Dominic Monaghan on Kimmel Posted by b3rt4 at 4/30/2009 07:14:00 PM View Comments Labels: Jimmy Kimmel Live, Video

Thanks to Chelsea for the heads up.

NOTE: There is a sneak peek of Dominic's new movie Wolverine

Episode 5x14 - Jimmy Kimmel Appears in Secret Scene Posted by The ODI at 4/30/2009 06:15:00 PM View Comments Labels: Humour, Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Variable

Here is another funny clip from Jimmy Kimmel who in his own special way celebrated the 100th Episode of LOST.

Episode 5x14 The Variable - Jimmy Kimmel Appears in Secret Scene

Thanks to Chelsea for the heads up.

Posted By: The ODI

ABC and Disney shows join Hulu Posted by DarkUFO at 4/30/2009 04:44:00 PM View Comments Labels: ABC, Online Article

Hulu "Lost," "Desperate Housewives, "Ugly Betty" and other ABC shows will soon arrive on Hulu.com, according to a Disney/ABC press release.

Hulu is the popular online video site that, up til now, has featured shows from the Fox family of channels as well as NBC Universal network and cable realm. With ABC joining in, Hulu's popularity is likely to increase (it's already the third most popular video destination on the Web, according to a recent Hulu press release).

From Disney/ABC's Thursday release, here are the offerings that will arrive shortly on Hulu:

Episodes of "Lost," "Grey’s Anatomy," "Desperate Housewives," "Ugly Betty," "Samantha Who?", "Scrubs," "Private Practice" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live"

Episodes of ABC Family series such as "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" and "Greek"

Series from ABC Daytime and SOAPnet like "General Hospital" and "The View"

Shows from ABC’s library like "Hope & Faith," "Less than Perfect," "Commander in Chief," "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire" and "Dancing with the Stars"

Disney Channel shows such as "Wizards of Waverly Place" and "Phineas and Ferb"

Library titles from The Walt Disney Studios and short-form content including webisodes, sneak peeks and episode recaps from ABC Entertainment, ABC Family and SOAPnet


Source: Chicagotribune

We, the viewers of Lost, are The Variables Posted by DarkUFO at 4/30/2009 01:50:00 PM View Comments Labels: Online Article, The Variable

While the cool kids were learning the fate of the Idol-wannabes, us nerds were learning the fate of those who had already experienced this moment 30 years ago.

Even though at 9:59 PM on Wednesday, April 29, 2009, we hadn't yet witnessed the events that were to transpire in Lost's 100th episode, "The Variable," they had already happened. Our minds just didn't catch up until we saw the fictional events unfold across our TV screens. They had already happened in the sense that they had already been filmed; in reality, the actors that play these beloved characters had already acted out these scenes in front of cameras. But even within the Lost universe, these events had already happened. The proof? 2004 Eloise Hawking sent her son off to a certain death by her own hands (that had already happened) and 2008 Eloise Hawking lamented to a distressed Penelope Hume that she had no information on upcoming events, all within a matter of a few moments.

I get it now. No, not where this MindF@*k of a show is actually heading, but rather I get where they've been. Every episode of Lost has featured either a flashback or a flashforward, which, of course, the mere presence of the latter begs the question as to whether we were watching a flashforward of post-Island events or rather the Island events were the flashbacks themselves. No matter now of course, because we've come so far beyond a simple narrative direction of present day and past, or present day and future, because now on Lost, the past is the present and the present is the past.

Even back in season 1, whether we knew it or not (and of course we didn't), they were prepping us. The characters' flashbacks we saw were a simple narrative device, right? Just a way to fill in back story so the entire hour wasn't filled with a couple plane crash survivors walking through the jungle, right? Maybe, in the sense that it did break up the monotony of overgrown beards, tattered clothes and the constant sight of trees and rocks, but more importantly, the writers were preparing us for what was to come: Time Travel. Because what is a flashback, as a tool to tell a story, if not the simplest, most non-abrasive form of time travel?

What is a flashforward, if not an extremely less subtle hint of what's to come?

Lost didn't turn into a story about time travel. It's always been a story about time travel. Our minds, as viewers and participants, just hadn't caught up yet.

Unfortunately, for Daniel Faraday, either in spite of, or despite of, all of his knowledge of quantum physics, some of his final words, "anyone of us can die," came to fruition in the most ironic of ways - he had already died. He just hadn't caught up yet.

No wonder he cried at the TV screen showing the (fake) flight 815 wreckage. His future, in the past, had no future beyond the past.

This is why Lost will go down in history as one of the greatest time travel stories ever. Not only are it's characters' pasts just as important as their present, their present is defined by their future.

Our future, as viewers of Lost, however, is still yet to be told.

Source: Examiner

Lost's Shocking Death! Posted by DarkUFO at 4/30/2009 12:41:00 PM View Comments Labels: Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, Jeremy Davies, Magazines, Online Article, TV Guide

And you thought the next grave was going to be Juliet's... Wrong!

Time-traveling expert Daniel Faraday (nicknamed "Twitchy" by Sawyer) has become the latest Lostie to bite the big one, leaving the 1970's Dharmaville outcasts to fend for themselves just when they need him most.

Executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof commend Jeremy Davies for pulling off an increasingly bizarro role--and taking the news of his firing better than any of their previous island victims.

“For us, Faraday really was the cornerstone of the fifth season--he really shined,” says Lindelof. "I can’t imagine what Season 5 would have looked like without Jeremy Davies. When you think about all the crazy stuff that had to come out of that guy’s mouth, for him to be as interesting and emotional and poetic as he was is really extraordinary."

Lindelof and Cuse say they were impressed by how gracefully Davies dealt with his dismissal. While disappointed to be losing a paycheck, the actor saw his departure as essential to their storytelling. Lindelof says, "When Carlton and I called Jeremy to explain what was going to be happening with Faraday, we’ve never had a more awesome exit interview with somebody on the show.”

“It was an incredibly painful thing to kill this beloved character," Cuse adds, "but we feel that’s what this show has to do. His death is kind of the culminating event in the entire season. It really ends one chapter and commences the start of the final chapter of the entire series. Once we explained that to Jeremy, while he was personally saddened that his full-time status on Lost was coming to an end, he put the story above his own personal self.” (Hmmm...notice Cuse's wording: "full-time status".)

So why was now the right time to do him in?

"When we kill off a character we want the audience to say, ‘How dare you!,’ not, ‘It’s about time,’” explains Lindelof, who was particularly impressed with Davies' final scenes. “He has never been better than he was in 'The Variable.'"

Michael Emerson, who plays Ben, praises Davies as “a great sensitive guy who got deep into his character. He really lived it.” (And died it!)

Around the set, Terry O’Quinn (John Locke) will miss Davies and the music that always accompanied him. “Most actors walk around with headphones, but Jeremy would walk around holding a miniature boom box," recalls O'Quinn. "He always wanted to provide music for everyone--whether they wanted it or not. Everybody would go, ‘What’s up with this dude?’”

O'Quinn remembers the time Davies brought his boom box out into the water during an action scene. “We were out paddling in a canoe with me, Ken Leung (Miles), Josh (Sawyer), Jeremy and Elizabeth (Juliet) and we ended up flipping a half mile out to sea. The first thing I thought of when I came up was, 'I hope Jeremy’s f---ing boom box went to the bottom--and it did. But he replaced it real quick.”

Davies won't be so easily replaced. Do you think Faraday was killed off too soon? Or were you tired of his time-traveling jargon?

Source: TV Guide Magazine

Jimmy Kimmel's Secrets of LOST 10 - Darlton and JJ!! Posted by The ODI at 4/30/2009 07:57:00 AM View Comments Labels: Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, Jimmy Kimmel Live, JJ Abrams

Jimmy Kimmel's Secrets of LOST 10 - Featuring Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse and JJ Abrams!!

