Let’s get this out of the way first.  Fantastic Mr. Fox is about penises.

There.  I said it.  Fantastic Mr. Fox is about penises, and there’s nothing you can say to convince me otherwise.  Look, I had wanted to start this post with a really good, academic-style introduction about the relationship of Wes Anderson’s new film with the works of postmodernist Don DeLillo.  Then I thought, No, I should start by talking about Marxist notions of proletarian alienation.  Then I thought, No, actually, the Durkheimian concept of anomie might be more appropriate in this context.

But these subjects, while related to the following article, are mere branches growing off the main shaft of this post.  The long and short of it is, this post is about penises.  Say it with me, kids.  Fantastic Mr. Fox is about penises.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s let out a deep breath and do some overthinking.

Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel and Mark Lee. They totally had a plan when they started this one. They swear. They do manage to touch on Twilight: New Moon, Thanksgiving pop culture revelations, Christian Reality Shows, and Ninja Assasin. Along the way, some other stuff comes up, like how to market amateur theatricals and whether eating less makes you live longer.

For extra fun, play the Overthinking It Podcast drinking game.

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 74 (MP3)

Welcome to Black Friday (or as we Americans have it now, post-racial Friday), so called because it is traditionally the day on which retailers first turn a profit for the year. While we hope you do your fair share of consumption, we hope you will not be blinded to the true meaning of our many holidays, the reason for the season: Overthinking.

Every year it seems to start earlier and earlier. This year, the christmas decorations were up the morning after Halloween. The onslaught of treacly music began. The snowdrifts were painted into the corners of retail window displays. (This is particularly laughable as I live in Los Angeles, which is a coastal desert.)

And yet, the season has its pleasures as well. Great food. Time off from work. Eggnog Lattes at Starbucks. People wearing Santa hats around. Fox News’s annual sanctimonious hand-wringing about “The War on Christmas.” A court case or two over a nativity scene on public property. The release of cynical Oscar-bait films. ‘Tis the season to be jolly!

Question: What do you love or hate most about the holiday season?

And let us not forget the day just past: Thanksgiving. (American Thanksgiving for our international audience.) A time to pause, gather, imbibe immoderately, fight with your family, eat pie, and note your gratitude for things you might take for granted the other 364 days of the year.

Question: What neglected bit of pop culture are you thankful for?

These or any other topics are fair game: It’s the most wonderful open thread of the year!

The giving of thanks now dispensed with, the giving of gifts can begin. Or rather the buying of them. Just as we did last year, we enter the Think Tank today to present you with charming and unexpected gift ideas for the overthinker in your life.

Oh, who are we kidding, they’re for you.

As always, we are grateful for your continued readership throughout the year and hope you enjoy our ideas. And we hope you buy them (by clicking these links!).

And whether you buy the gifts listed here or some others, we hope you’ll use our Amazon affiliate link (oh, and here’s just the Black Friday deals) every time you shop online so that we get the kickbacks that keep our servers humming.

Now onto the good part.

Roger Ebert is an institution of the film industry. Not because of his particular genius (he gave Garfield: The Movie three stars), but because of his longevity. He’s been reviewing major releases for nearly thirty years. Looking back at a collection of his reviews is like looking into the history of film criticism at the end of the 20th Century.

Consider, for instance, his review of RoboCop:

Because the scene [where the OCP executive gets murdered] surprises us in a movie that seemed to be developing into a serious thriller, it puts us off guard. We’re no longer quite sure where “RoboCop” is going, and that’s one of the movie’s best qualities.

[...]

The broad outline of the plot develops along more or less standard thriller lines. But this is not a standard thriller. The director is Paul Verhoeven, the gifted Dutch filmmaker whose earlier credits include “Soldier of Orange” and “The Fourth Man.” His movies are not easily categorized. There is comedy in this movie, even slapstick comedy. There is romance. There is a certain amount of philosophy, centering on the question, What is a man? And there is pointed social satire, too, as the robocop takes on some of the attributes and some of the popular following of a Bernhard Goetz.

By way of comparison, here’s his review of Starship Troopers, a decade later:

“I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.”

— Thomas Jefferson

–

“The spirit of enterprise, which characterizes the commercial part of America, has left no occasion of displaying itself unimproved.”

— Alexander Hamilton

–

“Excuse me, I have to go. Somewhere there is a crime happening.”

— Robocop

–

I had always intended for the second installment of this oldest and most waited-for (if not awaited) Overthinking It series to be about a character I have often described as the Quintessential American Tragic Hero: Alex Murphy, a.k.a. Robocop from the truly excellent Paul Verhoeven film of the same name. Then, of course, other things happened.

