Ben Linus Scares Children

Thanks to Sonshine for sending me this, which made me laugh out loud. I didn't think I could love Michael Emerson any more, but now I DO. This is SO great. Watch right to the end.

Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

By the way, if this doesn't work (those NBC embedded videos are usually crap), you can click here for the link.

Fuhrer Frustrated with Lost

Oh Hitler. I just can't get enough of your funny anger. I previously posted the YouTube clip someone put together of Hitler blowing his stack over the film adaptation of Watchmen, and now there are dozens of these clips, with the subtitles having fanboy Hitler flipping over being banned from XBox live or his DVR breaking down and missing the finale of Lost or angry about J.J. Abrams' Star Trek remake. But of all the Lost ones, this one is by far the funniest. I do warn you, however; the subtitled language in this one is not exactly G-rated. Enjoy! :)

Random Lostiness for a Saturday

Dear Diary: It is Day 9 of my captivity. Between my notes on the episodes and the book itself, I've written 90,000 words. I think I'm getting carpal tunnel. And I'm having dreams about smoke monsters. And one involving Ben. I was actually on the island, and he was telling me that my daughter was the key to it all. And then Damon stepped in and clarified that by that he meant they were going to cast my daughter in the role of the key to it all. Seriously, this dream happened. I think I may be going mad.

So... that's how my diary would read right now, if I actually kept one. Here's a very funny article imagining how the diaries of various Lost characters would read if they actually kept them, too. Some of these are laugh-out-loud hilarious. I'm not sure what's funnier: the title of Jack's entry or Ben's P.S. Thanks to batcabbage for the link! (Oh, just don't read the comments. They're mostly written by spammers, Lost haters, or troglodytes. In some cases, all three in one.)

Our very own Lisa has been crafty, with a site on Etsy, and she's just started up a blog where she's offering one of her Dharma items as a prize in a contest. Go here to check it out, and good luck, Lisa!

Some very crafty Lost fan posted a review for a dining kit on Target.com as Richard Alpert. It's freakin' hilarious, and another fan wrote a similar one for Everything That Rises Must Converge, the book that Jacob was reading in the finale, pretending to be Jacob on the Borders site. Go here and click on Customer Reviews under the book. Thanks to Eamonn for these links! It makes me happy that Lost fans are slowly taking over the interwebs.

And now, back to my captivity. Only one more day...

Lost Spinoff Series Announced!

Thanks to CK and Jerry for sending this to me; your emails came to me within minutes of each other.

It's been announced that one of the Lost characters has gotten its own spinoff show, but the news won't come as any surprise to any of us, since it's the character we probably all pegged as getting one. The format, however, isn't what we expected.

Yes, folks, Smokey got his own sitcom!

According to the article, Lea Thompson has signed on as the wife, "who must put up with her husband's screwball antics while raising the couple's two rambunctious children, Tanner and Smoky, Jr."

"The whole concept began with us asking, 'So what happens to the monster after it kills somebody and disappears down that ancient temple vent? What kind of life might it have?'" Lorre said. "And what we realized is that audiences really relate to this character and would like to see it in everyday situations, shooting the breeze with buddies at a local watering hole or murdering its son's soccer coach and depositing his lifeless body in a tree."

"And of course, you'll be hearing lots of its classic catchphrase, 'Brrrrr, chk-chk-chk-chk, muuuuuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrhhh,'" Lorre added.

Oh, Onion. How I love you. You can read the entire hilarious article here.

And before I forget: Pushing Daisies fans, I've been meaning to post this all week, but the first of the final three episodes will air this Saturday at 10pm on ABC. It's too bad the show was cancelled, because clearly ABC is putting such a huge push on it, giving it such a juicy time slot. (See, Dan? Sarcasm and I are getting along just fine!)

OMG... Juliet's in the FBI!!

