting them on ebay? |
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| Reviewer: Ninjew on 01/12/08 |
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| Since these things are "disc only", could someone supply a LARGER version of the cover art at the top of the page for us to download, so we can put our nice $15.94 DVD in a case that looks nice and not like a NetFlix throwaway envelope? |
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| Reviewer: Herman on 01/13/08 |
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| Very funny! Classic riffing style with silhouettes reminiscent of MST3K but fresh, new and very hip. Recommended to all people who love bad movies and love to make fun of bad movies. I was such a MSTie, this is like a reunion of some of my dearest old friends. |
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| Reviewer: randysolo on 01/15/08 |
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| Just watched my copy! and all I can say is fantastic! Great!
awesome!
Its like eating a bowl of (insert your fav desert here)
I saw Hi-keeba! to Joel and the gang for a job well done!
its great, like having old friends come over for dinner and a bad b-movie, and then riffing on it (without the dinner part)
so buy it, if you havent ! |
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| Reviewer: live4laughs on 01/15/08 |
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| As good as ever! You can go home again. You're like family. Welcome back. It's good to laugh out loud. This is what you guys should be doing. Keep 'em coming. FUNNY! MORE! FUNNY! MORE! FUNNY! MORE! |
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| Reviewer: Officer Cornjob on 01/16/08 |
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| This is an excellent show, and highly recommended to anyone who is a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The film (originally called Brain of Blood, retitled here as The Oozing Skull) is perfect fodder, and the crew gets into the flow of things with nary a hiccup. It's just as if they have been doing this for all these past MST free years. Sure the show has a few minor rough edges, but that is to be expected, and there are FAR fewer than would be forgivable for a successful premier episode. Cinematic Titanic is off to a terrific start and I can't wait for the next release. I hope we don't have to wait too long. |
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| Reviewer: Janni on 01/18/08 |
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| Really, I want to give this 4.5 stars, so I'm rounding up to five out of goodwill towards the Titanic gang. This is as good as the average MST3K episode, which is in fact high praise. Is there anything I wish was different? Truthfully? I miss the corny skits. There are skits here, where the movie freezes and someone speaks their mind, but the segments feel a little distant. I guess it's hard to feel the same attachment to people who stay silhouettes the whole time. Fortunately, I'm already attached to them from years of MST3K. Perhaps a newbie who never saw the skits in MST3K won't realize there's something missing. Still, that's just a quibble. Great job, Joel & Co.!
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"You know what would make this scene 50% better? SNARE." |
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| Reviewer: Stochastic Jack on 01/19/08 |
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| I've now watched this about a dozen times, and I'm going to give it four stars. At first, I was only going to give it three, but the riffs catch up with you on repeated viewings.
One kvetch though: if you're going to send just the disc in a plain white wrapper, how about giving us a link to a downloadable PDF of a cover, so we can print it out and put this in a DVD case and proudly display it in the collection next to the MST3K and Film Crew stuff? |
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| Reviewer: VapoRub on 01/19/08 |
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| CINEMATIC TITANIC 01
THE OOZING SKULL
First, I'm glad to see this and I want to see more. The warm sense of reunion is a fairly good substitute for genuine entertainment.
But, it was something of a let-down. Maybe my expectations were too high. MST3K is one of my favorite things. This production feels as if it was done either as a bored lark or in desperation. It is not inspired. It has the feel of a relic... a leftover... serving a niche market-within-a-niche market. The jokes refer to such a wide span of pop-culture eras, it's practically a sure thing much of the audience will be baffled at any given time during the show. MST3K referenced a more narrow window of familiarity.
The absence of Mike Nelson as head writer is keenly felt. Mike, Joel, and the rest made up a wonderful team. That team is now fragmented. RIFFTRAX, uneven as they are, are on average much funnier than the CT-riffed OOZING SKULL. The FILM CREW's version of HOLLYWOOD AFTER DARK is much funnier than OOZING SKULL's riffing. The ideal riffing entertainment experience was provided by Joel as front man with Mike as the best brain. We may never get that combination again, which is too bad.
