What's Alan Watching?: Lost, "Jughead": How to dismantle a hydrogen bomb
Sean L said... I also watched the first four seasons over winter and I have to say I'm feeling pretty entertained. Which after all is the primary purpose of the show. Yes, clearly there's evidence of directions the writers headed in that lead nowhere (Eko's church - the actor left; Libby - they decided to kill her to heighten the impact of Michael's betrayal and now it seems the actress doesn't want to come back). On other points it seems the audience has to accept that that the Others take some 'creative' (read wacko) approaches to problem solving - but I don't particularly mind that.
And yes, clearly also there's some retconning going on. The polar bears are an explicit example of that - the first bear appeared in the pilot, and the writers admit that they didn't plan out the arc and mythology until after that. But what great retconning that was! They were being trained to turn a frozen donkey wheel that unseats the island in spacetime and banishes them to the Tunisian desert. I certainly wouldn't have included that on a list of possible explanations in season 1.
But I still maintain my belief that the overall story arc, and where we'll end up at the end of season 6, is a result of planning that took place in 2004. And to be honest, unless they do something really stupid to make it obvious that isn't the case, I'm happy to give them some wriggle room on that whilst I'm being entertained as highly as I am.
And if you're more irritated than entertained by the show, well sucks to be you.

{replying to}
-Undercover Asian Man said... I'm all for creative wiggle room in a TV series, but not for introducing things just for shock value that make no sense inside or outside the story. Like making someone enter numbers into a computer every 108 minutes instead of automating it (with the very computer it is attached to) when the people who created the system of discharging (the people who designed it so that the computer and number sequence would cause a safe discharge) would have had to known what it was for and how it works. So their conclusion for the best solution then is to have a fallible, sleepy, REM-sleep-needing human do it? When waking up every 108 minutes would drive him insane? Or the people who gained control of the Island after the Purge - Ben and his gang - would keep a crazy Desmond in charge of that computer instead of killing him and taking control themselves? Or that after Desmond turns the key and triggers the fail-safe, there doesn't seem to be any effect of NOT having the discharge anymore (so why didn't they turn the key much earlier, since the discharge didn't mean anything to the Island's existence?). This isn't 'creative maneuvering', this is just dumb plotting. Just like "THE NUMBERS". People really have short term memories. There was someone in the comments a few weeks back that said he just watched the first 4 seasons over winter in time for the start of season 5. I wonder how he feels about the time he spent wondering about Echo's church, Karl's brainwashing, why Russo was given such prominence if she dies without ever explaining her being allowed to live, all the stuff with Claire and Sun needing to be kidnapped (when Others could leave the Island and recruit/enslave people easily, like Juliet), why the Others thought it would be a good idea to have their leader let himself be captured and tortured on purpose yeah that & their hillbilly ruse & I dunno what-all do have to be taken as just the Others doing wack thingswhen they had the complete upper hand versus the Losties (full knowledge and the element of surprise), why Polar Bears were needed to turn the Donkey Wheel when a more docile Donkey could be trained to do it (Ben alone was strong enough to turn it and survive the cold long enough too), why if the hatches were built with true functions, they had a system where a pneumatic tube would just dump into a field allowing thousands of them to pile up unattended, why they made up a virus and corresponding shots etc, etc, etc.

What's Alan Watching?: Lost, "Jughead": How to dismantle a hydrogen bomb
How good is Jeremy Davies, by the way? There's a tendency to take what he does for granted because he specializes in playing this kind of twitchy outcast, but he more than deserves to be shoved center stage the way he's been this season. Just listen to the way he delivers a line like "Fantastic idea, really inspired" when Ellie the Other threatens to take a shot at him while he's standing near the hydrogen bomb; coming out of Sawyer's mouth, or Miles', it easily has a sarcastic undertone. But Davies' delivers it with complete exasperation, even exhaustion. Dan's mind is always racing faster than everyone else's, and you can see him doing all the mental calculus -- including the realization that the bomb problem will work itself out with or without him, because the island hadn't blown up 50 years in the future -- and growing frustrated that Ellie, like everyone else he deals with on the island, can't keep up with him. He's not cruel the way 1996 Dan was (though my opinion on that could change when we learn more about what happened to Charlotte), but he makes it clear how tiring it is to always be the smartest man in the room.

Completely 'Lost': Hmm...
{Dr. Chang's baby in 5.1 opening scene ~ resemblance to Miles Straume}
shotgun willie got all of his family there



oh- I love the hello gaze, the baby seeing *you*

Long Live Locke.: S5Ep2 - The Lie:
Remember how truly, deeply shocked Ben was when Alex was killed? He found Widmore off-Island and told him that he would get revenge for Alex's death by killing Penny, and that Widmore would come to regret 'changing the rules.' ..
But was it Widmore who did something to change the rules? Or was it Desmond (who Daniel claims is the only person who can)? Let's not forget how our favorite Scotsman greatly delayed Charlie's death. Desmond had visions of several ways Charlie was supposed to kick the bucket but he managed to keep them from happening. Until, that is, the ex-rocker drowned in the Looking Glass after enabling communication between the Island and the freighter.
This allowed Keamy's team arrive. They killed Alex, the freighter blew when Ben killed Keamy, the Oceanic Six left and then Ben moved the Island and all hell broke loose. As Ben had said to Locke, doing so was "a last resort". Ben knew he was out of options by that point.
If Desmond hadn't tried to save Charlie and had heeded Ms. Hawking's warning that he should never interfere with fate, would everyone still be chillin' on the beach, drinking stale DHARMA beer after a long day of participating in the second Island Open?

Once the communication lines were opened by Charlie and once Jack answered the freighter's call, Widmore knew where the Island was.


Long Live Locke.: S5Ep1 - Because You Left
this writeup is great, all good sense + ideas new to me, cld be wh Lindelof means th will see was always a time-travel show
re Locke encountr Ethan at plane: wldn't Ethan freak out wh sees Locke 2004? maybe DID recognize eo (as seen time travel cnscsns weirdness so Locke physically in 2004 meetg Ethan in past, maybe cnscns records as happeng in past.) S1e9-10 Locke & Ethan lot time hanging out by thmslvs.
Who are th chars left fr S1 now driftg thr time?
Locke, Sawyer, Rose. There are reasons believe all three had buried memories of their time-jumpg fr moment landed Island. /cool./
Rose was adamant her husband alive elsewh on Island. We all attributed this to her strong faith.
Sawyer to Kate in s1e5: "It's about time. I made this birthday wish 4 yrs ago."
Locke: how m times known about to rain? told ppl wh 'supposed' to do? he's figured followg some strong instinct, maybe actually bcs he's more connected to Island, his time-jump memories more accessible to him.


-Roland said... My current thinking about LOST Time Loops: S1-S4 showed us the Penultimate Time Loop. In various previous TL’s, there were no survivors of the Flight 815 crash, Mikhail met a Paralysed John Locke (of whom he had a “fleeting memory” in “Par Avion”), Charlie programmed the LG jammer and Juliet received her first three shoulder dislocations.