OK, not really. ;) ABC has released this longish promo for their new series, V. Most of us already knew that Elizabeth Mitchell had been cast in the lead role, and if the series was picked up then it might spell the end of Juliet as we know her. The show DID get picked up, but that doesn't necessarily mean she's dead. (Unlike many bloggers and journos, I didn't see her die at the end of the episode any more than I saw anyone else die at the end of the episode -- I mean seriously, if you're going to say the hydrogen bomb blast killed her, wouldn't it have killed EVERYONE else?! However, we also know that Jacob didn't touch her, and if his touch offers protection, then maybe the gal won't make it after all. I think I heard that Mitchell will be appearing in some episodes, so I will sit back and wait to see what Lost brings.

In the meantime, check out the new promo. It's kind of awesome. And makes the loss of Juliet a little less painful. Then again, the Bionic Woman up-front was pretty awesome, too, and that show SUCKED. But I'm hopeful.

Lost Season 6 Trailer

OK, this isn't the official trailer, but it's freakin' AWESOME. This was put together by a fan who spent over 12 hours editing together footage from seasons 3, 4, and 5. Thanks for sending it to me, theblackbox, and well done, my friend, WELL DONE!! You can visit his YouTube channel here.

Man, the wait for season 6 just got SOOO much longer!!



Go here to watch the same video in HD.

Did Ajira Go Back in Time?

There's been some talk about the timing of the Ajira flight. (I'd planned on posting this tomorrow so I can stay on track with my writing but I can see you're already jumping into it on the Jacob thread, so I thought I'd post this one so you could move the discussion here.) Apparently in some podcast Darlton have said the flight lands on the beach in 2007 (and y'all know what I think of getting our canonical information from podcasts... ahem). Because most people agree they travelled in 2008, that means they must have gone back in time.

First, there's no evidence on the show that there was any sort of time jump. Yet. Secondly, I don't think we have an exact date of when they left LA. I always thought it was around December 2007 that they left. Jack's breakdown begins in late August 2007, and he's in full-on crazytown mode just a few months later. Locke begins visiting them in the fall, I think (that's what I suggested when I wrote out the flashforward timeline in my season 4 book), which would explain the jackets they're wearing when he sees Walt. So there's no reason they couldn't have boarded a plane in December and that would mean everything happens in 2007, is there? Other than the fact there are no Christmas decorations out. In which case, maybe November? Hm.

The only evidence that something is different on the island to me is New Otherton. When Sun goes there, she finds the Processing Center sign still hanging, and the doors are adorned with the DI symbols. The rec room has the annual DI recruiting photos on the walls, which we'd never seen before. I think this suggests that there was a break in the timeline, and things are now different than they were before. The Others never inhabited these barracks, or it would look like New Otherton, and not an abandoned Dharmaville. I think something's up with that scene.

This. Isn't. Happening.

One of my readers sent me this horrific news story today, saying she knew it would freak me out (thanks for the link, Ashlie!). Yes. Freaking out. So it would appear the Buffy movie is become a more serious possibility. Which should be cause for a big YAY, right?

Wrong. Turns out Joss Whedon AIN'T ATTACHED TO THE PROJECT.

Let's take a little trip down memory lane, shall we? It's 1992, and 20th Century Fox thought it would be an awesome idea to take a serious, dramatic film with comic overtones and turn it into a stupid teen sex comedy called Buffy the Vampire Slayer, starring Kristy Swanson. Throw in a little Rutger Hauer and Luke Perry, and wham, movie. The only funny thing in the entire film was Pee Wee Herman's death scene, which still makes me chuckle. But even IT wasn't in the spirit of what Joss intended.

Fast-forward to 1996, where Joss was given a second chance, something that NEVER happens in Hollywood. He took back his original script and fashioned a groundbreaking television series out of it, creating a pop culture icon along the way and virtually erasing from our memories any trace of that earlier movie.

Sigh. Have they learned NOTHING? As the writer says, "sometimes it's as if Hollywood sets out with 'failure' plugged right into the GPS."

This is an early news bulletin, so it could be the media screeching about something that's not even close to development. Let's all breathe together, and pray. I don't think this will happen. It can't. IT JUST CAN'T.

