Reel Geek: "Bender's Big Score"

So by now maybe you’ve all run out and purchased or rented the new Futurama movie “Bender’s Big Score.” If you haven’t, congratulations! You’ve won the honor of getting to read a review before you see it. So here we go:

The first in a set of four films the Futurama team is putting out, “Bender’s Big Score” picks up where the series left off more or less, as much as an episodic animated show with only a vague story arc and minor continuity between episodes can pick up. Scamming Alien Spammers are able to trick the Planet Express crew, as well as Farnsworth himself, into giving up personal information, and gain ownership of the business. The spammers (who look like the offspring of a human and one of Dr. Suesses “Sneech’s” melted in a microwave would), thrive off of information, and discover a code hidden in a PE crewmember’s tattoo that allows them to go back through time. The aliens load Bender up with a virus and use him as their errand boy to hop through time, pick up priceless treasures, and wait out the thousands of years it takes for time to catch up under the Planet Express building.




Once again the Futurama team delve into the insane and entertaining realm of time travel. With characters jumping back and forth multiple times, creating more and more duplicates of themselves running around, the paradoxical hilarity grows exponentially (rimshot!). If you thought the team did a good job playing around with time during the series, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Fry is eventually stranded in the past, and we get to see how his life would have played out, had he never been frozen in the first place. Meanwhile, Leela gets engaged to the man of her dreams (much to Fry’s chagrin) and Bender continues to hop around, screwing up time and creating paradoxes that Nibbler warns could destroy the Universe. OH THE ANIMATED DRAMA!



The whole of Earth now owned by the Scammers, Earthican’s launch a “Star Wars: ANH”-style attack on the aliens solid gold Deathstars and attempt to halt the wave of paradoxes that will soon destroy the Universe. That’s about as much of the story as I want to give you without starting to running your viewing.

The Good: The crazy time travel storyline is great, and the movie handles it in the same confusingly bizarre and hilarious way as the series did. The film had a lot of strong gags, and the sideline plots were, for the most part, funny and relevant to the characters and the series. The return of various characters was also a nice touch. Just a sampling include: Fry's ex-girlfriend Michelle (Sarah Silverman), Cubert, Barbados Slim, the Harlem Globetrotters, Al Gore (of course voiced by Gore himself), the Nibblonians, Fry's dog Seymour, Fry's family, including his brother and nephew of the same name, the Santa. Hanukkah Zombie (Mark Hamill) and Kwanzaa-bot (Coolio), and the Mob-bots. The animation is high quality, and the characters are the same as you knew them in the series.

BUTTS LOL

The Bad: Unfortunately, as the film is highly self-referential, many of the appearances, jokes, and bits of the storyline aren’t very accessible to people who haven’t followed the series. At times it comes off as fanboy homage, with a lot of “hey remember that character, here he is again!” Much of this probably comes from the fact that the movies are going to be quartered and aired as episodes, so they will be referencing previous seasons as shows, and when aired on TV, won’t seem so “packed full of fan favorites.” The writing also seems to have suffered slightly. Whether this is because of the team’s first foray into feature length writing of the show, or due to the long break and possible rustiness of the writers I don’t know. Many (but not most) of the gags fall flat, and the musical numbers, while somewhat funny, seem a little out of the blue. While a lot of the fanboy-esque problems are probably pluses in most die hard Futurama fans’ minds, for a standalone movie they can be a bit much. The lack of a full-orchestrated score is also a bit disappointing, but you most likely won’t recognize it all that much with the reprising modifications to the theme that are used. None of this, however, should dissuade you from seeing the film, especially if you’re a big fan of the series.

The Ugly:

Goddamn they are so ugly.

Overall, the first Fururama movie is quite enjoyable. It can stagger in a couple places, but for Futurama fans it’s necessary viewing. Go out and get it right now! Or, you can wait for it to air next year. I get the feeling that it will make for four very good episodes. The downside to not buying the dvd is the lack of special features, which I will list below and then bid you adieu.