Posted By: The ODI

Lost Untangled - Episode 5.14 - The Variable Posted by DarkUFO at 4/30/2009 02:15:00 AM View Comments Labels: The Variable, Video

JJ Abrams - Short Clip about The Dark Tower Posted by b3rt4 at 4/29/2009 03:54:00 PM View Comments Labels: JJ Abrams, Movies

More The Dark Tower Info

Fitting the pieces for 'Lost's' endgame Posted by b3rt4 at 4/29/2009 03:38:00 PM View Comments Labels: Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, Online Article

On "Lost," a solved mystery inevitably means an even knottier one will emerge in its place. How fitting, then, that answering "when" ABC's acclaimed island drama would end wound up raising expectations for "how."

"Anticipation for the series finale is incredibly high," says Stephen McPherson, president of ABC Entertainment Group. "I'm sure it'll mean a few sleepless nights for Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse."

Not too many, if the exec producers have anything to say about it.

"We can't let those expectations terrify us," Lindelof insists. "The reality is, we've known what the series finale is going to be for a while now."

The only wiggle room is in how exactly the characters will arrive at their ultimate destinations. Explains Cuse, "The path that we take to the end still has some room for surprises and changes and discoveries along the way (in terms of) the characters' journeys and how their relationships evolve."

Getting Lindelof and Cuse to spill even a drop of a detail about how they plan to wrap the whole thing up? Not gonna happen.

"We think it's cool," Lindelof says, "and that's the way we will have written the 119 hours of the show that precede it."

They will, however, share some goals for the final episode: Be fair to the show's characters. Deliver on promises they've made to fans over the course of the series' run. And, as the old adage goes, leave 'em wanting more.

"When we say more, we don't mean answers," clarifies Lindelof, "because hopefully, the show will wrap up in an incredibly satisfying way, both mythologically and emotionally."

Of course, as that other old adage goes, you can't please everybody, and Lindelof and Cuse already have begun preparing themselves for myriad reactions. The way Lindelof sees it, "The immediate aftermath of any beloved series, whether it be 'Battlestar Galactica,' 'The Sopranos' or 'Seinfeld,' is so overwhelming that it's incredibly hard to distance yourself from the creative choices made leading up to it."

Ultimately, the producers are more concerned with the way "Lost" is regarded long after its final whoosh through time.

"How the show is perceived as a whole once you kind of take a step away and look back at it," Lindelof says, "that's the one that really matters to us."

Source: Variety

Dominic Monaghan Interview Posted by DarkUFO at 4/29/2009 11:27:00 AM View Comments Labels: Dominic Monaghan, Interviews, Movies, Video

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE star Dominic Monaghan stops by Hollywood 411. Dominic reveals how he joined the cast, as well as his roles in LOST and LORD OF THE RINGS.

'Lost' 100th Episode Posted by DarkUFO at 4/29/2009 09:38:00 AM View Comments Labels: Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, Interviews, Online Article

Thanks to ShaggyDC and Annika for the heads up.

It was four and a half years ago that Oceanic Flight 815 went off course over the South Pacific and came crashing down on a seemingly deserted beach.

Forty-eight people (and a dog) stumbled from the smoking wreckage to discover an otherworldly tropical isle inhabited by polar bears, smoke monsters and a mysterious band of human natives known as the "Others." The ever-evolving mystery made ABC's "Lost" the water cooler show of the 2004-05 television season, helped revive the flagging fortunes of its parent network, and turned its cast -- all of whom were virtual unknowns, save for Matthew Fox (previously star of Fox's "Party of Five") and Dominic Monaghan (Merry in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy) -- into internationally recognizable figures.

One-hundred episodes in, the survivors still haven't figured out exactly where they are and why, but executive producer Carlton Cuse has a theory as to how they got there, creatively speaking.

"The fact that no one believed 'Lost' was going to be successful in the beginning was enormously liberating," Cuse says. "So we set out to make 12 episodes of what we thought was the coolest TV show we could come up with and in so doing we violated a lot of the traditional rules of television narrative. We had characters who were murderers and had done very bad things. We had incredibly complex serialized storytelling. We had lots of intentional ambiguity, leaving the audience lots of room for interpretation and those things that sort of violated the rules of television were the very things that the audience ended up responding to."



But nothing lasts forever. In May 2007, it was announced that "Lost" would wrap in May 2010 at the end of Season 6. The reason was not the ratings, which have declined over the years as show has shifted time slots five times and taken long midseason hiatuses like the three-week break between Episodes 6 and 7 in Season 3.

It wasn't the high price tag of $4 million per episode. The decision was purely creative.

"We're fairly certain that, had we not been given an end date, the show might have been canceled by now, because we would've had to continue spinning our wheels and stalling," executive producer/ co-creator Damon Lindelof says. "It's a finite idea. Once Carlton and I had gotten through the first 30 or 40 hours of it, it became very clear to us that we were ready to take the show out of question/mystery mode and into resolution mode. And we couldn't do that until we knew when the show was going to end."

The show's beginnings can be traced to January 2004, when then-ABC president Lloyd Braun commissioned a script from Spelling Television that he envisioned as a narrative take on the unscripted hit "Survivor." Jeffrey Lieber wrote the initial drafts of the pilot, titled "Nowhere." Braun felt it wasn't working, so he brought in "Alias" creator J.J. Abrams, who had a preexisting deal with Touchstone Television (now ABC Studios), and teamed him with Lindelof, a writer-producer on ABC's "Crossing Jordan."

Abrams and Lindelof met on a Monday. By Friday, they had written a 20-page outline, adding a supernatural angle. On Saturday, the pilot got a greenlight. Having started late in the 2004 season's development, they had less than 12 weeks to write the pilot and prep it for production. It would have been a daunting task under any circumstances, but this script had 14 major speaking parts, a downed jet and a remote South Pacific island setting. Abrams and Lindelof compounded the logistical challenges by revising the characters and story lines during the casting process, leaving the complex puzzle of its mystery with more than a few rough, unfinished pieces.

"We didn't know that it was going to be successful, and when the ratings started coming out and it was doing well, we realized, 'Oh, my God, we're going to have to keep doing this,' " says Cuse, who stepped forward to run the show with Lindelof after Abrams departed to concentrate on other projects. "That's really when we really started working out the mythology."

From the beginning, the mysterious possibilities of "Lost" were a boon to ABC's marketing department, co-headed by executive vps Michael Benson and Marla Provencio.



"The pilot had a theatrical feel to it, so we felt we had to go out with it in a very big way," Provencio says. "But we also wanted to go more underground and do things that would intrigue the audience and make them want more."

The network started the buzz building by world-premiering the show's two-hour pilot at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 24, 2004. Over the Labor Day weekend preceding the show's TV debut, bottles containing cryptic messages were scattered across several beaches on the East and West Coasts. Although cleanup crews were prescheduled to remove any undiscovered bottles, the network still managed to get tagged with several littering tickets. It also aired "pirate radio" spots on stations nationwide.

"All of a sudden it would sound like people were cutting into the radio saying, 'Help! We're survivors of Oceanic Flight 815,' then it would crackle out," Benson says. "We actually got in a little trouble over that, too, because people thought it was really happening."

In the years since, the "Lost" team has made regular appearances at Comic-Con, including a panel discussion featuring Lindelof and Cuse last year that attracted about 6,000 fans. The network has also commissioned spinoff novels, an official "Lost" magazine, an alternative reality game ("The Lost Experience") and various tie-in Web sites, including the Emmy-nominated Find815.com, as well as a line of action figures.



The ABC marketing department has further taken on the difficult task of making the show's complex mythology more comprehensible to first-time or casual viewers with weekly four-minute video recaps posted on ABC.com that use action figures and character cut-outs fashioned from screen caps to re-enact key scenes from the latest episode.

"It's a challenging show," admits ABC president of entertainment Stephen McPherson, who greenlit "Lost" as a series after taking over for Braun in April 2004. "It's not just a cookie-cutter procedural with a new case each week. There's a real depth to it. But I also know people who watch only occasionally and really enjoy it when they do."

There's no question that the show's labyrinthine plot twists have been too much for some. Viewership has declined from an average of 15.69 million people a week in Season 1 to 11.37 million a week at the beginning of this season, according to Nielsen. But Cuse believes that has as much to do with changing viewing habits of the show's tech-savvy fans as anything else.

