It gets even better: not only is no purchase necessary, but neither is any downloading or syncing. This riff comes with audio AND video in one tidy package, streaming at you courtesy Hulu. Check it out at RiffTrax.com. (Available in the USA only)

Very well, apparently, as RiffTrax has since expanded into a veritable empire of satire. There are now so many people and products under the RiffTrax umbrella, it's hard to keep up with them all. So, for those who are new to the scene or perhaps haven't been paying close attention, I offer this rundown of all RiffTrax has to offer:

RiffTrax: The mainstay of the service — audio commentary MP3s that you play along with your DVD, producing a MST3K-like experience — continues to relentlessly assault the best and worst of Hollywood. I have 30 of their 70+ recordings, and oddly, I've found that the better the film, the better the RiffTrax. For example, Transformers was such a miserable standalone experience that even RiffTrax's satire couldn't save it. But favorites have included The Sixth Sense — laughing at such a serious and macabre film was a truly odd experience — Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and Spider-Man 3. That third film I watched with someone who had never seen the film before. I asked him if RiffTrax distracted him from the core plot; he offered, "I highly recommend watching a movie you've never seen with the RiffTrax commentary. It's surprisingly easy to tune the voices out when you want to hear the movie. And the riffers do a fairly good job of not speaking over the more important dialogue."

RiffTrax Presents: As mentioned, RiffTrax was founded by former MST3K host Michael J. Nelson, who eventually added his former co-hosts Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett to the RiffTrax cast. For some reason, they've found the need to use this separate brand name, "RiffTrax Presents", for commentary provided without Mike. Usually these riffs are served by Kevin and Bill, but the occasional guest riffer, such as Mary Jo Pehl (Mrs. Forrester) or Matthew J. Elliott show up — though reception to that latter riffer has been less than stellar. By contrast, Kevin and Bill's take on Star Trek New Voyages: World Enough and Time was one of the best riffs I've enjoyed so far.

iRiffs: Continuing the trend of offering riffs by lesser-known personalities, iRiffs feature none of the MST3K talent but are instead provided by third parties through RiffTrax in a joint financial venture. I've not tried these riffs yet, though I'm curious to experience Speed, as it's written and performed by the same team that I previously heard do a live riffing of TRON.

RiffTrax On Demand: Throwbacks to MST3K, these public service announcements, usually B&W and about ten minutes long, sell for only $1 each. Best of all, the public-domain video is included, with no need to sync a separate MP3. The crew worked overtime to pump out a record-breaking ten shorts in the month of July, dubbed "Eat Our Shorts".

RiffTrax DIY: This free service (which I first blogged about a year ago yesterday) offered audio clips from Mike, Kevin, and Bill for users to mix into their favorite YouTube videos, thus producing custom homebrew riffs that nonetheless featured recognizable and talented voice acting. The site, which never left beta, is currently down, putting all its user-generated riffs behind closed doors — though at least one enterprising fan salvaged such work and imported it to YouTube. (Be sure to check out the Batman fan film Dead End) I hope to see RiffTrax DIY return soon with an improved interface and more functionality, including inbuilt import and export functions.

RiffTrax Live: This summer's ComicCon played host to a screening of Plan 9 From Outer Space for which Mike, Kevin, and Bill provided live commentary. The group is willing to reenact this showing, but there must be demand. I requested a Boston screening and was immediately placed on a mailing list for the coordinating group, Eventful.com. I removed myself from the list but checked on the results today: only nine other people have petitioned for a Boston screening. Maybe if there was an easier process for the fans to cast their votes?

RiffTrax Ringtones: The voices of Mike, Kevin, and Bill are now ringtones for your cellular phone or other mobile device. Since I own neither, and any sampling of the ringtones requires a purchase, I don't know just how darn cool these must be.

RiffTones: Now we know why this moniker wasn't used for the RiffTrax Ringtones. The RiffTones are what you get when Mike, Kevin, and Bill set their witty repartee to music. As part of a competition called "Masters of Song-Fu", they competed directly against Jonathan Coulton of "Still Alive" fame. Charged with producing "a song about the moon", both camps recorded tunes that are excellent in their own special ways. Encore, encore!

RiffTrax Blog: Once an outlet for only official announcements, the RiffTrax Blog is now a daily source of madness and mayhem for all things Swayze and bacony. Complete chaos and random mayhem, it is the best opportunity you have to engage this terrible trio directly, as they regularly respond to commenters and each other.