Jacob's Touch

OK, I know I'm long overdue for a post on here. And now that the original post on "The Incident" has reached over 400 comments (!!) I think it's time to break out some of the key points so we can discuss them a little easier. I proposed in a recent post that maybe I need to switch to a website format (even though the thought of it scares me) because of the linear (and often confusing) nature of the comments sections, but most of the people who responded said they're fine with that, so I'm very happy! One person said it feels more like a family, and I really do agree. On the other Lost sites I sometimes feel like it's a bunch of people talking, but here it feels more like friends. Let's not get rid of that feeling.

So, to that end, what I'll attempt to do are short posts (short? me? Succinct and I parted ways a LONG time ago) where I just raise a topic and let y'all talk about it. Feel free to repeat what you already said in the comments in The Incident... most people probably didn't see it anyway. :)

Jacob handed Jack an Astro Bar and touched him; he handed Kate a lunchbox and touched her; he touched both Sun and Jin on their wedding day; he handed Sawyer a pen and touched him; he touches Locke (and appears to bring him back to life). Then, after they'd already returned, he touched Hurley and Sayid before they got onto the Ajira flight. He touches Sayid 9 months after Sayid returned, and he touches Hurley the day before he's going to get on the flight, and gives him a guitar case to take with him.

Why is he touching people? Is it to get them on the plane? Is it to imbue them with some sort of willpower that will put them on the plane? Hurley and Sayid are the unwilling participants in the Ajira return, and he touches them then as if to give them that added push.

Or is it protection? I'm thinking the latter, that his touch is like the touch the Good Witch of the North gives to Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz book, a mark on her forehead that tells everyone she is protected as she travels through Oz. None of them have died yet, except for Locke, and maybe the touch allowed him to cheat death more than once (he's done it several times on the island). Maybe Locke's specialness makes him a different case. He touches Ben just before he falls over when Ben stabs him. Will this protect Ben, or curse him?

Your thoughts?

The Lost Rewatch Schedule

I've posted our Lost rewatch schedule on the other page. (And I made it all purty for you guys.) It's a doozy, but I know we can do it!!

You can check it out here.

The Rewatch Blog!

So, it seems many of you are content with the way this blog works and looks, and a website wouldn't change things for you. Frankly, I enjoy the blog, I was simply responding to some comments from people saying they were finding 300+ comments a LOT to slog through (thankfully, 300+ comments is the vast exception, and certainly not the rule around here). Besides, a website could get costly and annoying and is more conducive to ads. I prefer our clean little place here. I mean, has anyone tried loading up Lostpedia recently? Cripes... the time it takes for that World of Warcraft ad to finish playing through has me jumping to another site in the meantime. SLOW.

So what I did instead for our rewatch is I just took out another blog name. lostrewatch was already taken (drat) so I took out Lost-rewatch. I chose a template that is identical to this one, and that way it'll simply look like another page off this site. It'll be an easier place for us to navigate if I limit it to our rewatch recaps only, and then we do our other discussions over here. I hope that works for everyone! :)

I'll always post here when something is posted over there, so you won't miss anything if you're mainly following this one.

By the way, this is me procrastinating when I should be writing. The shoes are already ordered by size and colour, my spice rack is in alphabetical order, I've cleaned two washrooms and both kids' bedrooms. I'm in pain here. Hey, CC, you don't want to write a second episode guide on top of that Gossip Girl one, do you?

OK, back to work. For reals.

Gone Fishin'...

OK, not really. But I just wanted to let you guys know that I'm not REALLY gone, but as of right now, I'm taking off the next 10 days to do nothing but write Lost. My husband's even taking the kids out of town to their grandparents' for two weekends in a row so I can work weekends straight through from 8am to midnight. Thank goodness I used to play piano and learned the discipline of coming home and practicing for hours while my friends watched Y&R. ;)

I will try to blog while I'm gone; I certainly can't leave the blog empty and lifeless for 10 days, especially so soon after the finale! I'm hoping to post a rewatch schedule soon for our official Seasons 1-5 rewatch (I'm thinking of starting the first week of July; I realize that puts us a month after the other rewatch parties -- yes, there now seem to be several, but we're the smartest bunch! -- but it also doesn't start us into season 5 until after the DVDs come out, whereas the other rewatches seem to be starting before). I'll post it soon.