Obligatory Grade: B/B-

Extras:

- Commentary track on which writers and producers Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Ken Keeler and Claudia Katz, director Dwayne Carey-Hill and voice actors Billy West, Jon DiMaggio and Phil LaMarr

- An animated and terrifying message from the 2000 Ex-Next President and Futurama guest star Al Gore makes thinking about the environment so much cooler (complete with video commentary with Gore, Groening and Cohen)

- 22 minute episode of “Everybody Loves Hypnotoad” complete with commercials

- A math lecture with Dr. Greenwald of Appalachian State University that explains some of the more nerdy jokes and references in Futurama to the Futurama cast and crew

- First Draft of the Film’s Script

- A number of character sketches and 3D models show what's been designed for the new movie, while three deleted scenes (not fully animated) show what had to be cut

- The complete five-minute trailer first shown at ComicCon 2007 and a "Futurama returns!" comic book reading with the voices of the Futurama characters are included

That’s all folks!

-Bishop

ReelGeek Goes to TIFF07

Well hello again from the internet! A couple of weeks back Toronto held its annual Toronto International Film Festival, and I went up to our neighbor to the north with a movie I worked on that was premiering. Then I was hit with the genius idea to see some films while I was there and tell you all about it! I stopped in to see a few films that might interest the Gnerd crowd. So without further ado, here’s a little rundown on the festival, and a review of the upcoming film “Juno” starring Ellen Page and Michael Cera.

So after an early morning flight and a long explanation of why I was entering Canada with a customs agent, and whether or not a tape in my possession was coming back to the states after the festival (Canada has a little-publicized overabundance of tapes clogging their major waterways, and every format is strictly regulated when entering the country) I walked out of the airport and into Toronto. If you’ve never been, well, check out another American metropolitan area, and then imagine it a lot cleaner and a bit friendlier, and that’s Toronto. It was as if someone had spread New York out a bit and then run a vacuum cleaner through it.

Toronto was a pretty laid-back film fest, from what I’ve heard from friends at the other big fests like Cannes and Sundance. There was very little overtaking of the city by the festival, and the paparazzi/legit photojournalism wasn’t super intense, though I avoided the parties so I can only really comment on the premiers, screenings, and the everyday walk through the city. Tickets are a pretty penny for seeing a film, even when you’re from New York and used to paying egregious amounts for a movie. Basically, if you plan to go up on your own, try and get in a bunch of films that don’t have distribution or are smaller foreign or documentary films. These are the ones you’ll feel okay about paying 20$ or more to see, because you won’t have to deal with all of your friends laughing at you a month later when they just snuck into the theater to see it for free. However, it’s always tempting to jump on seeing those soon-to-be big hits first. And here’s a review of one of those movies:



“Juno,” the newest film by Jason Reitman (director of “Thank You For Smoking,” son of Ivan “Ghostbusters” Reitman) is in a word, fantastic. Starring Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner, Allison Janney, and JK Simmons, it’s packed with people you’ll enjoy watching for two hours. Page does a great job as Juno, an offbeat and sharp-witted 16 year old who manages to get knocked up by her close friend Bleeker, played by Michael Cera. If you think the thought of Michael Cera getting it on and then impregnating a girl is awkwardly hilarious, you’re correct, it is. Juno decides to keep her baby and adopt it out to a couple looking for a child, cue Bateman and Garner as a yuppie couple that could make Cape Cod itself barf from all the sweaters and khaki. The film basically follows Juno through her pregnancy, her strained relationship with Bleeker (Cera), and her attempt to learn more about the couple she’s going to be handing the fruit of her loins off to.

If I make the movie sound overly serious, I apologize. The film had me (and the entire audience) laughing from start to finish. First time screenwriter Diablo Cody’s dialogue is at once often honest and accurate to a 16 year old girl, and hilarious enough to match anything by Judd Apatow. If you liked “Knocked Up” or “Superbad,” you’re going to want to see “Juno.” I heard mixed things about the script/dialogue from super secret sources before the film finished, but Reitman and the actors do such a great job that it’s almost hard to understand why anyone would think twice before greenlighting a movie like this.



“Juno” is a great script, a great story, an awesome cast, and a hilarious film. The music, including Belle and Sebastian, The Velvet Underground, The Kinks, Cat Power, Sonic Youth, and a score of songs by The Moldy Peaches’ Kimya Dawson fit wonderfully. It’s a great soundtrack and compliments the music-loving Juno’s character excellently.

The only downsides are that the film can get a little too sweet at times, with some of the whimsical songs by Dawson and some kitschy little moments. But these hardly subtract from the film, and they do balance out Juno’s hard-edged outlook on life, love, and being a pregnant 16-year-old girl. Cody’s dialogue can, like I’ve mentioned, come off a bit premature for a high school girl to sound off with, but Page’s delivery manages to remove any doubt you might have that a teenager would talk like that. I recommend you all see it when it hits theaters in December. And if you want to check out the trailer, hop over to the official site.