Riffstaurant: Just as Scott Adams manages Stacey's Café, so too is Mike Nelson branching into the food service industry. Instead of suggesting "Very good, sir," waiters (who are all named Mitchell) mock your ridiculous menu selections. Meals begin as the finest sirloin and is then butchered until it's little more than a Quarter Pounder. And you can expect nothing, from the kitchen to your seats to the revolving door, to actually work — no springs! … Okay, so there is no Riffstaurant. So sue me.

That's all from RiffTrax. But speaking of MST3K, that property is alive and well in home video format. MST3K: The Movie was re-released to DVD this past May, and a special collector's tin of assorted episodes releases this October, commemorating the show's 20th anniversary.

Finally, for all your ongoing RiffTrax and MST3K-related needs, check out Satellite News. Their daily blog follows the continuing careers of any and all MST3K alumni and also features regular trivia and discussions about favorite episodes. deep ape is a similar site and offers mostly the same news but with a smarmy spin; unfortunately, it is less consistent than Satellite News and lately not been updated in nearly a month.

Now, where's Torgo with my pizza…

Another such project featuring the talents of Michael J Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett is Max the Hero, a 12-minute animated cartoon currently playing online and at various festivals. Though all three actors lend their voice talents to this short, most comical is Bill Corbett playing the title character with the same blasé arrogance that made Crow T. Robot so irascibly lovable. Once Max's main plot starts to play out, there are some good lampoons of superheroes and fanboys, making the crude animation and somewhat crass opening sequence worth getting through.

Tip of the hat to deep ape, an all-MST3K, all-the-time blog. Surf over there, and to Satellite News, for news of other recent projects, revivals, and spin-offs featuring the stars and characters of Mystery Science Theater 3000 — including one that goes live today!

This weekend, RiffTrax presented its fans with a new gift: RiffTrax DIY. Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett have recorded hundreds of sound clips that you can drag and drop to any time index in any video, using their Web-based editing tool. This free product creates the potential for fans to apply the style and wit of Mike, Kevin, and Bill to design MST3K-style parodies of any practically video in existence! Budding artists have already used it to riff on everything from Batman & Robin to Sailor Moon. (Me, I just used it to mock my brother) Any riff made through September 6th is also eligible for fantastic prizes!

The genius of the tool is that it can import any YouTube video. In fact, this is required to use RiffTrax DIY, as stated in their FAQ: "RiffTrax DIY does not store or host any videos. All videos are provided courtesy of other websites. If you wish to Riff your own video, you need to host it on YouTube and come back to RiffTrax DIY with the URL." Apparently, what RiffTrax does is save your custom audio overlays and play them with someone else's video track — just like a real RiffTrax! And completely free of copyright infringement, too. The downside is that the site currently does not check to see if a video has any riffs enabled before saving it to the DIY directory, creating the potential for the site to become cluttered with YouTubers looking for a new distribution channel.

The site is currently in beta. The designers are aware of bugs such as the longer riffs cutting off during preview; also, I hope in later versions, watching your own movies when logged in as yourself will not count toward its number of views. More sound effects are also coming, which is great: even the hundreds currently available don't take long to hear.

Features still to come include the ability to upload your own audio riffs, and to export your final product. I question the value of either of these options. First, anyone who can record and upload their own audio probably has the hardware and software to be doing their own editing, without the need for RiffTrax DIY. Second, YouTube doesn't allow video exportation; why should RiffTrax? Not only that, but I'm such a fan of RiffTrax that I want people to have to go to this site to watch these riffs. The traffic is well-deserved!

So go ahead and get riffing — and reply here with your favorites!

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Considered "the zenith of the Trek feature films", I agree this film began the even-numbered successes that persisted until Nemesis. The tie-in to the original series, Ricardo Montalban as the villain, and the ending were all fantastic facets… but for all that, I still think I prefer the more lighthearted The Voyage Home.

Blade Runner
I confess that the one time I tried watching this was a decade ago and I just couldn't get into it; I turned it off probably before it got interesting. (Confession #2: I was bored by Tolkien's books, too.) Without lambasting me, could someone tell me what I'm missing?