Another thought: There are currently 371 comments on the original post on the finale (!!). A few people have said it's hard to follow the threads, since clearly my comments are a linear board only and not a threaded one. I've been thinking for some time of switching from a blog format to a website one. My problem: I haven't a clue how to build a website. Blogger brilliantly does everything for me. So I would have to hire someone to make me a website that is run by WordPress or something similar where I could upload things myself to a constructed website.

So my question to you is, what would you want in a website? For me, I'd want a forum where you could all have various threads (and don't worry, I'll still be jumping in on the conversations whether you want me there or not), but also a section where I can continue to post blog-type stuff and you could respond. I don't think I could get my act in gear to actually have this ready in the next month (I remember my work hiring a guy to do our site and I think it took him 8 months to do the website? Does it usually take that long?) but I would LOVE to have our rewatch all posted there all neat and tidy. But I don't think that would happen. What else would you want on there? Video/audio podcasts? Do you think a website is something I should do? Anyone know anyone who does a good job with a rather simple website and could show a neophyte like me how to actually work the thing?

Finally, humanebean commented on my post about the finale parties (I was walking to my car today and thought of the photo of the dead pilot and the sonic fence and started giggling to myself, and then this woman walked by me and I'm sure she thought I was... off...) and said maybe we SHOULD try to plan a finale party somewhere? Who's willing to jump on a plane and fly to a finale party with all of us? As I said in my response, come on, Batcabbage. I know you and Batkitty want to fly 24 hours to go to a Lost party. Who WOULDN'T? Our post-episode discussion could actually be LIVE. And our fingers wouldn't be tired. Who likes to rock the party? I like to rock the party! Let's say, Oahu beach? May 2010? (I'm sure no other Lost fans have thought of THAT yet!) ;)

Anyway, I will try to post here, but right now I have a book that desperately needs to be written. As my publicist said to me the other day, "Hey, check it out, your book is on Amazon! Isn't that weird that they're taking preorders for a book that you haven't written yet?" Thanks, Simon. No pressure there. I'll get you back for that one. ;)

So if I'm gone for a day or so and not commenting, I'm not ignoring you (and knowing me, I'm reading the comments more often than I should and should really TURN OFF MY EMAIL and get back to work, dammit!) I'm just writing.

Be seeing you!

While You Wait for...

...oh wait. Lost isn't on tonight. WAAAAAAHHHH....

Thanks to Roland for sending this my way! ABC has begun a new series of commercials called "ABC House" promoting their shows by putting two characters from different series together in one scene. Watch as Wisteria Lane clashes with... the island.



Oh, and here's today's JJ Abrams and Queen Victoria. Baahahahaha!

In Defense of Juliet...

A lot of people have come down hard on Juliet for the way she acted in the finale. I’m not talking about detonating a hydrogen bomb (somehow the people who don’t like her seem to have forgiven her for that… oh Lost. How you change us) but for the way she cuts loose from Sawyer and tells him he loves Kate, despite his protestations to the contrary. Some say she’s whiny and needs to stop bitching just because Sawyer might have looked at Kate. Others think she’s emasculated Sawyer because of the way she talks to him like he’s a child. Others, defending her, say she’s jealous because she’s a woman (and that’s not intended in a sexist way, but saying she’s perceptive and not stupid and can see when a man is showing affections to someone else), and maybe she has a right to be so.

I think also the writers have tried to establish a history with Juliet that justified her behavior in the finale. I think I'm the last viewer who actually sees her point. :) But then again, I’ve loved Juliet from the beginning, so maybe I’ve always been able to see things from her point of view.

First, her parents break up. She apparently didn't see it coming, and while I'll admit the idea that your parents divorced and therefore you're doomed (come ON) is a little bit simple, I do know a few people who seem very jaded after watching their parents' marriages dissolve.

