“Lost” – hi, “Losties” (apparently the term of art for Lost fans) – admittedly, I’m not a Lost fan, but as a casual viewer, this season has been powerful stuff. I must say, the Desmond episode – wherein we get a lot of answers to various “Lost” questions and a lot of emotions running. Desmond needs a constant, or else he’s going to die from his mental temporal trips. His love Penny manages to stick around for him! Aww! This could have been quite the Christmas episode. Plus, being in the British army is really tough (well, apparently, no worse than it is being in any army), but was Desmond AWOL when he went off to Oxford to find Faraday? And, how terribly convenient that present-Faraday suddenly remembers that he was in Oxford in 1996, available to help 1996 Desmond, who’s not quite helping present Sayid on the boat. Anyway, Sayid turned out to be decent help (his own episode was something straight out of the J.J. Abram’s “Alias” mythos – jeez, Sayid – your future’s not looking too great). But, as expected, time twists are serious mind-bogglers.
This past week’s episode – wherein Juliet has to decide who’s side she’s on already (but still Jack that she can’t chose, lest she endangers him – but Jack’s willing to take the risk – Jack, you’re crazy!) — well, I still don’t trust Juliet. And, Ben – he’s quite the villain, isn’t he? It says a lot about the actor that a viewer can hate Ben, not trust him, but kind of understand why he thinks he’s right. Indeed, Ben reminds me a lot of Sloan, from “Alias” – he’s Evil, he thinks he’s doing the Right Thing, but it’s really about his pursuit of his own agenda. Sloan ended up in Limbo (or Living Hell, if that satisfies anyone to be trapped underground forever) in the pursuit for immortality – will Ben’s fate be no less pleasant?? Hell, if Rambaldi, the Da Vinci-like being that caused the quest in “Alias” ends up popping up in “Lost” – I won’t be surprised.
Time’s James Poniewozik has some great posts about the Desmond episode and on the recent episode about Juliet (and her unsurprising past with Ben) – particularly interesting is Poniewozik’s comparison of the Juliet and Ben thing with Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” I’m beginning to think that the “Lost” writers’ asking ABC for a time limit for the series has helped them think of their endgame for the series and it’s making things that much more interesting. It’s starting to feel like a real point is possible and I might be willing to continue watching, not just follow plots that make any sense.
As opposed to, say, “Prison Break,” where I gave up a long time ago.
Oh, so many priceless lines from this past week’s episode of “Lost” – the idea that the Others had a resident therapist (Jack: “You people had therapists?” Juliet: “It’s very stressful being an Other, Jack.”); Ben’s leading Locke to the safe and the tape of the Red Sox game – and Ben’s saying: “I taped over the game.” Hehe. Kind of went along with the earlier episode this season, where Jack was shocked that the Red Sox won the World Series (since their plane crashed just before the Red Sox finally won).
If J.J. Abrams has been powerful as the man behind “Felicity,” “Alias,” “Lost” and now the soon new “Star Trek” movie/re-boot, what about Greg Berlanti? He’s got “Everwood,” and now “Brothers and Sisters,” “Dirty Sexy Money” and “Eli Stone” under the belt. Talk about talent.
NY Times’ A.O. Scott ought to be given an award for the funniest, laugh-out-loud movie review in his review of “10,000 B.C.” – at least for using the word “snuffleupagus” outside the usual Sesame Street context:
“Only time can teach us what is truth and what is legend.” This bit of fake-folk wisdom commences the voice-over narration of “10,000 BC,” and the more you think about it, the more preposterous it seems. If anything, time confuses the issue. But it’s best not to think too hard about anything in this sublimely dunderheaded excursion into human prehistory, directed by Roland Emmerich from a script he wrote with Harald Kloser, who also helped compose, using his better ear, the musical score.
Mr. Emmerich has made something of a specialty in staging — with maximal bombast and minimal coherence — end-of-the-world scenarios. (See “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” though not on the same day if you can help it.) In the context of his oeuvre “10,000 BC” might be thought of as a kind of prequel, an attempt to imagine human civilization not on the brink of its end, but somewhere near its beginning.
Yet even as the story begins, the old ways seem to be dying out, as the Yagahl, a tribe of snuffleupagus hunters who favor extensions in their hair and eschew contractions in their speech, prepare for their last hunt. In fulfillment of an old prophecy, raiders on horseback (“four-legged demons”) arrive to sack the Yagahl encampment and take a bunch of the tribespeople as slaves. Among them is the blue-eyed Evolet (Camilla Belle), whose beloved, D’Leh (Steven Strait), sets out with his mentor, Tic’Tic (Cliff Curtis), to rescue her.
And at its best — which may also be to say at its worst — “10,000 BC” feels like a throwback to an ancient, if not exactly prehistoric, style of filmmaking. The wooden acting, the bad dialogue, the extravagantly illogical special effects may well, in time, look pleasingly cheap and hokey, at which point the true entertainment value of the film will at last be realized.
Meanwhile back in the present, there is an awful lot of high-toned mumbo-jumbo to sit through. On his journey D’Leh (it’s pronounced “delay,” though most of the time he’s in a pretty big hurry) gathers a multicultural army to oppose the pyramid-building, slaveholding empire that has been bothering the more peaceful agrarian and hunter-gatherer tribes. These decadent priests seem like a curious hybrid of the Egyptians in “King of Egypt” and the Maya from “Apocalypto.” To reach them D’Leh travels overland from his home on the Siberian steppes through the jungles of Southeast Asia to the grasslands of Africa. But back then I guess it was all Gondwana, so the trip was easier. [….]
But the big, climactic fight, complete with an epic snuffleupagus rampage, is decent action-movie fun. And as a history lesson, “10,000 BC” has its value. It explains just how we came to be the tolerant, peace-loving farmers we are today, and why the pyramids were never finished.
Snuffleupagus!!! Snuffleupagus!!! 😀 Thank you, A.O. Scott! Thank you, very much!
Hmm, interesting article about this ex-lawyer, who went from corporate law to criminal defense (representing the criminally insane – good grief) and now owning a bar and penning a play with a title that I got to love – “Attorney for the Damned”! Aww, that’s a riot…
Jackie Chan honors his late parents in Australia, as they had spent several years there. Personally, I had no idea that Jackie Chan got his name “Jackie” from his time in Australia or that he spent a chunk of his life there (I’m so not up on the Asian celebrity beat). At the very least, I really didn’t think Chan has a connection to Australian politicians. Anyway, does all this make him an Australian-Chinese?
My brother got a copy of Jennifer 8. Lee’s “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles” – I’ll be reading it hopefully sometime in the next week or two (assuming life doesn’t get in the way). Anyway, so here’s the NY Times Book Review of the NY Times reporter’s book.
I so would like my hour back. It’s too early…