"People are still watching our show, they're just watching it in different ways," he says. "They're DVR-ing it, they're watching it on ABC.com, they're looking at it on DVDs. And when you sort of aggregate all the ancillary platforms on which 'Lost' is available," including cell phones and other PDAs, "and also weekend syndication, in fact the Nielsen number is only a fractional part of the audience now."

The complexity that makes it daunting for casual viewers is precisely what makes it so appealing to its hardcore fans, dubbed Losties or Lostaways, who follow the show with the intensity of Trekkers. They have a strong presence on the Web via such sites as TheTailSection.com and LostHatch.com, and strong opinions about where the plot should go. Cuse says he's aware of the chatter, but he does his best to ignore it.



"The problem is if someone says something that's critical of the show, it can kind of stick in my brain the wrong way and infect my creative process," Cuse says. "There's a guy named Greg Nations who's our script coordinator and keeps sort of records and history of the show. He follows all the boards and sort of gives us a Reader's Digest exegesis of what the fan sites say the day after the show airs, and that's a lot more palatable. He's very well-equipped to say, 'Here's a question that's percolating up to the surface a lot. You guys should take a look at this or think about this.' That indirectness is important for us maintaining the sanctity of our own creative process."

For Lindelof, the risks of responding to fan chatter are exemplified by Nikki and Paulo, a pair of characters introduced in Season 3 played by Kiele Sanchez and Rodrigo Santoro, respectively.

"The boards were all atwitter with, 'What about these other people on the show, these background people who are walking around?' " Lindelof says. "We had introduced one of them, Dr. Arzt (Daniel Roebuck), in the finale of Season 1 just as a gag to blow the guy up, but the question never went away. So we thought, clearly, there is a desire for us to give these people names and stories, and we tried it and it was a disaster."

Before the season was out, Nikki and Paulo were dead. They're not the only characters that have been sacrificed to feed the drama. During the past five seasons, several of the core group of original survivors have been killed off, including Michael (Harold Perrineau) and Charlie (Monaghan).

"That has been a specter hanging over all of us since Season 1," says Daniel Dae Kim, who plays Jin, a Korean businessman stranded along with his wife Sun (Yunjin Kim). "It's always difficult to lose a cast member, because we all uprooted ourselves and in many cases moved our families to Oahu," the Hawaiian island where the show is shot. "It's not like shooting a show in L.A. When one of us leaves, they leave the island, and it's not as if we can still have dinner with them even if we're not working on the same job."

Kim says he has given up speculating about the fate of his character or the answers to show's larger mysteries.

"Every time I thought I had a conclusion, the writers proved much more clever than I," Kim says. "Now I just look at it as a great amusement park ride and enjoy the thrill of it."

Lindelof says that when the show itself goes to the great hereafter next May, he and Cuse will be taking a ride out of town.

"We're taking a page out of the David Chase playbook," Lindelof says. "Instead of clarifying things, we want to let it simmer and percolate. So we're searching out some undisclosed locations, some of them on the planet Earth, others might involve getting on a Russian spacecraft."

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Writers talk about working on 'Lost' Posted by DarkUFO at 4/29/2009 09:35:00 AM View Comments Labels: Adam Horowitz, Eddy Kitsis, Online Article

Thanks to ShaggyDC for the heads up.

Lush jungle. Sun-baked beaches. Cool ocean breezes. Working on "Lost" sure is paradise.

Except that's Hawaii, where "Lost" has been filmed for five seasons now. Where the writers toil away? Well, that's actually Burbank. What we lovingly refer to as the Oahu of the San Fernando Valley.

That being said, the writers room of "Lost" is paradise in its own way. Though none of us are particularly tan, we've had the good fortune to enjoy the most amazing collaboration that any of us have experienced in our careers.

Since joining "Lost" during its first season, we've worked on breaking many an episode and during that time stumbled on a few simple truths, or secrets, about writing "Lost" that, in honor of its 100th episode, we thought we'd share. No, they have nothing to do with the monster, Jacob or the numbers -- they're much more mundane than all that.

The first thing to understand about "Lost" is that it's not a job. It's a lifestyle. For the eight to 10 months we spend writing and producing the show each season, we all eat, breathe and sleep "Lost" -- and sometimes takeout from CPK. But mostly "Lost."

The next thing you need to know is the answer to the question we most often get asked: "Is there really a plan?"

Yes. We really have a plan.

However, there's quite a distance to travel from "having a plan" to executing it. There's still the small issue of actually divvying up that plan into the 17 or so episodes we write each season. That's where the work comes in, which leads to the next thing we've discovered about writing the show. Every episode, for better or worse, must go through a process we've dubbed the "Four Day Break."

Day 1 -- Wouldn't it be cool if ...

Day 1 is the day we start batting around the ideas. We know where we are in the uber-plot, and we know where we have to start and finish. Now we need the idea that gets us from A to B, and Day 1 is where the greatest idea ever happens. And that's when one of us will spit out something like: "Wouldn't it be cool if ... Miles and Hurley took a road trip in a Dharma bus. Two guys who can communicate with dead people. Come on, that'd be cool. Right?"

Excitement sweeps through the room. The blank dry erase boards no longer look so daunting. We've done it. We know what the episode is going be and all pat ourselves on the back and head home. A job well done. Which leads us to...

Day 2 -- um, there's a problem

Everyone comes in early, excited to knock this sucker out, only to discover that after a night's sleep, maybe this great idea doesn't exactly write itself, that maybe it's got a few... issues. The conversation usually goes something like this.

Someone: "So we've got two guys in the bus heading to see Chang."

Someone else: "What are they doing?"

Someone else: "Going to see Chang. This is where we learn he's Miles' father."

Someone else: "But isn't the story over then? In act two?"

Now our greatest idea ever suddenly looks challenging.

After a few hours of wrestling with the difficulty of our premise, we all decide to sleep on it again. Which leads us to...

Day 3 -- the breakthrough

We all come back in, maybe a little later than the day before, and all with the same conclusion.

The problem is unfixable.

Time to scrap it. Can't be done. We need something else. Do we have any backup ideas? Island talent show sounds pretty good right about now. Yeah. We're doomed. All appears lost. That is until the sun is setting and someone, thankfully, quietly pipes in with ... the breakthrough. In the case of episode 513 ("Some Like It Hoth"), it went something like this:

Someone: "What if, after they find Chang at the Orchid station, he has to come in the bus with Hurley and Miles?"

Quiet. Time to absorb that. At first it seems just a small thought, but in actuality it has huge repercussions. And this change sweeps through the room, creating a new wave of excitement.

Yeah, if we did that then Miles is forced to interact with the one man with whom he has no interest in spending time. Conflict! Drama! A character going on a journey of discovery. Learning something about his past that will affect his future. And, lo and behold, hope returns to Burbank.

Riding the wave of euphoria, everyone heads home nervous. Is this a real breakthrough? Possibly. Which brings us to ...

Day 4 -- the break begins

Everyone sits around the table. Lots of nervous energy. Do we have something or not? As the discussion begins, suddenly ideas for scenes start popping up. Natural places for our uber-mythology to slot in appear. Connective tissue between episodes presents itself. All the ingredients seem to be there.

And that's when we know we might have a ways to go but we know we have an episode.

Which is not to say we're done. No, in actuality we're just beginning, but the four-day gestational process for the idea is complete, and now we can get our hands dirty figuring out the nuts and bolts of the story.

It's exciting and thrilling to be a part of it all coming together. Slowly but surely over the next few days to weeks, scenes and structure start to sort themselves out. All in the support of the core idea that was hatched during this four-day process. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

Up until the end of the break that is, because that's when, once again, we stare at the blank board that taunts us.

Yep. It's time for episode 514. Despair slowly fills the room once again. How can we possibly do this again? We're spent. That's all we've got. Every last bit of talent we have was expended making that last episode. We can't possibly keep going.

Someone: "Wait. Wouldn't it be cool if ..."

And the room goes quiet.

Suddenly we're re-energized. We all realize it at the same time. It's Day 1 again and, just maybe, we can do another one of these.

One-hundred episodes later we're still doing it. Doesn't seem possible. But Variety told us it's true, so it must be. Now if you're really interested in Jacob or the smoke monster, just watch the show.