-lost and back again said...
When Locke and Boone first encountered the Beechcraft in Season 1, Episode 13, Locke temporarily lost the use of his legs. Was that incident somehow related to the gunshot wound from Ethan? In that same episode, Locke gave his compass to Sayid. Did he no longer need it? that's what he said. Sayid: "Don't you need it?" Locke: "Not anymore." cool.

- m said... wow! I had already read lots of comments (on other blogs) about this episode, so I expected your writeup to be a pleasingly well-written revisiting of ideas already encountered. but no, in addition to covering just about everything of interest with attention & good sense, your observations about Ethan & Locke hanging out in season one, and about Sawyer's "birthday wish four years ago" line (which I never thought of as begging any question, but just passed me by as a typically Sawyer-style quip) are totally new to me! I love your detailing of how Rose, Sawyer, and Locke -- the complete & exclusive three we knew in season one who are still on the island & doing the time-jumping now -- all seem likely to have had future-past memories from the beginning. very cool.

The Bastard Machine : "Lost" Spoiled Bastard. Ep. 1: "Because You Left." Ep. 2: "The Lie." ... Post a Comment

As Hurley was telling his mom 'the truth' I started to get an itchy feeling - oh no, not another Keyser Soze/The Usual Suspects yarn.
Posted By: hickcity | January 22 2009 at 03:09 PM

hickcity: "another Keyser Soze/The Usual Suspects yarn"? hmmm, I don't imagine you think Hurley the teller is secretly the mastermind... and he wasn't telling a story cued by the objects that happened to be in his vicinity... so what could you mean? tell me tell me please?
Posted By: mcass | January 23 2009 at 04:48 PM

mcass -
Just an itch.
A riff. A bubble. A blip.
*Poof*
Posted By: hickcity | January 24 2009 at 12:58 PM

several Szymborska poems all tgthr in my mind: Reality Demands - mountains wind lifts hat
In Praise of My Sister - who does not write poetry
this one, below - in praise of those I do not love - with, again, mountains - that are only mountains

and There but for the grace of go I. ~thematic of the positive negative: they do not write poetry, I did not go into the coffeeshop that was bombed, I too dislike it - well that's Marianne Moore - but Szymborska's got her version re ~distrusting poetry "and I cling to it as to a saving banister"



A "Thank You" Note

here is much I owe
to those I do not love.

The relief in accepting
they are closer to another.
Joy that I am not
the wolf to their sheep.

My peace be with them
for with them I am free,
and this, love can neither give,
nor know how to take.

I don't wait for them
from window to door.
Almost as patient
as a sun dial,

I understand
what love does not understand.
I forgive
what love would never have forgiven.

Between rendezvous and letter
no eternity passes,
only a few days or weeks.

My trips with them always turn out well.
Concerts are heard.
Cathedrals are toured.
Landscapes are distinct.

And when seven rivers and mountains
come between us,
they are rivers and mountains
well known from any map. not awful unacceptable separation

It is thanks to them
that I live in three dimensions,
in a non-lyrical and non-rhetorical space,
with a shifting, thus real, horizon. and when all is love, as bcs all is grief (joy, too?) then it is all lyric, all what-it-meant-to-me, all landscapes in the mind. not: a lush green world with fields & workers & bridges. just a space with some people in it. where scattered cadences rise to the surface. (natalia ginzburg, lorrie moore, natalia ginzburg)

They don't even know
how much they carry in their empty hands.

"I don't owe them anything",
love would have said
on this open topic.

------------------------------------------------


There but for the Grace

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened sooner. Later.
Nearer. Farther.
It happened not to you.

You survived because you were the first.
You survived because you were the last.
Because you were alone. Because of people.
Because you turned left. Because you turned right.
Because rain fell. Because a shadow fell.
Because sunny weather prevailed. where did I get the coffeeshop ~ a bomb ~ ? another poem, or, what I imagined not-happening this one, but for the grace

Luckily there was a wood.
Luckily there were no trees.
Luckily there was a rail, a hook, a beam, a brake,
a frame, a bend, a millimeter, a second.
Luckily a straw was floating on the surface.

Thanks to, because, and yet, in spite of.
What would have happened had not a hand, a foot,
by a step, a hairsbreadth
by sheer coincidence.

So you're here? Straight from a moment ajar?
The net had one eyehole, and you got through it?
There's no end to my wonder, my silence.
Listen
how fast your heart beats in me.

------------------------------------------------


Some Like Poetry

Some--
not all, that is.
Not even the majority of all, but the minority.
Not counting school, where one must,
or the poets themselves,
there'd be maybe two such people in a thousand.

Like--
but one also likes chicken-noodle soup,
one likes compliments or the color blue,
one likes an old scarf,
one likes to prove one's point,
one likes to pet a dog.

Poetry--
but what short of thing is poetry?
Many a shaky answer
has been given to this question.
But I do not know and do not know and hold on to it,
as to a saving bannister.

-- translated by Joanna Trzeciak, in the collection Miracle Fair I've never had that volume. I think of this on a clipping, fr The New Yorker? maybe clipped & given to me. but Reality Demands I came across (& clipped) from The New Yorker myself, that was the first (for me - and I feel no trouble assuming it was the first of her poems published there - I discovered it, that's how-it-was-for-me, the world & the Nobel noticed her later), I was ~17.

szymborska "everything everything everything - Google Search

Baza piosenek
How could it be that you ruined my everything, everything, everything? .

Violent Fems - Kiss Off
10 10 10 10 for everything everything everything everything ..

Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems - Google Books Result
by Wisława Szymborska, Magnus J. Krynski, Robert ... - 1981 - Poetry - 215 pages
p173: ... Szymborska ... tell us, everything, everything, everything. ...


Vocabulary Completion Exercise: Nobel Prize Poet
that Mislava Szymborska lives and writes here in the spiritual capital of ... everything, everything, everything. And then too everybody looks at you as ...

"There you are living a quiet life, and suddenly in one minute, everything is turned ____ down. The whole daily ___, everything, everything, everything. And then too everybody looks at you as though you were someone else, different than before."


Wislawa Szymborska - 1996 Nobel Lecture: "everything"
I would bow very deeply before him, because he is, after all, one of the greatest poets, for me at least. That done, I would grab his hand. "'There's nothing new under the sun': that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the sun. And the poem you created is also new under the sun, since no one wrote it down before you. And all your readers are also new under the sun, since those who lived before you couldn't read your poem. And that cypress that you're sitting under hasn't been growing since the dawn of time. It came into being by way of another cypress similar to yours, but not exactly the same.
So maybe your new-under-the-sun poem will be about joy? Have you taken notes yet, do you have drafts? I doubt you'll say, 'I've written everything down, I've got nothing left to add.'


_______________________________________________________________
In Praise of My Sister
Wislawa Szymborska

My sister does not write poems
and it’s unlikely she’ll suddenly start writing poems.
She takes after her mother, who did not write poems,
and after her father, who also did not write poems.
Under my sister’s roof I feel safe:
nothing would move my sister’s husband to write poems.
And though it sounds like a poem by Adam Macedonski,
none of my relatives is engaged in the writing of poems.

