Synchtube Tropers (Riff on Videos and Movies)

Have we ever seen this rare promotional, borderline Defictionalization marketing technique for The Truman Show that was aired once, and only once, on Nick at Nite?

Tonight: The influential 1950's giant mutant insect movie that gave us late 1990's Misfits songs and 'Fallout 3' quests—Them!

edited 23rd Aug '16 8:39:23 AM by SeanMurrayI

EDF! EDF! EDF!

So we're starting things off tonight with"Teddy Ruxpin Adventures" or something that might actually be more frightening than our sci-fi/horror feature presentation tonight.

And, if we can all make it through that, at the top of the coming hour, nuclear testing in New Mexico gives rise to giant irradiated ants in the 1950's landmark movie Them!

Join us! http://cytu.be/r/TroperCoven

~Bisected8 ~lewattoo ~Noaqiyeum ~Finger Puppet ~Completely Normal Guy ~TAPETRVE ~Rockonman ~President Stalkeyes ~Sedmikrasky ~spacealien ~Mystic Eclectic ~Shippudentimes ~Space Wolf ~MapleSamurai ~colonelcathcart ~Kent Dawg 1

Okay, regarding the last few seconds getting cut off, the program I use to split videos for some reason wants to round to the nearest minute at the end of the video unless you explicitly type in the exact second you want it to end at. I don't know why. Recently I've been typing in that exact second, but apparently either it didn't work with this movie, or I forgot to do that? I'm not sure.

The last few seconds were a brief monologue about how entering the new world of the atomic age may bring new dangers, followed by a shot of everyone watching the giant ants burn. So that's exactly how it ended. Sorry it got cut off.

Hey guys, I don't care how you find it, look of "Better Late Than Never on NBC."

It's a reality show with Terry Bradshaw, Henry Winkler, George Foreman, and the SHAT!

That abrupt ending was the funniest thing I've seen in a while. You need to mess up more often like that, Sean!

He didn't mess up. I did, or the video splitting program did. And since such old movies typically have all their credits run at the beginning rather than the end, it's never a good idea to assume that shaving it to the last full minute (which my program typically does) is a good idea.

hey so ill try to show up more often than never due to life changes im no longer working dumb hours

also down af to see them! ive always wanted to

edit: i am slightly less interested in seeing night patrol but ill prolly show up to not be awk after posting here

edited 24th Aug '16 9:56:24 AM by imaginedbird

Getting around to this really late today...

Tonight, forget about Police Academy and its six sequels, this is all about Night Patrol, starring Linda Blair and... ((squints real hard at the IMDb cast list)) ...Pat Morita as "Rape Victim", omigod.

So we get back into more usual pre-show entertainment these days with the return of the Street Sharks and the beginning of the very end of Knightmare.

Then, at the top of the coming hour, everything slides downhill with a terrible 80's comedy made for a market that the filmmakers didn't already think was oversaturated with Police Academy sequels (At least it isn't Wrong Cops... we hope). We're heading on a Night Patrol.

Join us! http://cytu.be/r/TroperCoven

~lewattoo ~Noaqiyeum ~Finger Puppet ~Completely Normal Guy ~TAPETRVE ~Rockonman ~President Stalkeyes ~Sedmikrasky ~spacealien ~Mystic Eclectic ~Shippudentimes ~Space Wolf ~MapleSamurai ~colonelcathcart ~Kent Dawg 1

A unanimous X. Yet, to be honest, I laughed many times in the first 30 minutes or so, but it started to get real annoying later on.

I don't remember the last time I openly cringed so many times during a movie like that. I think the last time was during a rescreening of Disney's Chicken Little.

Tomorrow night's movie is Paula Peril.

A bit of backstory, because it has a fascinating one.

Atlantis Studios was (because they still exist, but aren't this anymore) a weird little outfit that took commissions for comic books and even movies. You could commission an artist to draw your comic book for you, or even commission the company to make a movie for you. If you visit those links, you'll see some missing graphics on the side, since the site no longer offers these services and these pages are outdated and no longer officially linked to.

But during that time, they did indeed make multiple comics for various clients. Their biggest, most popular comic by far, was Paula Peril.

Paula Peril was big enough that they started advertising it specifically on their site, while still advertising their commission services for aspiring comic and movie makers. Eventually, a Paula Peril short film was made. Then another. These proved popular, and it got to the point where Atlantis Studios overhauled their website, no longer listing their commission services (though as those links show, the pages themselves still exist), and instead advertising their most popular product.

