Secret LOST Video: "The Marbled Rye" (SPOILERS)

This one's strictly for fans of LOST who've seen all 6 seasons of the show, i.e. it's very spoilery so stop here if you've haven't finished the series. A little background on the video: showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse appeared to be engaged in a verbal spat on twitter last week over evidence that the show had been planned all along, but it was just a little tease leading up to their presentation of this jokey clip at Comic Con 2011. Shot on Disney's back lot a few weeks ago by regular LOST director Jack Bender, it shows Jacob (Mark Pellgrino) and Man-in-Black (Titus Welliver) overwatching Jack (Matthew Fox) and Locke (Terry O'Quinn) having a deep moment in the first season finale "Exodus", then bursting into an amusing argument takes potshots at the show's mythology. More proof that it's really the show that'll never die; dang, I miss it.

Themed Geek Havens

This one goes out to both Batman lovers and lovers who are Batman lovers... click the pic to check out an amazing-looking Batman-themed room in Taiwan's Eden Motel (warning: not appropriate for minors):


And if you're a Lost fan, next time you're in Barcelona, be sure to stop over at Bharma, an all-Lost themed bar!!

Random Stuff #12

Life After Lost

It hasn't been easy the last few months, following the finale of the dearly departed LOST, but I've been coping fairly okay... until now. A bunch of Lost-related news have surfaced to remind us fans that yes, it's really over folks, and we need to move on:

If you're a memorabilia collector type, and want to have a physical piece of the show hanging/sitting in your living/bedroom, you'll have the chance now to bid on all sorts of stuff at the Official Show Auction of Lost. Like for instance, a piece of Oceanic 815:

And the Dharma Van, Locke's Wheelchair, Juliet's Jumpsuit, Dharma Beer, Sawyer's Beach Camp Chair, you name it - it's probably there. Good news for non-US fans is that you can also join the bidding online through liveauctioneers.com.

That's all relatively normal compared to Pitchfork's report today that a photo of Jorge Garcia, who plays Hurley, will grace the cover of nerd-rockers Weezer's next album. Naturally, the album will be called Hurley...


For those who missed the finale on TV, Season 6 is due to come out in October and you can add it your queue here. Here's a teaser of the very last footage of Lost we'll ever see, a 12-minute epilogue called The New Man in Charge that'll appear as an extra on the release:



After watching that, I'm craving for some sort of spin-off action. But for now, goodnight Lost.

Losing LOST

So LOST is over. I've just been tossing up whether I should do a post-finale piece or not, since the web is already cluttered with them. And you'd think it'd be easy to blog about something you love dearly, but there's something about sheer complexity of the show that is quite daunting to write about, which makes me appreciate even more people like Alan Sepinwall and Noel Murray who are able to intelligently recap episodes weekly without fail. Anyway, what the hell, I'll have a crack at it; consider this a loose ramble about Lost and its finale and everything in-between (even if most of what I have to say has probably been repeated elsewhere, and more eloquently). If you haven't watched the show or seen the finale, stop reading now (it probably won't make much sense anyway).

I'll be the first to admit the final episode, appropriately entitled "The End", left me with mixed feelings. After the LOST title card came on for one last time, I was moved and frustrated at the same time. Many questions that have been begging to be answered were not; instead, exec producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Linderlof chose to tie up the emotional threads of the story, which in turn provided the meaning to the flash sideways narrative that has perplexed audiences since the start of Season 6.

The Island half of the finale proved to be Lost at its best - it was fast-paced, moving, funny - containing some of director Jack Bender's best work ever (how killer was Jack and Fake Locke's fight on the cliff?). The flash sideways reunions - especially Sawyer and Juliet's moment of realistion at the vending machine - had me on the verge of tears; it's the closest I've been to crying over a TV show in a long, long time.

The kicker? The sideways reality was revealed, by Jack's late-arriving dad Christian Shepard, to be some sort of "purgatory" or "metaphysical waiting room" where the characters had been living after they've died until everyone found and remembered each other and the time they spent together on the island. But it was something they all collectively created. How exactly? I'm not sure of the science or spiritual mechanics of its creation, and it's open to interpretation, but a case could be made that the detonation of Jughead in Season 5 was partially responsible. An explosion so powerful as to react with the Island's temperamental mystical (or electromagnetic) powers to produce another "world" where the main characters can live happily ever after.

Remember Juliet in her last breaths, uttering, "It worked"? That line didn't mean the bomb had reset the timeline so Oceanic 815 never crashed. She flashed, Desmond-style (since she was at the centre of the detonation at the Swan site), into the "after life" where everyone was able to lead the lives they've always wanted - together. If this kind of thinking seems like such a crazy leap - and initially it did seem like the writers had copped out - you know, purgatory this, metaphysical that, the logic or feel behind what transpired in its conclusion is something that has stayed with me long after. Had everything been solved neatly, the show wouldn't have made emotional sense.

