Animotion and Car Tunes

[beatbandito]

From everything I've heard it's a perfectly good movie, with some new types of computer animation Miyazaki doesn't usually use. It sucks he doesn't have full control of his name and legacy, but is being a little dramatic about this.

[Thad]

I thought the second Futurama episode was a big step up, but I acknowledge that I may have certain biases about the subject matter at the moment.

And hey, wrong guess on my part last week about DiMaggio negotiating top billing as a condition of his contract; it looks like the three leads are switching off, because Sagal got it this week.

There sure was a lot of continuity in this one, and I got to thinking, you know, Amy and Kif's relationship is probably the longest and most elaborate continuity thread in the series, isn't it? Like, there are more episodes involved in this particular arc than Fry and Leela's relationship, or the whole "Nibbler sent Fry to the future to save everybody from the alien brains" throughline that...seemed pretty important at the time but hasn't really come up again except as an occasional reference joke.

I think they did a good job of providing the information the audience needs to follow this one, but there's like a whole run of episodes you need to have watched to follow the whole thing, Amy and Kif's meeting, courtship, her parents, their marriage, the tadpoles...there were definitely some bits where I was going "Oh yeah, I guess I remember that."

[Thad]

Futurama's back again and, much like the last two times, it starts off a little creaky and relies too much on the kind of topical jokes that have never been the show's strength. (If you liked the Nigerian scammer jokes in Bender's Big Score, you'll love the binge-watching jokes in...whatever this episode was called. I've already forgotten and I'm not going to look it up.)

As you might expect, I responded to the episode description "Bender and the crew head west to join the Bitcoin mining rush" with some skepticism.

Fortunately, this was not a "Hey, isn't $tech_thing_people_joked_about_a_lot_ten_years_ago funny?" episode, it was a "zany genre spoof" episode. Now those are something the show's good at.

[Thad]

My favorite part about tonight's Futurama was when I nailed the 3D crossword clue.

[Thad]

(but also the Dune references are bad please stop)

[Thad]

[nosimpleway]

It doesn't matter whether Scott Pilgrim takes off, Netflix is gonna cancel it after one season anyway.

[Thad]

I'd say we're heading into another period where cartoon series have a bit of an edge because most of them aren't covered by WGA or SAG. I could see it making 2 or 3 seasons.

I heard awhile ago that the reason almost nothing on Netflix makes it past 3 is that season 4 is where major profit-sharing incentives kick in for the producers. That seems plausible.

[Caithness]

Can the entire story of Scott Pilgrim not be covered in one season? The comic is only 6 volumes.

[Thad]

Can the entire story of Scott Pilgrim not be covered in one season?

They covered it in a 112-minute movie. AIUI this series is a sequel to that movie, but I guess that message could have gotten garbled and they could just be retelling the same story with the same cast in a different medium.

[Niku]

I always heard it as an adaptation, not a sequel; but yeah, 8 (supposedly 40-ish minute) episodes is plenty of time to adapt 6 volumes.

Also got around to watching the latest episode of Futurama and so far, ugh, I'm just kinda bored with these episodes which feels so much worse than if they were just garbage.

[beatbandito]

They covered it in a 112-minute movie.

I would argue they did not, as it's mostly a character study and they only really hit the general plot in the movie. But this is definitely an adaptation not sequel. Every scene in the trailer was from the books.

[KingRoyal]

Also got around to watching the latest episode of Futurama and so far, ugh, I'm just kinda bored with these episodes which feels so much worse than if they were just garbage.

Have been doing a rewatch of the series and have gotten up to the movies and "Futurama starts boring" is pretty much the pattern of each iteration

They're not bad or anything, but season 1 is definitely mostly world-building with a few good bits thrown about, and Bender's Big Score is kind of funny but also a bit plot heavy and has way too many jokes about email scams that were dated even in 2007

[hngkong]

They covered it in a 112-minute movie.

I would argue they did not, as it's mostly a character study and they only really hit the general plot in the movie. But this is definitely an adaptation not sequel. Every scene in the trailer was from the books.

Yeah, I think the movie doesn't do justice for just how incredibly shitty Scott is at the start and how much growth he shows by the end of the books.

[Thad]

They covered it in a 112-minute movie.

I would argue they did not, as it's mostly a character study and they only really hit the general plot in the movie. But this is definitely an adaptation not sequel. Every scene in the trailer was from the books.

Yeah, I think the movie doesn't do justice for just how incredibly shitty Scott is at the start and how much growth he shows by the end of the books.

I'll agree with that. I never did finish the books (I think I read the first three?) but I think I'd just read the first one when I saw the movie and one of the first things I said about it was that Scott was a lot more likable in that version.

I've often said that adaptations of serialized comic books work better in a serialized medium like TV. If that's what we're doing here -- the same people as the movie getting a do-over in a more appropriate medium and format -- I could get behind that. It beats "let's do Harry Potter again", anyway, and I say that as somebody who mostly did not think the Harry Potter movies were very good adaptations.

[Niku]

This week's Futurama was pretty solid even while being based entirely around "what if modern thing future-wacky" because that was all pretty much window-dressing to the character based humor. Also Mom is always a good time. More of this, please.

[Friday]

The weird thing about Scott in the movie is how likeable he manages to be even though he's dating a high school girl and the whole entire cast constantly tells him he's weird and gross for doing so for like the first 30 minutes of the movie.

Like, seriously. Go back and watch that first half hour. Probably 40% of the dialog is just "holy shit Scott you are a fucking creep for doing this" or jokes alluding to that fact.

And it's not like he gets any better after the first 30 minutes! He just starts cheating on Knives with Ramona and not telling Ramona he has a girlfriend so he's basically also cheating on her.

The second best joke in the movie is how at the end when Nega-Scott shows up he's just this really cool chill guy.

(The best joke is the Vegan police)

[Mongrel]

Bi-Furious is pretty good too.

[Thad]

This week's Futurama was pretty solid even while being based entirely around "what if modern thing future-wacky" because that was all pretty much window-dressing to the character based humor. Also Mom is always a good time. More of this, please.

The difference between "The Impossible Stream" and "Related to Items You've Viewed", in terms of their respective approaches to "what if modern thing future-wacky", is that "Related" does a much better job of skewering consumerism. Amazon is a much better target for social satire than streaming TV, Dune, or Dune again.

And it's always fun to see Mom again, but my favorite jokes were the left-field ones (cabbage fight, single-use pointing stick).

I've liked 3 out of the 5 episodes so far. That puts it on par with the first 5 episodes of season 1, and better than the first 5 episodes of season 6. Season 5 isn't apples-to-apples since it was the movies, but when it's broken down into individual episodes, the first 5 would be Bender's Big Score and the first 22 minutes of The Beast with a Billion Backs and I suppose I'd say I liked 4 out of 5 of those (the first act of Bender's Big Score has that tedious plot with the nudist scammers, but the rest of it is gold).

[Thad]

the kind of topical jokes that have never been the show's strength

Okay the COVID episode was flippin' great.