33 posts tagged “lost”

After a five week break, Lost returns tonight to finish out its season run. Don't forget to set those Tivos!

That is all. Go back to work, slackers!

This reminds me of the "okay" video I've always wanted to do for the West Wing. Considering how many times these people ask the question, it's remarkable how little info any of them have.

South Park has its midseason premiere on Wednesday night. Since animation isn't covered by the WGA, they weren't out on strike, so this was a planned break. It just happened to coincide with the strike. For as much noise as I make about the fact that I don't like cartoons, South Park is consistently one of my favorite shows.

Also returning this week: Reaper. There are a few episodes left from before the strike and they're producing a few more episodes before the end of the season.

Of course, Lost is still new, as is Law & Order, I believe, and possibly, Smallville. I've got to check again.

Other stuff:
In an attempt to keep interest in the show, Fox is doing a 24 movie before the next season kicks off next January. One of 24's co-creators Joel Surnow, has left the show.

Bubble show Friday Night Lights has apparently been renewed with the help of DirecTV.

CW has announced Smallville has been renewed. I guess that's the good news. The bad news would be that Lex and Lana are both leaving the show. They'll be back for bits, but not regulars. Reaper has not yet been renewed.

CBS has renewed a bunch of shows including all three CSIs. How I Met Your Mother is still not officially renewed, but expectations are that it will be. There are rumors swirling that Alicia Silverstone will be the mother. Take that for what it's worth.

Starbuck's husband Anders (actor Michael Trucco) is going to star in a new NBC comedy called The Man of Your Dreams. It's expected it will be on in the fall. Anders has been a favorite of mine on BSG, so I'll probably watch this one.

Former Doctor Who Christopher Eccelston has joined the cast of G.I. Joe.

The first three Replacements albums and an EP will be reissued in April.

Gary Gygax, the creator of Dungeons and Dragons passed away last week.

Reason number 412 why I hate George Lucas. Lucasfilm is reissuing the three original Indiana Jones movies on DVD. There are special features that weren't on previous views. Gee, where have we heard this song and dance before? Jackass.

NBC's handling of Scrubs has always been ham-fisted. It's supposed to finish this year. Except because of the strike, they might not get to finish the show. Now ABC is making noises about picking up the show for the next season. For a whole season. Even though it was supposed to finish. Of course, NBC is more than a little pissed that ABC is making announcements like this since they still own the show.

Saturday Night Live returned a couple weeks ago. It's still bad, but at least the musical guests have been good. Last week was Wilco, this week was Vampire Weekend.

I just started watching another BBC miniseries. This one's called State of Play. I don't know how I missed this one. It's incredible. TV on DVD will eventually be the death of me. I was just going to watch the one episode and go to bed. Now I'm about to finish the disc and I want to finish it the whole series right now. It's going to take at least two more days to get the second and final disc of the series from Netflix. The cast is amazing. Lots of BBC regulars like John Simm (love him) and Philip Glenister (also from Life on Mars with John Simm), people who are now much bigger like James McAvoy, and a few already big stars like Bill Nighy. I think my current obsession with John Simm is responsible for me finally discovering this gem. With his Life on Mars being a favorite of mine and his guest shot on Doctor Who, I'm now finding I want to go back and watch the things I now know he was in that I've already seen, like Human Traffic and 24 Hour Party People. Full review of State of Play to come once I've finished it.

Hi kids. We're at about one month and counting until the return of Battlestar Galactica. The promos have begun. The same people who did the eight minute Lost recap have done a Battlestar one. Or at least it's the same narrator. My favorite line in the whole thing: "Girlfight."

Again, trying very hard not to spoil anything for those of you that haven't watched yet, but I'm almost ready to take back the not so nice things I said about Lost last week. No, that's not it, I still think last week's episode was a complete clunker, but this week was a step toward redemption. What an outstanding mind bending episode. So many questions, so many great Lost moments. Penny's dad, Hanso, the Black Rock, the numbers were all over this ep, time travel. Faraday is fast becoming a favorite of mine. It was actually kind of nice to have a Locke/Ben free episode. I have so many new questions. Wish I could write them out here, but that would probably get me in serious trouble for the spoiler-phobic, so I'll leave it out. There are three more episodes before they take a little break to get the last five ready. So Diana, I guess what we get in March is Lost and a little bit of How I Met Your Mother to tide us over until the shows return. But you're right, I wish I was as thin as March is looking right now.

Another random bits and pieces catch up post.

Jesse L. Martin is leaving Law & Order. This is too bad because this is the first year since we lost Jerry Orbach that he's got a partner that's working well. The whole cast is quite good this year. NBC is planning on doing 5 new post strike episodes that will air starting in April.

HD-DVD is dead. Long live Blu-Ray. Toshiba finally waved the white flag and gave up. All the major studios are moving to Blu-Ray. Looks like there's a PS3 in my future.

