12 Monkeyhog Day

SOURCE CODE

Last week, some colleagues and I got an early look at Source Code (trailers), the sophomore effort from friend of the blog Duncan "Zowie Bowie" Jones, as well as an all-too-brief look at the man himself. First, the Jones appearance. Like a small, English Bigfoot caught in a grainy home movie out in the woods, he seemed to pass in front of our field of vision only long enough for us to wonder if what we were seeing was the real thing before he strode back behind the treeline. During the sighting, he seemed to be trying to lower expectations a bit among the Moon fans like us in the audience (sadly, too few in the free screening), telling us not to expect his second film to be all that similar to his terrific first. (Whether he meant in terms of its subject matter or its quality, he didn't specify.) After maybe forty-five seconds at the mic, Jones hurried off, leaving the lights to fall and his film to speak for itself.

Though Source Code certainly is different from Moon, and not as good, neither it nor Jones has anything to be ashamed of for what it is, which is a gripping, engaging, well-above-average action movie. Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) abruptly comes to on a commuter train headed for Chicago, his last memory being piloting an Army helicopter in Afghanistan; he doesn't know where he is, what he's doing there, or why the stranger sitting across from him, Christina (Michelle Monaghan), seems to know him. After eight minutes, an explosion destroys the train, and Colter is now isolated in a small, dark room with few features other than a screen on which a militarily attired woman, Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), anxiously questions him about what he just saw. It's soon revealed to Colter that, using a technology called "the Source Code," his consciousness is being thrown into an alternate reality based on the last eight minutes of the life of one of the train passangers before he, Christina, and the other passangers were killed in a bombing, but an alternate reality that he can fully explore and affect. His involuntary mission is to discover who was behind the bombing in order to prevent other attacks predicted to follow; but he can only do this eight minutes at a time, reliving the last moments of a dead man's life over and over until he finds the truth.

The obvious point of comparison for Source Code is as an action/thriller Groundhog Day, but with our hero forced to relive the same eight minutes in order to prevent terrorist attacks, instead of forced to relive the same minor holiday in order to become a better person and get the girl. However, the film I was most reminded of was 12 Monkeys, in which a man from the near future is forced by a mysterious authority to travel back in time to gain intelligence about a past, seemingly inevitable catastrophe. (Hence the mangled compromise of this post's title.) Though Jones didn't write Source Code, it shares with Moon (which he did write) a ready willingness to borrow what it needs from other films, but with its own spin. (I already noted the influences of Silent Running, Solaris, Blade Runner, and 2001, to name a few, on Moon.) It uses a high-tech narrative device and action-movie setting to examine, like Ramis's and Gilliam's respective films, how inevitable or open-ended life actually is, whether we're in the driver's seat or the future is set in stone. Surprisingly heady stuff for a springtime actioner full of pretty faces.

Jones has openly described Source Code as a "one for them" film. (I believe the term he used was "director for hire.") But really, the only actual negativity I can direct at the film is relative, in comparison to the "one for me" Moon. Sure, Gyllenhaal, Monaghan, or Farmiga doesn't turn in anything like Sam Rockwell's extraordinary performance, possibly the best of his career; but everyone delivers solid work, especially Gyllenhaal with his character's blend of military professionalism and understandable frustration with the situation into which he's been forced. The story doesn't have the same surprises and thematic challenges, but it's still one of the most intelligent and compelling films of its kind that we've gotten in a while, and one that interweaves its intelligence with the action and suspence quite well, in both conception and execution. If this is Jones's "one for them" film, we should be so lucky as to have more like it during the rest of his career.

From the Moon to the Earth

The trailer of Source Code, the next film by the terrific director, Ziggy Stardust progeny, and friend of the blog Duncan Jones, is now available. Though he's moved to slightly more terrestrial settings this time around, he's hardly eschewing the fantastical and heady concepts that Moon featured. The plot seems a good deal more action-and-suspence-oriented than his last film (though Moon was hardly lacking in tension, of course), but I have a hard time believing that those elements won't stay tied to the mind-bending concepts and moral dilemmas we've seen in his past work. As for the cast, Gyllenhaal has done some fantastic work over the past decade (Prince of Persia aside), from Donnie Darko to Brokeback Mountain to Zodiac, and I loved Monaghan in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Gone Baby Gone (in both playing a love interest who's more than just a love interest—which, incidentally, is the vibe I'm getting from her role in Source Code as well). Given that he got what I consider one of the best performances of his career out of Sam Rockwell for Moon, I've got no worries at all in that department. If the trailer's anything to go by, it looks like Jones is two for two in delivering films that make us think while keeping us on the edge of our seats.

A movie worth writing about

INCEPTION. This has been a long time coming, and I would like to say the time has been spent mulling over my thoughts. But, well, that would be a lie. Every time I open my Google Reader I see that it says there are two posts waiting for me to read and I feel guilty. So while waiting for Thirsty Thursday this week, I'll put some thoughts to proverbial paper. Keyboard I guess.

Having seen the movie (trailers) twice, I can say that those who say one has to see it more than once to "understand it" are either being what the kids call a "hater" or exaggerating. I got it for the most part the first time but there are certainly layers of meaning that come out after seeing it a second and -- what I hope will soon be -- third time. The first screening was mainly consumed with following the twists of plot and it was not until revisiting the move that I was able to appreciate the full extent of the scope of Christopher Nolan's filmmaking. Watching Memento in between, I found myself focusing on how well he had transitioned from a small-scale to a grand-scale director.

