Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Ryan Sheely to overthink listener feedback. Topics include our troops in Iraq, scary movies, your ICBM address, proving and proving our knowledge, Will Smith, pulling punches in Faust stories, the further meaning of vampires, and how much TV can be good.
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.
Wrather, I want your dictionary.
where has the ‘these f**king teenagers’ podcast gone?
@pave —
You can find it on the “Podcast” menu up top, and you can find ep. 4 in the “latest posts.”
Or you can go here:
http://www.overthinkingit.com/category/podcast/tft/
Enjoy!
Wasn’t Michael Crichton basically retelling the Faust story over and over again? Scientist searches for knowledge, uncovers some hidden truth that is not meant to be discovered, presses on, and some people die horribly while others escape (relatively) unscathed. Sphere, Jurassic Park, and whatever his book about the nanobots was all seem to follow this pattern in a fairly straightforward manner.
the movie that scared me the most when I was little was ‘Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest.’ It gave me so many nightmares that my parents had to hide the VHS until I was older.
and I agree with Matthew; everyone loved the first season of ‘Heroes’ but then with season two people started to hate on it (which it rightly deserved…that was a *horrible* season) and we haven’t let go of that hate. It’s kind of ‘meh’ so far which I don’t see changing anytime soon.
I enjoyed _I Am Legend_. _It_ is mine, though. I’m still weirded out by clowns.
Multitasking seems to limit my forceful opinion somewhat. I only have one aspect to comment on.
IMO, a series needs to be over before it’s judged as a potential “greatest evar” or what-have-you. And any judgments based on certain episodes should be qualified as such by statements along the lines of, “I’ve seen X amount of episodes and thought Y about them.” A movie wouldn’t be released and reviewed seriously while still in production, and it most certainly wouldn’t be put on any top whatever lists when at that stage- any previews or pre-screenings are always given with a grain of salt, the assumption being it isn’t over or finished yet. I don’t see why a series should be different. There is still more left to base its merit or lack thereof on. And I don’t think one great season should qualify a whole series for “best,” nor that one bad season should disqualify it, either. If the OVERALL experience of “The West Wing” was a positive one, then it’s a good series; if the OVERALL experience of “Heroes” is bad, then it’s a bad series. So far, my OVERALL experience with “Lost” has been highly satisfying, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t episodes I thought were bad. But again, that’s so far. I’ll wait until it’s over before deciding if I really think it averages out to be worthy of being “one of the best shows of all time.”
Think of it like this, and I’ll relate it to Hancock, since y’all overthought it a little. I am not the only person of the opinion that the first half was pretty awesome and the second half was pretty crappy (and not so crappy it’s awesome again, just plain crappy, not very enjoyable). Because the two differences in segments average out, if asked what I thought of Hancock, I wouldn’t say it was awesome OR crappy, but that it was “alright” or “decent” or something along those lines. Then I may qualify it by saying the first half rocked and the second half blew.
Ergo, in order to make an overall judgment on a series, the series needs to be completed so that judgment can be made on the whole and not a part.
This isn’t to say judgments like, “From what I have seen…” are invalid, either, because one can make those of movies and series alike, too- and be totally justified in making them, because that opinion is on what one has seen. There is a qualifying statement inherent there, specifying a certain amount of the series (or movie), not the series (or movie) as a whole.
And I’m not saying people don’t make overarching opinions based on knowledge of a little. Obviously, it happens all the friggin’ time. But I don’t like making an uninformed opinion, and I don’t think anybody should. (But that’s just my opinion.) (Hah.) That’s why I read the _Twilight_ saga, after all.
@pave
iTunes is holding up our approval because of the naughty word. but if you want to subscribe to the feed, you can at:
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/thesefuckingteenagers
We’re releasing one later this week.
@sylvia
Just promise if you buy one, you’ll use the OTI referral link:
The Compact Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary, Complete Text Reproduced Micrographically (in slipcase with reading glass) (v. 1-20)
@ megan
If you like _Ferngully: The Last Rainforest_, you should be psyched to see James Cameron’s _Avatar_, because it looks like basically the same movie, except with phosphorescent CGI cheesecake instead of Robin Williams.
Or, you know, if you’re abjectly terrified by _Ferngully_, maybe you should skip _Avatar_. Unless, of course, the thing about it that scared you was Robin Williams.
Sorry I’m late to the party.
First off, Pete, don’t confuse Disco and Glam. They were very different movements. Glam was more outrageous for the sake of outrage. There was a strong focus on blurring sexual distinctions and androgyny. The music, while not as experimental as the prog rock folks, was still fairly original.
Disco, on the other hand, wasn’t about fashion rebellion like Glam. Disco wasn’t rebellion at all; it was mainstream. This was music for the beautiful people to go out and be seen dancing to, and the rebels were the ones BURNING the records, not the ones listening to them.
To condense – Glam was an outsider genre, Disco was an insider one.
On the subject of movies where someone makes a deal with the devil and fails to get their deserved comeuppance, I have two.
First, there’s one with the literal devil, in “Devil’s Advocate,” starring Keanu Reaves and Al Pacino. Reaves SHOULD go to hell at the end, but as I recall, he doesn’t.
On a more figurative level, what about “The Firm?” Tom Cruise really should just get hauled off to club fed at the end, but he doesn’t.