Source: Variety

'Lost' DVR viewing hurts advertising Posted by DarkUFO at 4/28/2009 09:43:00 PM View Comments Labels: Online Article, Ratings

"Lost" looks like an advertiser's dream, drawing in the sought-after young viewers who carry their obsession to the Internet, videogames and DVD sales.

But that often fickle audience has grown up with the ability and predilection to time shift their viewing, undermining the traditional way networks earn money for programs.

" 'Lost' has a very young audience that consumes things how and when they want it," says Jeff Jensen, Entertainment Weekly senior writer specializing in "Lost." "It's a show where people want to take the time to savor it. But when the audience says, 'I love you but I can afford to wait to watch you,' you're kind of screwed."

"Lost" is one of the most digitally recorded scripted TV series on the air, with about a third of the viewing time-delayed. That presents an economic puzzle for ABC working in an advertising environment that buys commercial time according to a live-plus-three-day calculation.

Advertisers are leery of buying time on shows that are heavily DVR'd, says Deana Myers, SNL Kagan senior analyst.

"It's not just skipping the commercials, but even if viewers watch the ads, the timing of sales or movie openings is important. If I have a movie coming out that weekend, and that ad doesn't hit people until maybe seven days later or more, what good does it do me?"

Charles Kennedy, senior VP of research at ABC, hopes to unlock the monetary potential of shows such as "Lost."

"What's lagging are the measurement systems and models that are in sync with how (the audience) is changing. About 70% of the audience doesn't have DVRs, so there isn't a big impact on us right now from the time-shifting," Kennedy says. "But we'll need to adjust as more people come into that world."

Kennedy says without DVR capabilities, ABC would lose that extra 30% of viewers who could potentially watch those commercials.

"Of that small slice of the pie representing people who DVR, about 36% of commercials are viewed," Kennedy says. "If Coca-Cola places an ad that runs in six hours or six months, it doesn't matter."

Product placement has been touted as a way to work around viewers' fast-forward tendencies, but "Lost" has never attempted to cash in on that.

"'Lost' takes place in its own reality, plays with time and the mythic, so it can live for the ages," Jensen says. "Product placement runs the risk of dating it from a creative point of view, and that could hurt future DVD sales."

While jokes have been made about Coke bottles washing up on the island, producers and the network have shied away from anything that would take viewers out of the "Lost" experience.

"This is all new territory for us, but the mantra at ABC Disney is to get the quality first, and we'll figure out how to make money after that," Kennedy says. "Our challenge is to make a business model that works for both our viewers and our advertisers."

Source: Variety

A couple of things that got cut from J.J. Abrams' Star Trek Posted by b3rt4 at 4/28/2009 04:00:00 PM View Comments Labels: JJ Abrams, Movies

Eagle-eyed Star Trek fans will note the name Mark Okrand among the film's credits when it debuts on May 8: Okrand is the linguist who created the Klingon language in the movies. (Possible spoilers ahead!)

But you won't hear any actual Klingon in the film, co-writer Alex Kurtzman told SCI FI Wire in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday.

"We actually had a sequence that ended up getting cut from the movie that took place on Rura Penthe, in a Klingon prison," Kurtzman said, explaining the deletion. "And there was definitely Klingon spoken in the movie, and it ended up getting cut."



Rura Penthe, as fans know, is the Klingon prison colony on an ice world, which was first featured in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Images of Nero in the prison—and the line "The wait is over"—are featured in the trailer but do not appear in the movie.

In J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, the Rura Penthe scene was meant to explain where the villainous Nero (Eric Bana) has spent a couple of decades in the story.

Zachary Quinto, who plays Spock, meanwhile, told SCI FI Wire that other scenes were cut from the film, including ones of his character as a baby (images have appeared on the Internet) in a birth scene meant to parallel the birth of Kirk.

Star Trek opens May 8.



Source: SCI FI Wire

Matthew Fox on Good Morning America Posted by DarkUFO at 4/28/2009 03:12:00 PM View Comments Labels: Matthew Fox

We hope to have the video later today.

Temple of the Smoke Monster Posted by DarkUFO at 4/28/2009 08:40:00 AM View Comments Labels: The Smoke Monster

Thanks to kansasgal71 for alerting me to this blog by Duncan Crawford the person who sculpted Smokies Lair and heiroglyphs. Here are a couple of photos.



You can read his blog here.

Ask Lost - Naveen Andrews Posted by DarkUFO at 4/28/2009 08:08:00 AM View Comments Labels: Interviews, Naveen Andrews, Video

Matthew Fox Appearance on David Letterman Posted by The ODI at 4/28/2009 06:51:00 AM View Comments Labels: Interviews, Matthew Fox

**UPDATED** Thanks to Sluky for the heads up about the FULL interview clip

NOTE: Very minor as Fox mentions his feelings about the finale

Here is the Full Interview

Highlight Clip

Posted By: The ODI

Matthew Fox Outside of David Letterman Show Posted by The ODI at 4/28/2009 05:30:00 AM View Comments Labels: Matthew Fox

Matthew Fox outside of the Late Show with David Letterman - 4/27/09

Enjoy Foxy fans!

Thanks to JD for the pics!

(Click to Enlarge)


Source: The ODI

Festival Jules Verne - Lost à Paris (*Updated*) Posted by DarkUFO at 4/27/2009 09:03:00 PM View Comments Labels: Video

Update: 21:00 Thanks to Heinze75 for sharing their videos with us.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A94366D29E289DBD

Update: 15:00 Thanks to DutchLost for these videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEN0EgAevGM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnB_Q-3WisA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XghbzhcXetU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22cVT9NzZZs

Thanks to The Lost Gang for these photos. If you have any photos that you want to share, please email me or post links in the comments and I'll update this post.

http://s216.photobucket.com/albums/cc319/lostgang/parislost/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25594850@N04/sets/72157617346031134/

Thanks to Sandra for these links/photos

http://www.jva.spoilersfrance.com/home.php?page=videospecials7
http://www.jva.spoilersfrance.com/home.php?page=videospecials8
http://www.jva.spoilersfrance.com/home.php?page=videospecials9
http://www.jva.spoilersfrance.com/home.php?page=videospecials10
http://www.jva.spoilersfrance.com/home.php?page=videospecials11
http://www.jva.spoilersfrance.com/home.php?page=videospecials12
http://www.jva.spoilersfrance.com/home.php?page=videospecials13
http://www.jva.spoilersfrance.com/home.php?page=videospecials14
http://www.jva.spoilersfrance.com/home.php?page=videospecials15
http://www.jva.spoilersfrance.com/home.php?page=videospecials16
http://www.jva.spoilersfrance.com/home.php?page=videospecials17

Thanks to Annamarie for these.

Photos

Thanks to Elisabetta for the following.

http://s270.photobucket.com/albums/jj92/eli_massi/Lost%20a%20Paris/

And this is a small recap of what happened when the actors and Darlton were about to leave...LOL!
And of course there's a looong recap on my blog but it's in Italian :)

http://foxyandjackrule.blogspot.com/2009/04/to-all-my-foreign-friends-short-recap.html

Thanks to Mellow for the following.

http://www.spoilertv.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=9058 There is a big recap and if you scroll down you can see the pictures i took.
also here are some small spoiler I got from Damon Lindelof himself:
http://www.spoilertv.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9059

EW - Must List Live Posted by b3rt4 at 4/27/2009 05:51:00 PM View Comments Labels: Online Article, Video

This week on Must List Live!, we're celebrating Lost's upcoming 100th episode by selecting our favorite episodes ever, and the picks may surprise you. Also geeking out is the Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons, who stops by to discuss why he loves American Idol's Adam Lambert. Still not enough? Well, we're breaking down the new Wolverine movie and also continuing out Comic-Con giveaway, handing out FREE passes to the convention as well as a hotel room and entry to our exclusive EW Comic-Con party (which last year featured stars from Lost, Star Trek, Heroes, and Battlestar Galactica). Just watch the clip below for a chance to win. It's that freakin' easy! (And, as always, all the sexy and delicious contest fine print can be found right here.) The show is broken up into two parts, so stay tuned after the first one ends.

