Matthew Wrather hosts a panel including Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, John Perich, and Jordan Stokes to Overthink:
- Series Finales (real and imagined)
- Battlestar Galactaca. Spoiler Alert: There will be no more episodes.
- The Blunders and Successes of SyFy
- Allegories of the Book of Mormon
- The Twilight Movie: The nuance of pornography, the subtlety of horror, the sexiness of melodrama.
Links Mentioned in the Podcast:
- Sandglass: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CNSAXO?ie=UTF8&tag=overtit-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000CNSAXO
- SyFy’s original Films: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sci_Fi_Pictures_original_films
- Battlestar Galactica and Mormonism: http://www.millennialstar.org/2006/02/12/battlestar-galactica-and-mormonism/
- Turbo Boost: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arL04K3HLMw
Tell us what you think! Email podcast AT overthinkingit DOT com or call 20-EAT-LOG-01—that’s (203) 285-6401. If you haven’t yet, take the very short survey! And… spread the overthinking by forwarding this episode to a friend. (It’s not chain main, but we promise something good will happen if you do.)
Excellent podcast, guys!
Only two questions remain:
1) Who speaks German and translated the awesome title?
2) When can we see the Skype chat protocols?
Oh, and here’s my bank account number…
Hah! Never will you fool me!
Fantastic episode. Personally, I reckon that the SyFy original picture “Anonymous Rex” is high up in the heirarchy of ludicrousness. That becomes even more apparent on reading the brief summary. Dinosaurs faked their extinction and now disguise themselves as holograms (or in the past, decked themselves out in latex suits) to live among us. An attention-grabbing concept it may be, but it is, just possibly, teetering dangerously on the edge of plausibility when you consider the fact that the dinosaurs must have been exceedingly intelligent to pull off the greatest hoax of all time.
Not only did they manage to survive centuries of inhospitable environments, but they also developed latex long before mere Homo sapiens did. Not only that, but these latex suits must have been even more advanced than our own, allowing a creature of substantial size to be compressed into a vastly smaller human-shaped form. As can be seen, they also gained contol over three-dimensional light tricks and utilised them with an expertise unknown to man. Douglas Adams claimed that mice were the superior beings on Earth, but this film turns that theory on its head – dinosaurs, with their miniature bird-brains, were (or are…) the most advanced creatures on the planet.
Completely and utterly far-fetched, even by the standards of a cable channel who failed 2nd grade Spelling.
Interestingly enough, Anonymous Rex is based on an excellent series of hardboiled detective novels by Eric Garcia. (Other titles include “Casual Rex” and “Hot and Sweaty Rex.” Yeah.) The concept isn’t any less ridiculous on paper than it would be on screen, but he totally sticks the landing.
Watched 37 and 38 together, i must say a small tear may have been shed when listening to 37 and assuming that wrather wasn’t coming back, though the podcast 38 wrather was missing the normal coked up surfer dude opening for some reason.
1) It appears that sub-consciously most of the writers on the podcast still view the site as a blog instead of a website
2) Is there a link to the site that talked about the relation between porn, melodrama, and horror?
The thing we were talking about there is Linda Williams’ essay “Film Bodies,” (Film Quarterly “Vol. 44, No. 4 (Summer, 1991), pp. 2-13). You can get it online if you have access to JSTOR; most university libraries and some well-appointed public ones offer this.
If you can’t get at the original, you also might want to look at a post I wrote in response to it a year or so back called “Slashing Private Ryan.” (It’s not about Tom Hanks having sex with Vin Diesel, although in retrospect that would have gotten us more pageviews.)
Nope, not gone… But very glad to be appreciated! :)
The difference between a blog and a website is something we’ve talked about a lot. What would you say the difference is?
Well i don’t know if it’d be overthinking it instead of just “thinking” on the subject.
The word site would just be the location of something and so therefore, the site of “overthinkingit” would just be here, in which case at this site, it could just be a blog.
But i guess if we assume a site as perhaps one like a tourist site or something, there would perhaps be more emphasis on the design and relative aesthetics of the place, whereas a blog perhaps focuses more on the content that gets posted? (However trivial the content may be…) In hindsight, perhaps overthinkingit should be considered more of a blog since im assuming you’d be more prided upon the content on the site than the new RSS technology that was implemented.
@Bthinking – That’s an interesting take. I might say that a blog is just one thing, whereas a website has more than one thing. A website is a launching pad. For instance, a website might have articles, plus a discussion forum and a photo gallery. The addition of those other features besides the text makes it a website. I realize that nowadays, blogs can have these features. So the line is blurring. Maybe your definition is better. The blog aesthetic is stripped down, minimalist.
I have jokingly complained that I’d much rather be a website than a blog, because in my mind blogs have a questionable reputation. Don’t get me wrong, I read many blogs. But the word “blog” still conjures up an image of self-indulgent hipsters, living off their trust funds and writing about Vampire Weekend in a Starbucks on a brand new MacBook.
I also think that “blog” sounds a lot less impressive than “website.” Anyone can start a blog in five minutes, and most blogs are probably updating once a month, or less. Saying you have a blog is meaningless. Saying you have a website is slightly less meaningless. “Website” implies, to me, that some effort has been put into the enterprise.