Oh yeah, the best part of seeing it at Toronto, aside from the fact that Reitman, Cody, and the cast came out to discuss the film after the screening? These guys:



As you may or may not know, Cera’s character is a cross-country runner, and is seen wearing his outfit quite a bit. Well the film had some of the “team” show up and jog up and down the lines, talking with people waiting to go in.

That’s all for this week guys, come back to see another review and rundown from TIFF 07!

Reel Geek: Why Video Game Movies Suck

Every Tuesday, Geekanerd Correspondent Bishop rocks it movie geek style...

This movie murdered Raul Julia.

Sometimes, when you put two things you really like together, you get something brilliant. Chocolate and peanut butter, apple pie and ice cream, emo kids and rabid unfed raccoons. Sometimes when you combine two things, you get something terrible: the Joker and infants, Mark Miller and crossovers, or, as I’m talking about today, movies and videogames. For years people have been trying to make a singular perfect unit from the two, continually resulting in some sort of awkward one night stand of a film in which both parties are thoroughly embarrassed and anyone watching is just downright disappointed, if not a little ill. (Yes I did just liken watching the film adaptation of a game to peeping in on two people having bad sex; enjoy that analogy when you’re in the theater next time.)

So I’ve just thrown down the gauntlet to videogame-based films. “But Bishop,” you’re saying to the computer screen, “I’ve seen good videogame-based movies, there was...well there was definitely one when I was younger, I’m pretty positive.” Well you’re wrong, and please stop speaking to your monitor, I can’t hear you and people are going to start thinking you’re weird. See the problem with videogame movies is that they’re all fairly terrible. Generally you might come up with one or two that you remember being good, but that’s because you were 12 and two dudes punching each other for 5 minutes was pretty fucking rad back then and made up for all the crap that filled the other 90 minutes of the film. Let’s run through a quick list of some videogames turned major motion pictures and see what we’re dealing with:

Super Mario Bros. (1993)
Double Dragon (1994)
Street Fighter (1994)
Mortal Kombat (1995)
Pokémon films (2001-God Knows When This Will Ever End)
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003)
Resident Evil (2002), etc
House of the Dead (2003)
Alone in the Dark (2005)
Doom (2005)
BloodRayne (2006)
Silent Hill (2006)

Obviously I haven’t included them all for time and space, but you get the idea. Now out of all of those movies, can you really tell me that any of them were really top notch? And when I say good, I don’t mean: “well I mean Mortal Kombat was pretty faithful to the storyline and had some cool characters.” I mean: “Was this a good movie, does it rank up with Spiderman 2 or X2 in terms of quality of a nerd-based product?” Heck if any of these movies even ranked with X3 or Superman 3 it would be impressive. Now you may really like some of these movies, that’s fine, I really like John Hughes movies, we all have our thing. You’re allowed to enjoy movies that aren’t quality pictures. What I’m trying to get at is that there really hasn’t been a high quality film adaptation of a videogame, and why that is.

Shang Tsung is upset that he was in a terrible movie.

First things first, these movies are made to make money. They’re made to capitalize on something that has been making money and has name recognition. Now I won’t say that 90% of films aren’t made like this, but with say, a comic book adaptation you’re much more likely to get a production team that has a couple people that are really all about bringing those characters and that story to life. Videogame films more often than not are really just cranked out to earn a studio some money. You’re going to be much harder pressed to find someone really interested in bringing the world of Super Mario Brothers to life than with Superman.

Even though Robert Patrick scared the shit out of you as the T1000,
he still managed to look like the love child of
Vanilla Ice and Thomas Lennon in "Double Dragon"

The next problem is just an overall lack of depth in the source material. Not only are many videogames lacking in a rich story, but they often they lack in depth characterization and strong back-story. Most videogames shouldn’t even be considered for adaptation. Mario Brothers? Street Fighter? Terrible ideas for movies. The games’ storylines were as lacking or simplistic as you can get, trying to translate them into a live action film was never going to turn out well. Now we’re seeing videogames that are more in depth with greater attention given to the writing and character, but it’s still leaps and bounds behind what we would see in any other written medium; comics, novels, short stories, or even television, which has visual elements that fill in the gaps that written description would cover. We get a very small look at a videogame character’s world, and it’s hard to empathize with most of them. We don’t get an insight into how they feel as we would in a book or comic. There’s no narrator or much inner monologue, and we’re mainly left with a few intermittent observations by the character you’re controlling, or some cut-scenes that attempt to fill everything in. There just isn’t much to build off of in a videogame, and so someone adapting for the screen really has to make some very large adjustments to the overall story to get something remotely watchable. And this brings us the third problem.