Source: EW

Interview with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse - Part 1 Posted by The ODI at 4/26/2009 05:53:00 PM View Comments Labels: Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, Interviews, Lostpedia

Thanks to Sam from Lostpedia for the heads up on this interview they conducted with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse!

This is a cool read and is Part 1 of the interview.

Enjoy!!

Carlton Cuse: This is Carlton with the slightly deeper voice.

TheAma1/Alex: (laughs) Hey Carlton!

Damon Lindelof: And I'm Damon, the other one, with the very nasally voice.

Alex: And I'm Alex.

Damon: Excellent.

Alex: Ok, so I know you've mentioned already a couple of times, in DVD commentaries and such, Lostpedia. So we were just wondering what your relationship is with the website. Do you just know it by reputation, or do you generally have any form of interaction with it?

Damon: You know, obviously one of the questions that Carlton and I get asked very often is like “Is there a Lost Bible that has all the details of the show? Is there a database?”, and our answer to that question is “Yeah we have this guy named Gregg Nations, who is the keeper of all the information”, but there is also a website that is like Wikipedia, that is sort of fan aggregated, that has sort of every little detail about the show, they have still frames, but they are also... You know, what differentiates Gregg from what Lostpedia does, is that Lostpedia is speculative. That is to say, it has to assume something, because it's not run by us. So, you know, I think there is sometimes a perception out there that Lostpedia is kind of branded by the show, as opposed to a seperate fan community, and we find ourselves having to differentiate those two things. That being said, when we've visited the site we are incredibly impressed with sort of the level of detail. There are occasions where we basically say “What was Juliet's husband's first name?”, and if Gregg is not sitting in his office we will log into Lostpedia to get that answer.

Alex: Great. So have you ever used fan sites to gauge how well fans interpret the various answers on the show?

Carlton: We have a couple of guys in our office whose job is to sort of... They read a broad section of the fan sites after every episode, then they sort of give Damon and I the sort of reader's digest, synopsis, of what people responded to in the episode. This is good for us number 1: because we're still busy making the show, we dont have the time to search all the websites, but is also gives us the sense of what sense questions are percolating up, what assumptions people are making based on what they've seen. Have they puzzled something together. Do most people for instance, you know, we were well aware that many of the hardcore fans pretty much already figured out that Marvin Candle, or Pierre Chang, was Miles' dad. One of the questions that's been percolating up on the fan-sites has been “Well how come Sun didn't move on the airplane along with Kate and Jack and Hurley?”. You kind of become aware of what questions people have in their brains, and you know, that's helpful feedback for us.

Alex: Have you ever seen any theory that has come close to solving any major mysteries? Like the Smoke Monster or Jacob?

Damon: You know, the answer is not really, because... Sometimes, like for example, there were popular theories probably about a year ago, or maybe as long as two years ago, right around the time I guess Eko died. About the Smoke monster's function was some sort of judge. It basically took your memories and processed your life and decided whether you were worthy of living or not, and that is certainly, kind of, one of it's functions. We've dealt with that more specifically now on the show, but the audience simply does not know enough yet to make an educated guess about where all of this is leading. You will know a lot by the end of the Fifth season, probably a lot more to begin to get a much better sense of what the end game of the show may be, but we've had to hold a lot of that stuff back so that people wouldn't get it too early or that all the answers were coming in the penultimate season of the show. Considering what the audience has to work with, they've proven to be incredibly resourceful and insightful, but there are some clues that we have not yet presented them that are really intricall to figure out what the real endgame of the show is, so there's no way that they could really, you know, really...

Alex: ...grasp...

Damon: ...get at it. Yes.

Alex: Before an episode airs do you usually have a general idea of what the public's reaction will be? Or have you ever been surprised by any reactions towards an episode?

Carlton: Uhh, yeah, I would say not in a huge way, but I would say some times episodes that are Damon's and my favorite episodes are not necessarily the same as the ones the fans like, but it's usually just a matter of degrees. You know, we're here working on these things really intensely, and some of them we love more than others, but, you know, sometimes an episode we think is just okay the fans will really embrace and vice-versa. So there's a little bit of a difference sometimes between our perception and the audience's perception, but in major things there's pretty much agreement. For instance, we had already decided to cut bait on Nikki and Paulo before the audience had even seen their episodes. So the audience's negative reaction to them was sort of reaffirmation that we had made the right decision, but we had already made the decision to cut bait on them.

Alex: So, speaking of Nikki and Paulo... For a couple of years now you've been joking around a Seventh Zombie season so to speak . Are we ever going to get with the Season Six DVD set some kind of Zombie special episode?

Damon: That is a very engaging question! You never know.

Alex: Moving on to more show, or so to speak, related questions. In the special alternate reality game The Dharma Project from last year. A lot of fans want to know, since basically funding was pulled out of the Dharma project last year, what was going to be the final revelation of The Dharma Project? Since The Lost Experience was about the numbers, and Find 815 was about the fake wreckage, so, what was going to be the final act of The Dharma Project?

Damon: Essentially the whole idea was to signal to the audience that our characters: Jack and Kate and Sawyer and Hurley and Juliet and Sayid were going to end up in Dharma times, and Faraday too, sorry, and Miles of course, strongly imply that our characters were going to appear in Dharma times. So that would be something that would be sort of set up in the Internet experience. I think some people believe that they hear Faraday's voice in the Comic-Con experience. These events are sort of partially canon but more promotional than they are canon. Giving the audience a sneak peak as to what the season is about.

Alex: A foreshadowing of what was coming basically?

Damon: Right, and clearly our characters arrive in Dharma times in the seventh episode, in LaFleur, so, we knew that we were gonna be spending with them almost half the season in Dharma times, but we weren't going to be starting to tell the audience that story until after 6 episodes had aired, so uh, sorry, LaFleur is the eighth episode, but that entire story was basically setting up the audience for those stories.

Posted By: The ODI

Michael Emerson in People Magazine Posted by The ODI at 4/25/2009 10:18:00 PM View Comments Labels: Magazines, Michael Emerson

Here is a little feature about Michael Emerson in the May 09 issue of People Magazine.

Thanks to Edith for the scan.

(Click to Enlarge)

'Lost' Star Sued for Sexual Harassment Posted by DarkUFO at 4/25/2009 08:34:00 AM View Comments Labels: Henry Ian Cusick, Online Article

Update: 13:30 We've opened up a thread in the forums if you want to discuss this further.
Update: 11:00 Thanks to B3RT4 for the Court Documents.

Thanks to David for the heads up and to everyone else who submitted this to us. We'll try to keep you updated on this situation. Let's hope it's untrue.

Henry Ian Cusick, who plays Desmond on the show "Lost," is being sued for sexual harassment.

According to a lawsuit filed today in Los Angeles Superior Court, Chelsea Stone claims that while working on the show, Cusick placed his hand on her buttocks and caressed the back of her body while making moaning sounds.

She also claims Cusick "placed his face on top of [her] breasts, moving his face from side to side." He then squeezed her breasts with his hands.

According to the lawsuit, approximately twelve days after this went down, Stone was let go. ABC and Grass Skirt Productions are also named as defendants. She is seeking unspecified damages.

Cusick's rep had no comment.

Source: TMZ

TV Guide - Top 5 Thump Moments Posted by b3rt4 at 4/25/2009 07:15:00 AM View Comments Labels: TV Guide, Video

As Lost's Season 5 heads into its final three weeks, TVGuide.com's Getting Lost video series counts down the season-to-date's most resonant episode-ending "thump" moments, as voted on by readers.

Among the Top 5 is, of course, the capper to "He's Our You," in which Sayid guns down a young Ben. Michael Emerson emailed us the morning after that jaw-dropper aired, saying, "When Sayid shot Young Ben, I looked at my wife, Carrie [Preston] — who was in a state of shock — and said, 'Yikes. That's more than a flesh-wound.'

"If it's as bad as it looks, what happens now?" Emerson mulled. "Do three seasons of Lost DVDs suddenly erase themselves?! And what will I play in Season 6 — Might-Have-Ben?"

As if he didn't know that Ben didn't die on the spot.

Also in this installment, I reveal the dominant theory coming out of last week's Burning Question, which asked about Faraday's recent whereabouts. I then send a new puzzle your way, this one regarding the last unsolved mystery regarding Flight 316. Send your best guesses to Getting_Lost@tvguide.com.