Okay, sci-fi fans want their hard sci-fi solutions, and I did too - trust me, I KNOW it's frustrating when a show introduces so many cool concepts (the Dharma Initiative, etc) only to abandon them later on. And as much I as love Lost, it isn't flawless TV. Blame it on the way TV networks operate (the ratings game...), blame it on the writers not having a complete endgame in mind, blame it on the fans who've built up their own perfect theory they so desperately want to see materialise. The show has been a victim of every one of these factors. If you take all that into context, and enjoy the ride for what it is, I think Lost has come up pretty damn well. The nailbiting cliffhangers, the endearing characters, the mind-bending twists and mysteries - no other serial has been so ambitious and risky and thrilled my imagination in such a way since...I dunno, Twin Peaks? And it'll be a while before another comes along. FlashForward? Please.

Back to the ending - it's been haunting, lingering in my mind, and I've made peace with it. It's as good as one can hope. Jack's walk through the bamboo field, collapsing, Vincent laying down next to him, Jack seeing Ajira fly out in the sky, his eye closing for one last time. Bloody beautiful and heartbreaking. The show has come full circle, and the symmetry between these last few moments and the pilot is quite amazing:
Actually visual echoes and parallels such as these occur throughout the finale (the church resembling an airplane cabin, Locke falling on his back once again, etc), enhancing the show's consistency, even if loose plot threads are dangling all over the place. They may not make logical sense, but they do emotionally. In the end, Linderlof and Cuse can't be accused of copping out - they've obviously made it clear what the story they wanted to tell is. Even with all its intriguing mythologies and out-there science, the crux of the show has always been a struggle between faith and reason. "The End" realised Jack's long, bumpy journey from Man of Science to Man of Faith, and for that the show has paid off. Not many answers for us long-time viewers? We really need to learn to let go. It worked.


Some random thoughts:

• How great was Michael Giacchino's score?
• My favourite season is 5. Most consistently entertaining run of episodes. And I'm a time travel geek.
• Favourite finale? Season 3. "We have to go back!!" Mind-blown.
• Most head-hurting twist: the whole Daniel Faraday/Eloise Hawking thing, and Richard/Locke's compass. Ouch.
  
• Lost is clearly a show that gains a lot of its power from cliffhangers and mysteries; the answers are rarely as interesting. Did we really an answer to the whispers? Look how it turned out.
• The resonance of Christian Shepard's name only clicked at the end.
  
• Upcoming DVD set will have an extra 20 minutes of finale material that wasn't shown on TV.
• Damn, I will miss this show.
• Ok, one last thing:
  

Attention Lost Fans...

If you consider yourself a Lost fan at all, I can highly recommend picking up Entertainment Weekly's special Lost issue which hit the stands at Borders this week. There's a spoiler-free preview of the series finale (in two weeks, gasp!) and a number of articles, including a season-by-season recap and a map that sorts out all the convoluted relationships in the show, that'll make you realise that, sadly, there will never be another wacky, mind-bending show like this again (*SOB*). 

Lost meets 24

So what's better than a mash-up? When two of your favourite things are being mashed-up, which in this case, is Lost being given the real-time, split-screen 24 treatment. Kinda clever, the actual plane explosion is particularly well-done. Naturally, spoilers for Lost if you haven't seen the show.

The Lost Supper

At the moment there's nothing more exciting out there in film/TV/entertainment-land for me than the arrival of Season 6 of Lost. Scheduled to premiere in the US on February 2nd, this will be the last season of the series, which finished on such a cracker of a cliffhanger in Season 5 it has left the minds of the show's loyal fans buzzin' and reelin', trying to predict where the story will be heading next.

Since they really delivered in a big way in Season 4 and especially, Season 5, I trust that producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof and their stable of writers will end things satisfyingly and in line with the emotional and narrative logic that the show's established so far. Click here for a Q&A with them. They don't reveal too much, but it's an interesting read.

ABC's already rolled out their online marketing teasers, notably this recreation of Da Vinci's The Last Supper featuring the main cast (see any hidden clues?):

Here's the trailer:



More Lost craziness: How about a Lost Theme Park?

Lost: The Sitcom!

So what's a Lost fan supposed to do in the (excruciating) downtime until Season 6 starts next Feb? If all the suffocatingly obsessive forum discussions are getting a bit too much, there's always the abundance of fan-created material on youtube to tide you over. The latest I've stumbled across is a great mix of Lost's Season 1 opening credits with Full House's theme song (there's a few more at TV Squad). It's kind of interesting how easily Lost lends itself to the late '80s/early '90s sitcoms, though it probably speaks to how cheesy the show can be at times (and no doubt the editorial wit of the clips' makers). But I dunno, maybe it's the hair or something. Either way it's pretty funny stuff. Love how they got the Full House typeface in there.