Kevin Smith is gonna be on Newsnight Review tonight with Kirsty Wark. Kirsty Wark is a celebrity Killie fan of sorts. Think they are going to discuss the rise of cult fiction to mainstream or some other such stuff. if your in Britain you can watch it on TV realtime tonight or online on the iplayer for a week after or if your not in the UK you can do whatever your (illegal?) thing is to watch it.
Me, i am getting it taped, i will see it in 3 weeks!
And so to the third of four Futurama "films", Bender's Game. As previously stated the main problem with Bender's Big Score and The Beast With A Billion Backs was that they felt episodic, mostly due to the fact that they really were four episodes each stuck together. As much as there's a common story running through them, the structure dipped and peaked as the episodes changed. Bender's Game goes a long way to fixing this, but still not completely.
Bender's Game is Futurama's stab at the fantasy genre adopting Dungeons And Dragons and Lord Of The Rings as its basis. What would be the last two episodes take place in a fantasy world and run like a full forty-five minute episode. What would be episode two leads up to how they get there. The wrangle comes with the first segment. It introduces some stuff integral to the plot but then takes what seems a pointless detour when the crew take part in a Demolition Derby. It feels a little unnecessary even if it does lead to a few things that kind of pay off, such as Leela's electro-shock collar, setting up her abhorrence of the violent being she becomes in the fantasy world.
I could go on, but Bender's Game is funny as hell, still as flawed as the other two Futurama "movies", and more than likely won't win any new converts. If you love Futurama then you know this is for you. If you don't, well it isn't.
So here we are with the second of four feature length Futuramas which may or may not signal the end of Matt Groening's best creation (yeah I said it!). After the relative choppiness of the first, Bender's Big Score, it's pleasing to say that The Beast With A Billion Backs manages to do the four episodes-as-one thing a little more successfully.
Basically the best point about Beast is that it's less cluttered. Instead of chucking in four episodes worth of ideas it feels more like an actual movie. There are still issues of course. As I said, it feels more like a movie than Big Score, but it still plays like a TV show doubling up. Also there's a startling abandonment of anything and everything that happened in Big Score even though it follows directly on from that film. One of the major criticisms of the first film was that it appeared to reset what had happened at the end of the shows original run. It was easy to dismiss as time having passed and it being a necessity for the plot, especially as the first film having a Fry/Leila angle made sense as this was the primary storyline in the show. It's a little more difficult to forgive this time around.
Beast opens with the rift that opened at the end of Big Score still there but in the time between all the Fry/Leila stuff is again dumped purely so the first half can be about Fry's new girlfriend and the fact that she's a slapper. This is essentially a plot device to drive the rest of the story. Thankfully the second half gets it right. What starts out as your typical pod-people style sci-fi/horror takes an almighty twist when the real motivation of the beast from the rift is revealed. this leads to one of those wonderfully bizarre storylines that Futurama used to excel at. To reveal it would be unfair.
What is frustrating about Beast With A Billion Backs is that in many ways it's better than Bender's Big Score. As per usual the gags, both spoken and visual, are inspired and the invention of the people involved is an absolute joy. But thanks to an unevenness caused by the first half it still lacks something of the brilliance of the show at its peak. It's still great, and fans of Futurama should love it, but like Groening's other creation's attempt at feature length it somehow doesn't quite work. Maybe watching it split up like four episodes is the way to do it.
Yeah I know this should be on The NHOJ but I'm not talking about Baseball as good as it is, I'm talking about five's, what happened to the capital letter folks?, excellent show that features the live games.
For over a decade now host Jonny Gould and a rotation of cracking pundits have tirelessly brought British terrestrial viewers the game live. The show is a combination of hard facts for those more accustomed to the game and tutorials for those that aren't. Thankfully thanks to the people involved this is in no way dry, but rather one of the funniest shows on TV at times. This is down not only to the very funny people, comedian Phil Jupitus has joined this year to add to the laughs, but the general tone of the show.