And that's the story of Paula Peril and how it came to be. Oh, and the lead actress, Valerie Perez, is known as a famous cosplayer, most famous for her Wonder Woman cosplay.

It's all total geek stuff. And it's showing Thursday!

Sadly, I got other plans to watch the screening of another movie (a rough cut of another project I've been involved with) to get to in Manhattan tonight.

But, as Bonsai shares, tonight's movie will be The Adventures of Paula Peril, a title character who always struck me as a heroine whose gimmick is seemingly always being made the damsel in distress.

Something about that just seems a little... odd, IMO. See if you can put your finger on it, but it just might have something to do with the indie studio's choice for a video thumbnail...

Personally, I hope Atlantis Studios makes other stuff besides Paula Peril, because I've seen their website before she became their flagship product and main star. They used to publish a handful of different comics, generally trending towards the serious storylines and art styles that comic books in the US are associated with.

One comic was named Princess Reborn, and it was basically a dramatic superhero origin story. I'm not big on superheroes (the costumes, the cheesy names, etc. are not my style), but regular people with superpowers having to deal with the danger in their lives and discovering who and what they really are - that was more my thing. I read the first issue of Princess Reborn and I liked it. Why not make a movie out of that? I guess it didn't sell.

It's a shame they basically stopped advertising the variety of other products they had, because I thought the idea of a work-for-hire comic book and movie company was really neat. Yet, ironically, they're almost a victim of their own success. The success of a specific one of their products overshadowed all others (likely combined), and boom - instant change of business model. It's no longer "look at these comics we sell! We'll even make your comics and movies for you!" Instead, it's "here's Paula Peril! Read the comics, watch the movies!" Something once unique transformed into a one-note company riding on their flagship product.

Still, I must also congratulate them. And whoever commissioned Paula Peril in the first place, for having tapped into what apparently was a large enough market to become successful off of. Dang.

Okay, so tonight we're kicking things off with the heartwarming story of the time Sonic the Hedgehog befriended a physically disabled girl, in Sonic X. Then it's a zombie apocalypse-themed episode of Spooksville. No-one's done a zombie apocalypse before.

And then, it's our main feature, The Adventures of Paula Peril, starring a semi-famous Wonder Woman cosplayer now playing the role of an indie comic character repeatedly commissioned by the odd little outfit Atlantis Studios. What happens when you commission a work-for-hire company to make your comics over and over again? Well, what happens when the comics are actually relatively popular? They get made into short films, which do so well that they result in this full-length film. So hey why not.

Come on in and join the indie fun! http://cytu.be/r/TroperCoven

~Bisected8 ~Morgikit ~lewattoo ~Noaqiyeum ~FingerPuppet ~CompletelyNormalGuy ~TAPETRVE ~Rockonman ~SpaceWolf ~PresidentStalkeyes ~RandomWriter413 ~Sedmikrasky ~cake1 ~spacealien ~MapleSamurai ~Aldo930

It starts with moving comic book images, then the live action element begins with some kung fu fighting. It's fast-moving cheese. Or to quote a Troper in the group, it has a lot of energy, but also a lot of flaws. That's basically my opinion as well.

She's Budget Lara Croft alright. She knows all sorts of history and sociology and the like. She can fight. She can scale buildings. There's a bit of inconsistency though; it starts with her kung fu fighting, but in a later scene, two men spot her and she just runs rather than try to fight them off.

Each segment was directed by a different director, and it shows. One of the directors hammed up the corniness a bit, complete with a villain who likes to S-P-E-L-L random words for some R-E-A-S-O-N. (Okay, it turned out to be a dream sequence by the guy who has a crush on Paula.) And one story involves a frigging ghost.

It got a unanimous ★★ from all our viewers. Really surprised, honestly, but apparently we all liked it enough to elevate it to a 2. Nicely keeps up with my average.

Finally! After trying to find out who the hell created Paula Peril, I found my answer and an interview to go with it. James Watson, the creator, didn't commission Paula Peril, but instead specifically worked for Atlantis Studios.

Also, apparently he has a reputation for ripping people off. A more personal story of a ripoff.