Then she has an affair with and marries Edmund Burke. Grade-A asshole. He sleeps with another research assistant and tosses her aside. She knows what it feels like to be the other woman. She leaves and comes to the island, BECOMING the other woman, but as much as she loves Goodwin, she hates thinking that she's actually the other woman (witness her breakdown in front of Harper when Harper confronts her on it). Goodwin is impaled, and she soon finds out that Ben thinks she's his, that he controls her and owns her. She makes a deal with him to leave the island, but is scarred by the experience.

So she comes to the camp, where it seems to be inhabited by Men Who Love Kate. Man #1, Jack, will do anything for Kate, but joins forces with Juliet and they seem to have a thing. But when they go to the Tempest station and she breaks down and tells him about Ben, he kisses her. Later, when Jack is on the operating table, she realizes he loves Kate and was just using Juliet as a pawn. He kissed her, and TOLD HER that he had her back and nothing would come between then. And then, like that, Kate did.

Sawyer pined for Kate for months after she left the island. No doubt in my mind. He stared at the ocean, we SAW the scenes of him going on and on and on about how painful it was for him, and it was. No doubt in the past 3 years he's been able to tell Juliet all about his brief but meaningful relationship with Kate, that they slept together, that he left her in the helicopter and he probably believes she’s with Jack. Eventually he resigns himself to the fact she’s not returning, and takes Juliet, who is, well, there. If Kate had been there, would he have been with Juliet? Probably not. And she knows that.

After three years, they’ve now established themselves, and Kate might be a memory, but she’s the one that got away. He loves Juliet, I truly believe he does, and he’s happy with her. He’s a better man, even if she does tend to talk to him like he’s a child at times, and he’s not the cad he was when he was with Kate. No more sarcastic remarks, and they’ve settled down. Then the Oceanic 3 show up in a Dharma van and Jin calls him and… he lies to Juliet. Doesn’t tell her where he’s going, just says he has to go somewhere. That lie was the beginning of the end. When he returns he tells Juliet, and Juliet’s whole world collapses. It’s the Jack situation all over again, but it’s more devastating because she truly believed she had Sawyer, and that they’d always be together, and she’d been with him for 3 years as opposed to Kate’s 3 months. But now it’s no different than her parents’ marriage, than her marriage, than Goodwin, than Jack. She begins watching for signs.

People can criticize Juliet for being whiny despite Sawyer professing his love, but there’s a reason the cliché “Actions speak louder than words” is so popular: it’s true. You can tell someone you love them until you’re blue in the face. But if you’re making ga-ga eyes at someone else, calling them Freckles (which, face it, is a far more endearing nickname than “Blondie”), looking in her direction when Bernard and Rose talk about true love, and following her everywhere, we know where his heart lies. And Juliet is heartbroken. He can corner her in the jungle and say, I will ALWAYS be with you, I love you, blah blah blah… but she’s right when she says she knows, and that’s why she has to leave. He’s staying with Juliet because maybe even HE doesn’t realize he loves Kate. Juliet is not being whiny or annoying in this scene… she’s a broken woman who’s been let down so many times, and now it’s happening again. (And many fans hate Kate now because of it, but it’s not her fault, either.)

Sawyer might believe, truly believe that Juliet is wrong, but she knows deep down that Kate is the one he loves. I’m not shipping here, I’m simply watching the program in front of me, and I think Juliet has every right to be upset. If she’s pregnant, as some people have speculated, that makes her upset even more heartrending. She certainly hasn’t told Sawyer, if that’s the case, and she’d rather lose the baby inside of her than have to deal with her heart being ripped out the way it has been. So… she detonates the bomb.

IF by detonating the bomb she rewinds the clock and puts things back to where they were, and we zip back to 2004 or 2007 or wherever and we watch some of these characters meet again like they don’t know each other, imagine how heartbreaking that will be for us. Have you seen the Buffy episode, “The Wish”? It’s an alternate universe where Buffy never came to Sunnydale, Willow and Xander are vampires, Oz and Giles are vampire hunters, and when they begin staking and killing each other, not really caring what’s going on, our hearts break. We’ve seen what they were when they were closest friends, so this alternate reality where they aren’t even aware of each other’s existences actually hurts to watch. It could be one direction the show takes next season, and it’ll be tough.