Inception has that complex storytelling packed full of nuance, metaphor, and layers of meaning found in movies generally relegated to small budgets and art-house theaters. But partly as a result of his commercially successful Batman franchise, Nolan has been given a studio budget and produces his movies in a way that reminds me of classic epics from the studio age where a director could fill the screen with his vision. From beginning to end, Inception is an immersive movie where the level of production value fills the screen with his vision. This is a movie that should properly be experienced on a large screen. In Memento we follow one character and use creative filmmaking to tell an individual story with the focus at all times on Leonard (Guy Pearce). For Inception the lead actor might be Leonardo DiCaprio, but party due to its ensemble cast, the real main focus is the world and the dreams. The characters are each more important for how they serve as our conduit into the understanding of Nolan's exploration of the concept of reality. More on why DiCaprio's Cobb is the most-developed character will have to wait.

I also got the sense of a more classic style of filmmaking in the actors chosen. DiCaprio might be a movie star but one known for using his post-Titanic career to position himself as a serious actor instead of a matinee idol. Start culling through the rest of the cast and you pull people known for providing strong performances in movies, not as btox-office draws. I get the sense that in making this movie Nolan pretty much said "I want a Joseph Gordon-Levitt-type actor" or an "Ellen Page-esque ingenue" and instead of trying to find someone to fit the bill, he got those actors. I have a running idea in my head that I go back to of who would be my dream ensemble if I were casting a movie (a topic I think worth making a post about, now that I think of it) and there's a sense I get that he did the same thing. And cast them.

Alright those are general ideas I can write about for those who are living under a rock and therefore not seen this movie. Now begins...

SPOILER ALERT

Now that is out of the way, the question is what I think the movie is about. As I discussed with you before, I do not think that the top -- his totem -- is going to fall. Although I have avoided reading analysis before writing this I did see one twitter post that made me think. Whoever it was wrote that it didn't matter if it fell or not because he was happy -- although it was written somewhat more eloquently. My reasoning for why it does not fall are somewhat related to that. The question of whether the whole movie is a dream is not something I will probably ever be able to tell for sure, although as I think of it again, I start to consider how much every character seems to act how he would expect -- specifically how certain he is of Ellen Page's reaction. Anyhow, that is for another post. The main idea I felt after coming out was that reality did not matter to him anymore and so his creation of his own world where he could be content is what mattered to him and so that's what he chose to do. Watching it more I think I'll be able to look more at the idea of how Nolan is exploring denial and how the idea of happiness itself is not an authentic but instead manufactured concept. Again, that might be for later.

The other part of the post that I couldn't really say before the spoiler cutoff is how much I admired the pacing of the movie. The movie holds suspense for roughly the last hour by cutting those different dreams together that are so different not just in atmosphere but also in the type of suspense created. From the idea of a falling van and a race against time and

an action-movie fight, we get a run of the different ways a movie can use its tools to keep an audience enthralled. Again, filmmaking on a grand scale. Nolan really shows in this movie how his ability as a small director and large-scale director can both be used at the same time.

Also, I think I might need to see the movie again. Soon. But there's my start to the discussion.

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

INCEPTION

I know that lately this blog has been neglected to the point that we should worry about hearing from Blog Protective Services, but it seems like it's been a while since I saw a film that really motivated me to throw my thoughts out into the electronic ether. Inception (trailers) is that film.

— YOU MUSTN'T BE AFRAID TO SPOIL A LITTLE BIGGER, DARLING. —

The first and foremost thing I have to say about Inception is: You see things you've never seen before. I don't mean that hyperbolically, but literally (unless you happen to have the imagination of a Fellini or an Arthur C. Clarke). The kind of sheer imagination on display in Inception is a rare and precious thing, especially in today's Hollywood and especially given the amount of resources usually necessary to pull it off convincingly. The city of Paris folding over onto itself; a freight train plowing down the middle of a busy city street; people fighting in a rotating hotel hallway; crumbling skyscrapers falling into the sea like a glacier. Even for these purely visual aspects of the film, to think that they all came from one imagination gives me even greater respect for Nolan—who both conceived of them as writer and executed them as director—that I had before.

In addition to the breathtaking visuals, the story itself is a marvel. For almost the entire running time—two and a half hours that flew by as quickly the second time seeing it as the first—it seemed that at least every ten minutes some new element entered the story that made me stop and think, "That's really cool," or "That really interesting," or "I can't wait to see where this will lead." Starting in the first fifteen minutes with using a dream within a dream to compound the subject's vulnerability, on through the use of totems, the dream-projections' violent reaction to dream invasion (and the extent to which anti-invasion training can take that, as seen once the team enters Fischer's subconscious), the differences in the perception of time between waking and dreaming (and its exponential multiplication as more dream-layers become involved), the necessity of a "kick" sensation to wake the dreamers, the revelation that the Mal who keeps appearing in dreams isn't an outside invader like the team but Cobb's own projection of his dead wife, Cobb's responsibility for her death and how that was done—Inception's story was so fascinating, so engaging, and so well and intricately constructed that it never gave my interest a chance to flag.

Just how well constructed this story is, just how much thought and care Nolan put into it over the decade or so he was working on it, is made particularly evident in the film's centerpiece, the team's invasion of Fischer's subconscious. Not only do they use three dream-layers to plant the idea deeply enough without his noticing, but each layer serves a particular purpose: the first (the rainy city) plays off the resentment Fischer feels toward his father; the second (the hotel) establishes distrust between Fischer and Browning; the third (the mountaintop hospital) creates the positive, emotional basis for the idea, the "catharsis." Eventually, all three layers are active simultaneously and affecting one another, seen most dramatically in the first layer's effects on the second, from the tumble-cycle hallway effect as the van flips over to the weightlessness created when Yusuf drives it off the bridge.

