HOME   News   Reviews   Adv Search   Features   My DVD   About   Apps   Stats     Search:
  Directed by
  Starring
  Specs
  • Full Frame
  Languages
  • English: Dolby Digital Surround
  Subtitles
    English - Hearing Impaired, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Commentary - English
  Extras
  • Deleted scenes
  • Teaser trailer
  • 3 Theatrical trailer
  • 19 Audio commentary
  • Featurette
  • Photo gallery
  • Animated menus
  • Storyboards
  • Animatic

Futurama Season 4

30th Century Fox/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment . R4 . COLOR . 390 mins . PG . PAL

  Feature
Contract

TV decision-making people are extremely unclool and splung-headed.

How else could you explain the axing of Futurama after a mere four series', while other shows seem to drag their tired, saggy butts around our screens for absolute eternities? Yes, bad news everyone, this set contains the final production season of 18 episodes of the total of 72 ever made. Die young, stay pretty and all that stuff. Well, except perhaps for Professor Farnsworth.

These final outings for the crew of Planet Express and various other folk in their rather massively big orbitty thing offer up a varied package of laughs, pop culture references, geeky splats and even genuinely tender moments. If you wish to know more historical stuff about it all, click on one of the links to the right and check out what we blathered on about in regards to any of the previous season releases. We're busy people here you know, we can't hold youse meatbags' scaly hands and wipe your noses all the time!

Anyway, mell out, pull up a groove and get fabulous with the last (sniffle!) collection (sob!) of Futurama (blub!) episodes (fnark!) ever. Well, unless they somehow do a Lazarus on us...

Disc 1

  • Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch
    Summary: Amy and Kif¡'s relationship gets even weirder when the greener of the two becomes pregnant. Ah, but who's the mother?

    Classic line: "Yes, I programmed it in for you. Four million lines of BASIC." - Kif.

  • Leela's Homeworld
    Summary: Winning the 'Orphan of the Year' award at the Orphanarium leads to Leela discovering the secret of her parentage...

    Classic line: "I usually try to keep my sadness pent up inside, where it can fester quietly as a mental illness." - Leela.

  • Love and Rocket
    Summary: After Planet Express Ship is given an upgrade, she and Bender have this thing going. But when she catches he of the shiny metal ass cheating on her, she doesn't take it too well...

    Guest head: Lucy Liu

    Classic line: "In order for me to get busy at maximum efficiency, I need a girl with a big 400 tonne booty." - Bender.

  • Less Than Hero
    Summary: After sustaining injuries from Pi-kea assembly, Leela and Fry discover Zoidberg's 'Miracle Cream' has superhero like side-effects, so they team up with Bender to do the superhero thing...

    Classic line: "Should superheroes commit a crime? Even to save lives? I need moral guidance. Bender?!" - Fry.

  • A Taste of Freedom
    Summary: It's Freedom Day again, a time to do whatever you want. Zoidberg revels in it, but discovers that eating the flag is pushing things too far, especially when he's sentenced to death...­

    Classic line: "I'm swelling with patriotic mucus!" - Zoidberg.

Disc 2

  • Bender Should Not Be Allowed On TV
    Summary: Bender wangles his way into a role on robo-soap All My Circuits, however new protest group Fathers Against Rude Television aren't too jazzed with his style...­

    Classic line: "That was so terrible I think you gave me cancer!" - Calculon.

  • Jurassic Bark
    Summary: The pizzeria where Fry worked is part of a 20th century exhibit at the Museum of Natural History - complete with his dog, Seymour, in petrified form. Farnsworth believes he can clone him, but Bender is jealous...­

    Classic line: "Fry, it's been three days - you can't keep boogieing like this. You'll come down with a fever of some sort." - Leela.

  • Crimes of the Hot
    Summary: Global warming is increasing and damn is it hot! It seems it's all Farnsworth's fault, as his prototype robot had lousy emissions controls, so all robots are damned to destruction. Unless...­

    Classic line: "Morbo is pleased, but sticky." - Morbo (gloviously!)

  • Teenage Mutant Leela Hurdles Summary: It's decided crabby old Farnsworth needs to be 'youthasised', a process involving a special tar bath. An accident sees all the crew treated, reverting to their youths - with a good side effect for Leela...

    Classic line: "The fountain of ageing? It's just a legend. Still, they called the tooth fairy a legend and now it's head of the FBI." - Professor Farnsworth.

  • The Why of Fry
    Summary: Thinking he's a non-important nothing when Leela dates the mayor's aide, Fry discovers he's actually the most important person in the universe, thanks to Nibbler...­

    Classic line: "Did everything just taste purple for a second?" - Fry.

Disc 3

  • Where No Fan Has Gone Before
    Summary: Fry travels to forbidden planet Omega 3 to retrieve old Star Trek episodes, not realising the show was outlawed centuries before for its corrupting influence...