Gould is the greatest asset, a host who seems to never quite have a grip on the situation but somehow always stumbles through. It's actually mesmerising to watch. He also is one cheesy guy, in fact if he ever does a movie he's getting made a Splice Hero of Cheese instantly, meaning that he's an easy target for a slagging from his wingmen and producer. But he always takes it on the chin and gets them back. The producer Eric gets ripped to shreds constantly.
But that's what's so great about it. it's a group of people having a great time it just so happens that they're not just hosting a live telly programme but also showcasing live sport at the same time. This relaxed feel allows you to become drawn in very easily, either through emailing the show, going on the forums or playing the fantasy baseball game that ensnares Gould worse than anyone every year. Even if you don't, just being able to laugh at the in jokes makes you feel a part of something, call it a cult TV fanship if you will.
In all honesty I can't think of a better way to promote the game in this country than this show. Keep up the good work boys!
I know it's really just a few episodes stuck together and plopped out by Fox just like the Family Guy "movie" but Futurama's back so wheesht and just accept it as a great Xmas present. And there's another three to come!
See the excitement about this comes from the fact that when Futurama was on the air it trumped the four adjacent seasons of The Simpsons. The Simpsons has continued to nose dive since then but has remained popular leading to the movie version, a more in depth review coming with the release of the DVD I promise. Futurama suffered from not just being The Simpsons and so essentially flopped leading to cancellation before syndication ratings and the Family Guy resurgence led Fox to believe that it should be resurrected. The motivation was in no way about money of course (ahem) but who cares as Futurama's back for the time being.
It would be churlish to compare this to The Simpsons Movie, as I said at the top there, this isn't really a movie at all but four episodes of the same storyline stuck together. Of course this is a weakness of the film. it feels like four episodes with clear cliffhanger moments and changes in plotlines coming very quickly. As a result it's very much like me after Xmas dinner, bloated and fit to burst. There's so much going on, mainly thanks to a time travel plotline that's baffling in its intricacy, coupled with so many nods to previous episodes for the fans, that it's all a bit much to take in at first.
Of course all of those nods are very welcome as a fan. Many a little detail is explained and new perspectives are opened up much like they were in all of those Fry and the Nibblonian episodes. And the storyline is pretty damn good, the extra time gives it a chance to develop in a way that it couldn't have over twenty minutes. Plus every character you want is in there somewhere, in a way where they at least get something, unlike The Simpsons Movie. And most importantly, it's as funny as ever.
No matter the flaws, and the makers admit that they did struggle thanks to having never written a movie before in the DVD commentary, this is Futurama. On other words it's brilliant and will reward many viewings. It serves up everything you could want and any sense of disappointment really comes from the fact that Futurama served up such a high level of quality over its run that four years of expectation could never really be met. In time this will get the credit it deserves and it bodes well for the other movies. Any fears about a canceled show coming back brought on by the fact that Family Guy's been in the main shite since it came back can be put to rest.
So I've just finished watching every episode of Mystery Science theater 3000. That's a great number of episodes. Just shy of two hundred. "What's the big deal?" I hear you ask, and by you I mean the voices in my head. Don't worry, they're helpful. They ask the questions that need asking, or tell me that the jumper I'm wearing makes me look like a nonce. I digress, the big deal lies in the fact that this feat took just shy of two years thanks to a cap placed by me on myself only watching two episodes per week to avoid burnout. You see for those that don't know MST3K, as we in the "biz", and by "biz" I mean we who watch it and aren't actually in any sort of business as such, call it, the show lasts ninety minutes an episode and features a bloke and some puppet robots watching truly awful films. Of course that means anyone watching it is watching someone watch a film that's not very good. I'm not explaining it well but suffice to say it's like a DVD commentary that takes the piss out of movies that deserve to have their urine extracted. And thanks to the awfulness of the movies and the sheer volume of witty one-liners it can become quite exhausting watching it non-stop.