In CINEMATIC TITANIC, There are too many on-screen riffers. Each riffer has relatively few jokes. The riffers are shown from such a long shot it's difficult to get any sense of their presence and gestures. The whole thing looks like a post-production "cheat", not that there's anything wrong with that. The riffs could very easily have been recorded comfortably in advance, and various takes of the silhouettes just standing around could be combined in editing and compositing. The simple immediacy of three clearly-seen guys in seats offered by MST3K has been replaced in CT with a less visually-involving presentation. There are long sequences in CT 01 in which individual silhouette characters appear to be held frames.
Mary Jo is hardly used. She has few lines. And while it sounds sexist, it is not easy to understand the typical female voice compared to that of a typical male voice. Mary Jo's voice is perfectly lovely, gorgeous even, but it doesn't have the edge that makes it easy to understand in a riffing situation. Her lack of lines and the difficulty in making out what she's saying suggest that she should be the first casualty among CT's onscreen characters.
The assaulted movie, retitled here as OOZING BRAIN, was an excellent choice. It is prototypical MST3K material and presents more than enough opportunities for witty derision. Unfortunately, many of those opportunities were missed by the CT gang. While I understand the need to let a riff session "breathe", there are many dead spots in this first episode - incidents which cry out for obvious jokes and receive none, and long stretches of silence from the riffers while hilarious incompetence unfolds on the big CT screen. Five riffers should make for more riffing than three riffers, and there was certainly room for more riffing. Instead of a high-speed barrage of appropriately deadly jokes offered in the best episodes of MST3K, CT 01 gives the viewer a painfully relaxed, almost disinterested stream of moderately funny observations. There are very funny moments, and I'm sure you know what they are, but there aren't many of them. It appears the group wasn't really giving its fully-focused effort.
Both the FILM CREW and MST3K have a structure that provides a pleasant rhythm: the silhouette/voice over sequences are peppered with host segments that serve as a resting place, some eye relief, a useful summation, increased familiarity with the riffing characters in sketch material that amplifies the riffing humor in a setting that offers more freedom than the commentary offers alone. CT (and RIFFTRAX) does not offer this pleasing, desirable, interlude. The complete lack of any explanation of why the little silhouette guys are stuck in an auditorium riffing on movies is disorienting. MST3K wrapped up the entire reason for its existence nicely in a short theme song. CT offers nothing. Beyond the instrumental theme, there is no wrapper material. No extras. No explanation. What the dang heck anyway.
I hope CINEMATIC TITANIC is successful and there are many more CT shows. It has to get better, and it's great to hear these people work together again. This first show, however, is way off.
In terms of value-for-money, CT 01 is a bust. I don't need to rehash the oft-repeated complaints about CT's despicably shoddy packaging and extremely high price. DVD replication and packaging is surprisingly inexpensive these days, so the corners cut here are baffling.
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Addressing one of the more foul-smelling elephants in the room: piracy may slightly affect the bottom line of CT. It's impossible to believe in a 100% lost-sale correlation, as put forth by MPAA/RIAA. Each copy downloaded via P2P does not result in a lost sale. Most downloaders wouldn't have bought what they download at any price, even if piracy was completely eliminated. It is possible, however, that a small segment of the potential market, one that might have purchased CT 01, downloaded it for free instead in a moment of ethical weakness. The exact impact of illicit digital acquisition will never be known, but this may prove interesting to the idly curious:
I will ignore, for the moment, binary newsgroups, IRC, FTP sites, and emule, and stick to discussing the popular bit torrent protocol. I have over 200 bit torrent sites bookmarked. Just for kicks, I searched every one for CINEMATIC TITANIC. I found several torrents, and removing all redundant hits from aggregating sites, I found that torrents for the show have been grabbed over six hundred times. Assuming each torrent resulted in a download, that's six hundred pirate copies of CT 01. Many P2P users dupe downloaded video for friends. Let's wildly claim that 20% of CT downloaders did that. That would make 720 illegal copies generating no revenue for Joel and The Gang. How much does the CT crew get for each copy? That's private info and we can only guess. Let's guess that EZTRAX keeps more-or-less 33%, and that CT receives about $10 per disc. IF we accept the plainly fallacious assertion that each downloaded copy is a lost sale, from bit torrent alone, that would mean $7200 lost. That's not so bad, really. If an entertainment company can be damaged by a $7200 loss, it's not doing well. |
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| Reviewer: kegobeer on 01/26/08 |
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| As a big MST3K fan, it was a sad day when Mike and the 'bots were yanked from the airwaves. Imagine my surprise when I discovered Joel was back! I didn't hesitate - I jumped at the chance to buy the new Cinematic Titanic DVD. I was not disappointed. All the great riffs are there, the writing is excellent, the guests fantastic, and the experience top notch! If you are a MSTie, or you enjoy watching the best rip on a horrible movie, run - don't walk - and buy this movie! |
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| Reviewer: Den on 01/26/08 |
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| I wish they would have had the download licensing taken care of so I wouldn't have had to deal with the DVD but it was worth the wait. |
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| Reviewer: Lester on 02/01/08 |
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| Ah, such peak riffing performance. It's good to hear
Joel & crew ripping brainy schlockfest.