    Guest heads: Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, George Takei, Walter Koening, Nichelle Nichols

    Classic line: "Another classic science fiction show cancelled before its time." - Bender.

  • The Sting
    Summary: A spot of interstellar vicious-beekeeping goes horribly wrong when a baby queen Leela snatches kills Fry. But her dreams tell her he's still alive...

    Classic line: "Why am I sticky and naked? Did I miss something fun?" - Fry.

  • Bend Her
    Summary: Bender becomes Coilette, a fembot, to win at the 3004 Olympiad. When the matter of a gender test arises, he asks Farnsworth for the snip - later attracting the advances of Calculon...­

    Classic line: "This top makes me look fat. Is it trampy to go on a first date nude?" - Coilette.

  • Obsoletely Fabulous
    Summary: The Professor's new purchase, Robot 1-X, threatens to render Bender obsolete as he's not compatible. Fearful of an upgrade, he becomes a castaway...­

    Classic line: "Behold my hand-crafted purity. The modern world can bite by splintery wooden ass!" - Bender.

Disc 4

  • The Farnsworth Parabox
    Summary: The crew's entire perception of reality is thrown into question when Leela looks in a box Farnsworth wanted destroyed - a box containing a parallel universe...

    Classic line: "Now, now. Perfectly symmetrical violence never solved anything." - Professor Farnsworth.

  • Three Hundred Big Boys
    Summary: Zapp Brannigan's defeat of the arachnid home world results in a silk surplus, meaning 300 bucks for everybody. Numerous ways are found to spend it...

    Classic line: "The loot, the loot, the loot is on fire!" - Richard Nixon's head.

  • Spanish Fry
    Summary: While camping, Fry's search for Bigfoot sees him kidnapped by aliens. He returns without his nose, or "human horn", and discovers they're big on the black market as an aphrodisiac...­

    Classic line: "I want my nose! I don't wanna have to teach a new one to shoot milk when I laugh." - Fry.

  • The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings
    Summary: Cursing his stupid fingers for his inability to master the holophonor, Fry makes a deal with the robot devil for his hands. Can they help win Leela's love?

    Classic line: "You're not nice!" - The Robot Devil.

  Video
Contract

Blug! Not surprisingly, as with the previous three seasons things are still designed to fit snugly onto the confines of 20th century 4:3 television set screens. Still, it's not worth tromping off to the angry dome over, as otherwise things look decidedly non-snuffular.

Once again the picture is decidedly clool, brightly coloured, as sharp as Bender's tongue (erm, voice chip?) and exhibiting nothing worth noting from the spluh-tacular world of aliasing and blemishy things. The 2D and 3D elements continue to work together as beautifully as the finest holophonor creation, with perhaps the only bum note being the subtitles, which tend to crushinate some of the personality - and often humour - from what's actually being said.

  Audio
Contract

As our puny audio-delivering technology has yet to catch up with 30th century trickery such as Dolby UltraDigital Prological 44,710.68, all we receive is Dolby Digital 2.0, with a wee bit of surround encodingment type stuff. Still, at least we don't have to buy all those speakers, let alone find hidey-holes for them. In all it's a decidedly 2D experience, delivering little in the way of stereophonic thrills and spills, and little more when pumped through a Prologic system, with the subwoofwoof remaining virtually petrified.

Still, dialogue is, as always, clear and non-meh inducing, and sits well within the musical creations of Christopher Tyng and the selection of classical music from 20th century composers such as Young MC, Van McCoy, KC and the Sunshine Band, Tom Jones and even Pizzicato Five.

  Extras
Contract

Hurray! Another reasonably chunky array of extra pieces and bits has been assembled, all housed within very funtacular menus featuring smart-mouth comments from, in order of disc numbertude, Bender, Mom, Zapp Brannigan and Zoidberg, as well as all manner of classic quotes from various series'...

Audio commentaries: After doing the heads of more mathematical challenged peoples in with the amount of commentaries in the last set, the tradition continues - 18 episodes, 19 commentaries. Each has a standard, all-in blug-inducing geek-fest featuring writers, directors, actors and some bloke named Matt Groening, all of which include much wonderfully factacular stuff amidst the giggles, talking over each other and general pile of irrelevancies on offer. The bonus commentary is for one of the more poignant episodes, Jurassic Bark, although it scarcely touches upon that actual story. Rather, it's generally kinda-sorta about the writing process for an episode, although it veers off into such scintillating topics as pooping dogs and couches more often than not.

Animatic from Obsoletely Fabulous (24:35): Those who are with the program thus far will know what this is, a series of minimally animated sketches presented with not always final voice acting and the odd sound effect. Whilst more casual watchers will be spleeshing and spluhing, animation nerds will love this - especially the extra bits of story which show up, but were severed from the final edit.