So I started on New Year's Day 2006 and finished on November 14 2007. Eleven seasons worth of bad movies and funny quips. It's a huge undertaking in many ways and something that all fans of the show should do. Why? In a word evolution. It develops an understanding as to how this wonderfully odd show came into being and developed into one of the funniest things ever made. From those baby steps of the KTMA years (Season Zero) as the performers improvise through movies they haven't even watched, fine tuning the type of humour and the characters, through the tentative steps of scripting the show in Season 1 before everything falls into place in Season 2 and sets the show running for the "glory years" (Seasons 3 - 7). Then of course there is the decline that the Sci-fi era (Seasons 8 - 10) exhibits. In these final days it is a show running out of steam, being slowly crushed under the weight of burnout among those with the show, coupled with many losses of important personnel on the way and the inevitability of cancellation.
Watching the show in its entirety and in order reveals things about it. There are the obvious things, such as the break down above of the different eras of the show. Then there are the smaller things, the things that don't lead well to appreciation if it is watched scattered. If you watch the show on a Rhino DVD volume you may come to conclusions such as: Bill's Crow isn't as good as Trace's, Josh's Servo and Larry are terrible, the Mads are awful in the Sci-fi era, Mike is better than Joel. Obviously they are all open to vice-versa. Watching it as it evolves gives you an appreciation of things because you live with them for a time. Josh Weinstein is excellent during his tenure as Servo. He is the funniest at improvising in the theatre and some of the running jokes he creates for Servo (mango juice) are hilarious. Larry is not so great. During KTMA he's tolerable but in Season 1 Josh begins mugging too much and makes the voice higher. His decision to use his own voice for Servo after the Kermit on helium original voice is a relief mind you. Leaping forward to the other puppet change, Bill Corbett is phenomenal as Crow. The decision to play him as if he is now older and grumpy is genius as it matches Bill's voice perfectly. I still prefer Trace's interpretation but Bill's really grows on you on those final months of the marathon. Of note as well are the changes to Trace's Crow. He grows older during his tenure. He starts almost like an infant in the first couple of years before maturing. When watched in order Crow grows up from KTMA - Sci-fi. The Mads in the Sci-fi era are not great, but again when Forrester and Frank are but a distant memory it becomes easier to like what they are doing. As for Joel vs. Mike, they are both excellent in different ways and not only did they bring different characters to the human hosts, they also brought different tones to the show.
The really great thing about watching the evolution of the show is watching a talented group of people find their collective feet and start to produce quality television after a great deal of experimenting to see what works and what doesn't. Comparisons with The Simpsons can be found here. It too has a little seen "season zero" (the Tracy Ullman shorts) and can be seen evolving and changing greatly in its earliest years before hitting its stride and finding a glory period that is pretty much unmatched by any other show. Shamefully when The Simpsons began to run out of steam it kept going (and going, and going, an...).
Of course neither show would be allowed today. Both took an age to find their audiences and iron out the kinks, mainly thanks to the makers doing it their own way as opposed to following notes from the networks they were on. MST3K came along at a perfect time, as did The Simpsons, as there were new networks desperate for content to fill the schedules that they were willing to give a fair chance. These days MST3K would have been canceled quickly. In fact, strike that, it would never have been picked up.
So the big question is, on looking back, what is the best season of MST3K? Very difficult to say but in all honesty every season has something about it to recommend, either thanks to how strong the episodes are or because of interesting developments (KTMA, Season 1, Season 8's host segments, Season 10's first and last episodes). Trying to pick one of the seasons from the glory period is almost impossible as Seasons 3 - 7 are simply brilliant. Season 7 has a 100% strike rate, but then it only has six episodes so it doesn't technically count. At this point the one I wouldn't pick is Season Four, but the reason for this comes out of marathon fatigue. Season Four came at a point where I should have taken about a month off before going into it. I plan to go back and watch the season again by itself after there has been enough time passed after finishing this.
All in all through the wheat and the chaff, and there's plenty of both, for every Cave Dwellers in a season, there's a Castle of Fu Manchu, the complete body is some work and one that deserves to be watched as it was intended. Obviously those first couple of KTMA are missing but if you only need a few episodes to finish your collection then get them and sit down to this. It can be a slog at times but in the end it is well worth it.
And it must be said, this is the greatest show about films ever made, purely because it serves as a great education as to how not to make them!