As we've already discussed, the various layers have distinct roles not only in the team's plan, but also in the narrative and drama of the film itself. In the first dream-layer, the van's slow (from the other layers' perspectives) fall toward the river below serves as the ticking clock against which everything else must race; in the second, Arthur must use both brawn to fight off subconscious security and brain to figure out how to create the kick necessary to awaken his sleeping teammates in a zero-gravity environment; the third is a classic action sequence with guns, explosions, and an army of faceless bad guys; in the fourth, limbo, the drama and suspense are emotional rather than action-based, as Cobb must finally confront and overcome the destructive pain and guilt he feels about Mal. These four layers are simultaneously interwoven in a tour de force of stunningly effective storytelling and editing, a cinematic Swiss watch.

Of course, all these scenarios would be insufficient without interesting characters and talented actors, and Inception has both. DiCaprio's Dom Cobb joins the ranks of protagonists haunted by their past familiar from Nolan's filmography: Guy Pearce in Memento, Al Pacino in Insomnia, Hugh Jackman in The Prestige, and, the exemple par excellence, Christian Bale in the Batman franchise. Like them, Cobb is essentially a loner but is forced by necessity into uneasy alliances of convenience with others, imbuing him with an intriguing tension. The other members of the team are much more peripheral, but that doesn't mean they're one-dimensional or without color: the professional Arthur's longstanding but often tense working relationship with Cobb; Eames and Arthur's barbed exchanges; Ariadne (I see what you did there, Nolan!) as the simultaneously eager but cautious outsider, a role both giving an opportunity for explanatory exposition for the audience's sake and providing a fresh pair of eyes to perceive the damage and danger caused by Cobb's obsession with Mal; Saito acting both distantly first as target then as suspicious employer, and closely as an active member of the team. In addition to these, we get Batman alums Michael Caine and Cillian Murphy, as well as too-brief appearances by Pete Postlethwaite, Lukas Haas, and Tom Berenger (who's been AWOL from marquees too long, if I might be permitted a little Platoon reference). Though the amount of screen time some of them get is limited, they all come across as real, vibrant characters.

Inception was a joy to experience, and my hope is that its success will make it easier for similarly ambitious and visionary stories to get produced. I've already heard it described as the kind of film—like The Matrix over ten years ago, and Star Wars and the early Spielberg films twenty years before that—that will send kids to film school in the years to come, and I think the fact that it's so imaginative that it doesn't just put its creator's imagination on display, but also sparks its audience's imagination, makes that prediction a pretty likely one. We'll be fortunate if budding filmmakers find inspiration in Inception, with its creative vision, intelligence, thrilling action and suspence, moving drama, technical mastery, intriguing characters, and vast ambition. Inception is the cinematic total package.

P.S. — For this post's title, I was also considering "Beyond Your Wildest Dreams" and "Immaculate 'Inception,'" but I think you'll admit they're a bit over the top; and, after all, you can never go wrong with the potent combination of Hammett, Houston, and Bogie.

The Origin of Batmanuel

LOST

Fooled you! Sorry if you were genuinely looking for a post about the origin of the character that Nestor Carbonell played on the short-lived live-action TV adaptation of The Tick. However, I'll do the next best thing and talk about the much-anticipated origin of Richard Alpert in "Ab Aeterno," as well as "Recon" and "The Package." So enough fooling around, and on to Lost.

"Recon," our first Sawyer-centric episode of the season, gives us a glimpse, in its flash-sideways, of perhaps the greatest cop-show-that-will-never-be of all time, Ford and Straume. It also shows us some interesting aspects of Sawyer's character and nature. As far as we know, everything about the lives/life of the original timeline's Sawyer and alterna-Sawyer was the same up to and including their/his parents' deaths. In the original timeline, this drives him into a life of, essentially, following in the footsteps of the man who destroyed his childhood as a con man; in the new timeline, it compels him to join the LAPD in order to take down con men (and women) and eventually to get to Anthony Cooper. Instead of being a born criminal, Sawyer—both of them—is teetering on the line between the law and crime, with some small event early on—apparently his writing the letter to "Mr. Sawyer," using Jacob's pen—nudging him toward channeling his feelings of hate and revenge one way or the other. During his date with the smoking-hot alterna-Charlotte, he even says that he realized this early on—"I got to a point in my life where I was either going to become a criminal or a cop."—and chose the law. No doubt that's why he can play a con man in his sting operations so well. (That opening scene was a terrific little play on our expectations. Also, did you notice that the woman alterna-Sawyer was stinging called him "dimples"? I guess Sawyer isn't the only one quick with the nicknames.) It also reflects original Sawyer's fifth-season role as "LaFleur," head of DHARMA security (ironically, conning his way into a position of authority and trust). In both timelines, Sawyer walks a fine line between the right and wrong sides of the law, jumping back and forth as the situation requires, giving yet another example on Lost of moral ambiguity, of a blurring of the line between detective work and conning, law and crime, good and evil.

As for the original-timeline scenes of "Recon," we get our first real look at the returned Charles Widmore and his armed Geek Squad (I wish I could claim credit for having thought of that) of Liz Lemon, that nerdy data guy on Jason Statham's crew in Paul W.S. Anderson's Death Race, and what I can only assume will prove to be a bunch of red shirts. Widmore seems to be anti-Loophole, but of course that doesn't necessarily mean he's pro-Jacob. (For one thing, there's an obvious contrast between science-oriented Widmore and the low-tech Others, e.g., keeping Loophole out through sonar pylons vs. lines of ash. Speaking of the pylons, does this mean that Widmore's joined forces with the Hanso Foundation, the folks in Ann Arbor behind the DHARMA Initiative?) I wouldn't put the murder of the Ajira survivors on Hydra Island past either Widmore or Loophole; both can be pretty ruthless when it comes to getting what the want, or even to merely tying up loose ends. Meanwhile, Sawyer seems to have reverted back to his looking-out-for-number-one con man mode from the first season, telling both Widmore and Loophole what they want to hear in order to get what he wants, i.e., off the Island. The plot thickens . . .

