Cinematic Titanic (ex-Mystery Science Theater 3000) slams into the Paramount
While its influence on Internet discourse may still be up for debate, Mystery Science Theater is indisputably one of the most cultishly-adored TV series of the last 20 years. Scores of geeks across the globe still get all warm and fuzzy thinking about waking up on Saturday mornings (or just tuning into pre-South Park Comedy Central on any given night during the mid-'90s) to witness the cracking wise of a marooned spaceman and his robot pals, their pop-culture-damaged riffing the only defense against the mind-numbing powers of the worst movies ever made.
So it only makes sense that 10 years after the Sci-Fi Channel put a halt to new episodes of MST3K, the brains behind the show would give up their gigs at America’s Funniest Home Videos and return to laying their riffs over riper material—you know, stuff with words like “Oozing” in the title. The Sci-Fi-era core of Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy currently offer audio commentary for blockbuster fare at rifftrax.com, while the show’s original cast—Joel Hodgson, Trace Bealieu, and J. Elvis Weinstein—plus former second-bananas Frank "TV's Frank" Conniff and Mary Jo Pehl sail the Cinematic Titanic, a more faithful revision of the MST3K format that keeps the superimposed shadows but ditches the robots.
The Cinematic Titanic folks recently announced a brief tour of live shows, one of which will take place at Austin’s Paramount Theatre. Tickets went on presale yesterday, but unless you’ve got $100 to toss the Paramount’s way (or 12 easy payments of $10 or more!), you’ll have to wait until next Monday to get your seat. The cast will be taking on a different movie in each city, so stay tuned to find out what they’ll be skewering at the Paramount. And remember: Keep circulating the tapes.