at first, TOS really baffled me. But watch it a few times, the pain threshold goes up and hilarity ensues! Stilted dialogue, baffling incontinuity, make this a
B-movie smorgasbord. I give it 9 out of 10 Gor head bandages!
Cinematic Titanic - keep it going! |
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| Reviewer: Ted on 02/26/08 |
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| Wow, what a shame.
EZTakes mailed it in a crap envelope, not even a CD sleeve. CD was roughed up pretty bad. But the movie itself? No, not "Brain of Blood", but the CT treatment?
Got 15 minutes in, threw it away. Just a few minutes in, a nearly-racist joke. Then a cheap, insulting and repellent joke about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS/Lou Gherig's) sufferer Stephen Hawking.
Then Frank made some nonsensical and unfunny joke about a vomiting jazz trumpeter.
Geez, I'm not even one of those "Mike is bettar/RiffTrax rulez" geeks, not ever seeing/hearing a RiffTrax.
But this was a pathetic disgrace all around. EZTakes and CT both can go take a flying leap. |
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| Reviewer: anonymous on 03/13/08 |
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| I thought the host segments were weak but I loved it over all! |
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| Reviewer: nopesoappope on 03/18/08 |
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| Sure, the movie's bad, but the formerMSTs weren't funny, the DVD came scratched and scuffed in a small paper envelope without even a mailer... |
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| Reviewer: hrmhrmhrm on 03/18/08 |
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| Any reason why negative criticism of the movie is not being posted? Really uncool, EZTakes, doesn't make me want to buy stuff from you. |
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| Reviewer: pluckedturkey on 04/02/08 |
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| Ok. I have to say the coments completely trashing this movie seem unfounded to me. I found most of the refrences/ jokes easily understandable except for 5 to 8 % pretty good for such a bunch of diverse writers. as a fan of MST3K since 1990 / 91 I have to say i am very happy with Cinematic Titanic ( as well as with riff trax but that is another story) I downloaded the movie ( in about 3 to 4 hours not bad for DSL cable) and then burned my own DVD flawlessly. as per the complaint of the person who ordered the DVD and got a scratched one without a true case. I guess i would have been disapointed too but where can they go except up from there. I am very eagerly anticipating the next Cinematic Titanic experiment. Thanks again for the laughs. |
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| Reviewer: ripleybsx on 04/02/08 |
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| I think it was an okay start. It had quite a few problems, bu t having rewatched old MST from the KTMA days and Season 1 on cable, this definitely reminds me of those rough first days when the riffs were more ad-lib and further between. and that's good because this too will get better. I look forward to their next release. |
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| Reviewer: Tumbler on 04/02/08 |
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| I'm currently watching the movie download. I appreciate that most of MST-3K has gotten back together for this fare. The clip looked and sounded good to me. Now; first off, Widescreen? Are you serious? This is/was MST-3K. They riffed movies that had mainly been mangled by local advertisers, like your Dad, on his locally sponsored late night Ghoulfest, probably featuring a future Mom in some sort of low-cut draculette outfit.
And someone is sniffing more than Vicks when they start placing what is definitely company correspondence in the review section.
The 5 stars is just an attempt to offset anyone who is angry when they saw a review column they hadn't sprayed yet. Angry... like that fella was at John Lennon or that fan club president was angry at the young Mexican singer; you know, misguidedly miffed. Don't you think we'd all be better served if you just bugged the major studios until they finally did a remake of 'Gone With the Wind' starring Tom Cruise and Will Smith.
