Miles & Ben: "Dr. Linus"
So, here’s another “Lost” post for you which will probably include spoilers. If you’re not caught up with all the new episodes and don’t want anything ruined for you, go away now. 
I’ve been watching “Lost” since it first aired way back in 2004. I even liked the ’slow’ part of Season 3, especially the second time I watched it. In addition to watching the show and coming up with my own theories (most of which have been shot down mercilessly as more information is revealed) I’ve really enjoyed the online community of “Lost” fans. We’ve all shared theories, quandaries, our desire to know the truth and in general how much fun we’re having with the show.
But I have to say, I’m not enjoying “Lost” fans anymore. I try to go to the same places and read what people are saying but all the whining and bitching is really getting on my nerves. All these years I’ve continuously read “I trust the writers to know what they’re doing.”
Now, all I read is, “I want to know what everything means RIGHT NOW – and I mean everything. If they leave anything out, I’ll hate this show forever.”
For example, in this past week’s episode “Dr. Linus” (my favorite of the season so far, but that’s no surprise since I have a very unhealthy fascination with Benjamin Linus), there was a great bit where Miles mentions Nikki and Paulo and the fact that they have $8 million dollars worth of diamonds right there in their graves. I thought that was funny, totally in character for Miles and a nifty little shout-out to everyone’s least favorite Losties.
So, when I visit one of my favorite “Lost” chats/discussions, what do I read about this? “This is exactly the kind of “answers”/closure/filler that I don’t care about and wish they wouldn’t waste my time on.”
I guess fanboys/fangirls are the same no matter what they’re a fan of. So many of them just can’t stand it when something they care about goes in a direction they don’t want, or that it’s not moving fast enough – or slow enough – or it just isn’t right, dammit! “I want Green Lantern to have black hair, not brown hair. Now it’s all just ruined!”
And no, that’s not an exaggeration. I’ve read about these ‘fans’ who will totally abandon something they profess to love more than anything for something as simple as a bad costume.
This also brings to mind all those Hermione/Harry Potter shippers who had a hissy fit when Hermione and Ron got together instead and started demanding J.K. Rowling change her plot lines and APOLOGIZE to them for being wrong.
So, the point of my rant? Relax, people. Yeah, it’s important to you and that’s great but when you start laying claim to something you had no hand in creating, you really need to get over yourself.
Me, I do still have faith in the “Lost” writers and producers. We’re going to get the answers to the questions they want to answer. All the other stuff that they’re going to leave out? I’ll just decide for myself. That’s one of the advantages of unanswered questions in fiction – for those willing to fill in some of the blanks themselves, they get a wholly original story that no one else has. “Lost” is not my property, but I have my own, personal version of the story that no one else can have.
I’m a huge fan of classic films of all genres and across all studios. However, there’s a special place in my heart for MGM musicals. With production values above and beyond almost all other studios, even the worst MGM musical had something going for it.
Kathryn Grayson was one of the many stars in the MGM musical stable. She left us today at the age of 88.
One of my favorites of the strip ‘Garfield Minus Garfield‘
Garfield Minus Garfield February 5, 2010
In general, “Lost” viewers are an intelligent group. You have to have some brains to keep what’s going on straight in your head – or at least what you think is going on. Do any of us really know? No.
But after the season premiere of season 6 I’ve been reading some comments, theories, etc. that tell me people are focusing way too much on the minute details and forgetting the big picture.
SPOILERS AHEAD. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN EPISODES 1 AND 2 OF SEASON SIX, STOP READING NOW.
I’ll add some buffer space. If you don’t want spoilers, get out now while you still can.
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Okay, you were warned. 
Okay, the bomb went off and it worked…and it didn’t. We have two times lines. Yay! Double the angst, glowering looks and “son-of-a-bitches.” One where the bomb did work and the plane did not crash and the island has sunk; one where the island did not sink but all the Losties were booted into the present – Jacob is dead so we know they’re in the same time period as Ben, Not-Locke and Richard Alpert.