Storyboard - Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch: Perhaps not the greatest episode of the batch to give this treatment to, however the text is so bloody small it doesn't really matter, as unless you've stolen the giant screen from Madison Cube Garden you're unlikely to be able to make out anything other than nothing. For the uninitiated, this is a series of still screens featuring the episode laid out in almost comic strip format, with production notes scribbled here and there. Go for it, your eyeballs will hate you.

Deleted Scenes: Ranging in length from a blink and you'll be wondering what the guh happened nine seconds to a much less button-pushing frenzied 3:02, snippage from 16 of the 18 episodes is included here. It's not up to the standard of the main feature vision-wise though. Deal.

3D Models: 11 'turnarounds' of various 3D rendered things from the show, ranging from Planet Express Ship to Planet Express Ship to, erm, Planet Express Ship - with the odd other thing thrown in. Each has a brief commentary, full of the sort of geek-speak like "geometry" which will most likely have kindred spirits of the speakers soiling themselves.

Character Pencil Tests: Just over eight minutes of very fuzzy animated pencil sketches of assorted characters, demonstrating an unnerving side of the personalities of those responsible as they seem to like blowing characters up - in the KERBOOM sense of the word.

How to Draw...­: Budding artists can eschew originality in favour of ripping off Groening with these detailed instructions on drawing Bender and Professor Farnsworth. Things to note: Bender's head is shaped like a bullet with an overbite, and his body is basically a Slurpee cup.

Stills Gallery/New Character Artwork: 50 sketches, most of them final ones, of various assorted different mixed characters.

International Clips: Oh schman! Are they still bothering with this lame-o-rama stuff? Feh - a 1:26 snatch of Love and Rocket offering a selection of four languages: English, German, Portugeuse and Castellan Spanish.

Trailers: Just the TV plugs for the first three DVD sets, plus the decidedly spluh-looking video game, yet another in a seemingly endless stream of plop the camera behind the character's shoulder and watch them running around shooting stuff affairs which plague the shelves of game emporiums nowadays. Bring back Pacman!

Easter eggs: Great Shatner's goat, methinks they're playing with us. Most every screen on every disc has innumerable little eggy-looking objects, leading doofii like myself to contort the old button-stabbing hand into all manner of weird arrangements virtually all to no avail. Still, later discs in the set do yield a few things - some footage from a Star Trek geek convention, an alien message to get compulsive nerdlingers all wet and wild, some unused captions and a table read - so keep on looking and they will be found, unless you're a truly impatient form of Earthican, of course. Meanwhile, say hi to your physiotherapist for me afterwards, won't you?

Finally, one unusual thing to note. The third disc of the set appears to have had its artwork censored. Perhaps the presence of an unsightly black blot and the existence of a massive cloud over the image (other than standard disc text) leads us to this conclusion. Most odd. Update: Thanks to mArc from the rather fabnificent www.gotfuturama.com for advising that the disc makes sense when coupled with the packaging - something we didn't receive with our review copy.)

  Overall  
Contract

This is it - no more to come. So take a pill, buy it, put in pride of place on your shelf next to the other three boxes, tenderly remove it from said place every so often to partake of the animated excellence contained within - or build a scale model Planet Express building out of it if that tickles your fancy. But if you're a fan of superbly written, brilliantly realised animation, you'll want to call this your own. No spluh!


  • LINK: http://www.dvd.net.au/review.cgi?review_id=3689
  • Send to a friend.

    Cast your vote here: You must enable cookies to vote.
  •   
      And I quote...
    "Mell out, pull up a groove and get fabulous with the last (sniffle!) collection (sob!) of Futurama (blub!) episodes (fnark!) ever...­"
    - Amy Flower
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Player:
          Pioneer DV-466-K
    • TV:
          Loewe Xelos 5381ZW 81cm 100Hz
    • Receiver:
          Onkyo TX-DS494
    • Speakers:
          DB Dynamics Eclipse RBS662
    • Centre Speaker:
          DB Dynamics Eclipse ECC442
    • Surrounds:
          DB Dynamics Eclipse ECR042
    • Subwoofer:
          DTX Digital 4.8
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard RCA
    • Video Cables:
          Standard Component RCA
      Recent Reviews:
    by Amy Flower

    The Simpsons - Gone Wild
    "Fox get the dartboard out again to compile another haphazard four-episode release of Simpsons episodes… "

    The Commitments: SE
    "A rollicking good flick that manages to be musical without being naff..."

    Placebo - Soulmates Never Die: Live in Paris
    "One for all Nancy Boys and Ashtray Girls to treasure."

    Amazon Women on the Moon
    "...worth a look if you’ve never before had the pleasure. Bullshit, or not?"

    Jack & Sarah
    "Proving that simplicity is no obstruction to brilliance, this is an ultimately sweet (but not sickeningly so) tale that gives all those bigger English films out there a more than respectable run for their money... "

      Related Links

     

    Search for Title/Actor/Director:
    Google Web dvd.net.au
       Copyright © DVDnet. All rights reserved. Site Design by RED 5   
    rss