Source: TVGuide

More TV appearances scheduled Posted by Administrator at 4/24/2009 06:52:00 PM View Comments Labels: Elizabeth Mitchell, Matthew Fox, TV appearance

Thanks to katieb for the heads up on the first two.

Matthew Fox is scheduled to appear on Good Morning America on April 28. And Matthew will be on Jimmy Kimmel Live on May 13.
Source: MSN TV

Elizabeth Mitchell is scheduled to appear on The Bonnie Hunt Show on April 27.
Source: Lost-Media


Posted by The Lost Interviews/Twitter

Dominic Monaghan on The Bonnie Hunt Show Posted by Administrator at 4/24/2009 02:51:00 PM View Comments Labels: Dominic Monaghan, TV appearance

Dominic Monaghan is scheduled to be on The Bonnie Hunt Show on April 30.

Source: Lost-Media

Posted by The Lost Interviews/Twitter

J.J. Abrams talks about spoilers Posted by b3rt4 at 4/24/2009 12:25:00 PM View Comments Labels: JJ Abrams, Online Article

DocArzt beat me to it, but this article written by J.J. Abrams is too damn good to not pass on to as many people as possible. J.J. is like E.F. Hutton: when he talks, people should listen. Especially if those people are "Lost" fans.

J.J. is the guest editor for Wired this week, and chose "mystery" as the theme of the issue. Makes sense, if you know the man's body of work. What intrigued me most in the article he provided for the issue is a topic near and dear to my own heart: spoilers. Here's what he has to say about "Lost" in particular.
People often ask me how "Lost" is going to end. I usually tell them to ask Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, who run that series. But I always wonder, do they really want to know? And what if I did tell them? They might have an aha moment, but without context. Especially since the final episode is a year away. That is to say, the experience—the setup for a joke's punch line, the buildup to a magic trick's big flourish—is as much of a thrill as the result. There's discovery to be made and wonder to be had on the journey that not only enrich the ending but in many ways define it.

"People often ask me how "Lost" is going to end. I usually tell them to ask Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, who run that series. But I always wonder, do they really want to know? And what if I did tell them? They might have an aha moment, but without context. Especially since the final episode is a year away. That is to say, the experience—the setup for a joke's punch line, the buildup to a magic trick's big flourish—is as much of a thrill as the result. There's discovery to be made and wonder to be had on the journey that not only enrich the ending but in many ways define it."

After that, he deals with the spoiler-centric day and age in which we all live.
But the real damage isn't so much that the secret gets out. It's that the experience is destroyed. The illusion is diminished. Which may not matter to some. But then what's the point of actually seeing that movie or episode? How does knowing the twist before you walk into the theater—or what that island is really about before you watch the finale—make for a richer viewing experience? It's telling that the very term itself—spoiler—has become synonymous with "cool info you can get before the other guy." What no one remembers is that it literally means "to damage irreparably; to ruin." Spoilers make no bones about destroying the intended experience—and somehow that has become, for many, the preferred choice.

"But the real damage isn't so much that the secret gets out. It's that the experience is destroyed. The illusion is diminished. Which may not matter to some. But then what's the point of actually seeing that movie or episode? How does knowing the twist before you walk into the theater—or what that island is really about before you watch the finale—make for a richer viewing experience? It's telling that the very term itself—spoiler—has become synonymous with "cool info you can get before the other guy." What no one remembers is that it literally means "to damage irreparably; to ruin." Spoilers make no bones about destroying the intended experience—and somehow that has become, for many, the preferred choice."

Well, it's not my preferred choice, that's for certain. And I know most of you feel the same. Anyways, as we enter into the last few weeks of the season here, I thought it appropriate that J.J. dropped the above science at this particular time. So I promise to keep this a spoiler-free sight not only through the end of Season 5, but Season 6 as well.

I'd love to tell you I'm doing it for you; but honestly? I'm doing it for me. I want the discovery and the wonder of the journey ahead to remain untainted.

Source: Zap2IT

Naveen Andrews at Brit Week Posted by DarkUFO at 4/24/2009 09:27:00 AM View Comments Labels: Naveen Andrews

Series finale to air simultaneously in every country Posted by Administrator at 4/23/2009 10:25:00 AM View Comments Labels: Season 6

Update: 25th April After speaking to my ABC contacts this appears to be false or at best EXTREMELY unlikely due to overseas syndication contracts.

According to Cuatro, the Spanish network that airs LOST in Spain, the very final episode of LOST will air “simultaneously” in every country where the show is broadcasted.

Source: SL-Lost

Posted by The Lost Interviews/Twitter

Secrets of Lost #10 Posted by Administrator at 4/23/2009 10:23:00 AM View Comments Labels: Humour, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Michael Emerson, Video

Posted by The Lost Interviews/Twitter

Write Environment - Damon Lindelof Posted by DarkUFO at 4/23/2009 08:28:00 AM View Comments Labels: Damon Lindelof, Interviews, Video

Thanks to Donna for the heads up on this video.

Lost No.3 in AOL's Best TV Dramas in History Posted by DarkUFO at 4/23/2009 07:38:00 AM View Comments Labels: Awards

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

You can see the full Top 50 here.

ABC to air 'Flash Forward' promos during 'Lost' Posted by DarkUFO at 4/23/2009 07:31:00 AM View Comments Labels: Online Article

ABC is so excited about its new project Flash Forward the network has plans to start marketing the show before its even officially ordered a series.

When viewers tune in for the 100th episode of Lost next week, they will be served an extra dose of mystery. Sources said ABC will launch a stealth promo campaign for Flash during the episode.

While questions from the dense mythology of Lost probably will be answered in the episode, the commercial breaks are sure to raise a host of new ones. Viewers will see perplexing snippets that might direct viewers to a Web site.

The mystery spots will in fact be for Flash. They are said to be part of an elaborate marketing campaign for the drama, which has not been officially picked up but is quietly being positioned on ABC's schedule for next season. ABC has used several online Web sites to promote Lost over the years; sites designed to expand on various aspects of the the show's complex mythology.

Several summer programs are getting early starts next month as networks jockey to use their in-season momentum to launch post-season programs. But promoting a new show for next season in April -- a program that hasn't even been formerly announced yet -- is extremely unusual.

Fox is making a somewhat similar early move with its musical drama Glee, which will air one episode after American Idol next month before launching the show in the fall. Both Flash and Glee are expected to have marketing campaigns that help ramp up excitement for the projects through the summer.

From the moment in September the Flash spec script by filmmaker David S. Goyer and Star Trek veteran Brannon Braga landed at ABC with a series commitment, the project has been considered a perfect companion for Lost. Yet with Lost airing in midseason, ABC promoting Flash suggests the network may be considering the show for fall rather than trying to air the shows on the same night..

Based on Robert J. Sawyer's sci-fi novel, Flash starring Joseph Fiennes, chronicles the aftermath of a global event in which everyone in the world blacks out for 2 minutes, 17 seconds and has a mysterious vision of the future.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Damon and Carlton Interview Posted by DarkUFO at 4/23/2009 07:15:00 AM View Comments Labels: Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, Interviews

Thanks to The_Other_Other for the heads up.

Q. When the show is all said and done, how do you want the show to be remembered … and about 20 years after the show has ended would you both be willing to be involved in the remake/relaunch of “Lost,” and if so, what would you do differently? What has the show taught you? (Combined Ramsey Lawson and Jon P.)
DL: I think our hope is that looking back on the entire run of the show, that people remember the EXPERIENCE of watching it — what it actually felt like to be mystified and frustrated and surprised — as opposed to just where it landed storywise. When all is said and done, we’ll have consumed six years of our fans’ lives and our greatest wish is that they look back on that time and feel that it was all worth it. As far as whether we’ll want to revisit “Lost” 20 years from now, the answer is probably no… though it would be pretty cool to see what someone else might come up with!

