UPDATE: Now that we’ve actually seen Avatar, don’t miss our Avatar Podcast: “Are We Human, or Are We Panther?”.

Fenzel: I wonder how the Avatar article I wrote [Ed. Note: Fenzel wrote "5 Reasons Avatar Will Suck" before seeing the movie. —Ed.] is going to hold up, now that Avatar is actually in theaters. James Cameron’s probably gunning for us. So, if I get killed by a liquid metal killer robot, you all know why.

Mlawski: The funny thing is, I spent this morning reading all of the early reviews for Avatar, which were all ridiculously positive. But none of them said the plot, characters, or writing was any good. They all boiled down to, “Oooh! Pretty!”

So we can have a situation in which the movie is a big critical hit, yet Pete’s article is completely right.

Belinkie: I wonder if the movie is a lame cliche, but at the same time, it’s a well-written lame cliche. Like, the plot moves along quickly, the dialogue is sharp, the jokes work. So Pete’s article might be completely right, but it works in spite of those issues.

Perich: You mean, like Star Wars? Star Wars: A New Hope was groundbreaking visually and is a lot of fun, but let’s never forget that the writing is really (really) bad.

Belinkie: I’m going to straight-up disagree with you. I’m not even a Star Wars fanboy, but them’s fighting words.

Star Wars is an extremely well-plotted movie, with some amazing characters. Seriously, how do you look at a screenplay that invents Darth Vader and Han Solo, and declare it really really bad writing? If you mean it has some cheesy DIALOGUE, well sure. But that doesn’t make the writing bad, in this case. I’d say the cheesy dialogue is part of what makes the movie so much fun, and therefore part of its goodness.

Lee:Ugh. “I Got a Feelin’,” the Black Eyed Peas, song, was nominated for the “Record of the Year” Grammy. What a joke. Though I don’t want to do it the service of even mentioning it on this site, it’s worth repeating that this is an awful, awful song. It has no redeeming quality.

Fenzel: TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT!!

Lee: Not lyrical, not musical, not cultural

Fenzel: LET’S LIVE IT UP!!

Lee: If anything, it actively subtracts from music in general for being so bad

Fenzel: I GOT MY MONEY!!!

Lee: As in, it makes other songs worse. Not just Black Eyed Peas songs, but the life’s work of other musicians is made less by the existence of this song

Fenzel: LET’S SPEND IT UP!!!

The Tyger Uppercut

Tyger! Tyger uppercut!
Tyger knee him in the gut.
What jump forward jab or fierce
Could brave this fearful Street Fighter?

In what level’s pixeled sky
Doth one escape his patch’ed eye?
What the leap evade his ire?
What the turtle block his fire?

And what flash kick, sonic boom –
What wall jump from across the room?
What better move in all the game?
What yoga fire? Yoga flame?

What the Ryu? What the Ken?
What hadouken, shoryuken?
What the Blanka? What beast’s trick?
Down forward punch? Charge forward kick?

When Zangief bared his scratch’ed chest,
Or Cammy spandex’d up her breasts,
Did Sagat’s scar they think to see?
Did you just counter-pick Chun Li?

Tyger! Tyger uppercut!
Tyger knee him in the gut.
What jump forward jab or fierce
Dare brave this fearful Street Fighter?

- Fenzel

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.

Look out behind you!

Disaster movies, like Roland Emmerich’s 2012 (debuting this week), always feature our protagonists speeding away from some onrushing threat. Whether a giant monster, a geological phenomenon, a torrent of lasers, or a terrifying combination of the above, the margin between life and death is measured in miles per hour.

Hurry up! Run!

The chase says so much about the genre and humanity’s relation to it. It’s man vs. nature writ large. Nature goes from indifferent to cruel, targeting our heroes with falling debris, obscuring smoke and other unfortunate people who just weren’t fast enough.

It’s gaining on us! Step on it!

The panel of Overthinkers sprinted to safety this week and, while catching their breath and staring at the wreckage of a major American metropolis, debated on what was the Greatest Escape in a Disaster Movie. Read our verdicts and weigh in by voting in our poll.

And make sure you read all the way to the end for our Mystery Guest Judge!

One of the key services that we at Overthinking It provide our loyal readers – for absolutely FREE! – is inventing words for concepts you didn’t know needed words. Like the Ghost Ship Moment, for instance. A $19.99 value, yours free just for subscribing.

Today, we let you in on another explosive concept that will unlock your minds to new levels of movie criticism: the benchmark movie.

A benchmark movie stands right on the border between two different classes of movies. Consider the blended genre of “dark comedy.” Serial Mom might be a good example of a benchmark movie for dark comedy. Anything darker than Serial Mom is an outright dark movie; anything funnier than Serial Mom is a straight-up comedy. Serial Mom is the benchmark of dark comedy: the signpost on the border.