My download is about 2/3s done now. However, my review of all things oozing is complete.
Have a nice day.
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| Reviewer: SHODAN on 04/02/08 |
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| This is not a review, I've never been able to see the film because I'm in the UK. I've given it 4 stars because there's no way to leave a review here without choosing a star rating, and I don't want to be churlish and give it a 1 because of my disgust that it's STILL not available outside the US, even now as a download! WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE IT AVAILABLE OUTSIDE THE US (OR CANADA)?
EZTAKES NOTE: The person that owns the original movie will not let Cinematic Titan or EZTakes distribute outside the US (it is not under our control). |
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| Reviewer: Roebeast on 04/04/08 |
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| Good to see the crew back together. Make more! |
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| Reviewer: murderface on 05/09/08 |
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| Look at vaporub's review, hahaha. The only bad review is novel length and weird. Why did you have such a hard time hearing Mary Jo Pehl? I watched the movie and heard everyone clearly. It was just as good as MST3K, I have always found Joel's sense of humor a little darker Than Mike Nelson's. I am also a fan of The Film Crew stuff but RiffTrax is kind of a pain in the ass because I have to keep synching the track to the movie. Oozing Skull was cool because I paid 10 bucks, downloaded it and watched it immediately. I would definately buy further releases the same way. Very easy, good price. Highly recommended! |
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| Reviewer: SteveK on 05/19/08 |
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| I'm glad I waited for the hype to die down before getting this.
No, it's not MTS3k, but it wasn't meant to be. It IS a new venture into the same genre by some of the great minds behind MST3k.
Favorite riff: (Joel) It's the Mod Squad - In Color! (oh, I'm old.) |
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| Reviewer: Boba Frett on 05/30/08 |
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| Glad to see Joel and the gang back doing what they do best.
Can't wait for the next episode. |
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| Reviewer: BoB3K on 06/19/08 |
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| The riff quality was pretty good. The riff delivery was a little weak. The host segments were very weak. It was nice to see the original cast back together.
Taking into account that it was a first go, I give it an even 3 stars. |
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| Reviewer: Shlump on 06/22/08 |
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| I was looking forward to this release; unfortunately, it turned out to be a disappointment. It's as if the Cinematic Titanic crew were trying too hard.
On the rare occasion that a good joke was thrown out...it was ruined by a terrible delivery or in Joel's case by milking it until it screamed.
I'd recommend the releases by The File Crew over this; however, I will give Cinematic Titanic another chance since I'd really like them to succeed (if they get better). |
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| Reviewer: LeNox67 on 06/23/08 |
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| The crew is back and thank God for that. Their quips are the bomb and on target everytime. Thed movie itself is a hard watch so I gave it 4 outa five |
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| Reviewer: ginamak on 06/24/08 |
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| Just like old times. |
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| Reviewer: mix.master.entropy on 10/09/08 |
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| Cinematic Titanic Episiode #1!
I got into the whole CT viewing thing a little late, and purchased this movie a couple months after it was released.
Downloaded the DVD-image for $9.99, don't really care nor have I ever cared about packaging and paper (really folks, giving a bad review of a film because you don't like the envelope it was shipped in? ), downloaded, burned, and enjoyed.
Watched it a few times since then. It's as good as any other CT episiode, which means it's great. The humor is a little hard for some people to deal with (this is *not* mystery science theatere 3000 no matter how badly you want it to be).
Overall, 5/5. :) |
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| Reviewer: Full_Mooner on 10/13/08 |
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| I don't know why some people didn't like this. I sat down with a couple friends and we laughed all the way through this ridiculous movie. I wasn't sure Cinematic Titanic could succeed without Mike Nelson's keen sense of humor. Nevertheless, CT is totally awesome in their first outing, 'The Oozing Skull'. I cannot recommend this highly enough to fans of the early MST3K show. |
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| Reviewer: anonymous on 10/31/08 |
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| Very funny! |
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| Reviewer: jorin on 11/02/08 |
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| Definitely a masterpiece of movie riffing. It felt like a
return to early MST3K in several ways, and overall I felt
that doing away with the goofy sketches is an improvement. |