Q. Have you had any regrets about previous character deaths coming too soon, and whether you might have wanted (in hindsight) to have given them a little more time on the island? (Corey)
DL: The one that comes to mind is Mr. Eko. That was a situation where we had some pretty cool ideas as to where we were gonna take the character, but unfortunately, Adewale was not really interested in working on the show beyond Season Two. This forced us into a position of having to kill him “prematurely,” and even though we had no control over him leaving, we probably could have executed (pun intended) the death itself with a little more finesse.

Lostcake Q. How much did it mean to the writing of the show to know exactly how many episodes you had left to tell the story? (Derek) … The ‘end date’ agreement you reached with ABC was groundbreaking for network television and REALLY saved “Lost” from spinning its wheels indefinitely. It also made the show pretty much “cancel-proof,” as you now know exactly WHEN the show will leave the air. Do you feel like “Lost’s” agreement will set a trend that other networks/producers will adopt? (Cheif Brody)
DL: Negotiating the end of the show and effectively cancelling ourselves in the process was without a doubt the single most awesome thing that ever happened to “Lost.” As writers, we had reached a very frustrating impasse… we had already told our beginning and we knew the ending we wanted to work toward, but all we could actually write was the middle. We knew the show would hit a new gear once we ditched the flashbacks and started to tell the story of the people who left the island, but we also knew we couldn’t START that story until the audience knew we were heading down the proverbial mountain. Fortunately for us, (ABC Entertainment Group president) Steve McPherson and (then ABC Studios president*) Mark Pedowitz at the network put aside their business sense and understood that creatively, ending the show was absolutely necessary. Who knows if other shows will adopt the conceptual framework of a “limited” series (they’ve been doing it in the U.K. for decades and it’s awesome), but it really liberated us as storytellers.
*Note: Pedowitz is now special adviser to Disney-ABC TV Group prexy Anne Sweeney

Lostcomicon Q. A while back, I remember reading you guys made a Sawyer episode with Jolene Blalock, but for some reason, decided to switch it to a Michael episode. My question is: Why? Will we ever see that footage, incorporated in some other way? Was the Sawyer-centric story ever told or was it just abandoned? Can we get it as an extra on one of the upcoming DVDs maybe? (Chase)
CC: This happens all the time in both film and TV, scenes or storylines are shot that just don’t work out as you hoped. We’ve been fortunate to have a really high success rate on “Lost.” In fact, that was the only time we dumped an entire storyline. No fault of the actors — it just wasn’t properly conceived. We have no plans to put it on the DVDs because unlike most deleted scenes, which just don’t fit into the body of a particular show, this storyline was not at the quality bar we have for the show.

Q. I was wondering how long “Lost” would have run in its most straightforward narrative, if you had been able to produce it that way. If you had been given free rein to run the show and let it unfold as you wanted, would it have only been four seasons long? Five? If not, how much further along in the storyline would we be right now? What parts of seasons two and three would have been more truncated? (Ryan/similar question asked by Foobeka)
CC: At the end of the day “Lost” will have run for exactly the right amount of time. At one point we’d talked about 100 episodes being ideal but as we got further downstream we came to appreciate the extra 20 or so hours. It’s funny now, the question we are being asked the most has shifted from, “Do you guys know what you’re doing?” to, “Do you guys have enough time left to tell your story?” People used to be worried that “Lost” was spinning its wheels. Now the concern is, are we gonna be able to wrap it all up in only one more short season?

Hurleymiles Q. What works may have influenced you?:
You’re obviously huge fans of Stephen King… I was wondering how the ending to “The Dark Tower” informs yours. (Simplevincent)… I have read that “The Stand” is very influential to the mythology of “Lost.” (William) Are you guys fans of Irish literature as “Lost” seems to have similarities to a number of famous Irish stories, including of course ‘Ulysses”? (Brian) … The “Star Wars: Episode 4” influences are on display. True? (.35) … I have wondered if one of your big influences came in the form of a wicked British children’s show called “Children of the Stones,” particularly with time and cycles. (Spymunk and JimK). I am struck by the similarities in scope and tone between “Lost” and “The Prisoner.” (Jeanette) Of all the books referenced in the show, which fathered your show’s structure the most? (Mischa)
Are any of these, indeed influences and are there others not mentioned here?
CC: For both Damon and me Stephen King’s “The Stand” was the most influential model for “Lost.” Because “Lost” is not the tenth carbon copy of a medical, legal or cop show there wasn’t a clear roadmap for how to make it work for 100 episodes by looking at other TV shows. So instead we turned to “The Stand,” a 1,000-page novel with a high-concept idea at the core: most of the world’s inhabitants have been killed by a super flu. What we loved about the book was that what sustains the 1,000 pages is not the mythology of the super flu but the stories of the characters. The mystery of what was happening on this island had to be secondary to the mystery of “who are these people?” In terms of creative inspiration we owe a debt to many other sources: the Bible, “Twin Peaks,” “The Prisoner,” the Narnia Chronicles, and of course “Star Wars” and all of its mythological antecedents, Kurt Vonnegut and Flannery O’Connor.

Q. Can you comment on why the show’s signature flashbacks have been replaced by the “three years later/earlier” title cards? I think you could have kept the flashback device the way it was and the audience would have understood. Right now it feels a little like spoon-feeding and I’d like to think I (and your viewers) are smarter than that. (Max)
DL: Our viewers are extremely smart… in fact, WAY smarter than us. That being said, when we’re doing flashforwards and flashbacks while the island itself is flashing through time, we felt it was necessary to use the title cards just so WE could keep the story straight. The good news is that we usually only do it once a show to remind the audience where our characters are relative to each other, but once we’ve established it, we just go back to the good ole WHOOOOOOSH.

Q. How much goes into maintaining continuity on such a complex show? (Alberto) (Adam adds that “your continuity guy is a god.”)

Ben CC: A lot. We have Gregg Nations who works for us and is in charge of continuity. He keeps detailed records of everything that happens on the show. He doesn’t have what’s going to happen; only what HAS happened — but he meticulously checks everything we publish in each script against that historical continuity. Not that we don’t make mistakes once in a while but given the enormous complexity of our show, our error rate is low.

Q. I am so happy to watch your long-term planning start to really pay off in the story. Have you had the idea to actually film scenes or at least parts of scenes long in advance due to age or set changes? If you could have in season one, would you have filmed a couple shots of 10-year-old Walt looking down into a pit saying “Get up John”? (Cole)
DL: We’re really concerned about shooting scenes WAY in advance for a couple reasons. The first is straight up security… if such a thing leaked, the spoiler sites would find out HUGE plot reveals way before we want them to. The second reason we don’t do this is that while the overall story of the final season has been planned for almost five years now, we still enjoy the organic process of actually writing these scenes in the order we’re filming them.

Q. What challenges do you face in creating a nearly deserted island? Do you ever need to digitally remove planes, boats, or houses in post? (CelebritySkinned.com)
CC: “Lost” would not be possible without the tremendous advances in visual effects technology in the last few years, especially the drop in costs and the ability to do complex visual effects on a TV budget and schedule. The island of Oahu where we shoot the show is very beautiful but also very populated and developed. We remove roads, telephone poles, houses, boats and surfers in nearly every episode. But even more importantly, VFX allow us to make Hawaii look like literally any place in the world. We’ve used our VFX team to turn Oahu into Iraq, Berlin, Paris, Tunisia and even a snowy winter in Red Square. In fact, in the entire 100-plus episode history of the show we’ve only shot four scenes off the island, mainly due to actor availability.

Source: Variety

Dominic Monaghan and J.J. Abrams on Jimmy Kimmel Live Posted by Administrator at 4/22/2009 01:05:00 PM View Comments Labels: Dominic Monaghan, Jimmy Kimmel Live, JJ Abrams, TV appearance

Dominic Monaghan and J.J. Abrams are scheduled to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live on the 29th of April.

Source: Lost-Media

Posted by The Lost Interviews/Twitter

TV.com Top 10: Actors ready for primetime (Ken Leung is #2) Posted by DarkUFO at 4/22/2009 07:44:00 AM View Comments Labels: Awards, Ken Leung, Online Article

Thanks to Jeffry for the heads up.

2. Ken Leung
Where you've seen him: Lost, The Sopranos, and if you're lucky, Keeping the Faith (video below)
Did you see this week's episode of Lost? As Miles Straume, Leung absolutely owned that episode, and showed people what he's capable of. The camera never gets tired of Ken--he's one of those rare talents that grabs your attention and puts it in a headlock.

