MST3K Returns For a New Audience

by Chris Feil

This Friday marks the return of cult favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000, the spoof equivalent of sharing a movie theatre with a patron who won’t stop talking back at the screen. This time the crowdfunded production heads to Netflix, with many classic episodes also back on the streaming service as well. For some the original series is more of an acquired taste, but for its devoted cult, there is much to rejoice again.

The premise was simple: painfully bad films are forced upon two robots (the gumball machine-like Tom Servo and metallic rooster Crow) and one human (Joel Hodgson, then Mike Nelson, and now Jonah Ray) in a plot for world domination by some crackpot scientist...

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Thoughts I Had... While Rewatching "Grease 2"

Grease 2 gave me such writer's block in the Pfandom series because what to even focus on with such an event? I finally powered through but the focus naturally had to be on LaPfeiff's career. So, herewith a random collections of thoughts and observations from this viewing which I think was my 6th or 7th? The movie is terrible but I'm addicted to early Pfeiffer's lusty bravado in it, hence the multiple revisits.

(This is gif heavy so be warned...)

Dody Goodman & Eve Arden reprising their Grease roles as "Blanche & Miss McGee"

↑ But these are the faces you'll find me making every time I find myself watching it. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS AGAIN?!?!?

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Pfandom: Cool Rider and a Pink (Leading) Lady

on the set of Grease 2, her first lead roleP F A N D O M  
Michelle Pfeiffer Retrospective. Episode 8 
by Nathaniel R 

We've mostly focused on Michelle Pfeiffer's acting in our Pfandom retrospective. We're sure the star who has described herself as "extremely private" would like it that way, but this would be the appropriate time for a brief bit of personal context.

Though the young actress had been working nonstop since the late 70s in television roles and a few features, she'd been struggling offscreen. She was impatient with the way her career was developing. She'd also become involved with a cult, an experience she's always been cagey about in interviews. She had given them too much of her money and was eating strangely at their insistence. In 1981, she took back control of her life.

At the Grease 2 premiere in NYC with her new husband Peter Horton and producer Allan Carr

Two marriages and two divorces (of sorts): in her personal life she fell in love with fellow up-and-coming actor Peter Horton (who would later become a TV star on thirtysomething), and broke free from the cult; in her professional life she dumped her first agent to sign with the much more powerful William Morris Agency. The shakeup had an immediate effect on her career...

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The Ever-Growing Pains of "Beastly"

With Disney's live action remake of "Beauty and the Beast" hitting theaters this Friday, here's Jorge Molina to take a look into the yearbook of forgotten movies and another recent Beauty & the Beast adaptation...

I’ve been always fascinated by the mythology, tropes, and interpretations of fairy tales. They are one of our most lasting and frequently sought pieces of folklore. They are the ultimate piece of intellectual property, belonging to the collective consciousness of entire generations. We love to tell them, retell them, repackage them and resell in as many forms as we can conjure up.

I also was once a teenager that wanted to write movies.

Now, let’s imagine that my thirteen-year-old self (with all his growing pains, confused sexual identity, and overflowing longing for deeper meaning) was given the task of reimagining the classic tale of Beauty and the Beast in a modern setting...

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2016's Box Office Scorecard. Big & Minor Hits (Some Flops due to Budget)

Each day for the past two weeks we've been looking back on the year that was from different angles. Today, the biggest hits of 2016 in two different categories (franchise vs original).

It will surprise no one that the year's biggest hits continue to prove Hollywood right (sigh) in pursuing nothing but animated and superhero pictures and franchisable intellectual property and neglecting the nurturing of movies for adults. On the bright side quality pictures do occassionally break through audience resistance to original concepts and voices, often with the help of awards at year's end. So next time you hear people complain about awards season, remind them that we might never get movies made for adults if there weren't shiny gold statues to chase.

How many of these 35 pictures have you seen and which will you hit next? 

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