You can also use benchmark movies as a standard for movie quality. Anything worse than your benchmark is “bad”; anything better than your benchmark is “good.” The benchmark movie is the perfect median.

A benchmark movie is inherently personal, however. Everyone has different tastes. So the Overthinkers will each contribute some benchmarks of their own. Once you’ve read through ours, post your own in the comments!

Order Up!

Sci-fi and fantasy elements of pop culture – movies, TV shows, books, etc – distinguish themselves from contemporary times through weirdness. People wear weird clothes, pilot weird vehicles, live in weird houses and interact with weird races. The weirder a common function of society is, the odder the landscape.

And what’s weirder than weird food?

“Fictional food” is up there with “alien sex” for producing the squirmiest reactions. We’re very self-conscious about how we look when we eat and what our choice of food says about us. And we defend our tastes very fiercely, to the point that treating the weird as normal freaks us out. The way we react to fictional food tells us about the fictional society being depicted, as well as … about ourselves.

Overthinkers – what is the Best Fictional Food?

(And stick around ’till the end for a verdict from our MYSTERY CELEBRITY JUDGE!)

Overthinkers, raising the bar like the flag at Iwo Jima
Dropping you haters for your rhyme misdemeanors
Snooping outside the studio, that’s where I seen ya
Bite our style, your throat burns like you’re chugging drain cleaner …

… and so on.

Diss tracks are a staple of hip-hop, what with its premium on credibility, freestyling, lyricism and ostentatious display. But hip-hop didn’t invent the diss track. Hardly.

So we rounded up the Overthinking Posse – the Lenza, the Fenza, Ol’ Dirty Perich and Stokesface Killah – to crack the deepest wax on the block. I’m talking deep in the record crate, son. I’m talking old school.

What, Overthinkers, is the Best Diss Track Prior to Hip-Hop? SOUND OFF.

And stay tuned to the end for a verdict from our Surprise Celebrity Guest Judge!

Two things about vampires:

1. They are huge drama queens.

2. Left to their own devices, they never die.

Yes, that’s right, the trailers for New Moon are out, and it looks like these vampires are living forever — taking Twilight to a whole new, aw who the Hell am I kidding.

The best thing about vampires is killing them. Doing battle with the forces of darkness. Facing down the enchanting stalkers of the night, the pale dudes in the funny coats who speak with fictional accents and keep asking for invitations because they can’t do something as simple as walk through a door without making a whole bloody production out of it — and taking them out with the aid of any number of colorful and exciting implements or methods.

Now, you, the readers, tell us, the pedants, what the best one is — with a little bit of help from our stable of overthinkers, and a special (simulated) celebrity judge . . .

What do I need to lay the ol’ Goblet of Fire on Cedric Diggory? I think I left it lying around here somewhere . . .

An army, Napoleon observed, marches on its stomach.  The Overthinking It army, on the other hand, rolls along on cylinders of fresh flour tortilla, stuffed to bursting with a delicious melange of beans, rice, meat, salsa, pico-de-gallo, sour cream, and who knows what else.  Today’s Think Tank will attempt to answers perhaps the most important question facing our society today:  what should I get in my burrito?

We are very pleased this week to welcome a very special celebrity judge!*  Based on your feedback, we may invite** more celebrity judges in the future, so sound off in the comments and let us know, y’hear?

* Note:  no real celebrities were harmed, or involved, in the creation of this blog post.

** i.e. impersonate.

Barbacoa (shredded, spicy, barbeque beef)—Lee

My mouth is literally watering as I write this.

I was unaware of barbacoa until Chipotle introduced it as a menu item a few years ago. Barbacoa blows away the other meat competition (chicken, pork, beef) for two important reasons: 1) it’s packed with crazy spices (chipotle adobo, cumin, cloves, garlic and oregano) and 2) it’s tender and moist beyond my ability to describe in written words. Notice the pool of grease juice in which the meat resides. That’s concentrated awesomeness.

NOM NOM NOM NOM

As if I needed any additional proof of barbacoa’s superiority, I brought the statistics with me. Read ‘em and weep. For a single 5 oz serving, barbacoa packs the following:

Calories: 285

Calories From Fat: 143

Fat: 16g

Barbacoa is the leading meat on all three statistics.

But perhaps more important than barbacoa’s standalone prowess is how its abundantly flowing grease juice affects other ingredients. Just like a superstar athlete who makes his/her teammates play at a higher level, barbacoa enhances the other ingredients with its flavor and moistness. It kicks the entire burrito up a notch. Barbacoa. It’s the LeBron James of burrito ingredients.