We made it, guys!  Season five!  We’re here!  I finally finished watching all of Lost.  I am officially caught up.

Hot.

Does that mean this is my last Overthinking Lost post?  Hardly!  This is only the beginning.  There is so much packed into these last seventeen episodes that it doesn’t seem fair to write just one post about it.  So, starting this week, I’ll try to tackle some of the show’s main themes: faith versus science, fate versus free will, and so forth.  Along the way I’ll try to make some predictions, too, about what may be to come.

This week’s topic: faith versus science!  Which side is winning?  Which side will win?  But first, my recaps for season five.

Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, John Perich, and Jordan Stokes to overthink the tragic ends of Michael Jackson, D.J. AM, Ted Kennedy, and Reading Rainbow.

Tell us what you think! Leave a comment, use the contact form, email us or call 20-EAT-LOG-01—that’s (203) 285-6401.

Download Episode 61 (MP3)

Interesting movies this week… after a lackluster summer blockbuster season, August has finally seen some worthwhile releases, between District 9, Basterds, and this weekend’s offerings.

With Labor Day fast approaching, summer is coming to an end. We previewed the summer’s movies in two episodes of the Overthinking It Podcast (subscribe in iTunes). From the flip side, what were the standouts for you?

In sadder news, we lost Dominick Dunne and Ted Kennedy. Fenzel was too busy writing his latest opus on race relations to man his customary post at the OTI Obits desk… why don’t you fill in for him and reflect on the passing of a literary and a political giant?

On the TV front, Mad Men continues gloriously (I gotta say, though I know it makes me a philistine, I like the shorter shows and tighter pace), and—mirabile dictu—Summer Glau is joining the cast of Dollhouse in the fall. (Fellow geeks, if you need a moment alone, I’ll understand. Just come back to leave your thoughts in this, your open thread.)

The continued critical acclaim and box office success of District 9 proves that audiences are comfortable with aliens as metaphor for apartheid. So the Overthinkers tackle other cultural artifacts that have used aliens as metaphor for something in the human condition. For only by stepping outside of ourselves … can we see ourselves … as we are.

Which is your favorite “aliens as metaphor” piece of pop culture? And did we miss one of the classics? Sound off in the comments!

I bet you KNEW there was a plane crash in this movie. Weird, huh?

When we walk into a theater, we usually know a fair amount about the movie we’re going to see. For instance, I haven’t seen Transformers 2. But from the trailer, I know that Sam Witwicky goes off to college and absorbs some sort of alien code from a mysterious artifact. I know that Optimus Prime fights in a forest, and it probably doesn’t go well for him. (There’s something about the way Shia yells “Optimus!” that reminds me of the way Ewan yells “Noooooooooooo!” in that Star Wars: Episode I trailer I memorized in 1999.) I know that Megatron returns. I highly suspect that the final sequence takes place at the pyramids.

(By the way, someone remind me to make a list of movies in which ancient Egyptians had direct contact with aliens: Transformers 2, Stargate, The Fifth Element…)

This is all right there in the trailer—it’s information the studio wants me to have. Depending on what other movies I went to see, I might have been shown this trailer whether I wanted to see it or not. Being surprised by Megatron’s return just wasn’t an option.

Now compare that to the District 9 trailer. (Warning: D9 spoilers ahead.)

“You are all going to make me lose my mind.
Up in here.
Up in here.
You are all going to make me go all out.
Up in here.
Up in here.”

— William Tecumseh Sherman, on his “march to the sea”

From Buchner to Buschemi, from Dickinson to DMX, the modern human is oft-beset by the specter of madness. Denied the comforts of microcosmic tradition and ritual, torn from the circadian rhythms of preindustrial life, and disarmed of macrocosmic rationality or consonance, the modern human is forced by exposure, education and experience to confront paradox, treachery, nihilism, contradiction and, above all, brutality, within a paradigm that does not admit to the existence, let alone prevalence, of these things.

In such circumstances, whatever the threat without may be, the true threat is within — that your own mind and body will reject reality and rebel against your self-control, plunging you into despair or insanity.

Perhaps one day you awaken to find yourself transformed into an enormous bug.

Perhaps you find yourself in a bank, responsible for hostages you have not taken — mistaken for a bank robber, when you have done no such thing — fired at by ground- and airborne sharpshooters for the crime of banking while black, even as you save the lives of the very men looking to take yours.

It’s enough to make a man lose his mind.

Up in here, up in here.

Sort-of spoiler alert: this post deals with a particular scene towards the end of the Inglourious Basterds, so if you haven’t seen it yet and want to go into the theater with a clean slate, you should stop reading now (and get out there and see this movie pronto—it’s a gold mine for overthinking). That being said, I won’t reveal any major plot points, so if you don’t mind losing out a bit on the experience, then plow ahead.

What, does no one smile in season four? Cheer up, guys!

Hey, folks!  I’m back and ready to Lost-ify.  Special thanks to Ryan Sheely for holding the fort until I returned.  I haven’t read his article yet—he warned me it was not only primarily spoilers, but in fact only spoilers—but my mother ensures me that it is an enchanting piece of work.  If you haven’t read it yet, please do so—but only if you’ve seen all of Lost season five.

I, however, am way back in the land of the fourth season, and I’d like to talk about time.  Time is… confusing.  To say the least.  (I know this because I saw The Time Traveler’s Wife last night.  My one-word review of the film: Mehhhhhh.)

We humans tend to think of time as a straight line pointing forward—but is it, really?  Lost’s writers certainly don’t think so.  That would be too simple, and, as we well know, Lost doesn’t like simple.

Plot-wise, Lost’s fourth season was exciting and somewhat overwhelming.  A staggering number of important events occurred over the course of just twelve episodes.  Because there was so much plot, it was hard for me to tell if there was an overarching theme tying everything together.  But if I had to pinpoint one main theme of this season, it would definitely have something to do with the nature of time.  Over the years, science-fiction writers have used time travel and paradoxes to explore many different themes: the inability of humans to escape the deterministic nature of the universe, the joint themes of regret and revenge, love’s ability to transcend time and space.  So this week, I’ll try to answer this question: when Lost starts talking about time machines and psychic flashes and trick flashforwards, what is it really talking about? What is time a metaphor for?  At heart, what is season four of Lost about?

But first, let’s recap the episodes I watched over the past two weeks:

Matthew Wrather hosts with Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, and Mark Lee to overthink Inglourious Basterds, welcome Tracey from Chicago, and construct an online dating profile.

Tell us what you think! Leave a comment, use the contact form, email us or call 20-EAT-LOG-01—that’s (203) 285-6401.

Next week will be a listener feedback episode, so get your calls and emails in!

Download Episode 60 (MP3)

After a rocky start at Cannes, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is widely predicted to take the #1 spot at the weekend’s box office. (You know, I can’t believe I’m indulging in that “opening weekend grosses” crap. I hate the horse-race aspect of feature film journalism as much as I hate the horse-race aspect of political journalism. Maybe it’s just that I hate the features business. The real action these days, creatively anyway, is on TV. But I digress.) Did you see it? Did the Jews-Nazis revenge fantasy have you cringing or yelling “jawohl“?

Post Grad, starring Rory Gilmore, does not look nearly so interesting. But Salon had an article about favorite movies about life after commencement which definitely lengthened my Netflix queue. Did movies prepare you for life after college? What do you know now that you wish you knew when you were younger?

pnnDid you see the Avatar trailer? Watch Top Chef? Project Runway? Mad Men? Sound off! It’s your open thread.