In my sister’s desk there are no old poems
nor any new ones in her handbag.
And when my sister invites me to dinner,
I know she has no intention of reading me poems.
She makes superb soups without half trying,
and her coffee does not spill on manuscripts.

In many families no one writes poems,
but when they do, it’s seldom just one person.
Sometimes poetry flows in cascades of generations,
which sets up fearsome eddies in family relations.

My sister cultivates a decent spoken prose,
her entire literary output is on vacation postcards
that promise the same thing every year:
that when she returns,
she’ll tell us, everything,
everything,
everything.

-

az- Customer Reviews: The Myth of Lost: Solving the Mysteries and Understanding the Wisdom

Enjoyable read with a provocative thesis,

October 13, 2008

By	Dr. W- See all my reviews

The components of analysis, such as that of the major characters, symbols and motifs, are well done and provide much in the way of eloquent summary and thoughtful provocation. The theory itself, however, rests too much on a Panglossian view of life (Voltaire's parody of Gottfried Leibniz' philosophy in which the character Pangloss claims that despite horrific tragedy all is for the best or else it wouldn't be this way), too much on the notion that a universal truth exists and that the mythic format is the appropriate way to tell a story to expose us to that truth.
Oromaner is at his best when he claims that the main message of LOST is that when you find yourself, you will be free (21). For example, Oromaner claims that Jack "tries to clean up everything around him to feel self-worth in his own life" and that Jack's challenge is to fix himself instead of everything else around him, to realize that he is not omnipotent and it's not his responsibility to try and save everyone. Oromaner nicely highlights that Jack can't even give up on the opportunity to fix Ben, someone who we all feel he should probably just let stay broken. Oromaner offers equally insightful descriptions and analyses of other characters (all of them, in fact). It's just when he connects them all to his theory that it gets too concrete for me, and misses what I feel are the most exciting parts of LOST: its novelty in combining several mythic and literary formats, with multiple cultural references which sometimes do and sometimes don't convey the meaning of their previous contextual placement, and the ability of the show to offer various "readings" from philosophy, psychology, film studies, story-telling and literature, and even science and ecology.
The beauty of LOST is that it has opened itself up to all of these various readings. The beauty of Oromaner's book is that it enjoys participating in the LOST universe with a playful & thoughtful analysis.
yes yes again wh I like re Lost is reading all the ideas ppl have about it, what might be happening, wh they wld like to see happening, how they would write the story if it was theirs. I like how participatory, how m seems to call on others to imagine, to involve thmslvs in th story, even consider it as if they were telling it.
I was underwhelmed watching the S5 premiere episodes, but reading the very sharp discussn at Tuned In blog and a few clear & funny posts re time on Sepinwall blog takes me back into wh I find great, a world of readings & conversation about a story that open it up, make it a world in wh so much to talk about.
a world in wh there is so much to tell you

szymborska ~my sister is not a poet. she writes postcards:
when I get back I'll tell you
everything everything everything

You Can’t Make a Record If, You Can’t Make a Record If, You Can’t…

Tuned In » Lostwatch: You Can’t Make a Record If, You Can’t Make a Record If, You Can’t… « | 80+ comments:
*The Islanders are moving through time in tandem with each other. But only with each other. Not with the Others—who did not appear to get flashed well
*Are we to assume Marvin Candle just got to the Island in the flashback? Because he has a new baby, and his wife is not dead. y I wonder wh if any conclusns to draw fr the baby, who was v cute smiling at approaching dad fr the crib.

-Matt: Based on the fact that the Others (I'm assuming only the original inhabitants, 'cause clearly Juliet moves too) don't move with the flashes, I'm guessing that the Others are *part* of the Island in some way. ~I like Richard Alpert as part of island in some way. but: his camp included Cindy & other 815 tailies who'd been kidnapped & assimilated, and none of them travelled with Locke at the flash.
--TomShaw: why was Ben so eager to let them leave last season, when now he has to get them back. good point: he acted nonchalant about Jack, Kate, et al leaving in the helicopter. Was the freighter supposed to explode earlier, such that the chopper would have to go back to The Island (and thus never make it back?) Or was he given bad info in the past? This sudden change in motives makes no sense to me.
-Dave: I'll go off James' bullets:
*I don't think the Island moved. The place on earth where you can get to the Island (I really don't want to use the word "portal") moved, and apparently continues to move, but I don't think the Island itself physically moved. (Note to anyone shifting around the Island: don't sit on any tree stumps)
*Who's shifting: I don't think we have enough information to know much about the shifting. What we do know: Richard and his camp ie the original or at lst pre-Dharma, pre-Ben 'hostiles' did not flash with Locke and the beach folk. Is there a camp of recruits (Ben's people, if you will) who are flashing somewhere? Are we going to see Cindy and the kids flashing on another part of the Island? right-good. Or are they somehow protected in a way that Locke isn't? Is that why Jacob makes lists?
*How many kinds of time travel? Good question. I'm sure the conversation will return to it
*I think the presence of the baby shows that the baby problem wasn't always there. I think that's a byproduct of the Incident. ah ok good suggestn.
..I didn't think of the soldiers being Widmorian. That makes perfect sense: he's always been saying everything Ben has he took from Widmore, and they were very possessive about the Island. Are those the first guns the Hostiles stole from people? We've never seen a flaming arrow attack, and in the Destiny Calls recap, L&C said that the Hostiles kill, take, and use. Maybe Widmore sells out his troops to lead the Hostiles the same way Ben sells out the DI to lead them. And by "sells out" I mean "kills."
..Side note: what if Chang's baby is Miles?

-Tom Shaw makes a good point that the soldiers would seem to be from AFTER Yemi's plane crashed, making them in the late 1990s

...p2
-yogi: I think we also know how at the season 3 finale, Locke got from shot in a ditch to across the island thowing a knife in Naomi's back, again, the knife thrower Locke was the time traveling Locke. huh: even if not, that's a cool idea and the sort of thing that bears out Lindelof saying it's always been a time travel show: if retrospctvely we realize we witnessed ppl who were time-travelling
-milpool: We've naturally assumed up until now that Richard is some kind of immortal, but isn't it becoming more and more likely that he's a time traveler? well but also there's Ben wryly saying "you remember birthdays Richard?" but I suppose he cld be ageless bcs totally unstuck in time, ~ always travelling. Present Richard finds Locke and tells him "the next time I see you, I won't know you - give me this compass." Okay, great, buuuuut didn't Richard always know Locke? Wasn't he there for his birth? For that specialty test with the knife? Unless, of course, the Richard that witnessed Locke's birth was the present Richard who will later be throttled back in time to be able to witness Locke's birth and only know of him after the fact of actually meeting him on the island. Come to think of it - wasn't one of Richard's items that he showed to kid Locke a compass?? Maybe Richard wanted kid Locke to pick that compass as proof that he was unstuck in time, and not necessarily some kind of chosen one. ooh nice idea (even if unlikely to be intended by the writers)

