The penultimate episode of this year’s Futurama half-season brings us the traditional Anthology-style episode, a trio of non-canon stories in different styles. This time it’s centered around books and reading and so The Futurama Mystery Liberry is presented by none other than LeVar Burton – not necessarily in his Star Trek persona, but as the long time real-life host of Reading Rainbow, the PBS children’s book show. Written by newcomer Jeanette Lim and Futurama veterans David X. Cohen and Patric Verrone, this is one of the most fun episodes of the season. While two of the parodied book series are largely unknown in Europe, they are still fun to watch and sucessfully combine a nostalgic feeling with a little science-fiction.

Futurama always seemed to have its hits and misses, but the 2024 season has been surprisingly strong and continues with great episodes. Cuteness Overlord marks the return of Kirstin Gore as screenwriter after over 20 years – she wrote the classic Leelas’s Homeworld from Season 4 and now comes back with another family-focused story. But this time it’s not about Leela but a new household that has been introduced recently – the Wong-Krokers with their three children. It’s also the first Amy episode for a long time and has a lot of fun parodying a certain toy collecting craze from a long time ago.

We are now in the final stretch of four episodes of this year’s Futurama season and it’s time for the return of Bureaucrat Grade 35, Hermes Conrad. The story created by veteran series writer Bill Odenkirk, who also wrote Hermes’ first big outing 24 years ago, delves deep into the character’s previously unwritten family history and combines it with the love for coffee that has always been in the background of the Futurama universe. Three Hundred Big Boys once saw Fry drink 100 cups of coffee, but Planet Espresso goes much further than that, telling a story spanning millions of years.

It was time for a Crazy Professor episode and with Attack of the Clothes this year’s Futurama season gets one in the best way possible. It’s funny, crazy and absolutely ludicrous – and one of the best Farnsworth stories yet. Written by Ariel Ladensohn, who actually is more associated with the Solar Opposites competition and was only involved with one previous Futurama episode, the story still hits all the hallmarks of a Futurama classic. Professor Farnsworth’s shenanigans are always welcome and this entry takes things in a direction that is unusual even for Futurama.

The fifth entry in this year’s batch of new Futurama episodes is, once again, an unexpected surprise. It’s Leela’s first own story and while it could almost have been a soap opera, One Is Silicon And The Other Gold turned out to be a brilliant and funny story about the pitfalls of finding friends in the future. Having Leela strike up a friendship with a chatbot is not even that futuristic – instead of heavy science-fiction, the episode cares more about the series’ characters. A return to Leela’s story arc was long overdue and the proper return of everyone’s favourite one-eyed Planet Express employee is very welcome.

Number four of Futurama 2024 will probably be known as “Bender goes Buggalo-Fighting” but thankfully there’s more to the second Bender-centric story of the new season than meets the eye. First, Beauty and the Bug is a return to Mars and that means the return of Amy’s parents Leo and Inez Wong and their Martian empire – and we get to see more about what’s happening on the red planet culturally. This time it’s Bender who gets involved into something new and also falls in love again with a special robot lady.

The third episode of Futurama’s 2024 season manages to come up with the first big surprise of the batch – it’s not a story about Fry, Leela or Bender, but about Frank, The Temp. Wait, who? Exactly! It would be unfair to reveal too much about the episode, so I’ll try to keep it spoiler-free. David A. Goodman, who already wrote two wonderful Futurama episodes besides being a prolific television writer for over 30 years, brilliantly insert a new tale into events from a popular third season story to create an everyday workplace horror à la Twilight Zone – or even better The Scary Door.

Last week’s new Futurama episode brought up a lot of complaints because of its half-baked current affairs satire and this week’s effort already has been unfairly mangled because of its worrying title. Luckily Quids Game only takes the bare concept from the Korean Netflix series and turns it into a surprisingly heartfelt all-ensemble episode that includes some wonderful flashbacks to Fry’s past. Written by Cody Ziglar, whose only other Futurama episode was Rage against the Vaccine from the previous half-season and directed by Crystal Chesney-Thompson, who started to direct for the series in 2010, Quid’s Game is a pleasant surprise after a slightly lukewarm start.

Yes, it’s back again – that animated show about the pizza delivery guy being catapulted into the future! It seems Futurama is just indestructible, but this time its return was already planned last year. After its temporary demise eleven years ago at the hands of Comedy Central, it caught up with the streaming world a decade later being picked up by Hulu. The first batch of ten new episodes of what is the first half of Production Season 8 or alternately Broadcast Season 11 was released last summer. And as promised, the second half is now coming out as Season 12 in the same weekly rhythm on Hulu in the US and in the rest of the world on Disney+. Sadly I only managed to review the first episode last year, but hopefully I can at least write some quick reviews in the coming weeks. Now, let’s have a look at what the Planet Express crew is up to this week…

After looking for a new name for this website for a long time, I finally took the plunge last year and decided to rename DVDLog into CineTales! In the light of the venerable DVD becoming more and more obsolete in favour of Blu-Ray and even streaming, it was just time to give up the name this website had since its inaguration in 2005.

Originally, I intended to revive the website last year, but due to a family member passing away unexpectedly, I lost the energy to go through it. This summer has so far been much more relaxing and now the transfer to the new domain and the re-branding is as good as complete. It still means that there are a lot of parts of the website that need a lot of work including the overall look and the new logo is probably not quite final yet, but it’s a first step to reactivate CineTales.

I’ve already prepared a bit of content to come over the next few weeks, fortunately there is still a lot of material that can be adapted as Blu-Ray reviews and of course there are always the streaming services. I am still in favour of offline media, but if you can get access to hundreds of movies and tv series for the price of just one traditional media per month, who am I to argue with that?

Stay tuned, things are going to happen sooner or later. No schedule, just when I feel like it! You can follow on the social media in the sidebar or just use the good old-fashioned RSS feed.