The First Annual Overthinking It Linda Hamilton Memorial Screenwriting Contest is going great, but I didn’t give you guys a lot of time. The deadline is now officially extended to October 31.

This means:

If you sent us a submission you’d like to revise, feel free! You’ll be judged on your last submission before the deadline.

If you haven’t submitted yet, GET ON IT. Yes, people are submitting to this contest (and thanks to the folks who sent us stuff so far!), yes it is real, and yes we will actually make at least part of the winning entry.

A quick reminder on the rules:

RULES/HOW YOU DO IT:

1. Write an action movie. It doesn’t have to be long, it doesn’t have to be in any specific format, but it needs dialogue, and it needs action . . .

2. .  . . and it needs characters! Specifically, female characters. The LEAD must be a WOMAN. The MAJORITY of the characters must be WOMEN.

3. Specifically, the parts need to be GOOD PARTS. I want to see interesting, compelling characters with some depth who get to say and/or do interesting things.

4. Your movie should NOT be about MEN or about SEX. Your women can be sexy, but they cannot be EXPLOITATIVE.

5. Your movie must pass the Bechdel test — two women must talk about something other than a man.

6. Making your women LESBIANS just so they can MAKE OUT is CHEATING! Lesbians in general aren’t against the rules, but entries will be judged within the spirit of the contest, so keep that in mind.

7. Email it to womeninactioncontest@gmail.com.

For complete rules and more info, check the original post.

And get going! Don’t just talk about sexism in movies. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Wrather, Lee, and Fenzel overthink peak oil and peak rock, the meaning of hip-hop, the ringtone bubble, politics, pornography, and artistic protectionism and offer a new feature, OTI picks, while Wrather manages to say something offensive to every nationality, ethnic group, and world religion. Spoiler alert for Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger.

Warning: This podcast may be NSFW. Also, a lot of the offensive stuff is meant facetiously.

OTI Picks
Lee’s Pick: Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger Videos (www.wcnews.com/holovids)
Fenzel’s Pick: Boston News Net (www.bostonnewsnet.com)
Wrather’s Pick: Hello My Future Girlfriend (www.2atoms.com/comedy/worstoftheweb/blount.htm)

Download Episode 13 (MP3)

So I was watching the season premiere of The Unit last night. This is a show on CBS about an elite military unit. And look what I saw:

One of the Executive Producers is named “Frank Military.” How is this possible? Is it a pseudonym? A coincidence? Or did growing up with the name “Frank Military” somehow lead to a job on a military TV show?

Okay, I can’t really claim to be a regular comic strip reader. But I recently became aware of exciting new developments in Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse (question for all you Strunk and White nerds – is the name of a comic strip italicized?). I feel like Ms. Johnston, without even meaning to, may have pointed the way towards a new style of storytelling.

Merlin Mann is one of my favorite bloggers. He has lots of sites. I like him because he has finely honed bullshit meter and zero tolerance for over-hyped garbage like the internet. Or “productivity.”

Anyway. Merlin recently wrote an article recently about The Wire, which (he agrees) is probably the greatest work of televised vision which the mind of man has yet produced. He is using the show as a visual aid in a series of connected points about doing creative work, none of which are really relevant here.

But along the way he notes a kind of fractal organization in the show’s plot, where micro and macro story arcs combine to produce a level of complexity that rivals a 19th century Russian novel. (One way to understand the show’s unmatched accomplishment is to think of it as novelistic — let’s say Dickensian — as opposed to a show like The Sopranos, which, with its focus around a complex and compelling character at the center of all the action, is Shakespearean.)

I’d like to consider The Wire as paradigmatic of the current crop of leading television shows (yes, in fact I don’t just watch crap), and offer a thought or two about the circumstances that have allowed for their ascendancy.

This is the first part of what may very well prove a one part series, in which I’ll invite our brilliant readers to overthink the lyrics of a particular pop song.

To kick things off, how about we take a little Journey?

Just a small town girl, livin’ in a lonely world
She took the midnight train goin’ anywhere
Just a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit
He took the midnight train goin’ anywhere

So far, so good. We have a girl and a boy who are both on the same train. Maybe the train’s metaphorical (real midnight trains go to specific destinations), but the point is clear – here’s a couple of random people who fate has brought together. You’d expect the next verse will tell us what happens when these two meet. But Journey isn’t going to play by your rules.

Our society’s institutions are collapsing, and we have lost confidence in our leaders to save us. Wait, didn’t someone make a summer blockbuster about this?

Where do we turn in this time of crisis? Here’s what the Joker thinks about President Bush’s economic bailout.

I’m a lucky guy.  Recently I had the unique opportunity to see The Godfather…on the big screen.  In conjunction with a new, super restored DVD release of the Godfather trilogy, Coppola also had new 35 mm prints issued, and they (well, Parts I and II) were screened at New York’s Film Forum.  Awesome.  I was totally stoked…but not quite prepared for what would ensue during the screening.

WARNING: Spoilers (and unintended comedic reactions) after the jump.

Wow… the Batman! Or is it just “Batman?” Uh, your choice, of course!

– Selina Kyle, Batman Returns

The future Catwoman has a good question. Sure, the movie titles always refer to the guy as plain old “Batman.” But he didn’t start out that way. Here’s a quote from Batman creator Bob Kane’s autobiography (via Wikipedia):

One day I called [collaborator Bill Finger] and said, “I have a new character called the Bat-Man and I’ve made some crude, elementary sketches I’d like you to look at.”

Italics mine. Sure enough, when the character was introduced to the world in Detective Comics 27, it was with the “the.”

So which is correct: “Batman” or “the Batman?” Are both acceptable? Which does he prefer? To figure it out, we have to consider superhero names in general, and decode the function of the “the.”

Many rock purists and music snobs (myself included) often lament the quality of most modern pop/rock music.  “Music these days is so trite and derivative,” they say.  “It’s just been downhill since the 60’s and 70’s.  Those were the days.”

A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine added fuel to the music snobbery fire with its “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list.  Anyone casually paging through the list would notice that the bulk of the list was comprised of songs from the 60’s and 70’s, just like the music snobs always say.

I, however, wasn’t content with the casual analysis.  So I punched the list into Excel, crunched some numbers, and found an interesting parallel between the decline of rock music quality and, of all things, the decline in US oil discovery and production:

(Sources: Rolling Stone Magazine, US Department of Energy)

Analysis after the jump.  Drill Baby Drill!