Lost Finale Parties!

So, long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away (i.e. before I had children), my best friend Sue and I would put on these extremely lavish Oscar parties. We both kinda hate the Oscars, so we'd do them to make them watchable, because we're such movie whores we know we'll end up sitting through the whole boring shebang anyway. So the invitations were fancy and funny and enigmatic. Then we'd make up menus of the food we were going to serve, usually 8-10 things (all handmade; we'd spend two days making the food) and all named after the nominated films or people. (I'm drawing a blank on any of the names now... which is a shame. I used to have one of those menus around, but I haven't a clue where it would be now.)

We made a red carpet out front, went to L.A. and bought a plastic Oscar that sat on top of the TV, spent hours making poster collages where people had to find 15 nominated people in the picture, and the first to pick them all would win a prize (we needed something to entertain us through the lousy musical numbers!) and one year we even had someone in a tight-fitting glittery dress come and be our "presenter" for the evening. Everyone who came put $5 in the pot and was given a ballot, and the winner got the entire pot. One year it was $175!!

But NONE of these parties even begins to compare to those of Lost fan Matt Roeser. A reader of my blog, he emailed me the other day to send me photos and the whole shebang of each of his Lost finale parties, which he's been holding every year since the finale of the second season. Friends must come in costume (and then are given a prize) and the invitations are SO lavish, they often come as enigmatic videos he sends out to people that rival the Lost summer ARGs.

And his friends don't dress up as Ben or John Locke: they dress up as the Hatch, as Vincent, or as concepts on the show. My favourite photo (seriously, this makes me giggle every time I see it!) is from the season 4 party, where Matt dressed up as the dead pilot (and pulled a dead face in every single photo) and his friend Aaron dressed up as the sonic fence. Here it is:



LOLZ!!! Seriously, this photo KILLS me every time. Not only are both faces absolutely priceless, but check out where Aaron put the keypad. HAHAHA!! Check out Matt's blog, where he gives a rundown of each of the parties, complete with the invitations and photos. Matt, you are amazing. I LOVE these. Please invite me to next year's party. ;)

Did anyone else have interesting Lost parties? Or is anyone planning a Lost party next year? How much do I wish we all lived in the same area and could have a big bash??

Lost and Queen Victoria

I'd never actually seen this comic strip before, but thanks to one of my readers who sent it to me (thanks, Teri!), I can share it with you. This is the New Adventures of Queen Victoria, where her story is reimagined as happening in the present, using images of her from the past. Last week's strip ended with this comic:



(Click on the image for a larger version)

And today's began the new story, completely reimagined, as per the new Star Trek film:



The cartoonist put a disclaimer with the strip last week warning that Lost fans will not find this funny, but I find it DAMN funny. :) Hey, we can all have a chuckle along with things like this. (The artist is NOT a fan of the new ST film, and this is his response to it.)

I hope you enjoy it, and you can follow the strip here.

These Are the Blogs of My Readers...

Teehee... I just HAD to use a cheesy soap opera tagline for this one...

I have many loyal readers who contribute as much to this blog as I do, at times. Many of them have been furiously typing away on their own blogs, and because my original post on Lost's "The Incident" has upwards of 360 comments on it or something completely baffling, I'm sure many of you have missed the linkage. So, I'll post them here and drive some readers over their way, deservedly so.

The first is from Blam, who outlined a bunch of Lost links in his blog post the day of the finale. You can check them out here.

Many of my readers told me of the horrifying incident the night of the Lost finale, where some storm whipped through the area and their signal was either cut into by the emergency broadcast system, or wiped out altogether (I can feel your pain!! earlier in the season, TWICE the last 5 minutes of the show was chopped off because I was watching the American ABC feed and the Canadian CTV network jumped in early to broadcast their show, and I lost the end. ARRRRGH). One of those readers, "I Screen, You Screen," vented her pain here, along with a great recap.