In the timeline where the bomb worked and the plane didn’t crash, we are seeing differences – major differences. And for some reason, this is confusing people. Desmond was on the plane – and he was wearing a wedding ring. Hurley is the luckiest guy he knows. Boone failed to retrieve Shannon.
We have to remember that detonating the bomb didn’t just zip our characters back onto the plane – it changed everything related to the island from 1977 to the present – well, 2004, anyway. (Remember, that’s when the plane crashed.)
So it makes sense for Desmond to be on the plane. Even if he went on his life-affirming boat race, there wasn’t an island to trap him. Hell, maybe he won and proved his worth. Then again, it might not even be Penny he’s married to. Maybe he and Libby hit it off and got hitched.
Because the island is on the ocean floor it may no longer be affecting any of our characters and therefore, anything could be different. Granted, I don’t buy that it would have any effect on Shannon but that change was most likely due to the fact that the actress wouldn’t come back for the final season.
My curiosity isn’t about the major changes we’re seeing, what I’m most curious about is what we’re NOT seeing. I know the actor playing Walt is way too old to play himself from 2004, but we didn’t see Michael at all. Our favorite exploding science teacher made an appearance but we didn’t see see Libby or Nicki and Paulo.
Oh come on, wouldn’t it have at least been amusing to see our least favorite island couple return even for just a cameo?
Michael may have been left out due to acting conflicts, the whole thing with Walt’s age or something else. Personally, I’m taking Libby’s absence as a sign that my original opinion that Libby was in fact an Other may be correct.
We shall see…and I can hardly wait.
So, the long months of waiting for the sixth and final season of Lost are almost over – just 3.5 hours until the big event.
But not for me. I have to wait until it’s posted online.I love living in the country but we don’t have cable television and our antenna doesn’t receive a strong enough signal for the converter box to give us anything but our local NPR stations. As Pepe Lepeu would say, “Le sigh.”
I know I’m not alone but that doesn’t make it any better. All day tomorrow I’m going to have to resist the urge to visit my favorite Lost sites and discussions. I’ve done my best to avoid any spoilers and I certainly don’t want to blow it this close to actually getting to see it.
Oh well. In little more than 24 hours from now I’ll be able to watch. I haven’t been this excited about a tv show premier since the second season of Twin Peaks.
A great scene from a mediocre movie: Louis Armstrong and Danny Kaye in The Five Pennys
Rick Boyer has started a new entertainment blog. It currently only has three posts but it only started a few days ago. The fact that he chose to write about the women of How I Met Your Mother shows that it has promise.
Film Title: Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Starring: David Emge as Stephen, Ken Foree as Peter, Scott H. Reiniger as Roger, and Gaylen Ross as Francine
Written & Directed by: George Romero
Ten years passed between the original Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead but just try to put this out of your mind. You’re not really supposed to notice the passage of time because Dawn obviously takes place shortly after Night as far as the story is concerned. It simply wasn’t feasible to continue to set the movies in the late sixties when the eighties were almost upon us.
Despite the best efforts of officials and law enforcement, the undead problem has reached apocalyptic proportions and society is falling apart. Francine can’t keep her television station crew from behaving erratically, yelling at the scientific expert appearing on their currently airing talk show and from finally abandoning their position.
Meanwhile, Peter and Roger, members of the local S.W.A.T. team, are raiding a building, forcing the tenants to evacuate to safety. They fail, however, finding the basement full of the undead. After taking care of the problem they decide that it might be time to make a run for it.
They go to the television station and meet up with Roger’s friend, Stephen, the television station’s traffic reporter. He has convinced Francine, his girlfriend, to abandon the station as well – there’s nothing left for her to do since all the emergency centers have been overrun with the undead and there’s nowhere left for her to inform the people to flee. All four of them load into the station’s helicopter and take off in hopes of finding somewhere safe to wait out the returning dead.
They stop at airports along the way to get fuel and supplies. Coming across a shopping mall (a relatively new force of nature at the time the movie was made) they decide to stop and see what kind of supplies they can find.
