And a good morning to you, Overthinkers.

First, THE DEAD HAVE RISEN AND ARE MAKING ALBUMS. Not literally, of course, but a new album of rare and unreleased Jimi Hendrix tracks, “Valleys of Neptune,” debuted at #4 on the Billboard charts this week. Also, Michael Jackson’s estate signed a deal with Sony for $250,000,000 in exchange for ten albums over seven years. “In exchange” is perhaps a misnomer, since Blanket probably wouldn’t be in the studio cutting new hooks.

Just LEAVE ME ALOOOOOOOONE! Dah-dah nndah-da! Dah-dah nndah-di-da!

Second, MEN WITH GUNS ARE COMING FOR YOU, if you’re a protagonist in any of the movies opening this weekend that is. Repo Men (not to be confused with the cult classic), The Bounty Hunter and Diary of a Wimpy Kid open this weekend. Additionally, last year’s Swedish adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opens to limited audiences in the States this weekend. If it’s half as good as the novel, see it.

Sorry for all the misleading headlines; you know we’re not normally like that. But THE BUS IS SPEEDING OUT OF CONTROL! HURRY UP AND SAVE YOUR … open thread.

Not much to say about this week’s episode, which was decent but a bit filler-y for my tastes.  My favorite Sawyer episodes are the ones that con the audience (i.e., me), so I was a wee bit disappointed that Recon was so straightforward.  On the other hand — Miles and James are cops now!  Charlotte and James totally bone in the alter-verse!  I really dug Evangeline Lilly’s acting for once!  Un-Locke may or may not have a crazy mommy!  And Widmore’s doing… well, actually, I have no idea what he’s doing.  But, still: Widmore!  In other words, in a not-totally-spectacular episode, a lot of fun moments shone through.

Now onto the questions!

Question 1: Like the B-story in last week’s episode, Recon’s alt-plot seemed like a pilot to a spin-off series.  Which of the following Lost spin-offs would you most like to watch on a regular basis?  Hangin’ With Dr. Linus?  Straume & Twang (my name for USA’s new quirky cop show, starring Miles Straume & James Ford)?  The Good Shephard (a new Everwood-type show about a big-city doctor with daddy issues who learns about faith and family after moving to Provo, Utah)?  [Insert your own punny Kate- or Locke-based show here]?

Question 2: So, are we going to talk Un-Locke’s word for it on his mommy issues or what?  Is he talking about real-Locke’s crazy mom, or is he talking about someone else?  Tawaret, mayhaps?

Speaking of crazy mommies…

Question 3: What are we thinking about Claire now?  Is she crazy-evil or just crazy-crazy?  Did the “infection” make her go nutso, or did the supposed Aaron-napping do it?  And can she ever turn back to the light side?

Question 4: Who’s Sawyer?

See you next week.

Ah, that’s more like it!  This episode made my day–and I’ll explain more about why on Monday.  For now, let’s mull over these questions, shall we?

Let’s call this season “Greatest Hits.”  So far, we’ve been to the hatch (although it was a little, erm, exploded), the Barracks, the caves, and, this episode, the beach camp, the Dharma sub, and the Black Rock.  Plus, Smokey went and told us that we’d be hanging out with him and his buddies at the Hydra Station soon.

Question 1: What classic Lost location would you like to return to before the season is out?  I’m quite positive we’ll be seeing the frozen donkey wheel again, but the place I’d really love to see, if only for a second, is the “pile of notebook-filled canisters where the pneumatic tubes end.”

Question 2: So, whose lips wobbled when Ben said, “Because he’s the only one who will have me”?  Come on.  Raise your hands.  Don’t be ashamed.  (For the record, my notes read: “Ben!  WAAAHH!”  Not that I could see what I was writing.  I had, um, something…sniff…in my eye.)  And for those of you who aren’t buying Linus’s transformation into epic woobie, why aren’t you buying it?

Question 3: So Miles FINALLY got something meaningful to do in this episode.  Welp, I guess he’s a goner now.  So, is Miles going to receive a karmic death for stealing Nikki and Paulo’s diamonds or what?