Where we want to see him next: Ken Leung will never play a romantic lead or action hero, but he is perfect as an antihero. How about as a charming scamp hustling people in the big city?
Next project: As far as we can tell, he's available as soon as Lost kills off Miles :).

Source: TV.COM

Lost: Nerd Winks Posted by DarkUFO at 4/22/2009 07:41:00 AM View Comments Labels: Online Article

I maintain that there are two kinds of Lost fan out there - regular people and nerds. Your average Joe watches unphased when Charlie makes a Hobbit joke or we catch a glimpse of Hurley reading a critically acclaimed comic book (in Spanish) while waiting to board another Island bound airplane. For us nerds however, watching Lost is a different experience entirely. Our hearts skip a beat when we see Jack pick up little Aaron's Millenium Falcon off the floor or the lovely Charlotte makes a Klingon joke. It's these moments that titilate and tantalize our nerd sensibilities, sending us into a tizzy of snorts and giggles (I'm not saying all nerds snort, but I myself do from time to time). Here's a look at some of Lost's assorted geeky nudges to the nerd communuity at large. Special thanks to Lost-Media and Lostpedia.

Full Article Here

Source: Full Article @ UGO

Cynthia Watros guest star on CSI finale Posted by Administrator at 4/22/2009 05:42:00 AM View Comments Labels: Cynthia Watros

Thanks to Dusti from cynthiawatrosonline.com for the heads up.

Season finale spoilers on 'CSI,' 'NCIS,' 'Mentalist,' 'Trace,' and more!

CSI
Thursday, May 14
The CSIs investigate a series of murders tied to a scam involving valuable poker chips from a long-gone casino and Det. Ray Langston must use deadly force for the first time in his career as a CSI. Cynthia Watros and Gerald McRaney guest star.

Full article: EW

Posted by The Lost Interviews/Twitter

Video interview with Jorge Garcia Posted by Administrator at 4/21/2009 07:57:00 PM View Comments Labels: Jorge Garcia, Video

NOTE: Some mild spoilers in this video.

Posted by The Lost Interviews

Matthew Fox on Regis & Kelly Posted by Administrator at 4/21/2009 07:55:00 PM View Comments Labels: Matthew Fox, TV appearance

Matthew Fox is scheduled to appear on Regis & Kelly on the 28th of April.

Source: Lost-Media

Posted by The Lost Interviews

Jorge Garcia Attends "Lost" Photocall In Madrid Posted by DarkUFO at 4/21/2009 07:39:00 PM View Comments Labels: Jorge Garcia

Source: Zimbio

Matthew Fox - Magazine Article and Scans Posted by DarkUFO at 4/21/2009 09:09:00 AM View Comments Labels: Magazines, Matthew Fox, Scans

Thanks to mfoxfan and Hussiness_is_Bliss for the scans and the translation

What's the first thing you notice in a woman?
Hair and nails. A bad haircut or chewed up nails are telling for me, it's a sign of letting yourself go. Back when I was younger, I used to dump girls who chewed their nails all day long. On the other hand, I can't stand women who spend their days in salons. The smell of nail varnish gives me palpitations and a headache.

But there must be feminine perfumes that make you melt?
Coconut. My wife uses coconut oil to tan but also for her hair. Whenever I smell it, it's as if all of Polynesia is assaulting my nostrils with its fragrances. Truth be told, I'm slowly recovering my sense of smell, especially after I stopped smoking. All I could smell before was my own scent, pure tobacco.

What about accessories, what gets your pulse racing?
Oh, that's easy. I love it when my wife uses hair pins. The cheap ones have the same effect, I have no idea why. I like it when she slides them through her long, black hair.

How much would you spend on lingerie for your lady?
I'd rather be surprised. There are men who like to get in there and overcrowd their women's dressing rooms, but I'd rather have my lady put on that show for me at home.

Is there any feminine fashion trend you don't like?
I find the lowcut miniskirt with navels and gstrings sticking out look embarrassing. I prefer my wife's long flowing robes when she goes shopping for pineapple. She's got her little basket, can't get enough of that.

Which actresses do you find attractive?
If you asked me that question about a dozen years ago, I would have probably given you the name of a perfect-looking actress. Over the years though, as you get older and wiser, you stop being so exclussively focused on the packaging and you start to get interested in the contents as well. Maybe that's why I admire Jodie Foster. Jodie is a combination of charm, class and gray matter.

A lot of Hollywood actors today seem to be attracted to the glamorous type? Are you more visibly attracted to a more natural, simple look?
We live in a society where appearance is crucial. I have nothing against a small dosis of the artificial in a woman, things like mascara or a little lipstick and so on… But that's about it. There's nothing I hate more than fake nails, but I'm not a fan of anything fake on a woman: fake breasts, extensions, fake eyelashes. My wife was doing modelling when I met her so you would assume that she was very superficial, but that's just it, she wasn't like that at all! That was a good thing, that's what made her beautiful and that's how she instantly caught my eye.

What would you say if I told you you're a natural seducer?
Subconsciously, yeah, maybe. But personally, I don't feel like I'm playing that card or that I'm putting myself in the position of doing the chasing. If anything, I get the feeling that it's the other way around: I'm the prey!

What do you mean?
The media has been selling me for years under a "beefcake" packaging so I'm paying a price for that. If it were up to me, I'd rather have myself packaged as the best actor of his generation or the greatest husband and father, but I have a feeling that wouldn't sell papers anyway. I chose this job with eyes wide open though. Fame isn't a burden for me.

That's good, given that you've become the face of one of L'Oreal's line for men, L'Oreal Expert.
L'Oreal wanted to "man up" its marketing strategy. I was psyched when I got the call from such a great brand. Just because I'm a cowboy from Wyoming doesn't mean I can't take care of my skin. I don't have a problem stepping inside a beauty institute.

Was this your first ad?
No! I did a Clearasil ad when I was a teenager. My part was basically staring into the camera with an idiotic smile and telling everyone how I got rid of my blackheads.

If you could pack only one item of clothing, what would that be?
I'd pack a white t-shirt, 100% cotton. It might not look like it, but I have very fragile shoulders… Either that or jeans. That's my uniform. You know, I grew up a stone's throw away from Yellowstone National Park. My dad was a rancher down there and my only job was to go horseback riding with him. Everyone wore denim in the small town where I grew up. The only guy who didn't wear jeans was the undertaker. I think the true power of jeans is that they've managed to erase notions of clothing associated with social classes.

Do you have a favorite brand?
I've always worn classic 501s. They're irreplaceable. I have to say though that I absolutely refuse to spend more than $100 on a pair of jeans. I was just wandering around some shops the other day and I found some vintage jeans with a tag of $900. I find that absolutely ridiculous.

Less than $100 for the Texas cowyboy boots you told us you're addicted to as well?
That's totally different! It's two completely different things we're talking about here… There's a lot more work that goes into making a pair of good boots. It's about choosing the right leather and tanning it and… the inside stitching! That's how you can tell a quality pair: they have to be as beautiful on the inside as they are on the outside. I'm crazy about cowboy boots and I'm ready to pay the price. But if you take good care of them, a good pair will last you a lifetime. I've been known to spend more than a thousand dollars for a pair of cowboy boots and I've never regretted it. Plus, polishing my boots relaxes me.

What does your wife think of your addictions?
To tell you the truth, my wife thinks that's very redneck of me. Even back when I met her, I was wearing high heeled cowboy boots. Whenever I'd walk around in those, I looked like John Wayne descending after a long day spent in the saddle. My wife is an ex-Italian model. Good taste, class… it's all innate for them. I'm just an unpolished redneck.

JJ Abrams Mystery Box Edition of WIRED Magazine Posted by DarkUFO at 4/21/2009 08:20:00 AM View Comments Labels: JJ Abrams, Video

Source: Wired

Ask Lost - Daniel Dae Kim Posted by DarkUFO at 4/21/2009 08:09:00 AM View Comments Labels: Daniel Dae Kim, Interviews, Video

Source: ABC