The geekier among you probably have fond memories of 'Mystery Science Theater 3000.' But attempts to recapture that magic through projects like
RiffTrax (featuring MST3K's Mike Nelson) and
Cinematic Titanic (created by original MST3K cast members, including Joel Hodgson) have fallen short. Philip Bump is hoping that his efforts to update the formula with social media can put the spark back into making fun of bad films. Rather than simply asking people to gather around the TV with a bunch of friends, or listen to professional comedy writers hurl jokes at a flick,
Terrible Movie Night gets people from around the globe to sit down simultaneously, watch a particularly awful film, and crack wise via Twitter and Facebook.
A bad movie is chosen and scheduled to be watched at a particular time. (For instance, the fantastic 'Gojira' is on the chopping block for tonight at 8:00 p.m. EST.) Participants then head to Netflix (or iTunes or Amazon, whichever you prefer), and watch together. As the film unfolds, watchers are encouraged to comment either via Facebook or Twitter, reveling in the filmic awfulness. Comments and jokes are slapped with a time stamp and saved for posterity. You can even go back and
play comments from the community in real time, in case you missed a particular film. The whole thing sounds pretty fun, but it seems like getting everyone synchronized might be a bit difficult. Remember, when it comes to comedy, timing is everything.
Tags: facebook, movies, mst3k, mystery science theater 3000, MysteryScienceTheater3000, social networking, SocialNetworking, terrible movie night, TerribleMovieNight, top, twitter, web
Comments
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Subscribe to commentsmsampoFeb 17th 2011 12:11PM
I dispute both premises of this article: That RiffTrax/Cinematic Titanic have "fallen short" in some way, and that a random collection of twitter posters could do better. If the piece said the organizers simply wanted to carry on the MST3K spirit I would heartily support the idea. But you are not likely to get a lot of MST3K fans to do this by trashing the people they are fans of.