The lovely and talented Sonshine Music (who made me the Dharma symbol at the top that I now apply to all my blogging compatriots) wrote a lengthy and excellent post on the idea of a phoenix rising from the ashes and its possible connection to the ring of ash around Jacob's cabin. Definitely check this one out for an interesting take on whether Jacob might also rise. (Everything that rises must converge, right? Speaking of which, I'm having the WORST time finding that book... seems every other Lost fan beat me to the punch and shipping from Amazon takes two weeks, and the day after the finale there were so many holds at my local library it would have taken weeks for me to get a copy... so I'm hoping I can get my hands on one from Amazon before I have to hand in my manuscript!)

And finally, our assistant head researcher, Benny, has painstakingly outlined the Moebius loop and its effects on the plotline of Lost. Warning: Your head will hurt, but that's because it'll feel bigger after you've read this. Read carefully and you'll follow his argument.

Well done, guys!! So much to discuss, and... so much time!! :)

Dollhouse Renewed!!!

Well, all those naysayers who've been saying this series didn't have a chance because even the Joss loyalists weren't being loyal enough... have been proven wrong. Dollhouse has been renewed for a second 13-episode season. Not 22, but not CANCELLED, either, so... yay!!

Bones and Scrubs have also been renewed, as well as Castle (I've only watched a couple of eps of Castle but Nathan Fillion is my hero). You can read the whole article here.

And no spoilers on Dollhouse, please; I'm SO far behind (the last one I watched was Spy in the House of Love) because of going away and writing this book, and I can't wait to watch the finale. Thank you to Batcabbage for sending the news to me. You made my day!

Star Trek!!!

OK, so I'm getting away from Lost again... but once you see the new Star Trek film, you'll see it's not THAT far from our favourite ABC show.

This is a review without any major spoilers, so feel free to read ahead. I have to admit off the top, I wouldn't consider myself a Trekkie. I feel that Trekkies (and by the way, I do NOT see that as a derogatory nickname, being the insano Lostie that I am) know a billion things about the series, and where I'm just following Lost, they can tell you minutiae about TOS, TNG, Voyager, DSN, and Enterprise. And all of the movies. I've seen most of the movies, all of TOS and TNG, some of DSN, maybe an episode or two of Voyager, and the pilot ep of Enterprise. My husband, on the other hand, Mr. Snicker on the nights of Lost ("GEEZ how you do you remember all that useless information about this show?!") has seen pretty much every episode of every incarnation and every movie at least a half dozen times, at least once in the theatre. And despite most critics denigrating the last few movies, hubby thought they weren't as bad as some people thought.

So halfway through this movie, I was thinking, "Wow, he must be SO freakin' excited right now!!!" I know I was. In a word, it's stunning. The look of it is amazing, the sound is incredible, the acting is great, the storyline is at times hilarious, at times touching, and I was captivated the entire time.

Did it have its flaws? Of course. There's one relationship in there that some of you may have heard of that had me going, "Wait, what?? Why?" But I chose to just ignore it. I hope they drop it in sequels, because it did nothing for the storyline, as far as I'm concerned. The casting, though (for the most part) was inspired. The actor who does a younger Chekhov had his ridiculous accent down pat ("We will be arrivink at Wulcan werry quickly"), and was very entertaining. Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz) plays Scotty, and is HILARIOUS. Every time he opened his mouth, people in the audience were giggling. Karl Urban (who will forever be Cupid from Xena to me, even though I adored him in LOTR as Eomer) is pretty amazing as Bones. At first I thought he was doing a bit of a caricature of him, but then I realized the character was always played very over the top in a wonderful way by Deforest Kelley, and the only way to pull that off is to be equally so. Chris Pine was really good as Kirk, even if they maybe went a little bit too far in the whole, "ooh, look what a rebel he is" thing. But frankly, he rejuvenated a character that has long been staid for me. Zoe Saldana and John Cho are good as Uhura and Sulu respectively, though this new Uhura is very different than the one we previously saw (in my opinion; maybe really diehard Trekkies would totally disagree with me on that one). The real tour de force, though, is Zachary Quinto. Oh, how you have been wasted on that piece of crap we call Heroes. This is what he was born to do. He is BRILLIANT.