-sharasays:
OK, so I'm rewatching The Lie, and back to wondering about Sun - particularly wondering about the scene with Kate and Sun where Kate asks Sun why she's in LA and she says "I have some [small deliberate pause] business to attend to". So what would have been in LA for her to do (that would have necessitated a suspicious pause before she said that)? Who do we know that is in LA at that same time, with whom she conceivably be having a secret meeting?
Ben.
My money is on Ben coming to Sun and informing her that Jin is alive on the island, and that the island is under threat from Widmore, and enlisting her help in getting everyone back to the island and getting close to Widmore. I'm always suspicious when any character on this show tries to manipulate another person to do something by telling him/her exactly what they most want to hear (like I was saying about Ben and Ms. Hawking above), and Sun telling Widmore that she wants to help him kill Ben would be exactly what Widmore wants to hear. She gets him to bite, she gets inside information - I'd bet she's the kind of lady who would keep her enemies closer, and knowing that she had to protect Jin would give her the grim determination that she has shown off-island. good point.
And, Sun's warning to Kate that "they want Aaron" and she needs to "take care of" Aaron just sounded like she was manipulating Kate for a particular focus -both distracting her from the possibility of her being spooked by the Back to the Island team (which should have been obvious to two smart ladies used to these ruses, who had just heard Bentham's entreaties that they must return right), and hitting on her worst fear - that someone was trying to hurt or take Aaron - making Kate more likely to view a return trip to the island as a necessary means of safe escape, rather than, like, the worst thing ever.
Yup. Sun is in league with Ben and double-agenting Widmore. nice.

..Plus when Ben is whining to Ms. Hawking about "losing Reyes tonite" to the cops, he doesn't mention "Sun freaking hates me and wants me dead, so we can count her out too". Not that that means anything, but if he's just got 70 hours and major obstacles, I'd count an angry rich widow with a blood vendetta as at least as much of a challenge as a crazy dude in jail.


-Dave:@Chad - I thought about Locke being the only one shifting, and I've got three possible solutions. Solution 1: it looked like the people Locke got to were Richard's people. Maybe Richard's people are all ageless wonders and tied to the Island. Since we didn't see Cindy and the kids there after the Orchid, they could very well be in another part of the Island, shifting and going nuts. Solution 2: by being chosen by Jacob, Cindy and the kids (and, of course, other 815ers taken by the Others) were brought into the Other fold, and are thus tied safely to the present. I like Solution 3 the best: season 1 was all about the characters being interconnected. Off the top of my head, I'm going from Hurley to Locke the box company? to Sayid ? to Desmond(s2) to Jack to Sawyer to Kate, and that's not counting the spider webbing over to other connections. All these people are intertwined somehow, and when the O6 left, it all got screwed up. The Others are their group. ie bcs w their group, they are anchored. When Juliet joined the Losties, she became part of their fabric. Now, that fabric of people was drawn together by the Island into a tight weave. Given the nature of people, the various fabrics can stretch and twist, and even be added to or removed from, but because the FDW was turned and the portal to the Island moved while parts of the 815 fabric were both inside and out, things got messed up. The fabric didn't tear, because if it did, the group would just be 2 different groups; since that fabric was still on either side of the old portal to the Island, the people still on the Island can't be anchored to one time until they're all together again. I'll be honest, at the start of the post I only had the first 2 solutions, but the third one just kept making more and more sense the more I typed. I'm positive it makes way more sense in my head than I can put into words.




*What's Alan Watching?: Lost, "Because You Left" & "The Lie": Uh-oh, Zoot skipped a groove again! | 100+ comments


-christy said... 11:42 AM, January 22, 2009 first-rate (informed about the show, clear about the time travel logic ~ lifestream vs time stream: these things are Always, and funny!):

'For example, if you can't change the past, then how did Ethan shoot Locke in the shift to the past? If it didn't happen the first time, it couldn't happen according to Faraday.'
Who says it didn't happen the first time? We know Yemi's plane crashed before 815, so let's say it was 2003, right? 2005-Locke skipped back in time to 2003, saw the plane crash, and got shot by 2003-Ethan. It didn't happen in the past for Locke, because that's 2005-Locke. He wouldn't remember it in 2004. But Ethan probably would--but he's an Other. We wouldn't know if he remembered it or not because we don't follow them, plus they lie and hide what they know about the island. It's not like we'd have a scene with Ethan in 2004 seeing Locke and saying, HEY that's that guy I shot last year! He was too busy being deceitful and kidnapping pregnant ladies.

'And if the island jumps into the past, shouldn't everyone who knows they will exist in the future act pretty much as if they were immortal, knowing they will survive to fulfill that future?'
Fulfill what future? Landing on the island? The 2005-castaways have already done that. Then later (in their lives) good they went back in time and got shot at with fire arrows.
It's not that I'm such a LOST fan that I'll find a way to understand everything even if I don't. It's the same time travel device used in 12 Monkeys and (forgive me) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I understood it in those movies, and I wasn't some crazed fan when I saw them.

'And why are inanimate objects like the camp affected by these jumps, but things like their clothes aren't affected. I know Juliet spouted something about things they are touching come with them through time, but that's a cheap explanation that really isn't one.'
Actually I agree with you that this one is pretty weak.

'What happens if the island jumps you well into the future, and the place you are standing is occupied by an inanimate object, like a new mountain or plane wreckage or a new amusement park conquering aliens build on the island? Do you die instantly?'
That's a good question. The problem with it is that they can probably just tell this story without that ever needing to come up.

'One problem if Mrs. Hawking is Faraday's mother: She's not in Oxford. Unless Ben is willing to spend some of his 70 hours on transatlantic flights, or still has access to mystical island travel powers, she's got to be in LA.'
Well, another possibility is that Mrs. Hawking moved from Oxford to LA and Daniel is mistaken about her current location (whatever "current" means in this context, given that 2004-Faraday was telling hatch-Desmond to go find her at some unspecified future time after leaving the island), or that she'll go back to Oxford before Desmond gets there, or Desmond will get to Oxford and someone will be like "oh her? She's in LA" and he'll go to LA. Maybe Ben can't move that fast in a few hours, but she can move around within the course of several years, surely. Also we've seen her in Great Britain before. It may not be the same lady, but I don't think her being in LA rules it out.

'Regarding Charlotte, you didn't mention it but she had the same affliction (nose bleed) that the guy who was drilling too close to the core of the island had.'
Also Horace when Locke sees (dreams?) him chopping the tree down over and over again. right. and Horace says ~ "I'm not making any sense am I? well I've been dead for 12 (20?) years."
The funny thing is that when I was looking up info on Yemi's plane, I saw that Locke had had a "vision" of seeing the plane crash before. I have a feeling this will relate to things like child-Locke drawing the smoke monster and Richard expecting him to know which objects belonged to him. And also Faraday's (and Charlotte's?) memory problems.

-christy said... 11:49 AM, January 22, 2009
Also it's all related to the new tagline for the series, "Destiny Calls." Everything is already decided. You make your own decisions, but you can't change anything because you're already destined to make each decision the way you will make it.
It makes me think of Calvinism, but I'm going to choose not even to think about that right now. Leibniz. notion ~ monad. cathy: It's (just) another way of looking at time.


-christy said...9:28 PM, January 22, 2009

'I've read all the comments and the ones that answer my queries about time travel only hold up if you fixate on the perspective of the Lostees.'
No, they don't. Your example is logically flawed. If a 2004-soldier killed 2005-Neil in 2004, then continued to live his life, then ran into Neil in 2005, Neil wouldn't be screaming on the beach. That happened in 2004. He'd be in the zodiac with Faraday. Then he would promptly disappear, because that's when he went to 2004 (or whenever--not the actual dates, obviously). The solider would remember Neil, but Neil wouldn't remember the soldier (because he hasn't gone back in time yet, and he won't get shot until he does). Neither of their timestreams would be "violated" (whatever that means) any more than the other.
I think perhaps the problem is that when you're talking about time travel, there are two things that we call "time." One is a large, cosmic idea of time, in which all history occurs in a certain order, and then you have time as each person perceives it, when they live their lives one event after another, and even if one of those events is a time-jump, they remember things in the order THEY do them, not in the order they occur in the larger concept called time. good. timeline vs lifestream
Of course there are paradoxes in time travel, but it doesn't mean humans aren't capable of understanding the basic concepts. If it's actually so hard to get that fewer people watch...well, then it'll still have many times the viewers that most of the shows I watch have. But I suspect most people will just go along for the ride, they way they have for every other popular time travel story written throughout history.

'so now there are two lockes.
each iteration of locke moving forward in time. one at the box company and one on the island. same for all the rest of the 815s on the island.'
Yes, there are two Lockes in that moment in 2003--2003-Locke (working at the box factory) and 2005-Locke (with his knives on the island)--but they don't go on living in parallel forever and ever. 2003-Locke will eventually become 2005-Locke, who will go back in time.


-Jordan said... 12:51 PM, January 22, 2009
Here's how the loop works, and this contains spoilers for 12 monkeys, so if you haven't seen it yet, what's wrong with you? It's a great movie and came out like a dozen years ago.
There is no beginning or end, that's why it's a loop. It always happened in the past and will always happen. You can't change the past but you can change the future, just from the present, not from the past (this takes into account going back in time and returning, not so much going forward, since to you that hasn't happened yet and doesn't exist).
Bruce Willis sees the shooting at the end of the movie as a child. He always saw it as a child even though it future Willis had not gone back yet. I know that's kind of head-hurting because you want to say that they had to go through once without it, but for the sake of argument, this is the way it always happened. They don't want him try to stop the outbreak, because they know he can't. They just want to find when in started to get an unmutated sample (the person in "insurance" on the plane) to take back to the future, which was their present, so as to try to make things better in their future.

-

Thursday, January 22, 2009

the day after the season premiere, reviews & followup links:

"Lost": "Nothing in the show is season-long" [**The Watcher - chicagotribune - Mo Ryan interview w Lindelof re premiere]
Damon Lindelof expounds on last night's season premiere: "There are actually sort of three acts to the season. The first act is the first seven episodes, the second act is eight through 13, and the final act is 14 though 17. Every time that you think that the show has settled into, 'Oh, is this all about the Oceanic 6 trying to get back to the island and the island is skipping through time,' it changes. But we don’t want to tell you how it changes or what frequency it changes. All we can say is, there are a lot of twists and turns this year."
"Lost" returns to record-low ratings, with viewers fleeing throughout the 2 hours [latimes-showtracker]
"Lost" retools its logo [courant.com] now you can sort of see the cityscape in the letters of 'Lost'//
What is the meaning behind "Shotgun Willie"? [amyrobot.com]:
Lost: the meaning of season premiere music: Desmond played "Make Your Own Kind of Music" by Mama Cass; Juliet plays Petula Clark's "Downtown" (It's a sad, wistful song about wanting to be somewhere else); Dr. Candle puts on "Shotgun Willie", a 1973 song by Willie Nelson. After getting through the lyrics about Shotgun Willie sitting around in his underwear, the record starts skipping on the lyric "Well you can't make a record" before getting to the rest of the line, which is "Well you can't make a record if you ain't got nothing to say." The skipping record is like the whole island that starts skipping around through time... And the lyrics might refer to Dr. Candle's unsuccessful attempt to record his introductory video on the Dharma Initiative (the one we saw a few seasons ago) because he gets interrupted when his construction crew stumbles on the time-travel mechanism that lies inside a hunk of rock on the island. Or maybe Dr. Candle really does have nothing to say and the whole premise of the Dharma Initiative is incorrect, or philosophically wrong?
This was the best season-opener since Season 1 [wpost-celebritology-Dueling Analyses]
// What just happened? [*sepinwall]
Is "Lost" quantifiably better than before? [housenextdoor]
// Meet recap band "Previously on Lost" *
*note that "Previously on Lost" is title of several items all linked to around this time, beginning of S5, the first by Sepinwall & then JmsP at TunedIn, and the latter two on successive tvtattle Lost link roundups:
- imagined summary scene posted on A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago, prvs dlww post
- title of a band that sings recaps (haven't lkd into this, really)
-title of the youtube video where one guy watches all of lost straight "henry gale's the leader! .. there are two islands!" (this is my fvr)


+my follow-up reading list:

Tuned In - TIME.com » Lostwatch: You Can’t Make a Record If, You Can’t Make a Record If, You Can’t… « | 80+ comments

*What's Alan Watching?: Lost, "Because You Left" & "The Lie": Uh-oh, Zoot skipped a groove again! | 100+ comments

**The 'Lost' season premiere: Timeless | The Watcher

and: Completely 'Lost': THE SEASON FIVE PREMIERE



Wednesday, January 21, 2009
the day of the season premiere, prepatory links:

"Lost" time travels through Season 5 [nj.com Sepinwall Q&A w Lindelof]
Time travel plays a big role this season, but Damon Lindelof says traveling through time was built into the show's DNA. "The big question going into this year is this idea of, there's only two fundamental approaches to time travel," says Lindelof. "There's the 'Back to the Future'/'Heroes' approach where you can go back and change things, that stepping on a butterfly, suddenly, there's a different president, people have antenna heh, George McFly's a best-selling author. And the other way is, if you went back in time and tried to kill Hitler, you would fail, because Hitler wasn't assassinated. What would happen if you were in the past and tried to change the present as you knew it, would you A)Fail, or B)Succeed, or C)Cause the thing you were trying to prevent. And that's really interesting to us, because there's no (do-over's)." well that keeps seeming weird to me bcs dsn't that require that some events count as things you can't change and some don't? bcs clearly you do change things, by being there, you step on things, things happen that did not happen - all of what is happening to you had not happened. unless you say 'these things are always' which ok works for me. Leibniz ~ look at all of time at once, all of this was & is always happening this way, you were always going to 'go back in time' and step on this leaf...). but unless you conceive of things that way .. to say you can't 'change the present' seems like acting as if the present is affected only by the big~noted events
U.S. Airways crash a "Lost"-ian coincidence? Producer said: "Oh My God" [dailybeast short interview w exec producer Jack Bender] ..the week before Lost returns, the US Airways flight went down in the Hudson River and everyone aboard survived. well good. Everyone involved on the show must have been stunned when they saw the plane in the water. / Bender: When J.J. Abrams asked me to work on the series, I hadn’t seen a group of co-stars like this since ER. / There’s never been a show that anticipated its ending two years in advance. really?
The first 5 minutes of EVERY "Lost" season premiere tells you everything [slate] There are 342 tiny clues tonight [boston.com]
"Lost" even more confusing! [bostonherald] // Revelations will drop like no-name extras [tampabay] What makes "Lost" great is what also makes it frustrating [usatoday]
"Lost" cast: Before they were stars [11points.com: youtube clips of MrEko, Kate, Hurley in commercials, Juliet in Gia...] // Does Juliet really love Jack? [nymag intrvw w E Mitchell]
Recapping "Lost" up till now [nydailynews] // Season 5 is all about quantum physics [nypost] / Meet the newest "Lostie," Zuleikha Robinson [nypost] familiar name? no I'm thinking of Zuleika Dobson - by Max Beerbohm - '1911 novel a satire of undergraduate life at Oxford'
Do the explanations make "Lost" less interesting? [latimes] The mysterious becomes the merely preposterous. The weirdness of a polar bear on a tropical island is more satisfying than any reason you can provide for it. nah. actually pretty cool to connect the bear to Charlotte's dig in Tunisia ~ the island moving ~ maybe the bears were there to push the wheel, after living in those dharma cages solving mechanistic puzzles to get fish cookies // Newbies not welcome [sfgate - Tim Goodman's rvw]
Watch "Previously on Lost," a video parodying "Lost" addiction [time.com] right, saw this via Tuned In. guy watches all four seasons straight = 2.7 days*