Question 4: Widmore!  Okay, that’s not really a question, but… Widmore!  He’s here!  He’s made his way to the Island!  What do you think’s going to happen?  Will he join up with Crazy Jack and His Island Boppers?  Why did Jacob want him to come to the Island, anyway?  And where are Penny and Desmond?!  For GOD’S SAKE — WHERE ARE PENNY AND DESMOND?!

Question 5: I can’t come up with a good question about Richard. Can YOU?

See you on Monday.

The celebrities! The glamour! The inexplicable robot dance to the soundtrack of UP! Since everyone loves Monday morning quarterbacking, we’re giving you an opportunity to share your approval, gripes, jokes, and opinions here, in a special 2010 Oscars Open Thread.

Question 1: The night’s clear winners were Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker, a perfectly creditable film by any standard, but essentially a glorified buddy-cop picture. Did the winningest picture of the night deserve all the accolades heaped upon it—writing, directing, and best picture? How do you think it managed to beat out Avatar for all of those?

Deposed

Question 2: If there was a loser, it was James Cameron. Though Avatar picked up a few little men, none of them went to Cameron, and they were for technical categories—visual effects and cinematography—nothing to do with storytelling and artistic achievement. Did Avatar get what it deserved? Or was it robbed?

Question 3: In the Streeps/Bullock stakes, the victor was Sandra Bullock. Hope you won your Oscar pool with that one. What, exactly, do you think was being honored here? The actress? This particular performance? The longevity and diversity of her career? (By all of those measures, doesn’t Streep have the edge?). Hey, we’re not snobbish—as listeners to our podcast know well, at OTI we are a fan of actors who work. We just wonder if this Oscar was really for Demolition Man.

Bonus Questions for Overthinking

• What did you think of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin as hosts?
• This year’s ceremony largely moved along at a brisk—sometimes even a breakneck—clip. Did it lack in character what it gained in speed? Or were you happy that they kept it to a relatively zippy three and a half hours?
• Seriously, what was up with that robot dance to the soundtrack of UP!?
• By what stretch of the imagination is Twilight a horror film? And what was that montage doing there in the first place?

Nothing Oscar-related is off limites, for it is your… Open Thread!

You find a thread at the end of your week. Open? (Y/N)

Nothing really interesting happening in the world of pop culture this week. Everything’s at sort of a standstill. So you can talk about … oh, wait, there’s the 82nd Annual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Award Ceremony coming up on Sunday. We could probably talk about that.

We’ve talked the Oscars to death in a lot of other posts, so let’s just focus on recent Oscar news:

• Mo’nique, odds-on favorite for Best Supporting Actress (Precious), made gossip columns for refusing to campaign for votes. Why a successful comic actress wouldn’t want to associate herself with the child-abusing role that made her a star, I have no idea.
• Nicolas Chartier, producer of Best Picture nominee and critical darling The Hurt Locker, has been forbidden from the Sunday night ceremony for e-mailing Academy members urging them to vote for his movie. So first we’re supposed to campaign for the Oscar, now we’re not. Unbelievable! If you can’t count on consistency from the body that’s nominated Meryl Streep for a dozen Oscars, what can you count on?
• Finally, Sacha Baron Cohen has lost his slot as an Oscar presenter, after the Academy nixed a skit spoofing James Cameron’s Avatar. Cameron claims that he would have been okay with the gag. Having seen a description of the proposed skit, though – where Cohen plays a female Na’vi knocked up by Cameron, who confronts him a la Maury Povich – I’m glad it got axed. Where’s the punchline?

Question: list your picks for Oscar winners!

Submit the most accurate list of Oscar picks, and you could win the respect of the smartest people on the Internet! And isn’t that worth more than anything? Well, except winning an Oscar. Or getting paid to predict who’ll win the Oscars (which we aren’t). Discuss these and other quandaries in the comments, since this is your … open thread.

It's hard not to want one, isn't it? Think how that'd look on the XBox.

