This Open Thread has been open since midnight for added doorbuster savings. But there’s some stuff leftover for you latecomers, too.
The big news is the “official” beginning of the holiday commerce season. If you’re looking for gift ideas for the Overthinkers in your circle, you could do worse than the Overthinking It Gift Guide. Or just get them a Kindle. I bet everyone gets Kindles this year.
Movie news you should care about: the return of the Muppets to the big screen! On the small screen, the Roots got reprimanded by NBC for playing Michelle Bachmann onstage with Fishbone’s “Lyin’ Ass Bitch.” And Drake’s new album Take Care debuted at #1 on Billboard, proving that he’s far from … uncharted (get it? get it? c’mon, I’m buzzing from sweet potatoes here)
What song would Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem use to play on Mitt Romney? Or is there something we missed? Sound off in the comments, for this is your … Open Thread.
The Muppets song used to introduce Mitt Romney would have to be “I Hope That Something Better Comes Along”
What song would Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem use to play on Mitt Romney? They know enough to promote the single from the Muppet soundtrack: “Forget You” performed by Muppet chickens, presumably backed by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. http://youtu.be/XnfJch2o7vU
I’ve been reading Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye” (a Philip Marlowe story), will probably finish it this weekend. Also rewatched Chinatown on Friday. I was just wondering, why is the fedora so strongly associated with film noir? Who started it?
And hey, while we’re at it, why does every hardboiled detective story have a femme fatale in it? Fenzel, based on the literature, it should be easy to solve crimes in that LA Noir video game – the more attractive the woman is, the more likely she is guilty.
I recommend the movie version of The Long Goodbye, directed by Robert Altman and starring Elliott Gould. It’s available on Netflix Streaming, I believe.
Ditto the recommendation. Altman’s The Long Goodbye is the ur-Big Lebowski.
I’ve actually made that exact same point before. I believe in some circles this qualifies as peer review.
The reason for femme fatales is that, without them, there’s often no motivation for the detective or male protagonist (often in film noir, he’s just a nobody) to either a.) solve the murder that she’s tied to or b.) commit the murder that she ties to him. It’s such a cliche that it’s hard to imagine a film noir without a femme fatale, though I’m sure it could be done. Often times, the fatale is contrasted with a “virtuous” woman whom the hero is pushed by society to choose, but because he’s a man (i.e., his penis does his thinking for him) the easy availability of the fatale strokes his ego more than the virtuous woman’s purity. Though I guess the virtuous woman could easily turn into a fatale, or have been a fatale all along.
As for the fedora, they had to have been fashionable in the Thirties and Forties (the era of film noir, usually) or even earlier. Film noir probably wouldn’t work in the 1890s, with stovepipe hats.
Muppet SPOILERS question: Do you think everyone got out of the plumbing warehouse before it blew up? And is anyone else glad that Uncle Deadly got such a big role in this movie?
HECK YES about Uncle Deadly. He was always one of my favorite obscure Muppets in the tv show, so it was a delight to see him have a great part in the movie.
Having seen The Muppets, that movie is begging to be overthought.
What are we to take of the fact that the new film treats events from The Muppet Show, Muppet Movie, Muppets Take Manhattan, and Muppets from Space as all part of canon? Can we construct a timeline of the Muppet Universe in which the events of all four of those movies really happened?