In the next episode, "Ab Aeterno," we take a break for the most part from both the Island goings-on and the flash-sideways timeline to delve into one of the great mysteries of the series, Richard Alpert, a.k.a. Ricardus, a.k.a. Ricardo. This episode both gives us a heaping pile of answers to long-standing questions, and a lot of great character and background material showing us what makes the Island's three most mysterious inhabitants tick. Richard doesn't age thanks to Jacob, because he was refused absolution from a crooked priest and was afraid of dying and going to Hell. He arrived on the Black Rock, which was cast inland in a huge storm, crashing into and breaking the Taweret statue. The Island (via its "unique energy," perhaps) keeps Loophole trapped there, preventing him from wrecking havoc upon the rest of the world. Jacob brings people (the Black Rock, the Others, Oceanic 815, maybe DHARMA and Desmond) to the Island to prove to Loophole mankind's essential worth (perhaps in order to "defuse" his evil should he ever escape the Island). But far from being a mere info-dump, "Ab Aeterno" gave us a real sense of the rivalry between Jacob and Loophole—they've been trying that knife trick for centuries!—and showed us that Richard's story is really a tragic one: a simple man lost in a strange new world, willing to kill to get back the woman he loves, a pawn in a game beyond his comprehension, cursed with eternal life and what seems like a doomed mission, spending lifetimes in service to a being only to find his master murdered and his life and effort rendered apparently meaningless. But Hurley's ghost-whispering at the end infuses the distraught Richard with new purpose, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with it.

In "The Package," we pick up both the original timeline and the new timeline after our hour with the immortal Canarian: Widmore and Loophole are parrying and thrusting back and forth, and we find out what led alterna-Jin to be in that freezer and what happened after Sayid found him in "Sundown." As was speculated earlier, Jin and Sun aren't married in the new timeline; and far from her leaving him, the trip to LA is their opportunity to run away together, beyond (so they think) her father and his boss's malevolent reach. Unfortunately, three of the characters we love to hate from the original timeline—Keamy, Omar, and Mikhail—are waiting at the other end to complete the set-up that Mr. Paik has arranged by sending Jin with payment for his own hit, which Sun couldn't replace (having closed her account). Sayid's Gun Kata ends up resolving most of this, but the episode ends with two elements which may be more examples of the original timeline influencing the new: alterna-Mikhail loses an eye, and Sun is pregnant. In the original timeline, she and Jin were only able to conceive on the Island (perhaps related to its healing properties), so that may explain why they don't have off-Island fertility problems in the new timeline, i.e., Jin and Sun's on-Island fertility "bled over" into the new timeline, where off-Island Jin and Sun should be infertile. Alas, their story ended on a hell of a cliffhanger, so we'll have to wait and see if they finally get the happiness in the new timeline that has evaded them in the original.

In the original timeline, Widmore's people nab Jin (keeping him in good old Room 23), apparently to get information about the Island's various energy pockets that Jin studied during his stint with DHARMA in the '70s (again, pointing to the energy being tied to keeping Loophole prisoner on the Island). Widmore gives us more vague references to what would happen if Loophole escaped—"Everyone we know and love would simply cease to be."—but it remains frustratingly unclear (assuming he's telling the truth in the first place). Loophole takes a trip back to Hydra Island for a parlay with Widmore. (When they were getting the outrigger ready, I was hoping this would be our explanation for the event last season, when Locke, Sawyer, and the other time-skippers were followed and fired upon while rowing from the old beach camp to the Orchid station ("The Little Prince"). Guess not. On second thought, it couldn't have been, since when the time-skippers found their outrigger at the beach camp the camp was abandoned, whereas at the moment Jack, Ben, Ilana, et alii are there.) Speaking of the beach camp dwellers, there was some nice character interactions in those scenes, and I like that they have a new sense of purpose thanks to Richard's return, but the whole thing with Sun's hitting her head while running from Loophole and losing the ability to speak (but not write) English seemed straight out of Gilligan's Island; they might as well have had a coconut fall on her head. Granted, it led to a nice scene of her and Jack talking on the beach, and perhaps there's a genuine medical explanation for it, but the whole scenario struck me as a real narm moment.

Meanwhile, on the submarine dock on Hydra Island, we get the dramatic return of Desmond David Hume (and with him, Mr. Motorboat himself, Henry Ian Cusick). This was great because it not only creates a nice parallel between the new timeline, where Jin's supposed delivery to Keamy is the "package," and the original, where Desmond himself is the "package" Widmore's brought to the Island (foreshadowed during Sawyer's visit to the sub in "Recon"), but also is long overdue, both for the character himself and for the great importance that he's supposed to have for how the rest of the series plays out.

P.S. — Just in case you needed a little more awesome in your life, this guy delivers the goods with a series of classy, minimalist posters for each episode of the first three seasons. I especially liked the ones for "Two for the Road" and "Flashes before Your Eyes."

"What if I said you can have anything in the entire world?"

LOST

I just thought I'd catch up with the three most recent episodes, "Lighthouse," "Sundown," and "Dr. Linus," and share my thoughts, ideas, and questions. I thought all three were terrific episodes, very entertaining and enjoyable, though in different ways.

(As a very cool sidenote, the director of "Dr. Linus" was none other than Mario Van Peebles, of Heartbreak Ridge, New Jack City, Ali, and the biopic of his groundbreaking father Melvin, BAADASSSSS!)