[ TV t a t t l e . c o m ]

*note that "Previously on Lost" is title of several items all linked to around this time, beginning of S5, the first by Sepinwall & then JmsP at TunedIn, and the latter two on successive tvtattle Lost link roundups:
- imagined summary scene posted on A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago, prvs dlww post
- title of a band that sings recaps (haven't lkd into this, really)
-title of the youtube video where one guy watches all of lost straight "henry gale's the leader! .. there are two islands!" (this is my fvr)

A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago - PREVIOUSLY ON LOST:
*note that "Previously on Lost" is title of this imagined summary scene + title of a band that sings recaps + title of the youtube video where one guy watches all of lost straight "henry gale's the leader! .. there are two islands!"
PILOT: So, we have a little time and the auto-pilot’s on. How ‘bout you tell me about the island?
JACK: Well, we lived on the beach, mostly, except for the time we lived in the cave with the skeletons and the time we lived in the secret underground bunker with the lending library and the time we lived in the village Otherville built by the scientists Dharma that the people who don’t age Others/Hostiles/Richard Alpert et al gassed to death with the help of their leader, my third nemesis, the nebbishy con man with spine cancer Ben, which we took over when the freighter people came to kill everybody. We ate wild boar and fish, and then the supplies stashed in the storeroom of the bunker, and then the scientists who the people who don’t age gassed to death were nice enough to replenish our food by airdrop, but only once, but that was okay, because the people who don’t age had some agriculture that we completely ignored while we stood in front of their refrigerators with the doors open. And I saw my dead dad just hanging around on the island, which I didn’t think too much about because I was preoccupied with the smoke monster and the baby stealing and the mind games with the nebbishy guy and the power struggle with my second nemesis, the formerly paralyzed bald survivalist mystic Locke, who was, frankly, nuts. so who is first nemesis? hmmmmm ... never says.
PILOT: Nuts, you say?
JACK: Yeah, man of faith, thought the bunker wanted you to punch Hurley’s lotto numbers into the computer every few hours, and I was like, it’s a GAME, you lose, sucker.
PILOT: And?
JACK: So he finally came around after the shipwrecked sailor Desmond who lived in the bunker for two years told him that you had to punch the numbers, which obviously meant you didn’t have to punch the numbers. Which, come to think of it, I guess he was right in the first place. who? Missed the numbers, cratered the whole freaking bunker, knocked the guy who used to live there Desmond right into last Tuesday. Literally. nice.
...
JACK: Wait, what did we miss when we were on the island for a flexible length of time?
PILOT: Every financial institution you’ve ever heard of is out of business, America fell in love with a gay cowboy movie, and we elected a Black college professor President instead of a war hero.
JACK: We find your story implausible.

-Of course, that was precisely Jack's reaction, despite all he'd been through to that point, when Ben told him the Red Sox had won the World Series.

Obama's inaugural showed tv's superiority to

Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Obama's inaugural showed TV's superiority to other mediums
With television, we were there, says Robert Bianco. "At an event dedicated to a dream no longer deferred, TV did what no other medium, from print to blogs to webcasts, can do as well: It conferred a sense of union and participation, a feeling that you were sharing the experience, not only with those who were there but with everyone who was watching," he says. "The peak arrived when Obama was sworn in and made his first speech as president, an 18-minute stretch that may remind an industry prone to sound bites of the pleasures of sustained eloquence. Still, television is a visual medium, and more gripping than the words were the images: those shots of Obama with the Capitol dome rising behind him and a huge, varied throng stretching in front." PLUS: Check out Oprah at the inauguration.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Will Obama's inauguration be one of the last shared TV events?
Eric Deggans says of today's historic event: "In today's super-fragmented media environment, little beyond American Idol and the Super Bowl can draw us together around TV's electronic hearth. Once upon a time, everyone could remember where they were when news broke that President Kennedy was shot or Saigon had fallen. These days, when even the selection of a vice president is announced by text message, that memory is gone, swallowed by technology's new ability to bring us instant reporting from just about anywhere to wherever." PLUS: Inauguration will be all over primetime.


[ TV t a t t l e . c o m ]

Tuumba Press: The Beginner - by Lyn Hejinian







Saturnalia Books: The Babies - by Sabrina Orah Mark






those two, both small, both attract me but am not sure I take to the writing. that happens consistently w Hejinian. and Orah Mark's books is praised by Claudia Rankine, whose Don't Let Me Be Lonely I liked very much, but I do not like her saying The Babies is marvelous 'in both senses of the word' because I think there is only one sense, full of marvels. don't treat the etymological weight of the word, its parts, as separate from its supposed common sense. ... denos.




Milkweed Editions: Reading Novalis in Montana - by Melissa Kwasny







it is this one that I think is more truly my. caught eye as shelved the single received copy for poetry sxn, the title (is it a play on Lolita-Tehran or km says she might prefer it not be), and novalis I like (and think of Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower), and praise on cover from Andrew Goldbarth, whose Budget Travels thr Space & Time is pretty, I have a galley, I think he's good.
"Surrounded by new books of poems that seem increasingly thin and merely clever yes yes, Melissa Kwasny’s poems present a richly textured surface and a deeply thought interior, ..a lyricist’s gifts with a philosopher’s understandings. This is the real-deal stuff." —Albert Goldbarth, author of The Kitchen Sink
' she's the real deal ' I liked v m that WSDp wrote in short letter recommendatn for me.


and I'm liking Ta-Nehasis Coates's book (& his blog & his conversation on bloggingheads)
Spiegel & Grau | The Beautiful Struggle - by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Sometimes A Great Notion

Tim Goodman sfgate - Spoiled Bastard: "Battlestar Galactica" Ep. 1: "Sometimes A Great Notion."
Granted, in the end, there was hope. No, that's not true. There was a tiny fraction of rage against the dying of the light.
Welcome to the end of your hopes. Have a great ride back home, wherever that is.

