The stopping/reversing rain trick is an established illusion - you can find it online with names like time fountain or magic fountain, and you just need a sprinkler that releases drops at a regular rate, and a strobe light that blinks at the same rate. The drops are always in the same place when the strobe blinks on,…

On a related note, the weird sideplots about the evils of computers (stronger in the stage version, cut down in the film to a few snide references to virtual reality) really haven't kept up well. Blowing up the MIT supercomputer to protest inaction on AIDS may have made sense in the 90s, but nowadays you might as well…

I once came across a Simpsons fan who insisted that this proved that the Simpsons took place in Hawaii as the only part of the the United States in the tropics, where the sun could be directly overhead. I sure hope somebody got fired for that blunder.

Who were these people you were dissing? The only one I could make out was Snoopy! What's your problem with him?

At this point, I think that the best justification for Rifftrax is the Bridget & Mary Jo series. They genuinely seem to have a chemistry beyond "We're all angry together". They laugh at each other's jokes, they get silly, they make little ad libs and what I guess are inside jokes - it just feels like mid-series MST. I…

IIRC, the rabbit checks her Carrot iPhone, and the Mayor uses an Android. Fox doesn't have a phone presumably because for balance he'd have to use either Windows or Blackberry and who uses them???

One thing that does make it tricky is that the film very much goes out of its way to avoid mapping either side to a real race. On the one hand, the history of prey in relation to predators means that you could easily make the case that the prey represent black people attempting to get past the shadow of slavery (they…

Those managed to be timely largely because they parodied films that weren't even out when production started, which is why you get some 'jokes' that don't make any sense because the screenwriters only had early marketing teasers to work with (there's a scene in Disaster Movie parodying Hancock, which came out just one…

"Fashion is Danger" also gives a good late 70s/early 80s-era Bowie (although I think Bret does a lot of the lyrics).

I'm pretty sure that's why Shkreli got arrested, actually.

I strongly recommend listening to the DVD commentary for that scene. It seems to be Arnie's absolute favourite scene and he just does not shut up about what an incredible idea it was and how all the women on set wished they had breast-inflating powers. Even after the scene ends, Arnie keeps talking through the next…

What you mean is:

Fun fact: Dan Savage was actually one of the hosts of the British version. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he doesn't really mention that ever.

"Hello, my name is Mr. Snrub. And I come from, uh… someplace far away. Yes, that'll do. Anyway, I say we invest that money back in the nuclear plant."

"Grand Funk Railroad paved the way for Jefferson Airplane, which cleared
the way for Jefferson Starship. The stage was now set for the Alan
Parsons Project, which I believe was some sort of hovercraft."

What, in your day you only heard one half of the phone conversation? Hmm, yes, it's true that the person had to restate what the other line was saying, but do it in a believeable way. What's that you say? Ha, yes, I liked it that way too. Bye!

Because the cost of printing a book (in mass-production) and shipping it is very low - for a paperback, usually less than a dollar. Most of what you pay for is the human side of things - editing, typesetting, marketing, agents, shareholders and of course the writing itself. Cutting out the paper doesn't do much to the…

So speaking of talented writers stuck on bad sitcoms, when's the Hater returning?

Looks like I missed the boat a bit on this one, but, given how UK-heavy the list is, I'm surprised there's no A Very British Coup, one of the many gritty 80s dramas that the BBC and Channel 4 produced at the time, but differentiated by having a gripping story. In short, Labour (in their old Labour, trade union form)…

If you're not sold on this film yet, just watch the opening scene: