Aki's Blog

For those who still haven’t noticed, the brand new season of Futurama have started, with the first episodes since the cancellation seven years ago. Two awesome episodes released last Thursday, and a third one tomorrow, all’ll be available at thousands of torrent sites.

I’ve always been a big fan of Star Wars, ever since I was a little kid. I remember having a shirt from the film trilogy that’s way too little now, and I still have figures of the characters with moveable arms and legs, as well as a Falcon ship toy.

After re-watching Episodes I, II and VI today, I just felt I had to write about the films. I never concidered the second trilogy (I-III) as a part of a series with the original one (IV – VI). They are more like two stories, the original one being about Lukes fight against Darth Vader and so on, and the other one more or less telling the story of how Anakin Skywalker turned from that innocent boy into the evil Darth Vader. They are still great though, although my favorite films must rank in the order V, VI, IV, III, I, II. But they’re all great, they are all epic, and I’m really looking forward to the upcoming Star Wars live action TV series, to be released in 2009 or 2010, and to focus on the minor characters in the period between episode III and IV. I just hope it won’t disappoint me.

Your standard soap opera season is divided into three parts of episodes, which themselves are divided into a total of five parts altogether. Although they’re defined as thirds, they’re not necessarily as long; the mid-part is usually the longest, and the last part is probably just between two and four episodes.

The first third holds two minor parts; the beginning introduces most of the main characters and mentions or identifies the conflict or crisis that the season will evolve around, even though it mightn’t have started yet – it can for example be a mere mention of its “eventual” future appearance. In the second part of the first third, the mid-point, the crisis develop, and forces the main character to make one or several hard decision(s) for the greater good, such as leaving a friend or partner, moving, quit abusing drugs, or in the more drama-based soap operas, murder or commit another type of crime. Reasons can vary a lot, with anything from as simple as “those drugs aren’t good for you” to more complicated.

The second third only holds one part, but it’s also the body of the story. As already told, this is usually the longest part, and this is in which the conflict develop further, and so does the characters on personal level. Characters that in the beginning of the story were unknown to one another are suddenly friends, and others were best friends but parted ways forever (or at least for a few episodes, as always in the soap opera world). As the conflict rises, and as good people suddenly turn evil, and whatnot, the suspense increases, building up for the last third.

The last third holds two parts, yet two very minor. The first part is the one in which the conflict resolutes. As the suspense is at its height, the season reaches its climax, and there are one or two episodes with barely anything with pure suspense. All the questions are finally answered, people may very well fall to their death – or, as a cliché in the soap opera world, return from the dead as they really “just fell into a coma” or “played dead”. Depending on what the main conflict of the story was, the resolution ofcourse differs; for example the true villain is discovered, after one or two innocent were apointed as villains earlier in the story. Arguments between friends finally goes away. Then comes the denoument, which literaly is “the end of the end” in French. The denoument usually just cover the last fourth of the last episode, and is therefore definitely the smallest part. After the climax comes the anti-climax, where we again see the characters in their natural habitat (home, school, work, etcetera), just like they were in the beginning of the season.

However, the phrase “the end of the end” lies, for in the world of soaps the end of a season is never the end, but merely the beginning of the next. The denoument often shows a hint or even a part of the beginning of the next story, all to get the viewer interested enough to wait a month or two and follow the next season as well.

Soap operas usually have a line of writers and directors for a season, possibly changing this crew for the beginning of another season but not very usually in the middle of one. Both the writers and the directors usually vary on their post, either through having one episode each on every third or fourth, or co-writing basically every episode. There can also be teams of two or three which co-writes, and then these teams vary instead. One member in either the writing or directing staff (or in both) is often the creator(s) of the series, but they usually only write or direct an episode once in a while, in spite the fact that they often visits the recordings or observe the manuscript before released to the actors.

Even though a single writer often has the main control of an episode’s manuscript, it is not nessecarily at first created by him, merely detailed. The writing usually starts with a meeting with the staff, either only the writing staff or with the directors or producers. The next episode’s content is discussed, whereas ideas are debated and in the end one is chosen to be the used story. A main writer is choosed to write the basic manuscript, either through personal choice, totally random or through the list, if the writers vary with a planned scheme.

When the manuscript is finished and checked through, the actors are given their lines one or two days before the filming starts. The filming then usually lasts for about two days, ending about a week before it is released on TV, as the schedule usually is that they produce the episode while the last one is airing, always being one week before the viewers.

I lost my cell phone today. Don’t really know where, but I have an idea that I left it on my locker in school. Ofcourse, when I returned to the spot half an hour later, it wasn’t there. I guess I can just concider it gone forever, since barely anyone in this world is honest any longer.

And I feel this panic, this line of uncontrolled emotions of anger, sorrow and anxiety. Not because the phone was expensive or something. No, I’ve had it for two years or so, and it’s quite damaged, and I was anyway getting a new phone for Yule. No, I’m just feeling a panic of not having it around, a sort of panic that can grow only in the 21st century.

Born in 1992, I can easily say that I’ve been raised into the era of mobile phones and Internet; I remember in the early ’00s, when someone brought her phone to school (when I still went to a local school about 100 metres from my house), and everyone reacted strangely asking her why, what’s the point? Maybe four (including me) in my class of 30 had their own phones, I had my mum’s old Nokia that weight about the same as a modern laptop. But noone carried them around. They were expensive stuff we couldn’t afford losing, and noone brought them around.

Still, I’ve been raised with a cell phone.  And a computer. And a TV. And an MP3 player, remembering when you could fit about 15 songs in the 200 megabytes. Remembering when I got my first iPod, with 30 gigabyte. I’ve been raised with this technology. And now I realise, I couldn’t do without it.

And that really hurts.

 In 1982, Monty Python filmed a concert performed at the Hollywood Bowl, a concert with a perfect mix of their most famous sketches as well as new material written especially for the concert.It’s  a show with some of my absolute favorite sketches, including the Lumberjack Song, the Ministry of Silly Walks and Nudge Nudge, and some great new ones as well, for example the Crunchy Frog sketch, How Sweet to Be an Idiot and Comedy Lecture.The only thing avoiding it to receive 10 stars instead of eight is the non-includance of the Dirty Fork sketch and that it’s so damn short, 01:17 h.

 ********eight stars

I really don’t read much manga (anymore, I was a real diehard mangafreak in 2005-2006), but since this blog after all have the URL http://blog.mangaworld.se I thought I had to write something about manga just once. And btw, that URL it temporary, and if I could afford it I’d get another one (hopeswerehigh.com or whatever). In other words: Click the ads and bring me the sweet sweet money!

My favorite manga series right now (I don’t follow all of these, but I’ve read at least 5 or 6 tankôbons of each, mostly more)

• Case Closed / Detective Conan

• Love Hina

• Death Note

• Battle Royale

• Dragon Ball / Dragon Ball Z

• One Piece

• Kajika

• Naruto

I just had to write that list. Sorry. Now carry on with your lives, tiny mortals.

MY RACE WILL DESTROY YOU ALL (Futurama reference for teh win)

I have heard a lot of the original “The Twilight Zone” series, running from 1959 – 1964, and I finally downloaded it entirely (24,1 GB, gah) yesterday and watched the first episode (“Where is Everybody”), and it was great.

 The Twilight Zone was a series of  free-standing episodes of horror, fantasy and science-fiction, and lots of the episodes are afterwards copied by film directors, authors etcetera, and are referenced for example by The Simpsons (where I actually heard of the show at first).What I love about my family is how I’ve been raised with all these classic films, shows, comics, etcetera; my mother has renewed on a monthly Donald Duck comic since the late 1960′s and still renews on it (although at first it was in her father’s name while she lived there, and now it’s in her name while she lives here), and she’s learned me to love the Monty Python gang, and movies from the 1970′s and 1980′s, such as Indiana Jones, Star Wars and Back to the Future etcetera. Thus, I’m surprised my mother hasn’t even mentioned The Twilight Zone earlier. However, when I first told her that I had downloaded and watched it, her respons was that she was happy for me, since it’s among the greatest series ever, that she followed when she was younger (even though it ended a year before her birth it started airing in Sweden several years later).Anyway, a great show, recommended to EVERYONE! Watch it! 