Fans. Fans are a big problem for videogame-based films. People are constantly bitching and moaning about how things in movies aren’t true to the story and characters in the game. Well, that’s because videogames just don’t translate well to film, genius. If the objective of the game is to run around solving puzzles and occasionally shooting guys all in an effort to find some artifact or solve some mystery or rescue their little girl, the writer has to both expand and condense that story into two hours. They have to cut out all the bullshit running around that you’re going to be doing in 25 hours of gameplay, grab all the story that remains, and attempt to expand that into 2 hours in a way that doesn’t make your brain hurt. Look at the Pokemon films, probably the highest grossing and most successful of any videogame adaptations. Of course these rode off of the television series which came out close to the game, so there was less work to be done, but what kind of characterization and story did that game have? There were basically about 4 things to that game: Pokemon, gyms, walking, and fighting bad guys. Writers managed to turn it into an entire series that’s still currently airing, but they had to just create a bunch of story and character to do so. Fans of a game have difficulty accepting huge changes that get made to story and character in adaptations. Though to be honest, this is a little understandable, as they were playing as that character for however many hours it took them to play this game. We’ve all put our personal experience into this somewhat blank protagonist and explored their world ourselves; of course fans are going to be picky about how the story and character follows their expectations. But you have to learn to deal, especially when it comes to story and character that are acceptable only in the realm of games. Videogames aren’t going to translate well into films, and you have to accept that and allow for changes, sometimes large ones, to be made.

ACTING!
Uwe Boll brings us another shitty game adaptation with "BloodRayne"

So what are we left with? We have people with either the lack of talent or the lack of passion creating the film, we have a lack of material to really draw believable and empathetic story and character from, and we have an audience that wants something that’s not really a realistic product. It seems like a good game flick is shit outta’ luck. Honestly, I think a good game adaptation can be made, but these three things have to change. Plenty of games out there do lend themselves to seeding a good film, the Resident Evil series wasn’t really very well done, but I could see it being done better. Halo’s storyline could make for an interesting film, (the human race fighting off religious aliens dealing with dissent within their race? Sounds like you could go somewhere with that.) The Metal Gear series might make for a good film too, provided that the three issues were resolved. Can they be done well? Give me a talented and ambitious production team, a good writer and a game with a solidly interesting story (at least the outline of one) and an audience that’s willing to let writer and director retool the story and the world to make it work for a two hour film, and I think you could start getting some quality films.

Speaking of Halo, there is a movie slated for 2009 written by Alex Garland (28 Days Later), directed by Neill Blomkamp (animator for “Smallville,” “SG-1” et al.), and produced by Peter Jackson (if you don’t know what he’s done you get an F in Nerd 101). The writer is good, the producer is good, and the story could lend itself to a good film, provided the director can do his job well and the cast is strong. They even have WETA doing the visual effects for the film. If the director and cast can pull it off, and the fans can allow for a little re-imagining, we might have something worth seeing. The real question is: how much corpse-humping warrants an "R" rating?

Reel Geek: Top 10 Things Movies Taught Me About Geeks

Every Tuesday, Geekanerd Correspondent Bishop rocks it movie geek style...


Hey there fellows and fellowettes! Today we’re going to talk a little bit about the many things I learned about nerds/geeks from the movies. And by many things, I mean ten. Ten things that I learned about geeks/nerds from the cinema, and the accuracy with which these ten qualities actually apply to real life geeks/nerds. So here they are, in no particular order after the jump:










1. All nerds are sexual deviants/perverts
Accuracy: Probably about 40-50% true

Okay so not all of us are sexually deviant, but I will concede that a large portion of the nerd community consists of teenage boys. And teenage boys are, by default, perverted sexual deviants. From Anthony Michael Hall’s prestigious panty presentation in “16 Candles,” to the panty raid/hidden cameras of “Revenge of the Nerds,” to the dominating antics of Alyson Hannigan in “American Pie,” to the bestiality scene in “Weird Science” (I may be misremembering that last one…) nerds are generally depicted as having an overwhelming sex drive and the desire to hump on just about anything. Now most nerds I’ve met have an average sex drive and no one has ever come out as being a secret fan of German Scat videos or anything, but I can't vouch for the entire community...



