Thursday, June 26, 2008

LOST Panel at Comic Con 08 in San Diego


Next month I will be attending Comic-Con for four days in San Diego. It was just announced that the official LOST panel will take place on Saturday, July 26 from noon - 1pm. Guess who will be in line at 6am...

And although an official date and time has not been released, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse will also be participating in a show runner panel hosted by Entertainment Weekly. So of course that will be my second panel priority.

By the way, I will be collecting as much swag as possible from various vendors, panels, participants, etc. I will have a contest after I return, with prizes from either Octagon Global Recruiting or Lost.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

LOST Flash Forwards, In Order


I was going to write about the Lost flash forwards in chronological order, but someone has taken the time to do it for us, visually. Enjoy.




Friday, June 20, 2008

Where Are They Now? LOST Cast Updates


Since we have plenty of time on our hands between Seasons 4 & 5, I thought I'd research what the (current) cast of Lost is up to. As a general rule, I don't tend to report gossip or share personal information about celebrities on any of my blogs, so that kind of detail will not be included below.

It seems that many of the cast are taking some much needed time off, while others are fitting in a film or two in the interim.

NAVEEN ANDREWS (Sayid)

HENRY IAN CUSIK (Desmond)

Dead Like Me
[the big screen adaptation of the Showtime series]

ALAN DALE (Charles Widmore)
Currently appearing in Spamalot, in London

MATTHEW FOX (Jack)
No projects on the horizon

JORGE GARCIA (Hurley)
Although there has been no official news, Jorge is about to begin filming When We Were Pirates.
Here is a video of him recording a song for the film, along with his co-stars.


JOSH HOLLOWAY (Sawyer)
No projects on the horizon

DANIEL DAE KIM (Jin)
No projects on the horizon

ELIZABETH MITCHELL (Juliet)
No projects on the horizon

EMILIE DE RAVIN (Claire)
MICHAEL EMERSON (Ben)
No projects on the horizon

YUNJIN KIM (Sun)
Two Sisters

EVANGELINE LILLY (Kate)
Afterwards

TERRY O'QUINN (Locke)
No projects on the horizon

SONYA WALGER (Penny Widmore)
The Factory
Tell Me You Love Me
(the HBO series has been picked up for Season 2)

Filming should commence later this summer, and Season 5 is scheduled to premiere in January 2009.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Dharma Reaches Out: The Octagon Email


Along with the rest of the Lost world, I received an email today from Octagon Global Recruiting (from a man named Hans Van Eeghen). To refresh your memory, watch their commercial again. It originally aired during the season finale a few weeks ago.

Here is the email:

Octagon Global Recruiting, on behalf of the Dharma Initiative, would like to thank you for registering your expression of interest in our latest volunteer recruitment drive.We will be launching in San Diego on July 24th at Comic-Con International offering select registrants the opportunity to take an exciting aptitude test that will give applicants the chance to demonstrate their unique talents.

The Dharma Initiative hopes you will be able to join us to find out more about their ground-breaking new research project. We will contact you closer to the date with more information.

For those not able to join us in San Diego, Dharma's full recruitment program will be made available online to registered recruits after July 27th.

In the meantime, the Dharma Initiative urges you to spread the word. Invite your colleagues to join the team at www.octagonglobalrecruiting.com and take part in this once in a lifetime opportunity.

I will be at Comic-Con, primarily to attend the Lost panel! So hopefully I will learn more about what Octagon involves and collect some cool swag as well.

So what do you think of this whole campaign?

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Hurley Sings! Jorge Garcia Records Song for Indie Film


Hey Lost fans - you must watch this video of Jorge Garcia singing "Here's To You." The song is from the upcoming independent film When We Were Pirates, starring Jorge and Sharon Zimmer.

The movie, directed by Jimmy Hanks (Tom's brother) and written by Rafael J. Noble, sounds like it has the potential to be a cross between The Big Chill and Stand By Me.

Stay tuned for more details! And be sure to bookmark and read Jorge's very entertaining blog, Dispatches From the Island.

Literary & Philosophical Allegories on LOST


I highly recommend that read J. Wood's "Of Myths and Pisteutics" if you're seriously interested in the literary and philosophical references that permeate Lost, as well as how they all intertwine. The article is one of the best I've ever read about the series.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Television Critics Recognize LOST


Year after year, I express outrage at the lack of overall award nominations for Lost in all major categories (acting, writing, direction, editing). So imagine my surprise and joy to learn that the Television Critics Association (TCA) has rewarded our favorite show with nods in the following categories:

Outstanding Achievement in Drama
Damages
Friday Night Lights
Lost
Mad Men
The Wire

Program of the Year
John Adams
Lost
Mad Men
The War: A Film by Ken Burns
The Wire

The winners will be announced next month, but it is unclear whether or not the ceremony will be televised.