"Lighthouse" and "Sundown" demonstrate what seem to be Jacob's and Loophole's respective M.O.'s in getting people to do what they want. In the former, Jacob (or his ghost, or whatever) has Hurley lead Jack out of the Temple to the previously unseen and unmentioned lighthouse, where he sees his childhood home in the mirrors; despite Jack's immediate reaction of anger and confusion, it leads him to believe in his importance to Jacob and to the Island's destiny, as seen in his later conversation with Richard inside the Black Rock. Jacob—much like Lost itself—often doesn't give people the whole truth but only what he thinks they need to know at the time, to the point of manipulating them, but ultimately leaves them to reach their own conclusions and make their own decisions. In "Sundown," on the other hand, Loophole promises people whatever they want to hear—that Sawyer will leave the Island, that Claire will get Aaron back, that Sayid will have Nadia, that Ben will rule the Island—and kills those who don't accept his devil's bargain. (Sure, he let Richard live, but perhaps he could tell that he'd try to kill himself within a few episodes anyway. Moreover, given that he killed at least a couple dozen Others at the Temple, the fact that he let one person live doesn't really change the equation that much.)

In "Lighthouse," Jacob told Hurley that he was sending him to the lighthouse—aside from getting him and Jack away from the Temple and letting Jack know he's his special little guy—in order to help someone find the Island. Then, at the end of "Dr. Linus," we see Charles Widmore (whom we haven't seen since last season) in a submarine offshore. Is he the one Jacob was talking about? My first instinct is no, that Jacob (who, while not perfect, seems better at least than Loophole) would never want Widmore (who sent Keamy's mercenaries in the fourth season and told Ben to kill Rousseau and Alex in the fifth) on the Island. But, on second thought, Widmore hasn't really been any more ruthless, devious, or "evil" than the rest of Jacob's followers; his beef seems primarily to be with Ben, who overthrew him and may not have been ruling the Others according to Jacob's wishes (their easy DHARMA-style living during his tenure contrasts with their simple ways before and since); and, most significantly, Widmore helped Locke to bring the Oceanic Six back to the Island, which, given their status as candidates, accords with Jacob's plans. At this point, despite my instinct to see Widmore as the "bad guy" (a dangerously simplistic concept on this show), I think that he's on Jacob's side; whether that'll end up being the "good" side, however, remains to be seen.

So Sayid has given in to the dark side. This is really tragic, given that his arc over the course of the series has been trying to overcome his past, his demons, and his fear that he's a "bad man" and undeserving of redemption or anything good in life. I read somewhere someone comparing him to an alcoholic who struggles for years to overcome his addiction, but finally gives in and embraces the bottle. Similarly, Claire has forsaken all else—friendship, morality, even sanity—in her quest to get Aaron back, turning into a latter-day Rousseau. Though Dogen said that Claire was "claimed" as Sayid was, how this happened remains unclear to me, since he apparently had to die first. Maybe she died in the mercenaries' assault on Dharmaville in the fourth season when a rocket blew up the house she was in, but she seemed fine when Sawyer found her seconds later; reader-of-the-dead Miles seemed weird around her after that, so it's possible that she died and returned to life claimed, but everything about her abandonment of Aaron and her appearance in Jacob's cabin with Christian still seems bizarre to me, so I hope we'll get some answers in that regard.

We've seen more evidence of the original timeline "informing" the new one. We haven't seen the cut on alterna-Jack's neck again, but we got some much clearer evidence in "Lighthouse" in his appendectomy scar; though his mother offers an explanation, the fact that he doesn't seem to recognize it indicates that it doesn't really belong in the new timeline, but is from the appendectomy Juliet gave him in the fourth season ("Something Nice Back Home"). And in "Dr. Linus," the fact that alterna-Ben teaches at Alex's high school, that he acts as her friend and mentor, and that he would sacrifice his own ambition for her sake, seems to show that the hard-learnt realizations of the original timeline—that power, and even the opportunity to do what he thinks is right, aren't worth sacrificing her—are nudging that Ben in a different direction, keeping him from repeating the original Ben's mistakes.

(Speaking of alterna-Alex, as much as I enjoyed Ben's flash-sideways, I had to suspend a lot of disbelief that she would be in LA, given that both her parents are French. I thought that, since her parents were scientists, maybe they held positions at universities in LA, but then I remembered that Alex said her mother had to work two jobs to pay the rent; I know academia can be rough, but not like that. I guess we'll just have to chalk it up to the Rule of Drama.)

I think that these episodes are three among the strongest in recent memory; in fact, these, in addition to "LA X" and "The Substitute," are giving me a lot of confidence about how the writers, directors, and actors will bring Lost to a close. In "Lighthouse," the two Jacks' parallel feelings of being in over their head and out of their element, their frustration and self-doubt, are finally overcome with a new-found sense of meaning, centeredness, and purpose. (Not only that, but it was pretty awesome seeing Jack as a father; it should be very interesting if we get to see more of David, given that daddy issues have defined Jack as a character. I do wonder, though, who his mother is; Jack met Sarah only a few years before taking Oceanic 815, but given how coincidence-prone the new timeline is, I wouldn't rule her out.) "Sundown" managed the rare feat of moving the plot forward briskly, delving into the mythology, giving us great character development and interactions, as well as awesome action and suspense, and having a tense and touching flash-sideways; it was the total package of Lost episodes. Though not much happened plot- or mythology-wise in "Dr. Linus," it was a powerhouse of character development and acting, thanks above all to Michael Emerson's complex and shattering performance. (Seriously, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, just give him and Terry O'Quinn their Emmys now.) Ben's conversation with Ilana after he runs for the rifle ("Because he's the only one that'll have me.") was one of the half-dozen or so most moving scenes in the entire series, up there with Boone's death, Michael's killing Ana Lucia and Libby, the end of the third-season finale ("We have to go back!"), and Alex's death. "Dr. Linus" may be the best episode of the season thus far; I'd expect nothing less from Mr. Van Peebles.