2. If we get drunk, we are by default the coolest person at the party
Accuracy: about 0%

There is no doubt that if you are a geek when you enter the party, drinking 7 beers will turn you into – a drunk geek. No geek’s charm has grown magically out of the bottle, unfortunately. Unlike Charlie Korsmo in “Can’t Hardly Wait” or Jonah Hill in “Superbad,” generally you will not find that getting drunk suddenly makes you seem to be a wild and crazy guy that people actually want to hang out with. You may however, find that you are that wobbly and pukey dude that everyone stays away from because he can’t tell that he’s yelling when he tries to talk to you about Blizzard’s next big release.



3. Hot chicks LOVE us
Accuracy: 35%

So apparently, according to movies, hot chicks love nerds, just not right away. There’s something about us that just wins them over eventually. Basically all of the characters in “Superbad” become the apple of a lady’s eye. "Revenge of the Nerds" has a classic scene (albeit basically of rape) where the hot girl falls for the nerd. “American Pie” has Finch and Stiffler’s mom, “Spiderman” has MJ and Peter Parker (it still counts even though it was a comic first), and Anthony Michael Hall and the cheerleader in “16 Candles.” Sure some people really dig that you can name over 100 characters to appear as members of one of the various X-teams, but chances are you aren’t going to be picking up all the lovelies with that info. I know nerds with hot significant others, so I won’t discount this, but let’s be honest, it’s gonna be a rare time when you hear the words “Wow, I never knew I could get so turned on listening to Star Wars trivia!”

Dennis Kucinich and hot wife Elizabeth, proof that hot women love nerds?

4. We are all guys
Accuracy: 50%

Well following that last one, about 95% of the time in movies, nerds, and even moreso, groups of nerds are all men or boys. I have no official tally or percentage of how many female nerds we have out there, but I can tell you there are quite a few. SOMEONE has to be dressing up as Padme and Leia (just kidding ladies). Unfortunately, very few films (“Welcome to the Dollhouse,” “Mean Girls” – Lohan was a nerd to start out with in the movie remember – or perhaps “Sorority Boys”) portray women in the nerd role. I say unfortunately because of the lack of representation, but maybe the ladies are just fine with not having as many examples of how they could be mocked stuck up on screen. Anyway, giving this a 50% accuracy, since yes there are fewer female nerds than there are male ones, but there are a lot more than are portrayed in movies, just ask AHR!



5. Nerds are scared of drugs
Accuracy: 35-40%

While “The Breakfast Club,” “RotN,” and other movies might give you the impression that nerds on average have never seen a drug, plenty of nerds take a toke now and again. The only reason many start later in life is a lack of friends to supply or an extreme fear of humiliating themselves. As with booze, nerds don’t particularly become any cooler using any other drugs. People didn’t care if Hulk could beat up the Emperor before they were high, and they still don’t after. There are a good chunk that are quite clean and want to ensure a high gpa, which is why I left the accuracy a bit higher than not.


6. We are awesome at sex
Truth level: 60%

“Revenge of the Nerds” and “American Pie” would have us believe that we are Gods among men when it comes to coitus. As Louis says in “RotN,” “All jocks ever think about is football. All nerds ever think about is sex.” I doubt that the average nerd is going to be a far superior lover to anyone else, however I will say that if not struggling with crippling social awkwardness and Cheeto hands, Geeks can get girls, and they are REALLY happy to have them, so they’ll go the extra mile. (While we at GAN do not condone Lewis' actions in "Revenge of the Nerds," we do condone dressing up like Darth Vader for sex.)



7. We’re all brilliant
Accuracy: 80%

While “Weird Science” and “Real Genius” really pushed the idea of nerds as super geniuses (not to mention “RotN,” wasn’t there a guy who built a robot servant in that one?) I can say that not everyone who has a box at their local comic shop and a couple Magic: The Gathering starter decks can build a laser out of things they found in their mom’s bathroom. Then again, sometimes you find yourself at home with your roommates having a contest to see who can name the most American presidents, and you realize that, yes, often being a nerd still includes having a hard-on for academia.