They’ve hit the jackpot. Not only is there plenty of food and clothes, there’s an ammunition store that hasn’t been touched since the zombie outbreak began. Crawling in from the top they barricade a few storage rooms and venture downstairs to get what they need.
When they find it relatively easy to maneuver around the mall and see how they could make themselves safe here, they decide to stay for a while – just until things calm down and start to go back to normal.
Denial can be a comforting thing, so these three (soon to be four – Francine is pregnant) work to make the mall safe for habitation. They fortify their rooms upstairs and even create a fake wall to hide the stairwell, opting to use other means to get around.
After losing Roger to a zombie bite, Francine starts pushing to leave the mall, wanting to go north. She realizes that fighting for material possessions just isn’t worth risking their lives. The men disagree with her but she insists that she at least be taught how to fly the helicopter just in case.
As is usual, the woman is right. A roving motorcycle gang spots the helicopter on the roof and deduces that there are living survivors inside. They attack the mall, breaking down the zombie barriers and making a general nuisance of themselves. In all the confusion another member of our heroic team succumbs to a zombie bite.
Only two (well, three) make it away alive, leaving the mall for the zombies. But really, doesn’t the mall make zombies out of all of us anyway?
Of all the Romero Living Dead films, this is my favorite. I have always enjoyed post apocalyptic stories but not for the death and destruction of the apocalypse – for how the survivors pick themselves up and manage to go on living. I suppose to be more accurate, I’m a fast of post disaster tales. I have enjoyed all five seasons of Lost, but the first season is still one of my favorites simply for the ‘how are we going to survive here’ aspect of that season. Watching people solve the problems of daily living in extreme situations is very gratifying to me.
And there’s not much more extreme than a world overrun by flesh-eating zombies when taking a step outside for a breath of fresh air could lead to taking your last breath ever.
Rating: Ten Screaming Pumpkins out of ten
This past week has been Living Dead week – and we still have a couple of movies to go before we’re done.
As any horror fan worth their salt knows, the king of zombie flicks is George Romero and this past week was a great reminder of why.
Film Title: Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Starring: Duane Jones as Ben, Judith O’Dea as Barbra, Karl Hardman as Harry Cooper, Marilyn Eastman and Helen Cooper (and Bug Eating Zombie), Keith Wayne as Tom, Judith Riley as Judy, Kyra Schon as Karen Cooper and Russel Streiner as Johnny
Written by: John A. Russo and George Romero
Directed by: George Romero
This movie may seem visually tame to young film viewers today, but for its time the first Night of the Living Dead was rather shocking.
On a nice Sunday afternoon in Pennsylvania, Barbra and her brother Johnny visit their father’s grave site. Not taking the visit seriously at all, Johnny relentlessly teases his sister that the shambling man walking around the cemetery is “coming to get you, Barbra.” So when the shambling man does try to ‘get’ Barbra, they are both equally shocked. And just like that, the Zombiepocalypse has begun.
It doesn’t take long for the action to start in this first of the Romero films. There’s no scenes showing the cause of the disaster, no shots of government agencies arguing over who will take the blame and how it’s going to be fixed. No, like all of Romero’s zombie films, this is about individuals and how this horror effects their day to day lives.
After escaping from the first of several zombies, Barbara runs to a seemingly abandoned farmhouse. She is shortly joined by Ben who will become the hero of our movie.
This movie has plenty of zombie attack action, but what makes the film worth watching is the characterization of Barbara, Ben and the others who are already in the farmhouse, hiding in the basement. Mr. Cooper, the spoiled, power-hungry husband, his sarcastic, weary wife, the nice young couple of Tom and Judy. Oh, and how could we forget the Cooper’s zombie-bitten daughter, Karen?
The one thing I like about these movies is that no one is safe. In any mainstream film, there’s always one or two characters that you know are going to make it to the end. Some of the later Romero films fall into that trap, but not this first one.
Claustrophobic, tense, horrifying and thought-provoking, Night of the Living Dead is still one of the best zombie films out there and is the standard to which to compare all others.
Rating: Nine Screaming Pumpkins out of ten.
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