[By popular demand, we're bringing you a Lost-oriented Open Thread this week.  And if it goes well, we'll bring you another one next Wednesday, too!  But don't worry—this isn't this week's only Lost post.  I'll still be subjecting "Lighthouse" to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve.  Come back Monday to see the full piece!]

So, here we are, four (or five, depending on who’s counting) episodes into Lost’s sixth season, and I’ve gotta tell you, I am loving it.  Although I disliked the flash sideways-es at the beginning, I think that had less to do with the narrative structure and more to do with the fact that Kate is just an uninteresting character. The events that occurred on the Island and in the flash Universe worked together to remind me of why I was so interested in the character of Jack back in seasons 1 and 2, before he started pining too much after Kate, before he got a tattoo in Thailand, before he stopped asking the important questions.  I’ll talk more about his flashsideways in my full post on Monday, but I was glad to see him get a full episode of character development before the season was up.

Question 1: The flash sideways-es: Awesome, or a waste of time?  Would you prefer a faster, more epic pace, or are you as cool as I am with these super-slow-burning character episodes?

"So, you and me are just gonna talk this whole episode? Uh, that's cool. I guess."

Speaking of Jack, it seems the the Daddy issues we thought the show forgot about are back and raring to go.

Question 2: Does this mean that Sayid, the only main living character who doesn’t have Daddy issues of his own, is doomed to die before the show’s climax?

And, speaking of Daddy issues, the unseen Christian Shephard haunted this episode.  (My bet is that we’re not going to see him again until the climax of the show — maybe the third-t0-last episode.)

Question 3: Takin’ all bets!  Christian Shephard: good or evil?  On the good side: Jack reminded us this week that he helped the Lostie’s out in the first season by leading them to the caves!  (Also his name is “Christian Shephard.”)  On the evil side: Back in the day, we saw him hanging out in the creepy cabin (which was probably being used by evil Smokey) with Infected/Evil Claire.

Speaking of Claire…

Question 4: Claire: What’s the deal?

The Othahs ate ha baybee!

And, finally, the big question:

Question 5: Now that the answers of Lost are coming out all fast and furious, do you WANT all the questions to be answered?  While I certainly want the big questions answered, I don’t want the show to lose its sense of mystery, either.  It’s like, if I were in a room with a poet, would I have him or her gloss every single word?  Then the poem would lose its spark.  Of course, I can easily understand the other point of view: “I invested so many hours in this thing.  I need to know that it all makes sense, that it holds together!”  (Also: is this debate just a meta-level recapitulation of the old “faith vs. science” debate we keep seeing in the show?  Am I like poor, deluded Locke, saying, “I looked into the eye of this network television series, and what I saw was beautiful”?  And if you, the rationalist answer-lovers, don’t get the answers you desire, will you take a telescope, Jack-style, and start smashing all the mirrors in Darlton’s houses?)

See you on Monday.

Good morning, Overthinkers!

Only one news story worth reporting on in the world of pop culture: the two-year anniversary of a little site called Overthinking It. Wow. Two years already. It feels like only yesterday we were asking, “Does pop culture deserve this level of scrutiny?” Thankfully, we’ve never received an answer.

Question: visit the Authors Page or dive deep into our archives. Tell us what you’ve liked from the last two years. Tell us what you’d like us to revisit. Tell us what you’d like to see more of.

And while we’re at it, tell us what you want changed about the site. More Excel charts? More product placement in the podcasts? More visits by our goofy upstairs neighbor Laronté? Sound off in the comments, for this is your … Open Thread.

(oh, and news happened this week, too; you can talk about that)

Good day, Overthinkers! How go those New Years’ resolutions? That poorly, huh? Don’t worry – we still love you.

In award show news – is it that time again? – Twilight, “How I Met Your Mother” and Taylor Swift were big winners at last night’s People’s Choice Awards. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson lost out to Sandra Bullock and Johnny Depp, respectively, for Favorite Actress / Actor nods. For the first time this century, democracy works! (Twice if you count the black President thing)

Question: The fascination with “giving the people a choice” in entertainment is relatively recent in human history (Hall of Fame ballots, the People’s Choice awards, American Idol voting, etc). If we lived during the Roman Empire, how would the big stars of the day have been nominated for awards? How about the Dark Ages? The Byzantine Empire?