8. For every three nerds that congregate, at least one must wear glasses
Accuracy: 90%

Anytime more than 2 nerds are present on screen, glasses must be worn by at least one of the nerds. This applies to all nerd movies, tv shows, commercial appearances, and probably life. I want you to call up two nerd friends tonight to hang out, and if none of you are wearing corrective lenses, either stumbling hilarity will ensue, or you aren’t real nerds. We’ll need to ask you to leave now, this site is for the hardcore geeks.


9. Black people LOVE us
Accuracy: 50%

Man when the white nerdy guy (Asian-Americans also apply) has a beer or smokes a bit and relaxes, black people just can’t get enough of him. At first he seemed uptight and probably afraid, but once we cut away from him for a couple moments, we return to find that he has won over the black guys, because he’s really a cool dude who “gets” them. It really helps if you try to "talk black" as well. This has happened to a couple movie nerds, including Anthony Michael Hall and the boys in “RotN.” Actually, come to think of it, it’s not even just black people that love us in movies, bikers, gang members, cops, really anyone “badass” will love us when we cut loose and relax. Just go with the flow man, chill out, and if that doesn’t work, you can always dance on the bar in platforms to The Champs’ “Tequila!” (Scored at 50% because while this is in no way accurate or an advisable way to interact with people, there really are a bunch of nerd-loving black dudes, but those dudes are also nerds.)


10. We all love Star Wars or Star Trek
Accuracy: 100%

This is completely true. When you enter middle school with your official designation as a nerd you are required to choose a side and vehemently deny the legitimacy of the opposing faction. The only exception to this rule being that you were raised on Ren Faires and exclusively enjoy fiction by George RR Martin and movies about Hobbits.


So that’s it! Everything I learned about nerds from movies, or at least 10 things. All of this information is 100% accurate and true and should be used to guide yourself in daily life. See you next week with another exciting update!

Reel Geek: Webcomics In Hollywood

Every Tuesday, Geekanerd Correspondent Bishop rocks it movie geek style...As geeks and/or nerds, I can pretty safely assume that you enjoy four things: comics, the internet, movies, and animation (if you dislike any of these things then you probably misspelled a word on Google and somehow ended up here). Well, today we’re going to talk about all four of those things coming together in a writhing orgy of tangled limbs and sweaty buttocks.

Oh my! Upcoming WebComic to Animation info and video, after the jump!


As many of you may know, Scott Kurtz, author of Player vs Player, the popular gaming comic, has launched an online animation series based on PVP. The series is set for 12 episodes, pumped out once a month, for a fee of $24.95 for the year. So far the reaction has been a mixed bag, but the internet is full of critics who would nitpick the way a popular website was giving away free money, so I’d rather not sit around debating how a character’s voice didn’t sound like what a 13 year old in Iowa felt it should.

PVP: The Series is being brought to us by Blind Ferret Entertainment, which is the studio that produced Tim Buckley’s “Ctrl+Alt+Del” series last year (see the trailer here). Blind Ferret is the creation of “Least I Could Do” writer Ryan Sohmer et al. Now I know I’m supposed to be discussing movies here, but bear with me.

Blind Ferret recently announced plans to create a full-length feature animated film starring the cast of “Looking for Group,” another comic that Sohmer writes. Sohmer posted a short that he and the BF team had put together for everyone to see, so take a quick peek at the video below.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the very fact that webcomic creators are pushing into the frontier of animation and film is pretty exciting to me. What we’re seeing is another expansion by webcomics into a venue traditionally only seen in syndicated comics. Garfield, Heathcliff, Peanuts and others were all syndicated newspaper strips that branched out into merchandising, which included animated features and television series. Webcomics have really only proven themselves to be financially profitable in the past few years, with powerhouses like PVP and Penny Arcade and collectives like Dumbrella and Dayfree Press. Now it looks like webcomics are taking up the challenge to produce animated series and movies without the backing of a large syndicate, and personally I’m glad to see them doing it. Sure things are going to be a little rough at first and there are going to be a lot of false starts and misfires, but that’s just part of the game.