James Poniewozik time - Tuned In » BSG Watch: Pleased to Meet Me «
The most interesting question is the one that BSG has unexpectedly made the focus of its final episodes:
After your gods fail you, after you lose what you have been told was your last hope for survival, what next?

Alan Sepinwall - What's Alan Watching?: Battlestar Galactica, "Sometimes a Great Notion" 128 cmmts to scan...


...& to read: The Watcher [Mo Ryan] - Interview: 'Battlestar Galactica's' Ron Moore addresses the shocking developments of 'Sometimes a Great Notion'
--this episd was shot during the strike, right?
Right, the strike was called, that episode was the only script we had written so that script would be shot. I flew up to Vancouver, gathered the whole cast and crew together & said, “OK, this is where we are. There’s a strike. I’m on strike. The other writers are on a picket line right now, I’m flying back to join them. There’s not going to be any more script pages. The show is entrusted to you. Just make the very best one that you can."
Obviously I wasn’t there, but what I heard was there was a tremendous amount of emotion from the cast and the crew as they were shooting it, because they all did wonder if this was going to be the last episode ever done, would the series be canceled if the strike went on too long. I think that informed a lot of their performances and a lot of the mood.
The day the staff finished putting the cards up on the board with Ron, and the day before we began writing, I flashed on my favorite American novel, Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey. It is a much underappreciated and towering work. Anyone interested in fine literature and great story telling should read Kesey’s masterpiece.
The book opens with a childish rhyme that enunciates the theme of the book and what to me was the theme of our show. “Sometimes I live in the country. Sometimes I live in the town. Sometimes I get a great notion. To jump in the river and drown.”
In Kesey’s book, the hero --Hank Stamper, an Oregon logger -- does constant battle with the river that runs past his home, a river that has claimed the lives of pets and loved ones and comes to symbolize the vast and indifferent power of the universe that both gives life and cruelly snatches it away again. In his notes to himself as he was writing the book, Kesey scribbled something that has become one of the shorthand phrases Brad and I use while writing scripts. Kesey wrote: “Try to make Hank quit.” By that he meant: take this strong, heroic character and pile one misfortune on his back after another until he finally falls. What happens in that moment? Does he despair? Does he get up and go on? For me, there is no more defining moment for a character.
We tried to do this with almost all the characters in this episode: Adam, Laura, Kara, Lee. We ripped everything out from under them then sat back to see what they would do. What were their individual breaking points? And if they did break, would they stay broken or grope toward a recovery?
It felt like, if we were going to get to a place where we’re going to find Earth mid-season and it’s not going to be what they’d hoped, it’s all going to be ashes, you had to play it truthfully. You had to say it’s really going to devastate them. It’s going to hit them in a way we’ve never seen before. Our heroes are not going to be heroic.

-{the rhyme} at the beginning of Sometimes a Great Notion, it's the great folk song Goodnight, Irene - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodnight,_Irene
-David Wheedle might be interested to know that those childish rhymes are in "Goodnight Irene," a folk song made popular by Leadbelly, and I believe the Weavers, at a time when Ken Kesey would have probably heard it all the time on the radio or in jukeboxes during his youth. Just some added resonance.


_________________________
dlcs-mcass: z0901 + tele-v + a-before
got my attn bcs critics saying how unexpected the reveals, of final cylon, of earth, of Starbuck meeting self. held my attention bcs about After The End. After your gods fail you, after your last hope is lost...


[cmmt at james's blog] -As to Starbuck, I don't think she's been there 2000 years. As the opening reminded us, "there's something different about that Viper", Starbuck's aircraft from when she disappeared, returned, then went on her solo search for earth. oh okay. I took it to mean Starbuck had found earth but crashed. A rebuilt Starbuck and Viper were who and what returned to Galactica. I don't know how or anything, but that's how it looked to me, based in part on the skeleton and hair, much more appropriately decomposed in this timeline.

IMDb :: Boards :: "Battlestar Galactica" (2004) :: Jan 1 2009 :: Is kara isn't the FC then how the frak...:I'm shocked to see that there are hardly any people who think that Kara (Starbuck) is the final cylon. If she's not the final cylon, where the hell did she go when she 'died' in maelstrom, and where the hell did she come from when she magically appeared in a brand new Viper (that just so happens to point the way to Earth) in the beggining of Season 4? Also, all this stuff about her 'destiny' has to mean something...

[cmmt at alan's blog] -If Ellen is officially the "final cylon", what in the heck is Starbuck? It doesn't seem possible that she is still human, especially if those are her remains. But she can't be cylon either.
& Do we know that the 13th tribe was "pure bred" cylon? I had always speculated that they might be hybrid. Since when did the humans have "cylon bone carbon dating technology"?

[cmmt at tim's blog] -It does beg the question, if Earth was "Cylon", and are identifiable as such, just what are the members of the 12 colonies? Are they the true machines? wait why wld they be machines. but y that is what ints me here, some qstn begged, what does it mean for earth to be (have been) cylon? I mean really I d n know what that means for them.


__________ggl...
...Their hope and home of the future: the distant and unknown 13th colony, Earth.
...the fabled lost thirteenth colony, Earth.

Twelve Colonies - Wkp: The Twelve Colonies were founded by tribes from Kobol, the alleged birthplace of humanity, although the tribes were of the number 13, one of which instead went to a planet called Earth. far away from the other twelve planets? The humans of the Twelve Colonies (at least 20 billion in the new television series) were virtually exterminated by the Cylons. Less than 50,000 survivors managed to escape in a civilian fleet guarded by the Battlestar Galactica.

Battlestar Galactica speculation - Earth and Backstory «Life In Motion August 14, 2007:
There has been speculation as to the origins of humanity in this version. While the original series suggested that humans actually colonised the Earth and originated off-world, this version suggests that Earth is the original homeworld oh. and that humans somehow found their way in a new universe founding twelve colonies.

...

Battlestar Galatica - Finding Earth and Nothing… « Tasithoughts’s Weblog June 15, 2008 : In their legends and religious records, Earth was the purported home of a 13th colony or tribe that left their home worlds millennia before.
The journey started when through betrayal their planets were destroyed by nuclear war by a robotic race( Cylons) originally created by them.
The series is about the exodus journey of the humans while being pursued by the Cylons.
Much of the show is about the process of self discovery and unraveling preconceived notions and out of the box ways of looking at things. It is great TV.
The mid season finale leaves the viewer wanting more because when the Galatica and Cylons ( now United) reach earth all they find are ruins. This means the journey has not ended. There is no promise land flowing with milk and honey. We can’t wait when BSG resumes its season again in January 2009.
cmmt: -I just read another interesting theory. What if, what we believe to be Earth, in the show, is in fact the Cylon homeworld? There are some things that don’t add up to it being our Earth. Namely, the prophecy that a dying leader will not step foot on earth. Secondly, as I watched the fleet in orbit, the landmasses were covered by clouds, leaving no visibly identifiable continents. Thirdly, Starbuck claimed Earth was pristine. hmm. but now in this midseason premiere, it sounds like it is clear that it *is* 'Earth' but just that it turns out Earth was inhabited not by humanity but by cylons. so, the myth of a 13th human colony wld simply have been incorrect?