At long last, one of the great comedians of our time meets Hugh Laurie.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), favorite of geeks worldwide, opened this week in Vegas (baby). Big tech news includes the debut of Google’s Nexus One (not going to link to it; just go to the Google homepage), its Android-ready smartphone, and the buzz about Apple’s new tablet computer, or “slate.” Also, the presence of Lady Gaga, Polaroid’s new creative director for specialty imaging products. Not making that up, people; we’re not that clever.

Question: What eye-grabbing pop star – of this or any era, really – deserves a promotional title at a major electronics corporation?

Shake it like, shake it like, no you can't shake the PO-LAROID! (It develops automatic)

And finally, the Directors Guild of America announced their nominees for best film of the year. The films honored are The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow), Precious (Lee Daniels), Up in the Air (Jason Reitman), Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino) and There’s Something About Cat People (James Cameron). We here at Overthinking It are still waiting on our DGA and AMPAS ballots; probably just a matter of time. You know how the post office is. What with the snow and all.

Question: Best film of the year of those five, OR best film which was not on that list!

Costume dramas are a toss-up at awards season.

Answer these questions, or propose your own! This is your … Open Thread!

You won't see glasses like this for another thousand years.

Happy New Year! We bid a fond farewell to celebratory new year’s novelty glasses with zeros for eyes and give a warm welcome to the 20-tens. Or is it 20-teens?

The beginning of a new year is traditionally a time to take stock, start a diet, and make some positive changes in your habits. (For this reason, if you’re a regular gym goer, you’d be well advised to take a few years off. The weight room is going to be packed this month, there is no hope of snagging a treadmill for the next few weeks. Don’t worry, the newbies will be gone by Valentine’s Day.)

But not all resolutions are self-improving. Or should I say, not all self improvement takes that much resolve. Yeah, yeah: More exercise; less procrastination; quit smoking; better diet. But what about the most important diet of all, your diet of pop culture?

Are you set to eliminate flab and eat your cultural Wheaties? Or are you going to relax and enjoy yourself more? Whatever it is, let us know about it.

Question: What are your pop culture resolutions for the new year and new decade?

And, as ever, the pop culture bandwagon rolls on. 2009 was a record $10-billion year for the movie business (though you wouldn’t know it to hear them whine about how piracy is going to put them in the poorhouse). Think they can repeat their successes in the new year?

Question (The Iron Man 2 Memorial Question): What future classics and cultural artifacts slated for 2010 are you most looking forward 2? (Oops. Did I say “2″ instead of “to”? I must have Iron Man 2 on the brain.)

These (and all other topics) are fair game. For this… is YOUR open thread.

Ho-ho-hoverthinkingit! From all of us here at OTI-HQ, Merry Christmas!

Christmas is a perfect subject for overthinking—a global cultural phenomenon and economic powerhouse; a day of celebrations sacred and secular; hey, even a site of military occupation: I hear there’s a war on it.

Question: So what do you have planned for the day? Watching Home Alone, Miracle on 34th Street, or It’s a Wonderful Life on TV? Special music? Chinese food and a trip to the movie theater? What is your unique, pop-culture Christmas tradition?

We’re going to be taking a week off between Christmas and New Year’s Day to recharge the Overthinking It flux capacitor with stolen pop culture plutonium. But never fear—we’re doing what every media outlet does when the original programing goes on hiatus:

RERUNS and CLIP SHOWS!

That’s right, we’re rehashing the of what we published in 2009. Stay tuned next week for “Best Of” compilations featuring our personal favorites, our most popular articles, and most importantly, the OTI Readers’ Choice. Nominate your favorite article of 2009 in the comments,  and come back next week to vote for the top choices.

Question: What’s the best thing we’ve published in the last year?

Answer these or any other questions. And let us know if you got some good loot! It’s YOUR… open thread!