 * * * * * * *seven stars

“Ah! A bomb!”"Stop screaming! That’s exactly what the bomb wants us to do!” 

Ever since I first saw the Futurama animated TV series as they aired on Swedish TV in the first half of the 00′s, I’ve loved the shows. As Matt Groening more or less created a new genre of animated sitcoms for adults with The Simpsons, no-one believed that other shows could follow without plagiarizing, and shows like Family Guy and American Dad was the perfect example of this. But then Futurama came, from the pen of Matt Groening himself, and it managed to follow in this great genre without any trace of plagiarizing. I’ve watched each Futurama episode at least three times, and I own seasons 3-4 on DVD. And every day I have cursed Fox for shutting the show down after its fourth season. So when they decided to produce a brand new direct-to-DVD-film and released it in November 2007, there was no question whether to buy it.The main story of the film is simple, and could easily just have been a normal episode (about 23 minutes) instead of a feature film at 1:25 hours, but as the story folds out and goes back to seemingly all the previous episodes, including for example the famous pilot, the Globe Trotters episode (The Time Keeps Slipping), and the one in which Fry tries cloning his 1000 years old pet (Jurassic Bark). The Planet Express crew as well as entire Earth falls for Internet spam by nudists of a nude beach planet, and gives away all their belongings, including Bender as he while downloading porn happens to download a virus making him their eternal slave. While having to work for the nudists, they realise that Fry has a tattoe of Bender on his butt, including a code that makes it possible to travel back in time – something the nudists starts to use to steal all famous objects until they own the entire universe.Meanwhile, Leela starts seeing Carl, a handsome man who she realises is the love of her life. They are to be married, but after he leaves her by the altar (after the decapitation of Hermes), the story starts unfolding with a surprising twist and sad story when Fry travels back in time as he can’t find happiness in the future.

A really complicated story, but everything folds out perfect and most of it actually makes sense. Even though some things are quite hard to understand, and some things are quite cheap; for example Bender has to leave a place for a time, and to create this situation the writers have put in that he had to go to the bathroom. As Bender is a robot, they put in the line “damn, for the first time ever I have to go to the bathroom!”.It’s quite cool to see how Futurama always – ALWAYS – manages to create so many original jokes, smarter and bigger ones as well as the minor texts they put in the background and so on. For example, on a phonebook Bender reads in the 21th century the cover says “now with 20 % more Josés!”, and while flipping through the book there are lots of names ending with José. Such things are so simple yet wonderful for the die hard fans watching the show over and over again – such details help making Futurama one of the best shows ever.The film also included unusually many “dirty” jokes (sex, naked, etcetera), especially cheap but still great ones such as “I’ve wiped Fry’s butt clean.” / “We’ll see about that!” and “Hm, okay, you’re clean. I meant that metaphorically!”. I would presume it was easier to put in dirtier jokes in a direct-to-video than in a TV series on Fox.And as always, Futurama has a great choice of music, especially in the part when Fry goes back to the 21th century. But I really hate the music in the scenes where they try their best to say “this is a film, not a TV series”. It destroys all the feelings in the film.And cartoon characters really should stop saying “things can’t any worse now”

 ******six stars 

Futurama is highly underrated and it’s a shame they were cancelled after only four seasons.

“Hey, isn’t this food a bit salty?”
“Don’t worry, I kept it 10 % under the lethal dose.”
“Oh no, I shouldn’t have eaten that 10 % salt for brunch… “

As I wrote earlier, I’m sick. I have a headache, throathache and feel like fainting.

I woke up at 7.00 AM, ate a minor breakfast, and went to bed watching the film Arabian Nights and playing the cell phone game Quadrapop (a version of Tetris). My current highscore is 22095 points. I fell asleep and woke up again at around 9.30. I gave my lizard Oliver and my cat Sushi some food, and settled down in front of my computer. I checked some blogs, and wrote half a chapter on Angel of Death.

That’s basically my day. I’m boring, am I?