Blind Ferret said that CAD: The Series was indeed financially profitable, and PVP still seems to be attracting subscribers, so we may start seeing more and more webcomics pushing into the animation field. Better still, we’re going to be seeing them get there on their own terms (or at least much closer than they would working under a syndicate and a network). Now I know some people out there are going to scoff and roll their eyes because webcomics are “trying too hard” or “going commercial.” Well those people have herpes. All we’re seeing is artists branching into another field of expression, one that allows them to create new material and give a new voice to their work. It may also push web-based animation ala Homestar Runner more into the spotlight and encourage more young artists into animation. This means not only more series like Homestar, but more series like “Venture Brothers” hitting the channels as networks see that these web-based series can garner an audience and make more compromises with creators about content and themes that carry over to air. Sohmers’ “Least I Could Do” has already been optioned and is in development for a TV series.

I’m looking forward to seeing web-based animated series grow and garner larger audiences. The scripts will probably be a little unsteady early on (writing for the screen has a different pacing than with a 4-6 panel comic strip), and the animation will be a little uneven, but go watch an early episode of the Simpsons and tell me you KNEW that it was going to be the success that it was.

Reel Geek: Futurama's Triumphant Return

Every Tuesday, Geekanerd contributor Bishop lays it out, movie geek style....

Hey there all you loyal GaN readers, welcome to my little corner of this wonderful blog. I’ve been drafted to update the lot of you on some hot geek-centered movie news, and to work off some of my debt after crashing AHR’s Segway in a misguided attempt to make an awesome Youtube video. So here goes!

I have a simple question for you gentle reader: Have you been excited lately? If not, you probably haven’t been thinking about the new season of “Futurama” that’s fast approaching (This is a serious problem and you may want to seek professional help).


Futurama-rama continues after the jump...

As many of you know, “Simpson’s” creator Matt Groening’s superb sophomore series “Futurama” has been in the grave since 2004 when Fox “cancelled” it due to a decline in viewer ship. But it will soon be resurrected for a new couple of seasons set to air on Comedy Central. Now you may all be scratching your heads and looking at one another quizzically, (I imagine that you’re all congregating around the computer reading GaN as a group, not unlike the average 1950’s family and their radio) wondering exactly how this all happened, so let’s backtrack for a second.

Futurama hit Fox in 1999 and started building a fan base. Unfortunately it was consistently bounced around in the schedule on Fox and preempted by sports. The final episodes of the fourth season were never aired on Fox, as the ratings had dropped due to an inconsistent time slot. Fox stopped ordering episodes, and that was that. Then Cartoon Network picked it up for it’s Adult Swim line up and “Surprise!” with a consistent time slot and a little promotion it garnered a huge set of fans, similar to what happened with Family Guy.

Fox perhaps realized the error of its ways, and eventually came back to Groening, and in his words:

"I was frustrated when it got cancelled, but Fox, 20th Television is the one who came back and said, 'Would you like to do a DVD movie? We said, 'Let's do two' and they said, 'Well, why not three?' and we said, 'Well, why not four?' and they said, 'Okay, four' and then that's it."

So after the intense negotiations described above, four straight-to-DVD movies will be coming out over the course of the next two years. The line up will be as follows:

• Futurama: Bender's Big Score
• Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs
• Futurama: Bender's Game
• Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder

Bender’s Big Score will be released on DVD and Hi-Def this November 27th. That’s only a scant 3 month wait ladies and gents. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll keep vague about what the first movie entails, though I will say a few short words concerning the plot: Bender, Time Travel, Theft, Buttocks, Al Gore. Excited yet? You had better be. There’s also going to be reprisals by many of the supporting cast in the movies, including the Nibblonians, “God,” Barbados Slim, Morbo, and Santabot.

Now details are still murky, but some of the special features have been announced, such as a full episode of “Everyone Loves Hypnotoad” (which has been going downhill since season 3, but we’ll take what we can get), and guest stars/voices Al Gore, Sarah Silverman, Tom Kenny, and Coolio. The other movies will include guest voices by David Cross and a visit by everyone’s favorite astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.

Now I know I mentioned Comedy Central a few paragraphs back, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten. See Fox went and got the movies started up, but the airing contract was up and Comedy Central won the bid to air the films as episodes, so the movies are going to air as chopped up episodes on the comedy network. I know how that sounds, but word is that before they go to air there will be some reformatting, extra writing of narration and such that will ease the movies into episode format. They’ll be widescreen on the DVD’s (something that should be important to any self respecting nerd) and standard 4:3 for the TV appearance. They will split into groups of four, so that’s 16 all new episodes of Futurama! Have you shoved your monitor off the desk with excitement?! If not, get ready!

Hope you enjoyed that little Futurama overdose, I know I can’t wait. Later kids.