TRON
What more can I say about this film, other than my previous recollections and my own 25th anniversary commemoration? Though I do wish I could combine this film with one of my favorite geek shows:

In 2004, I was witness to a theatrical screening of TRON as Chris Hanel (occasionally of TheForce.net and The Truly Dangerous Company; now of Geekza) and his cronies performed a live MST3K lampoon. I've been wanting to get my hands on that script ever since. Considering his podcast recently interviewed Mike Nelson of RiffTrax, I'd think some sort of collaborative MP3 should be possible.

The Dark Crystal
I haven't seen this film since my age could be counted without taking off my shoes. My parents thought this Muppet movie perfectly palatable to a young, impressionable mind (similar to their misinformed opinion on Watership Down: "Oh, a cartoon about talking bunnies!"). In hindsight, The Dark Crystal may've been one of the films that engendered my preference for dark, edgy stories. It's a wonder my mother didn't worry when her third-grade son brought home from the library every book he could find on vampires and werewolves; nowadays, that'd be grounds to see the school counselor. (Course, in my day, schools didn't have counselors…)

Look for a sequel next year.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Another movie not seen in a score of years — though anything scored by local-boy-done-good John Williams is okay by me. Funny that Drew Barrymore went on to become a household name (and one of my co-stars); whereas Elliott did not. Who even knows the actor's name? (Psst — it's Henry Thomas.) Too bad — he's still quite a prolific actor.

Conan the Barbarian
I've not read Robert E. Howard's original pulp series, nor the Marvel comic books, both of which this Arnold Schwarzenegger film is based on. But I'll be in the minority of preferring the film's sequel, Conan the Destroyer, to the original; I found the follow-up to be a more classic Dungeons & Dragons romp.

Either way, the film's success warranted slapping its name on an otherwise unrelated gaming property. Conan: Hall of Volta supplied many happy hours of Apple II gaming.

Also featured in Geek Monthly but which I've never seen:

• Poltergeist
• Cat People
• The Thing
• The Road Warrior

And other anniversaries this year:

• Close Encounters of the Third Kind: 30 years
• Masters of the Universe: 20 years
• Robocop: 20 years
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: 20 years

What films or occasions are you observing this year?

Even constrained by copyrights and other legalities, the show trashed enough duds to last ten memorable years. It's now been eight years that we've been without MST3K. Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese and Kevin Murphy's A Year at the Movies were great books — but they still left me wistful for the days of yesteryear.

Fortunately, the Best Brains crew reunited in 2006 to launch RiffTrax. For $3/pop, they'll sell you an MP3 to play alongside a DVD that you provide. Since RiffTrax isn't selling the actual movies, there's no licensing fees, thus opening a trove of previously untouchable titles for them to mock.

This was how I recently watched X-Men (click for sample) and The Matrix. My DVD's audio output piped into 5.1 surround sound, and iTunes connected to the normally-silent TV speakers. There was an occasional syncing issue (the movie and MP3 must be started at the same time; the MP3 provides regular cues to verify this synchronicity) — some my fault, some not — but otherwise, the setup was easy to establish.

The concept behind it all, however, could potentially be flawed: these are not necessarily bad films the expatriates of the Satellite of Love are now targetting. Despite having seen both films multiple times, I was more drawn to the actions of the X-Men than I was the verbiage of the peanut gallery. If we were watching Manos, Hand of Fate, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, or X-Men 3, I'd not be terribly vested in the cinematic travesty to which I would otherwise never expose myself. But the original?

Fortunately, I had far fewer compunctions in watching The Matrix. This extremely entertaining film is, like Independence Day, best watched with the brain turned off. And who can't laugh at Keanu Reeves and his string of bombs? Were I not hesitant to disrupt the timing between the MP3 and DVD, I would've paused to provide enough time to finish laughing before the next witticism was unerringly delivered.

RiffTrax is not MST3K: it has the same potential, but in a completely new medium. Please do check them out; new MP3s are released on a regular basis.

Incidentally, TeeVee.org, a blog and podcast, has an audio interview with Mike Nelson (also available in transcript form), in which Mike talks about MST3K, RiffTrax, and more. I was pleasantly surprised that one of his own admissions could've come from my own mouth:

I don't have TV, and I haven't had TV for years… But I do watch TV in that all the good stuff — and a lot of bad stuff — is available on DVD… I'm on, like, a large time delay, where people are excited and talking about a certain show, and then two years later I'll go, "Hey, have you seen this show?" Because I'm just now watching it on DVD… I'm on an extreme-delayed TiVo system, is basically how I look at it.

I ask you: could I be in better company?