Mo Ryan interview w Ron Moore:
That planet is Earth? We’re not going to find out, “Oh, there’s this other Earth over here...” This is the only Earth we’ll see?
--They have found Earth. This is the Earth that the 13th Colony discovered wait so no Earth was not the origin, Kobol was, and a 13th colony did go to Earth .. and? that colony was not human?? , they christened it Earth. They found Earth.
Then there’s the whole Starbuck thing. We don’t know what she is now, right? All 12 Cylons have been accounted for, but she doesn’t know that. Is she suspecting she’s a Cylon?
--Yeah, I think all questions are open for her at this point.

imdb: "Battlestar Galactica" (2004): After losing the war against the Cylon robots, the Battlestar Galactica crew speed toward the fabled 13th colony, Earth. Galactica Commander Adama and President Laura Roslin face waning supplies, crushed morale, and the credible threat of Cylons aboard the ship.

IMDb :: Boards :: "Battlestar Galactica" (2004) :: Is kara isn't the FC then how the frak... p9:
We have a planet of entirely cylons, which was evidently nuked 2,000 years ago.
"All this has happened before, and all this will happen again."
I know this is really out there, but here goes: Cylons create human beings as servants. hrm. does the show give reason to suppose cylons can *make* humans? Humans rebel, nuke cylon masters, move off and create their own colonies. Humans create cylons as servants. Cylons rebel, nuke Human masters, move off and create their own colonies. Rinse, repeat, over, and over, and over, ad infinitum.
I've recently seen a lot of people talking about how it may be that there are no humans at all - just cylons of different kinds. The above theory would create a lot more ambiguity about just where the borders between cylons and humans occur.

Golden Globes 2009: Best and Worst Fashion - Photo Gallery | TWoP
(NEXT 5x)
Drew Barrymore: Best
If you can get past the insanely over-teased hair (which admittedly is a challenge), and the fact that she was glued to her Grey Gardens co-star Jessica Lange (who looked lovely) all evening, Drew looks pretty damned good. Her pale blue-colored dress is feminine and floaty and hits all her curves beautifully.
I thought Drew Barrymore looked lovely. blue grey sea gauzy gown. Joe says Anne liked her gown best. me too. saw her when turned channel at 10pm & saw Spielberg accepting award, she was one of the people the camera was repeatedly cutting to. I like that her hair color & style was reminiscent of herself as little girl in ET (well compared to the long straight red hair in Donnie Darko, say) seen in clips celebrating Spielberg's movies.

and I like that Kate Winslet won both for Revolutionary Road and for supporting role in The Reader. and Anna Paquin won for True Blood. nice to see rewards go to classy actresses.

Kate Winslet is overcome after her second Globe of the evening. / NBC
Tuned In - TIME.com » Read This Thing That I Wrote Last Night, Not This Thing That I’m Not Writing This Morning «
While I grind away on deadline this morning, let me invite those of you who missed it to relive last night's Golden Globes liveblog by Richard Corliss, Kate Betts and me, from the first strokes of Jay Manuel's Glamastrator to the last piece of hardware given out. What were the high and lowlights for you?

MYSTIC RIVER
just rewatched. Sean Penn the actor I most like watching? and Kevin Bacon I also like. and Tim Robbins as Dave here is so sad, his walk, his shoulders, his loose face. the scene that devastates, I did not remember whether he kills him or not, is Penn as Jimmy by the river with Dave, telling him to admit what he did. and Dave stops trying to tell the truth and says Yes, I did it. and Jimmy says Why? and Dave says She reminded me of a dream I had. Jimmy: A dream? Dave: Of youth. I don't remember having one.

Mystic River (2003) - IMDb user comments
Falls sort of greatness but superb nonetheless, 30 November 2004
Author: Roland E. Zwick from United States:
The screenplay makes the pain that each of these men experiences vivid. The grief Jimmy feels over the loss of his beloved child, the psychological torment Dave suffers as a result of his abuse, and the bewilderment and loneliness Sean experiences from a failed marriage all become integral to this dark tale of bitterness, revenge and attempted healing.
Penn hits all the right notes as a man facing the worst experience life could possibly throw at a person - the murder of one's child - trying to make sense of a tragedy that defies any rational explanation. Robbins beautifully underplays the role of a man scarred forever by what happened to him in his youth, now endeavoring to function as an adult when he was robbed of any semblance of a childhood. Bacon is excellent as the man who attempts to put all the pieces together, not only of the case but of the shattered lives he and his two buddies have been living all these years.
The plotting, particularly towards the end, often feels more contrived than it needs to be. Laura Linney, as Jimmy's second wife, has a key Lady Macbeth moment late in the film that might have been effective had we been more fully prepared for it and had her character been more thoroughly developed throughout the course of the film. Still, these are minor quibbles when it comes to a movie as finely acted and directed as this one is.
Perhaps it is just an odd coincidence that three of the very best movies of 2003 - '21 Grams,' 'The House of Sand and Fog' and 'Mystic River' - all suffer from the same tendency on the part of the filmmakers to move away from reality and towards melodrama and contrivance in the final act. huh 21 grams same year? I remember seeing that, in theater, w rg, early on in chicago. maybe did not see Mystic River until later on dvd but assumed it was earlier.

from same reviewer:
re 21 Grams (2003) (Comments by author -alphabetical by title)
a masterpiece, 2 May 2004
The film focuses on three initially unrelated individuals whose lives intersect at a single tragic event -- a hit-and-run accident that kills a man and his two young daughters who are crossing the street at the moment of impact. The incomparable Sean Penn plays Paul Rivers, a chain-smoking heart patient who gets a new lease on life when he becomes the donor recipient of the man killed in the accident. Naomi Watts is Christina Peck, a young reformed drug-addict and wife and mother of the three victims. Benicio Del Toro is Jack Jordan, a former petty criminal who's turned his life around by `finding Jesus,' yet who suffers a life-changing and soul-destroying experience when he runs over the three victims, then flees the scene. The anguish experienced by each character is conveyed in agonizing detail by these three brilliant performers.
`21 Grams' is really about how each of us learns to cope with unspeakable unbearable (not esp about what cannot be spoken) tragedy in our lives. Paul feels a need to bond with the woman whose husband gave him renewed life, even if that bond, and the feeling of personal gratitude and responsibility that comes with it, requires him to take away another man's life. Christina, now utterly bereft of all that gave her life meaning, finds she can only cope with the utter senselessness of her loss by seeking retaliation on the man she knows is responsible for her emptiness. Jack undergoes a grave spiritual crisis as he lashes out at God for - as he comes to see it - making him an unwitting participant in the tragedy. Christina and Jack, in particular, have a great deal in common, since both have succeeded in shaking off the problems of a troubled past, only to have their source of salvation (in her case, her family and, in his, religion), mercilessly pulled out from under them.
`21 Grams' is the single best movie I have seen in years, a complete artistic triumph for all involved. It will leave you reeling.