P.S. — As much as I enjoyed "Dr. Linus," I was a little disappointed, at the end with all the happy reunions on the beach, everyone hugging and laughing in slow motion as the score swells, that we didn't see the reunited Ben and Richard slo-mo running across the beach into each other's arms, laughing and crying like a couple of girls. Would've been the perfect cap to a great episode. Oh well, can't have it all.

P.P.S. — Watching Ben and Alex's study session made me want to look up the Charter Act of 1813. That's how much of a history nerd I am. Turns out the answer was "the Punjab, Sindh, and Nepal."

Insert Palin-approved title here

AVATAR. I feel like I should write something about the movie (trailer) because, aside from being the highest-grossing movie of all time, I think it will take home best picture at the Oscars tonight. It will make me almost as sad as the night the movie-which-shall-not-be-named won.

This is going to be much simpler because I agree with pretty much everything you already wrote. I do think that if it does when tonight, I will not be completely upset because as a technical piece of filmmaking, it has pushed the medium forward. James Cameron has created a 3D movie where, as you mention, it is not a gimmick intended to raise the price (making it easier to become the highest-grossing movie) but instead a full part of the experience. I found myself so immersed in what was happening that I eventually did not even notice the 3D and felt a bit more like I was a part of the action -- and shooting action has always been something Cameron has done well. Use of 3D was particularly useful for this story, which was about manufacturing a reality and someone becoming immersed in another world by proxy without becoming truly part of it. Something crosses over from being a gimmick to a stand-out approach when the form follows function, not the other way around. Being in 3D furthered his story and so he was right to use it here. I will be curious to see if he or any others are able to do the same when the plot is not quite so conducive to 3D.

So that is the good about Avatar. Now for the bad. I was so glad to see this movie got the general slap in the face of being nominated (and having a good shot at winning) best picture without so much as a nod for the screenplay, which does allow for 10 movies to be nominated. For all of the money spent on developing, shooting, and promoting this movie, you would think that Cameron and company could have invested in a screenwriter. He might be a talented director, but Cameron is tone deaf at writing dialogue. The story is somewhat ordinary but I was fine with the general arc of the movie. What I found inexcusable was how corny the dialogue was at times and the lack of any depth to the characters, other than possibly Jake Sully (Sam Worthington). Just as I think 3D is poorly used when it takes one out of the movie, a screenplay is bad when the ineptness of the language is so distracting that it takes the viewer out of the movie. I laughed and groaned at multiple times where it was not intended and entire scenes where ruined for me because I was so distracted by the bad dialogue.

In all Avatar is certainly a movie I would recommend seeing for its amazing visual effects that suggest what the future of film could be. It might have still been a movie I would say some might enjoy on DVD even without the benefit of the 3D movie experience, but Cameron went and ruined that opportunity. I am glad I went, but I cannot imagine sitting through that movie without the 3D and in that he has made sure that the movie for me is one that will not allow for repeat viewings.

One more thought on "Lost"

LOST

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but I don't think I've heard anyone else suggest it, so I thought I'd throw it out there. Who knows, if I end up being right about this and no one else has thought of it, I could get Lost bragging rights the likes of which mortal man has only dreamt of in his wildest imaginings. (Or maybe everyone else thought of it months ago, or I'm just completely wrong, or both.)

As I said, it seems ridiculously obvious now that it's occurred to me. What if the Incident had the same effect on Jack, Sawyer, Kate, et alii in 1977 as the destruction of the Swan station had on Desmond in 2004, i.e., it made it so that the rules of "whatever happened, happened" don't apply to them, making them the "variables" that Faraday mentioned last season and allowing their consciousnesses to jump around through space-time? After Desmond destroyed the Swan by activating the fail-safe at the end of the second season, he got visions of the future (regarding Charlie's eventual demise) and an extended vision of what seemed like the past but with Eloise Hawking explaining how he couldn't change anything ("Flashes before Your Eyes"); moreover, it apparently made him much more susceptible to the consciousness-jumping effects of traveling to and from the Island, effects that manifested themselves instantly in him but took hours or even days to begin showing in others ("The Constant"). I believe this is also what the time-traveling Faraday meant when he told Desmond that he was "special," and in fact is why Desmond answered Faraday's knocking on the Swan door, despite the fact that he didn't do so originally ("Because You Left"). (Perhaps the reason Desmond answered when Faraday knocked but not when Sawyer did is that the interaction of two people who had been (or eventually would be) exposed to large doses of electromagnetic energy (as Faraday had been due to his experiments) was necessary for the rules to be broken and the past altered.)

Like the destruction of the Swan, the Incident was a massive release of the Island's biggest pocket of electromagnetic energy, so it would make sense for it to have similar effects on those near it. While Desmond's "specialness," his "variability," manifested itself in his consciousness's traveling back and forth in the same timeline, it may be manifesting itself in Jack and crew in their consciousnesses' traveling between timelines, either as obviously as with Juliet right before she died, or as subtly as when alterna-Claire decided to name her child Aaron ("I don't know why I said it. . . . I knew it or something."). Indeed, I think this is why they had to return to the Island (and, ultimately, why Jacob brought them to the Island in the first place), so that they would travel back to 1977, cause the Incident, be exposed to the energy that was released, and thus not be bound by the otherwise inalterable past. Perhaps this is Jacob's loophole to Loophole's loophole, that even if Loophole succeeds in killing him indirectly, he will have a group of people ("candidates," if you will) who can change the past and prevent his being killed (or effect his will in some other way).

OK, that's my theory. If it's a brilliant moment of lucidity on my part, or if it'll be dashed to pieces in the first five minutes of this Tuesday's episode, only time will tell.