Well, this is VerhOeverthinking It week, and as Darren Aronofsky will hopefully showcase for us Robocop’s durability — both as a cinematic subject and as a cybernetic apparatus — so will I persevere in hewing to one of my earliest intentions on this site.

Let us venture into the glory, the flaws, the fall and the suffering of that bechromed bulwark of semivoluntary justice — the American who is Half Jeffersonian, Half Hamiltonian, All Cop.

Do you want to learn more? Well, dead or alive, you are coming with me –

[Hey, Overthinkers - enjoy this Verhoeverthinking It Week guest post from Diana Barnes-Brown]

When I started the initial Overthinking for my Paul Verhoeven Week Basic Instinct Guest Post, the thought process was more or less as follows:

Michael Douglas + crazy bi chick + Paul Verhoeven = Hollywood hates women! Let the crucifixions begin!

But lots of things are happening in Basic Instinct, and only one of them is misogyny – so why essentialize? Keep reading for a brief rundown of the more interesting plot points, some feminist issues as a jumping off place for (what I hope is) more subtle criticism, and of course the obligatory reference to vagina bugs/Starship Troopers.

Our Paul Verhoeven Theme Week continues with the ultimate “Total Recall” debate.

In case you needed a reminder, this man is now the Governor of California.

MELINA (overwhelmed): Quaid, I can’t believe it…It’s like a dream.

On hearing her words, Quaid’s expression turns grim and confused.

MELINA (CONT’D): What’s wrong?

QUAID

I just has a terrible thought…What is this is all a dream?

MELINA

Then kiss me quick…before you wake up.

Those are the last lines from “Total Recall.” Since those words were uttered and the final credits rolled, fans have been debating their meaning: was the whole thing after Quaid sits down for his Rekall session just a dream?

Matt: I like Showgirls. And I don’t mean I like it in the “so bad it’s good” way I like The Postman. I actually think Showgirls is a good movie. There, I said it.

Notice I didn’t say it was a GREAT movie. Certainly, it’s nobody’s favorite Paul Verhoeven flick (unless you grew up with a major crush on Jesse Spano). But you know what? I like it better than The Hollow Man.

Showgirls tells the story of Nomi Malone, a tough blond who hitchhikes into Vegas with nothing but a single suitcase (which immediately gets stolen). But she’s got two things nobody can take away: a great body, and a gift for dancing. Nomi starts out at the seediest strip club in town. But soon she breaks into the chorus of Goddess, a lavish stage show at a big casino. There, Nomi faces off with the queen bee, Cristal Connors, who either wants to befriend her, destroy her, or turn her into a sex toy.

Nomi may be a topless dancer, but she repeatedly insists she’s not a whore and she’ll never be like Cristal. But (surprise surprise) the higher she climbs, the more she becomes everything that once made her seethe. It’s a story as old as All About Eve, but with the sex jacked up to eleven. This is the most-expensive NC-17 rated film ever produced, and you will see more breasts than Frank Perdue.

It sounds fun, right? It IS fun, damnit. But for reasons I don’t fully understand, conventional wisdom firmly believes that this film is one of the worst of all time. It has an abysmal 14% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it won the un-coveted “Worst Movie of the Decade” award at the 2000 Razzie Awards. In fact, Showgirls has won more Razzies than any movie ever made. It’s a cinematic punching bag. And I don’t think it deserves it.

Overthinking Cowboy Bebop is on hiatus due to VerhOeverthinking It Week.  Don’t worry, it’ll be back soon!

Back in the days when I was a teenager, before I was a hipster and before I had a website, I used to divide movies by their goodness into two basic categories.

Judgements are subjective. If you loved Night at the Museum 2, you are entitled... to... your... Aghk! I can't say it!

This was simple and accurate, and served me well for many years.  But then I went off to college, where I contracted that most pervasive and untreatable of viral infections:  irony.  (And also plantar warts.  Kids! Wear flip-flops in the shower every time!)  Hardly a week went by in college where I didn’t get together with one group of friends or another to watch a terrible movie for the sole purpose of mocking it.  This confounded my system:  these movies were terrible, obviously, and yet they made me feel good.  Clearly I needed a new category:  the good-bad movie.  (I am not the first one to think of this, although I probably thought that I was at the time.  College students are like that.)  And having just taken Psych 101, I made up a new table which divided the movies that made me feel good into three crudely Freudian categories.