Fourth Viewing: Further Finale Thoughts

So I watched the finale at a party when it first aired, on TiVO the next morning, on video iPod the next day, and a fourth time last week when my better half finally had the chance to see it for the first time. My opinion about it was solidified upon the last viewing; that was two amazing hours of television. And of course the questions and theories continue...

DANIEL FARADAY

Faraday was on the Zodiac raft when the island moved and the freighter blew up. So where does that leave him next season? What about the other no-name survivors who were with him?

IF Jin is alive, will Faraday rescue him? And if so, won't Jin's reappearance put a dent in the Oceanic 6's lie and plans?

Will Faraday be the one who helps the Oceanic 6 find and return to the island? Does his notebook contain information about moving the island too? If he is still experiencing short-term memory loss, perhaps he'll consult his handy little notebook after the events that just took place, only to find instructions for what to do in case of such a situation.

FREIGHTER FOUR

It will be very interesting to follow Freighter Four now that they are split up. Faraday is in no man's land on the water, Frank quietly slipped back into the real world, and Miles and Charlotte remained on the island...wherever that may be.

Were Miles and Charlotte born on the island or are they children of Dharma?

When Ben turned the frozen donkey wheel, they showed everyone's reaction to the sound and sky...except for Miles and Charlotte, who were on the island when it disappeared. Interesting, and never a coincidence.

MILES

Is Miles' father the man who appears in all of the Orientation videos (Dr. Marvin Candle/Dr. Edgar Halliwax/Dr. Mark Wickmund)?

Does Miles glean all of his info from dead people on the island? Did he know about Ben's off-island access and wealth before he arrived there, or was he informed about it and proceeded with the blackmail attempt? Would this also explain how he knows that Charlotte has been there before (even if she doesn't remember)?

By the way, I recommend that you watch this intriguing deleted scene from "The Economist" earlier this season (courtesy of Doc Arzt). Miles definitely communicates with the deceased, but it's unclear who that was or what he learned. My first inkling was that Ben's mother Emily spoke to Miles. Remember that young Ben encountered her in that very location when he ran away from his father in the barracks. She even warned Ben not to follow her (because the sonic fence was activated at the time).

JULIET

When Juliet stayed rather than leave with Faraday on the raft, did she know that Ben was about to move the island? Did she know that the freighter was going to blow up? I doubt it, because she would have tried to warn Jack before he boarded a helicopter there with the other survivors.

JEREMY BENTHAM/JOHN LOCKE

Did Locke (as Bentham) visit his old girlfriend Helen upon returning from the island, or did he change his name and stay away from her to keep her out of danger?

Jeremy Bentham...sounds like Bent Them. Bending through time?

CRAZY THEORY

Locke/Bentham visited Sun after he left the island. She then traveled to London to inform Widmore that Locke (as Bentham) was off the island. It was probably written on the back of the card she handed him. Widmore then had Bentham killed.

Bentham's death triggered Sayid to go get Hurley and start gathering the Oceanic 6 to relocate to a safe location. Sayid was working with Ben, so clearly Sayid lied to Hurley about going back to the island. Ben went to Jack at the funeral home to inform him that they ALL have to return to the island.

Widmore knows all of this. He wants them all to return, and will be there when they arrive.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Character Spotlight: Charlotte Lewis

Given that Charlotte was on the island when in moved in the season finale, plus that fact that there is rampant speculation about her past (thanks to Miles), I thought it would be appropriate timing to look at the little we do know about her.

Her full name is Charlotte Staples Lewis, an obvious nod to writer CS Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia). Charlotte was born in England, at least according to Ben (when she first landed on the island, he told Locke & co. everything he knew about her...from his spy Michael's intel on the freighter).

Charlotte is an anthropologist who received her PhD at Oxford (where Daniel Faraday was a physics professor).

When the fake wreckage of Flight 815 was reported in the media, Charlotte was on a dig in Tunisia and expressed skepticism about the crash.

She then unearthed a Dharma collar (with the Hydra station logo) that was attached to the skeleton of a polar bear.