Substitute your lies for fact

LOST

Despite what the most recent episode's title would have you believe, there is neither a (direct, at least) reference to the Who, nor an appearance by Tom Berenger. Kind of a letdown.

Though this post covers the past two episodes, "What Kate Does" and "The Substitute," there was a lot more going on in the latter than in the former, so that's what most of this post is going to be about. However, "What Kate Does" did offer some relevant bits of information. First off, it added my "alterna-Claire might not be pregnant" theory to the extensive collection of Owen's Disproven Lost Theories. Not only is she pregnant, but she's traveling to the States for the very same reason in the new timeline as in the old, to give her unborn son up for adoption. Mythology-wise, the new-timeline parts of the episode were significant in two ways. One is the appearance of Ethan (going by "Goodspeed" instead of "Rom"); more on this below. The other is Claire's decision to name her son Aaron, for reasons she can't explain. This seems to be an example of the two timelines subtly, subconsciously interacting: Juliet, before dying, realized that "it worked"; alterna-Jack has an unexplained cut on his neck right where Sawyer kicked Jack in the original timeline; more generally, people in the new timeline with no greater connection than sharing a flight keep running into one another, often in very meaningful ways. Somehow, the fact that the original timeline's Claire named her son Aaron has subconsciously "informed" alterna-Claire's choice of name. I expect the interactions between the two timelines to become more numerous and pronounced over the course of the season.

The other significant aspect of "What Kate Did"—other than the revelation that Jacob must have stopped by Paddy's Pub at some point and touched Mac to recruit everyone's favorite sleeveless Philadelphian for the Hostiles (a name that really seems to fit his character), probably for his renowned martial-arts skills—was the Temple Others' treatment of the resurrected Sayid, i.e., torturing and then trying to poison him. The first round of their "tests," blowing ash over him, makes sense if they're afraid that he's been "claimed" (to use their word) by the ash-adverse Loophole, but the electricity and the hot poker don't. If he has been claimed, then does that mean that all the other dead people who've appreared on the Island—Christian Shephard, first and foremost—are also resurrected agents of Loophole? Sayid doesn't seem to be acting like they did, but rather is understandably confused and upset about the whole situation. We'll see where this leads.

The real meat from the last two weeks of Lost, however, was from "The Substitute." In it, we follow Loophole—indeed, a "substitute for another guy"—as he travels the Island trying to recruit his version of the Others (or something). First off, it was cool to see him traveling via Raimi-cam; I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd found Ash at Dharmaville instead of Sawyer. I'm at at loss, though, at how easily he gave up on recruiting Richard, seeing as how he'd knocked him out, carried him into the jungle, and kept him in a sack hanging from a tree; moreover, recruiting Richard would've been quite a coup, seeing as he seems to have been acting leader of the Others since the real Locke's time-traveling-related disappearance in 2004. However, he does succeed in putting the fear of God into the otherwise unflappable Richard, resulting in what some commenters have already started calling the sixth-season equivalent of Jackface: "Dickface."

Moving on to the next candidate (a word that's become very significant in this show in the past few episodes), Loophole finds Sawyer at a low, vulnerable point in his life (the very thing that Loophole later accuses Jacob of doing), but Sawyer, unlike the seemingly all-knowing Ben and Richard, isn't fooled for a second that this "substitute" is the real John Locke. He goes with him anyway, running into scaredy Richard and mystery lad (younger Jacob? older Aaron? someone else altogether?) along the way, until they reach the Numbers Cave. A lot of ground is covered in there in a few minutes, and a lot of it still doesn't entirely make sense, but here are a few of the things that struck me. First, the scale with the light and dark stones on the plates. Before Loophole throws away the light stone ("Inside joke."), the scale is evenly balanced, but honestly, that didn't really reflect Jacob and Loophole's situation prior to the former's death: After all, Loophole was imprisoned, while Jacob had an army of followers and could travel off-Island as he pleased. Far from their being "balanced," Jacob seems to have had a big advantage over Loophole for a long time.

As for the numbers and names written in the cave, Loophole implies that the numbers don't really mean anything, simply that "Jacob had a thing for numbers." I think this is just a case of Loophole's continuing the fine Lost tradition of dissimulating and opaque explanations, since I find it hard to believe that the show has abandoned the Valenzetti Equation as an explanation (i.e., the numbers represent the values that, according to the equation, determine the date of mankind's self-annihilation; the DHARMA Initiative was established to study and, if possible, change those numbers). If the numbers are in fact meaningful, then it ties back to what Faraday said last season, that "people are the variables" that can affect the otherwise inalterable flow of time; maybe he didn't mean just any people, but only certain people, namely our familiar band of castaways, whom Jacob clearly has thought important for some time.

Since all the "answers" we get in cave come from Loophole, we must ask ourselves how much we should trust or distrust what he says. The show more or less tells us that we're supposed to think he's the bad guy: He wears dark colors, in Monster form he's been killing people since the pilot in the pilot, last season he deceived everyone into thinking he was really Locke, and he manipulated Ben into fulfilling his long-harbored wish of killing Jacob. The problem is, why should we think that Jacob was (is?) any better, other than his milder demeanor? His followers, the Others, are pretty cold-blooded and ruthless (though we don't know to what extent they're really carrying out his wishes). Even in the best light he seems pretty manipulative, bringing all these people to his Island and "testing" them for his own purposes, many of them being killed along the way. And honestly, Loophole's side of things—that Jacob's really a puppet master whose supposedly willing followers are really just brainwashed and manipulated slaves in need of liberation—sounds at least plausible. But of course, Loophole has an agenda of his own, which undoubtedly is furthered by his telling Sawyer this, so we'll just need to wait and see who, if anyone, is right.