A quote from the personal story of being ripped off:

Anyway, back to the interview with James about how Paula Peril got created:

So Valerie Perez was a Lara Croft cosplayer too, and Lara partly inspired Paula Peril. No shit. I could totally see that. And apparently Paula Peril's creator is a bit of an asshole.

edited 25th Aug '16 7:36:40 PM by BonsaiForest

It's the truth. I always thought there was something weird about someone starting up a production business to churn out short films by commission and basing his operations in the middle of Texas. Looking back at the studio's website now, though, it seems they've finally scrapped the entire production-studio-for-hire business to focus squarely on Paula Peril bondage fantasies.

Anyway, Oh, Ho-Oh-HOOOOOooooooooooo...

This Kung Fu Friday, Gary Daniels is given another go on our playlist as he gets his hands dirty with some stock villains in Africa who are in the business of smuggling ivory, diamonds, drugs... and even people.

For some reason, this whole thing was given the strange, seemingly unrelated title Witness to a Kill...

Some more observations on the movie:

Yes, it's very clear that Paula's main feature is to become a damsel in distress. This is despite her scaling buildings, performing kung fu moves and fighting off waves of enemies (a skill she randomly has or doesn't have), and having tremendous knowledge of history and sociology and geography. She's Lara Croft crossed with Lois Lane, as I've said before, and this movie makes that even more clear.

Yet she either gets chased and caught, gets suddenly surprised and chloroformed, gets a Tap on the Head (in some cases, so does her captor), etc. and has to be rescued, sometimes by her nerdy coworker who has a crush on her. (The character's creator has also stated that if he worked with her, he'd have a crush on her. Make whatever you will of that statement.)

The movie doesn't follow a super-strict formula thankfully, and does vary up the action and storytelling, but it does get ridiculous when one of the villains fucking ties her to train tracks, because that old-school cliché just needed to appear for some reason. Like, really? You couldn't come up with something that followed the story flow more naturally? Honestly, seeing some of the dumb ways Paula gets captured at times annoyed me. Why did she lose her kung fu ability when an elevator with two men out to get her opens up, and rather than fight them, she simply runs? Yes, I know, to make her a damsel in distress, but from a storytelling perspective, it's offensively stupid. From a characterization perspective, it offensively clashes with previous things we've seen her do.

One troper remarked that the movie's missteps were fascinating to watch, while still voting it a 2. They are indeed. It has uneven pacing, a mixture of scenes that are fun to watch and scenes that are just embarrassing, some fun ideas at times (I liked seeing her scale the building, and her coworker freaking out, "Did you just jump off a building?!"), and sometimes flawed execution of those ideas. The fight choreography ranges from not bad, to downright dumb (just look at how effortlessly she flips some of her attackers onto the ground, when it's obvious the actors simply rolled when she grabbed their hand).

I think the movie could honestly have used some more Ham and Cheese. It's got plenty of cheese; it needed a bit more ham.

The BDSM equivalent of Quentin Tarantino framing scenes around Uma Thurman's feet.

edited 26th Aug '16 12:10:30 PM by SeanMurrayI

@Tonight's movie: "Strong. Captain Strong. From 'Muric - I mean Grett Britten."

Oh, Ho-Oh-HOOOOOOooooooo...

Kung Fu Friday kicks off now with more mXc gag-dubbing and the usual Godfrey Ho bad-dubbing.

Then, at the top of the coming hour, Gary Daniels is a Witness to a Kill, whatever the hell that means.

Join us! http://cytu.be/r/TroperCoven

~lewattoo ~Noaqiyeum ~Finger Puppet ~Completely Normal Guy ~TAPETRVE ~Rockonman ~President Stalkeyes ~Sedmikrasky ~spacealien ~Mystic Eclectic ~Shippudentimes ~Space Wolf ~MapleSamurai ~colonelcathcart ~Kent Dawg 1 ~Quag15 ~pyrite

Have we ever done Enthiran, otherwise known as Robot, for Kung-Fu Fridays?

According to various links on the main TVT page:

It's the third most expensive film in Indian cinematic history.

It's the only film where visual effects wizard Stan Winston and choreography genius Yuen Woo Ping, longtime collaborator with Jet Li and the mastermind behind Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

It's also responsible for scenes like THIS

edited 26th Aug '16 7:54:54 PM by Shippudentimes

We typically don't go near Bollywood fare, only because it's difficult (if near impossible) to find one dubbed in English... and those movies typically run over two-and-a-half hours, often pushing closer to three hours (which this film is apparently no exception to).