Futurama Returns!

Random BedHead Ed writes "Good news everyone! After a five year vanishing act the sci-fi spoof Futurama returned this week with a direct-to-DVD feature. Wired has an article about its return, including the story of the show's origins, a behind the scenes gallery, interviews with creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, and some interesting trivia. For example, did you know the ship has an overbite like a Simpson's character? Or that the show's title is taken from an exhibition at the 1939 Worlds Fair?." We just talked about this a bit the other day, too, in reference to a great interview on TVSquad.

Great show, decent movie

[Synesthesiatic]

One thing I've realized about Futurama is that, unlike most "adult cartoons," it actually has a lot of heart. The episodes about Fry's brother, his dog, Lela's parents, and of course the whole Lela and Fry subplot are quite sweet, and you it actually give a crap about the loserish characters.

As for the movie, the story wasn't amazing, but there was a huge amount of fan service in it. To the point where only an avid fan could really appreciate it. I was so overjoyed to see new content that it was pretty easy to overlook the flaws.

Hard to Find

[CheshireCatCO]

Is anyone else having a helluva time getting a copy? I went to three stores in Boulder, CO on Wednesday. All had carried it, but were sold out (and I heard that a fourth was in the same boat). Is this a local phenomenon or is this just selling that well? If so, excellent... except the part where I can't get a copy.

Re:Great show, decent movie

[explosivejared]

Lela and Fry subplot are quite sweet

I say this with all seriousness! It is one of the greatest "romances" I can remember in any show, movie, what have you. The show actually made me care about a love subplot, and that never happens. It was so painful for the both of them, and as a typical nerd, I related to it so much. It was such a funny yet touching ride. I know this offtopic as opposed to the random show references (I'm guilty of doing that with the first post already), but I am completely serious. One of the best fictional "romances" ever! Period.

The Secret to Futurama's success

[ArcherB]

From TFA Groening says:

"The operating principle of Futurama was that you can do a joke that 1percent of the audience gets, as long as it doesn't derail the enjoyment of the mass audience," Cohen says. "And that 1 percent becomes a fan for life."

You also see the same formula in Dennis Miller's material. You only get 1/5 of the jokes, but that one make you feel so smart that you become a fan.

I didn't care much for Futurama until one night, I was watching an episode where Bender jumped off a "See where the stars live" tour bus and kept knocking on Calculon's door. Finally, after the third or forth time, Calculon asked him, "Do you have an extra goto ten line?"

I've been a fan ever since.

Re:I downloaded it

[lucas teh geek]

I downloaded it too, but I live in Australia. they dont even have a release date set here (region 4) yet. stupid media companies and they archaic "regions". if you dont want to sell it to me when it comes out, dont expect me to buy it a year later when you decide my region can finally have it.

Re:When's the next one come out?

[nine-times]

Yeah, I read elsewhere that the movie was created in the first place to be easily edited down into 4 episodes (but they tried not to be too obvious) because it will actually air on Comedy Central as the first 4 episodes in a new season. They'll have enough new episodes to fill out the rest of the season, and if its viewership is good, it could be picked up as a normal show again (by Comedy Central this time).

Re:Forget the DVD!

[fuzzix]

Okay, leaving tongue-in-cheek mode to make a technical point: Back in the VHS days, you had to translate media between PAL and NTSC. Today, there's no reason a DVD player can't handle both. The DVD players can already rescale the video, frame rate no longer has anything to do with "tracking" or "synching." So the PAL -vs- NTSC excuse doesn't hold water any more. Especially since that conversion can be done in real time on a midrange PC these days.

Most people will still have region locked players. Here in Ireland it's more expensive to buy a region locked player than an evil region free mpeg4 player (about 50 euro last I saw) but most made their purchase a couple years back when this wasn't the case.

So, 2008? They must be encoding the region 2 version on an Oric 1 from tape.

An aside, I bought a region 2 uncut Evil Dead box set some years back (on the cheap - I'm not really the boxed set sort but this was Evil Dead...) I was perplexed by the length of the three films... each was about 3-4 minutes short. "Hmmm... the pencil in the ankle scene is intact... there's the tree doing its thing... what's missing?". I got my clue when Bruce's "Groovy" in ED2 was a little higher pitch than I remember. The ~24 frames NTSC version was "accelerated" to 25 frames - when I refactored the framerate the movies matched the uncut lengths exactly. How common is it to just squish the movie rather than recoding it to the correct pitch/length?

Re:Great show, decent movie

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll never watch "Jurassic Bark" again. Saddest. Ending. EVER.

Strange -- that's precisely the reason why I watch such things *more* often. Entertainment for me is that which inspires strong emotion.

Re:binary (possible spoiler-warning)

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, it's a ascii bender! Straight ON! EVEN BETTER!

Re:Forget the DVD!

[sortius_nod]

actually, it's no loss for the makers of Futurama. They even aknowledge the fact it will be pirated - to be honest, without it being downloadable (pirated or not) Futurama would have nowhere near the fanbase.

I personally know of at least 10 people who would never have seen futurama if I haddn't given them copies or reccomended they download it. Because of Fox's retarded attitude towards Futurama when it was being aired for the first time, it seems that most people remembered it as "that show that the dude who did The Simpsons made... gotta love the robot" and that's pretty much it. Without being given copies to watch they would never have become fans.

I downloaded it, sure, I also downloaded, then bought, all 4 previous seasons. I have every intention of buying it when it comes out here in Australia, but we're usually behind the US and the UK, so I don't see us getting it until 2009.