As for the "flash-sideways" to the new timeline, Locke's alternate life was a real hoot to see. I mean, we got Hurley as a savvy CEO, Rose as a wise, no-nonsense temp-agency supervisor, Ben as a prickly high-school history teacher, the return of Peggy—I mean, Leela—I mean, Helen, a lot of great, tender, funny character moments, and the human reproductive system as taught by John Locke. Could you ask for anything more? Not only that, but my theory that alterna-Locke didn't go on the walkabout was validated (balancing out my disproven one about Claire; you win some, you lose some). One question very subtly raised, however, concerns Locke's father, Anthony Cooper; not only does Helen suggest to Locke that they invite "your dad" to their Vegas elopement, but there's a picture in Locke's cubicle of him (standing, with hair) with Cooper, confirming that he's indeed the "dad" Helen mentioned and that they have a good relationship. How, then, did Locke become paralyzed, if his father didn't push him out of that window?

The appearance of alterna-Ben in "The Substitute," following that of alterna-Ethan in "What Kate Does," raises the question of what exactly happened to the Island in the Incident. We see it sunk beneath the Pacific in the alternate 2004, and I'd assumed that that was an immediate result of the Incident, i.e., that from the new timeline's creation in 1977 the alterna-Island was sunk, so Desmond never reached it, he never failed to push the button in 2004, etc. And yet we have two Others—or, more precisely, two DHARMA members who would've later defected to the Others—leading normal, mundane lives in the alternate 2004. Ethan could be explained by his being evacuated as an infant prior to the Incident, but young Ben, wounded by Sayid and taken to the Temple by Richard, was almost certainly still on the Island when the Incident occurred. If alterna-Ben wasn't sent to Davy Jones's locker with the rest of the Island in 1977 when the new timeline began, then when—and more importantly, how—was the alterna-Island sunk if the Incident didn't do it? Come on, Lost, you're supposed to be answering questions now, not raising new ones!

Is it just me, or at about 2:20 in this video does Roger Daltrey sing "substitute my Coke for Jin"? Or maybe I'm just suffering from Lost on the brain.

"LA X": Additional Thoughts and Reactions

LOST

First off, thanks for the Juliet picture.

Having read your last post and watched "LA X" a second time (thanks, abc.go.com!), I just thought I'd jot down a few random thoughts.

One thing from the episode that seems kind of mysterious is the cut on Jack's neck in the new timeline, especially since alterna-Jack himself seemed confused about it as well. Here's what I noticed watching it the second time: The cut was on the left side of his neck. In the old timeline, after they jumped forward to 2007 and saw the remains of the Swan station, Sawyer kicked Jack. Where? On the left side of his head, around the neck and jaw. Perhaps it wasn't just hair styles that carried over from the old timeline to the new.

Jack's cut doesn't seem to be the only example of possible connections between the two timelines. When we first see alterna-Jack on Oceanic 815, he seems a little disoriented, like he expected to be somewhere else. It wasn't full-blown "Who are you? What am I doing here?" panic à la Desmond in "The Constant," of course, but it also wasn't what you'd expect from a person who'd already been sitting on that very plane, in that very seat, for several hours. If anything, it was more like '90s Desmond in "The Constant," who was a little disoriented when his consciousness returned to the '90s but described his 2004 experiences merely as a vivid dream. I'm not suggesting that alterna-Jack is undergoing consciousness-jumping like Desmond did, but he certainly seemed unsettled, like he sensed something was wrong but didn't know what.

Something that I think we can chalk up to consciousness-jumping is Juliet's last words. Her apparently nonsensical talk right before she died sounded a lot like Charlotte's when she was dying from the time travel. While Charlotte thought that she was in the past, maybe Juliet thought she was in the new timeline; she realized this immediately before dying, that a new timeline had been created in which they never went to the Island, and thus realized that "it worked." I definitely think that we can look forward to interaction between the two timelines in the future—even physical interaction, if my theory about Jack's neck is correct.

I'm also strongly leaning toward the position that alterna-Locke didn't go on his walkabout. Not only does it make no more sense for the walkabout organizers in the new timeline to let a paraplegic man participate than it does in the old timeline, but the writers made the point of having Boone ask him, "You're not pulling my leg, are you?" when Locke tells him about it. If he did lie, that would definitely add an interesting wrinkle to an otherwise very sympathetic version of Locke. (Speaking of those two, I liked your link to the Lost version of the love that dare not speak its name, a.k.a. "When John Met Boone.")

Regarding what you said about the similarities between this season and the first, in an excellent series on CHUD, "Lost: The Rewatch Column," the writer notes a mirroring going on in the series's seasons, with a number of similarities between the first and sixth seasons, between the second and fifth, and between the third and fourth. For example, Sayid's and Ben's respective positions in the second season ("Henry Gale" locked up in the Swan station, Sayid subjects him to some "advanced interrogation methods," but he breaks out thanks to Michael's betrayal; also, Sayid is the first to suspect what "Henry" really is) and the fifth (Sayid locked up in the Dharmaville jail, interrogated by Oldham, but breaking out thanks to little Ben's betrayal of his people; Sayid finally shoots Ben in part because he suspects what the boy will become).

I'm not sure it's the case, but I'm intrigued by your idea that the two timelines could correspond to the two beings battling it out, one light and one dark, one voluntarist and one determinist.

I'm sorry, though, to hear that you didn't find "LA X" satisfying. As I've said before, I gave up watching Lost with a set of expectations that needed to be met a long time ago; at this point, I'm just along for the ride. As for why we should care about the two timelines, I guess we'll see as the season progresses, seeing as we're only one episode into the two-timeline scenario; we had as much reason to care about Desmond one episode into the second season. I, for one, had a blast and can't wait to see where the series goes now that they've upped the ante this way.