Of course, there were some casting moments in there that made me go, "HUH?!" When Spock's mother meets him in a hallway and talks to him in a fake gravelly voice that's far too wretched for her years, I thought, "Man, this is as bad as that horrid old woman voice Winona Ryder did in Edward Scissorhands and ZOMG, wait, that IS Winona Ryder. Wait, what??" And then Kirk must stand before the Starfleet Academy to answer for something he's done, and I'm watching and thinking, "I know that guy from somewhere... the dude who's talking. Wait, is... um... is that guy... Tyler Perry?!" It was.

So those were a little odd, but they didn't really take away from the film. Lost fans will find much to rejoice over in this. Damon as executive producer; JJ as director; Orci and Kurtzman as writers; Burk as exec producer; Giacchino as music composer... not to mention that if, like me, you actually read A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking in season 3, you will be able to follow this SO much better. Be prepared for talk of space-time and black holes and time travel and EEEEE!!!!! SO. HAPPY.

And somehow in the first 15 minutes of the film my eyes were welling with tears over people I barely knew. How does a movie pull THAT off? Nice.

And as I think EVERYONE knows by now, Leonard Nimoy appears in the movie, and he's great. William Shatner apparently blithered on in the press about how upset and boo-hooey he was about not being in it, but there was absolutely no place for him. Nimoy was it. He was perfect.

We emerged from the theatre and I was shocked to discover that my husband had lots to gripe about. That relationship I mentioned bothered him way more than it did me, and the flaws I've mentioned really bothered him, too. I said, "But after the last 5 films have put me to sleep, and you said they weren't that bad, how could you say this didn't basically light a fire under a dying franchise?" He just shrugged and said there were several superfluous moments. Yes, there were a few, but hopefully JJ is taking them somewhere (oh yes, sequels are already in the works). He includes nods to the fans in there (how I loved that Captain Pike was so prominent in it!) but allows you to watch this with fresh eyes if you don't know Spock from a spork.

But without giving anything away, JJ includes a plotline in there that now allows him to go wherever he wants with this franchise. Hell, he can kill off Sulu in the next movie when Sulu is 23 and it wouldn't actually be inconsistent with the other films, believe it or not. I think that alone was worth the price of admission. Watching JJ Abrams take something as sacred as Star Trek and make it his own, taking it out of the hands of everyone who went before him while simultaneously paying homage to them?? That is the mark of an auteur.

I now give permission for people to spoil away on the comments boards if they've already seen the film. If you haven't seen it, please avoid the comments until you have! I want to know what you thought. Did you like it? Do you think JJ revived the thing or did he wreak havoc on something you think he shouldn't have touched?

UPDATE: To make this a little more Lostish, I meant to post Jorge Garcia's brief review of the film (worth checking out for his funny pics at the end!) :)

Quick Call for New Yorkers

Don't worry, I still have PLENTY to say about Lost, but I was wondering if there's anyone out there who lives in NYC or who will be in Manhattan in the next week or so? If so, could you email me? And now back to our regularly scheduled discussion of Lost. :)

UPDATE: Actually, maybe it's easier if I just SAY what I'm doing so people don't think I'm looking to bum a spot on their sofa or something, LOL! I'm currently editing an amazing episode guide to Gossip Girl, much like the format of the books that I do. The author had a trip planned to NYC to take some location shots used in the show, but something prevented her from getting there, so I'm looking for someone who might be able to take some photos of the locations we need for the book. I have the list (it's about 10, and honestly, if you could even do one or two that would be ACES) and can send it to anyone who emails me. Let me know if you'd be in the area and might be interested!! (Free signed copy of the GG book to anyone who can help me!) Thanks to the New Yorkers who have already emailed me!!