Falling from the sky like an unraveled skein, it’s this week’s OPEN THREAD.

In the stranger-than-fantasy-fiction category, J.K. Rowling has been hit with a plagiarism lawsuit by an author claiming that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire stole several ideas. Or rather, the lawsuit’s being filed by the dead author’s estate. I’d make some joke about a Hogwarts artifact that communicates with the dead, but (A) I don’t know the series that well, and (B) this is such a transparent publicity stunt I can hardly jape about it.

Question: is plagiarism even that big a deal, outside of schools?

Because once you've made the first $1,000,000, your future writing probably won't be scrutinized at all.

Martin Scorsese’s latest, Shutter Island, opens in theaters this weekend. Metacritic gives it a 64/100: generally favorable reviews. DiCaprio’s Boston accent? A 29.

Question: what’s the worst accent ever attempted on film?

Dude, you see that feckin' Statie ovah deah? Dude, bro, he looks WICKED pissed.

And finally, GamesRadar observes that this week marked the 20th anniversary of the U.S. release of Super Mario Bros. 3. A groundbreaking platformer, with astonishing level variety, an unprecedented range of powerups and gameplay that was challenging without being frustrating, SMB 3 set the bar high for the greatest franchise in video games.

Question: does SMB 3 stand up to the test of time?

Do you want to plagiarize someone else’s Shutter Island review so you can get back to your Tanuki suit? Then HAVE AT IT, YOUNG’N! Because this is your … Open Thread!

Official Poster for Michael Bay Hate-fest 2009, aka ZOMG OPTIMUS PRIME

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has arrived in theaters, and to no one’s surprise, Michael Bay has stayed true to form and given us a loud, action-packed summer blockbuster. Also to no one’s surprise, critics have savaged his latest work: the Rotten Tomatoes aggregated review score comes in at a meager 20%. And again, to no one’s surprise, the idiot savants of the blogosphere have, as if by reflex, piled on the Bay hate and lampooned his heavy handed filmmaking techniques and lack of sophistication.

The Overthinkers are by and large of the same opinion: we see Michael Bay movies as the epitome of style over substance, cleavage over character development, and explosions over elegance. He does make a convenient whipping boy for the shortcomings of mainstream commercial cinema these days, and as such he’s been the butt of jokes on several occasions on this site.

That being said, I’d like to use this occation, the release of Bay’s latest fil…er, movie, to take a step back and examine his body of work more objectively. How bad is Michael Bay, really? And how does he compare to some of the greatest directors of our time?

As you’re probably aware, almost any effort to objectively analyze the inherently subjective nature of movie quality involves turning to the vast database of user ratings on IMDb. It’s an imperfect methodology, I know, but it’s better than nothing. This is not the time to argue the merits and meanings of the IMDb user ratings (if you’re interested in such things, you should probably check out this earlier piece of analysis on the topic). This is time to take the data we do have, fire up the Excel, and get to work.

[Note: all IMDb ratings used in this article are current as of June 29, 2009]