STREET FIGHTER FROM "THE CELLULOID SHINOBI'S"
NTSC
PAL
RIFF
VOD
iRIFF BY: The Celluoid Shinobi's (Created November 7, 2008)
The Writer of RIDING WITH DEATH Directs his first and last Video Game Movie with STREET FIGHTER. Starring Jean Claude Van Damne as the guy from Universial Soldier and Raul Juila as the guy from Overdrawn at the Memory bank... with super powers! Also Starring a bunch of TV actors and Wal Mart Greeters cosplaying as their favorite Street Fighter 2 Characters!













Re: The Celluoid Shinobi's
I didn't see any connection with Steven E. de Souza and "Riding with Death." Did I miss something?" -----------------
Steven E. de Souza did write 3 episodes of "Gemini Man", but not any of the 2 episodes that got edited together for "Riding with Death"
A fun but uneven riff.
After reading through the praise and criticism from earlier reviews, I decided to give this one a shot since I already owned the DVD (oops, did I just type that?) and I didn't have any other expenses to worry about after the standard $2.99 charge. (BTW, I researched IMDB and I didn't see any connection with Steven E. de Souza and "Riding with Death." Did I miss something?)
----------The riff was a hit-and-miss experience. I'll talk about the negative stuff first just to get that out of the way.
----- Too many variations of "this movie sucks." This is not just a criticism for the Shinobis, it's a criticism of all rifftrax in general. This even got annoying on certain MST3K episodes. Let me decide if a movie is good or bad. I buy riffs for the jokes, not to hear a bash-fest.
------ More synch lines would help. This may be a tough riff to get back into if you're forced to pause in order to answer the phone. I recall only four or five synch lines being used for this 100 minute feature.
------- The timing of the lines could have used some tweaking. There was a bit too much dialogue being talked over and too many pauses that were left alone. I was getting the impression that this track was rushed out in order to compete with the other iriffs on the launch date.
---------And now for the positive stuff.
-------- Despite some jokes that missed the mark and the times they talked without even having one, it did have some clever moments that caused me to laugh out loud a few times. I especially enjoyed it whenever they repeated one of Van Damme's lines and made it sound like he said something totally ridiculous (or more ridiculous).
---------- I liked the style of riffing. It was very laid back in a Beavis and Butt-Head way. I actually found it to be a nice change of pace from the "full assault, leave no dead spaces" style that we're accustomed to hearing. These guys were definitely having fun recording the track, so it was hard not to have fun listening to them. Also, they have great voice talents for this sort of thing and they did a good job of modifying their voices to imitate each character that was on screen. The Zangief impressions were especially funny.
-----------Contrary to another comment, I had no issues with the audio at all. The hiss was only noticeable to me when I was looking for it. Otherwise, I was lost in "riff" world, just as I am with Mike Nelson's work.
----------- Also contrary to a previous reviewer, I thought this was a very good choice for a riffing project. Despite the fact that the movie didn't take itself seriously, the countless cheesy moments made up for that. To me, the cheese factor is more important than the seriousness factor because cheese offers more opportunity for laughs.
--------------Overall, I enjoyed this track and I will keep an eye on the Shinobis' future projects. I hope these guys continue to work hard and improve themselves because they have a lot of potential. It gets a 3 out of 5 from me. I would recommend it if you can obtain the DVD for a cheap price and if you can tolerate a slower paced style of riffing.
Good first-effort, with some rough edges
There are a number of good riffs in this, but the track suffered from being too quiet (particularly since the movie is rather noisy). And if you turn up the volume enough, you then find there was also some kind of problem with whatever audio setup they were using. In some places the hiss is very noticeable (to me at least), and what's more is you can hear them turn on their audio (as the hiss arrives), then a second later they do the riff for the scene, and then after the riff you can tell exactly when they turn off the audio as the hiss instantly stops. That just makes the hiss more noticeable. ___p___
A tradition with riff tracks is to have someone fill the "Disembaudio" role, and the Celluloid Shinobi did that with one of the riffers matching some of the lines in the movie in his normal voice. This does not work well. In my case, I did have the riff-track playing ahead of the movie, so when he said "Some line from the movie", I thought it was a riff and not a sync-point. So I'm sitting there thinking "Gee, that riff wasn't funny at all", and then of course I didn't notice that some character in the movie was now saying the exact same line. The movie-syncing voice really needs to be something distinctive. ___p___
They also picked a movie which is not taking itself seriously in the first place, which makes it less appealing as a target for riffing. The movie is certainly bad in places, and the dialogue rather absurd in others. But the movie also has multiple "comic relief" characters, and spends a lot the time winking at the audience. It's one of those movies which is trying to be hip and funny, but often doesn't quite make it. And as many MST3k writers have mentioned in various interviews, you can't make a good riff track by saying "That's not funny" every 5 minutes. The Celluloid Shinobi's did not make that mistake, but it still means the movie isn't as good a target for riffing as many others. ___p___
The result (of the movie with the riff added) was mildly amusing, but overall I'd say it was weak. I hate to say that for any of these iRiffs, as I know all the riffing-groups are excited to do their tracks and trying to do a good job. The CS's did have some good lines, and I suspect that future riff tracks will fix some of the technical issues they had when making this one. But I'll have to say I'd rate this as a "3", in fairness to the tracks where I've given 4's or 5's.
A Great Go of Street Fighter the Movie.
I was unshure about watching this after I saw the preeview but I gave it a go and was happy with what I got. To put it mildly I was ROTFLOL all over the place. I highly reccomend it.