DVD Review: Rifftrax Shorts Vol. 1 and 2 - Page 2

The Shorts - Volume Two

One Got Fat - It isn't actually about getting fat, but rather monkey-children riding around recklessly on their bikes. Okay, one of them actually is kind of fat...
Lunchroom Manners - Kids take it upon themselves to keep things civil in the lunchroom.
Each Child Is Different - But each child is equally screwed up.
Why Doesn't Cathy Eat Breakfast? / Petaluma Chicken - A double feature! Cathy doesn't eat breakfast and no ones knows why (and she won't say)! The brave, comely lasses of Petaluma build a bigger, better omelet!
Act Your Age - A boy builds complicated charts and graphs in an attempt to figure out his age. The janitor looks on with bemusement.
Safety: Harm Hides At Home - The main harm hiding in this short is the school crossing guard who becomes a "safety super hero" and randomly shows up in kids homes. Creepy crossing guards hide at home.
Coffee House Rendezvous - Coffee is the new swinging drink that all the hep cats are digging. Use it to caffeinate your next folk music night at church.
Are You Popular? - I think we both know the answer to that. Go and hide your shame.
Good Health Practices - Two kids with no parents showcase their new, healthy, kids-only utopia.

Video / Audio

Let's be clear, the video on this release looks downright awful. But to be even more clear, that's part of the charm. These are old educational films with all the sweeping grandeur and clarity you remember from the barely functional classroom film projector of your youth. There are often more scratches and debris marks on the film than there are people. Film breaks are common, and therapeutic. Out of sync audio disconnects you even further from reality, and warbly monophonic sound thankfully muffles the inane dialogue.

But the better comparison is to the files which the Rifftax guys have on their site. The download versions have been available for some time, and in various formats to suit your educational film-watching needs: whether on the go with your iPod, at home with a nice tumbler of bourbon, or alone in front of the ominous glow of your h4ck3r screen. Even though they've been generous with offering both divx and mpeg-2 files on the high end, they've still been noticeably blocky. The DVD version - barring everything I've already mentioned - at least gets us to as good as its gonna get, which quite frankly is just fine. The lack of visual and audio polish suits its purposes admirably.

Article Author: David R Perry

Lost somewhere in the rolling hills of Tennessee, David R Perry can occasionally be found doing dark, unspeakable things to words. Printed words, spoken words, electronically mangled words... really any kind but twittered words.

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