Cinemassacre Productions (full name Cinemassacre Productions, LLC) is an American film production company run by James Rolfe and Mike Matei. Cinemassacre focuses on independent filmmaking and film and video game reviews by Rolfe and its website, Cinemassacre.com, primarily hosts the web shows The Angry Video Game Nerd, Cinemassacre's Monster Madness and Board James. The website was launched in 2000.
Name
The creator of the website, James Rolfe, says the name Cinemassacre "refers to the efficient way in which my films are made, without a ton of equipment or pre-production meetings, ignoring all the extraneous things that happen behind the camera, when all that matters is what comes up on the screen in the end." While Rolfe is a fan of horror films, he says "massacre" has no relation to that, and he doesn't work only with the horror genre.
History
Cinemassacre.com was launched in 2000, edited and created by James Rolfe, and had an extremely simple layout. Its first version, which lasted 3 years, the only content available on the website was a filmography list and a gallery of film stills from scenes of films done by Rolfe. Many of the videos on Cinemassacre such as movie reviews, Top 10's and Monster Madness are edited by Rolfe's partner Mike Matei.
In 2003, a new website was created, featuring videos as QuickTime files. In 2006 Mike Matei created the YouTube account JamesNintendoNerd, another source of videos besides the official website. In 2008, alongside a collaboration with Mike Matei and another web designer, a new layout for Cinemassacre was released. One of the innovations for the new versions were the comments section and blog posts. In 2010, the website was again updated.
The current Cinemassacre.com was launched on January 1, 2013, as a celebration of the New Year of 2013. As stated by James, the site's current filmography count is over 400 videos.
Shows and Films
The website features web series created by James Rolfe, most popularly, The Angry Video Game Nerd, and also Board James and Monster Madness, a Halloween-themed review series launched every October, which consists of a Horror movie review released every day of the month. The website also shows other works of Rolfe, such as films directed, produced and edited by him. Below is a list of the main shows:
- The Angry Video Game Nerd (2004; 2006â€"present) - Web series of comedic retrogaming video reviews created by and starring James Rolfe. The show's format revolves around his review of old, typically unsuccessful video games which are deemed to be of particularly low-quality, unfair difficulty, or poor design. The "Nerd" character is a short-tempered and foul-mouthed video game fanatic. He derives comic appeal from excessive and inventive use of anger, profanity, and habitual consumption of alcohol while reviewing video games. The series began as a feature on YouTube and Cinemassacre and later became a program on ScrewAttack before moving to GameTrailers exclusively. The show was renamed The Angry Video Game Nerd to prevent any trademark issues with Nintendo and since he also reviews games from non-Nintendo consoles by Atari and Sega. A feature-length film, Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie, was released in 2014.
- Monster Madness (2007â€"present) - a web series in which Rolfe celebrates the Halloween season by reviewing one horror film (or more) on each day of October. The series has inspired Disneycember, in which fellow reviewer Doug Walker looks at the majority of Disney's animated, computer-animated, and live-action films. The marathon first began in October 2007, and has continued annually ever since. The series is edited by Mike Matei. The original thirty-one reviews followed the history of horror films. The second marathon featured the entries in the Godzilla franchise, and the third marathon returned to basics, reviewing horror films. The fourth marathon was a series of reviews of cult horror films, the fifth followed the Frankenstein (film series), Hammer Dracula, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween franchises. The sixth rendition focused on horror films produced in the 1980s, and was cut short to only sixteen reviews rather than thirty-one due to the production of Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie. The seventh marathon followed the Mummy, Hammer Frankenstein, Gamera, Alien, and Dead franchises. The eighth marathon featured back to basics, with simple movie reviews and no theme. Instead, a completely random free-for-all reviews.
- James and Mike Mondays (2012â€"present) - Rolfe and friend Mike Matei play games and discuss them while playing. Many games were originally intended for episodes of The Angry Video Game Nerd, but Rolfe found them not suitable as "nerd material" for various reasons. Although the series does focus on older games like the AVGN series, it is not limited to them and Rolfe and Matei have focused on newer games and consoles as well. This series has developed its own fan following, and is highly popular on the web, attracting hundreds of thousands of views weekly, with some videos in the millions. Sometimes a guest will join Rolfe and Matei; these have included Pat "the NES Punk" Contri, who has appeared with the Nerd in several crossovers of their two series; Kevin Finn, who has appeared in several AVGN episodes and who co-wrote, co-produced, and co-directed the movie based on the Nerd series; and Brendan Castner, a friend of Rolfe's who is a singer/comedian who performs as "Bootsy Spankins, P.I.". The series was created by Mike Matei and is also edited by Matei.
- Board James (2009â€"2013) - Rolfe focuses on another hobby of his, collecting board games. While game choices commonly come down to adventure titles such as Key to the Kingdom and Dragon Strike, famous games such as Mouse Trap and LIFE have also been shown on the show. Others episodes, such as Dream Phone and Mr. Bucket, were parodies of the horror genre of film. Mike Matei is frequently featured in this series as "Motherfucker Mike", as is Bootsy Spankins, who provides music for some of the episodes and appears as the character "Bad Luck Bootsy", an accident prone individual who always screws up the game when he plays with them, to the point where he has lost an eye playing Tornado Rex, burned his face with hot coffee while playing Donut Disaster, and ruined James' Splat! game by vomiting all over the board, the result of him refusing to stop eating Play-Doh. To distinguish his character in this series from the Nerd character, Board James always wears a baseball cap and a T-shirt with no glasses.
- You Know What's Bullshit (2007â€"2009, 2011â€"2012, 2014-present) - Rolfe talks about everyday things which greatly annoy him, such as pennies, shoelaces, microwaves, and the postal service. However, Rolfe has also filmed episodes which focus on jokes instead of things that actually upset him, such as grass (due to grass being the food that cows normally consume, which results in the cows leaving deposits of manure, which makes the title of the series literal) and amps that don't go to the volume of 11 (a reference to one of Rolfe's favorite films, This Is Spinal Tap). Rolfe calls this character the Bullshit Man, a man with a face that is "made of bullshit" (in actuality, Rolfe in a mask that looks like the wearer has bovine feces on his face). You Know What's Bullshit episodes have appeared sporadically over the years, with three cycles. The most recent cycle of six episodes premiered on November 12, 2014, with a newly re-animated opening; the opening sequence, in either case, features a bull defecating and the title of the show immediately folllowing.
Below is a list of films by James Rolfe:
- Jersey Odysseys: Legend of the Blue Hole (2004) - Short film by Rolfe inspired by the New Jersey Devil urban legend. The short film was produced at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where James went to college for filmmaking.
- The Deader The Better (2005) - Short film by Rolfe as an homage to the Universal Monster classics and zombie films like Night of the Living Dead. This was the last Cinemassacre film made before AVGN.
- Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie (2014) - An independent film based on The Angry Video Game Nerd. Rolfe produced and directed the film and co-wrote it as well as starring in it. The film was released in 2014 with limited releases at film and has since been released on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital Download. The budget of the film came entirely from fan donations. The story centers around the alleged (and since confirmed) burial of over 1 million copies of the proclaimed "worst video game of all time", E.T. for the Atari 2600, as The Nerd embarks on a quest to prove that there is nothing buried there after being pressured by fans to review the video game. Meanwhile, he is being pursued by federal authorities who believe he is investigating Area 51 and the crash of an unidentified flying object.
References
External links
- Official website
- Filmography