Ben later traveled forward in time to Tunisia, and it wasn't his first visit. Coincidence? I think not.

Matthew Abbadon, who claims to work for Oceanic Airlines, hand selected Charlotte to be one of the Freighter Four (along with Daniel Faraday, Frank Lapidus and Miles Straume) and travel to the island on a ship funded by Charles Widmore. Her actual assignment and role are unknown.

Charlotte arrived on the island via parachute, crash landing in a tree before being discovered by Locke and his group.

Ben shot her in the upper chest, but she she had a bullet-proof vest on so she survived. He then proceeded to share her life history with the group, and she looked surprised to hear it.

Charlotte accompanied the survivors to the abandoned barracks in New Otherton, but Sayid came and exchanged her for Miles, so she returned to the beach with Daniel and Jack's group.

Due to her vague answers and sassy attitude, Charlotte was not very popular there, especially with Juliet (which led to a nasty fight in the Tempest later, and should make for some interesting exchanges between them next season because they're among the only ones left on the island).

Let's back up a step. Charlotte clearly knew more than she was letting on, which became obvious when she and Daniel secretly took off to the Tempest station to turn off lethal gas. Oh, and our mysterious anthropologist knocked Kate out with a gun when she started asking too many questions. Add Charlotte to the list of women on Lost with prior gun experience that does not relate to what she supposedly does for a living.

She and Daniel went with Jin and Sun to get medical supplies when Jack required emergency surgery. We learned during that trek that Charlotte speaks Korean, when she interpreted and understood Jin and Sun's private conversations. Jin and Sun think that Daniel has a crush of Charlotte, but it appears that she views him more as a little brother. By the way, Jin confronted her about knowing Korean and threatened Daniel's life unless she helped Jin get Sun rescued.

When it came time to leave the island with the survivors and take them to the freighter for rescue, Charlotte chose to stay behind because she's still "looking for where she was born." Miles implied that she'd been to the island before, but she pretended not to know what he's referring to.

LINGERING QUESTIONS ABOUT CHARLOTTE
  • Did she know Daniel Faraday during their days at Oxford? Have they worked together before?
  • When she first encountered Locke and his group after dislodging herself from the parachute, she inquired about Claire and Aaron. Did she know the history of babies and infertility on the island?
  • Could she have been a child of Dharma folks? Was she born on the island, and if so, would that make her the first child to be conceived and delivered there successfully?
  • If her parents were working on the island for Dharma and they died during Ben's purge, are they the ones who provided Miles (the ghost whisperer) with the information about her previous stint on the island?
  • Even though there is an age discrepancy, could she possibly be Annie, Ben's childhood Dharma friend? Or could Charlotte be related to/know Annie? When she first encountered Ben, Charlotte didn't give any indication of recognition when she saw him and heard his name...
  • When Ben visited Tunisia before (time unknown), was Charlotte there? Was he there because that's where the island had moved before? If so, Charlotte may have known that (thus, the dig for the Dharma collar there).
  • Is it possible that Ben really doesn't know everything about her, that his only information came from Michael?
  • Does she work for Widmore directly and was she under his employ when she went on the Tunisia dig? Was he her source of information about the island and how to access it/avoid the dangers on it?
  • Had she also studied the Flight 815 manifest (like Frank)? Did she learn Korean only recently, as part of her homework for the mission on the island? And if so, how did she know for sure that not only were there survivors from Flight 815 there, but that the two who spoke Korean survived the crashed?
  • What will she make of the 4-toed statue? Perhaps she already knows about.
  • Does she make it off the island in the future and interact/work with any of the Oceanic 6 or Ben?
CRAZY THEORY - CHARLOTTE IS:

...one of Widmore's daughters. She and Penny don't share the same mother, and Penny is not aware that she has a sister. Charlotte has been to the island before because Daddy discovered and/or owns it, but she was very young at the time and doesn't remember much about it...yet.

LOST Finale Parties: Ours & His

I attended a great finale party last Thursday, sponsored in part by Dharma Water and Charlie, Kate and Jack. It was quite an experience watching that episode unfold with a group of people who share similar fervor for the show. Thank goodness they had TiVO, because we had to pause after reacting to the many jaw-dropping moments.

But I had no idea the lengths that some people go to...

Huge kudos to Matt R. for his serious dedication to Lost. Check out his blog, where you can view his very cool and creative finale party invites, as well as photos of guests' Lost costumes and Matt's detailed props. I am both jealous of and inspired by all of it. Nicely done.