The J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie has been moved from a Christmas 2008 release to summer of 2009.

FX has confirmed that rather than produce any post-strike episodes, the season of The Riches will just be seven episodes long.

Craig Ferguson will host the White House Correspondents Dinner. I can't imagine he'll be as offensive to the President as Stephen Colbert was, but he's a funny guy and I'm sure he'll get his digs in.

The deal isn't done yet, but it looks like NBC will let Scrubs finish in the way it intended.

Lots of announcements about the upcoming Wolverine movie, but the only one I'm going to mention is that Dominic Monaghan has joined the cast.

CBS is moving How I Met Your Mother to 8:30 on Monday. Shows what I remember from before the strike, I thought it was there already. It also wasn't in the list of renewals that CBS put out earlier this week, but it seems most people think it will be back. I'll be disappointed if it isn't. They're expecting to shoot nine new episodes this season that will start airing March 17.

Leonardo DiCaprio is producing a live action version of Akira.

Bionic Woman was officially canned. I deleted the unwatched shows off my Tivo a long time ago.

Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell have all signed on to take over Heath Ledger's part in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. Since it's a Terry Gilliam movie we already knew it was going to be strange, this just makes it odder.

There's a special Aerosmith only Guitar Hero coming in May. It also looks like I'll be able to get a stand-alone guitar for the Wii in a couple weeks.

The first official trailer for the new Indiana Jones movie is out. It looks ok.

Apparently, there's a vampire movie in production called Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Undead. With a title like that you shouldn't need Sean Lennon doing the score, but it's got him.

Molly Ringwald recently turned 40. I feel very very old.

An Arrested Development movie might be in the works. For me, this show rode right up to my threshold of embarrassment humor and occasionally crossed it, so I'm not dying for a feature-length episode.

Among many other names added to the cast of G.I. Joe, including Dennis Quaid, Doctor Who number nine, or Claude the invisible man from Heroes depending on who you are, Christopher Eccelston has signed on.

We're getting reissues of three Replacements CDs and one EP in April. The rest of their catalog should be available by the end of the year. I may have to check these out. I love these guys.

In other music news, Thriller celebrated its 25th anniversary while I wasn't looking.

Harold and Maude finally got an official soundtrack. Seems a little silly since you can just pick up Cat Steven's greatest hits, but I guess there was never a proper soundtrack. Don't tell Jim, but I love this movie. He made me watch it one too many times before I was old enough to appreciate it, I think. But it's brilliant.

This is a great list of 48 unanswered questions on Lost. Speaking of Lost, it will produce five more episodes this season, bringing the total to 13 of the 16 they were supposed to do, and when it returns for those episodes it will be at 10 on Thursdays following Grey's Anatomy.

BSG tidbits: Season 3 will be out on DVD March 18th. Season four will premiere on April 4th, with two catch-up specials showing March 28th. The writers are back at work on the show and it looks like they'll actually get to finish it. We'll get everything they shot starting in April, and then we might not get the second half of the final season until 2009. Yikes.

I don't understand the Jane Fonda on the Today Show controversy at all. She said a naughty word, but in fairness, it was the title of one of the Vagina Monologues, so I don't get how that's so bad.

Mitch Peleggi, aka Walter Skinner, will be in the new X-Files movie. Yay! I thought he was great on the series.

The Smurfs in 3d? I just...have no words.

Looks like the Justice League movie is moving forward without Batman or Superman, since they're both currently engaged in their own movie franchise. But I ask you, is it worth seeing a Justice League movie without them?

Transformers 2 is a go. Hm. I think maybe one was enough.

Turns out we'll be getting *both* Coreys in Lost Boys 2. Thank god for that. For a while it looked like we'd have to survive with only one, and that just won't do.

J.J. Abrams new show on Fox, Fringe, has added Joshua Jackson to the cast. OMG Pacey's back on TV!

Disney Interactive has announced Discs of Tron for the XBox.

I think I might have mentioned this earlier, but SciFi announced they're going to show The Sarah Jane Adventures and the new season of Doctor Who starting in April. In fact, they're going to be on Friday night right before BSG. Sounds like we're going to get the good Doctor in a similar fashion to the way BBC America is airing Torchwood, with only a small lag between airing in the UK and airing here. The Beeb hasn't actually announced when this show is starting in the UK, a peculiarity of UK TV that they do that a lot, but it's starting on SciFi on April 18th, so one would assume it's starting sooner than that in the UK.

The Knight Rider movie did well enough that NBC is considering making it a series. Ugh.

The new Clone Wars animated series got picked up by Cartoon Network. I like the look of it. I wonder if the stories will be any good.

Ok, enough of that. I'll put all the returning show info I can find in the next post.

One, and I promise not to spoil anything, but seriously, am I the only one that saw the Lost "twist" coming a mile away? Holy crap they telegraphed that thing so heavy handedly I think I have have bruises on my head. Diana would have smacked me because ten minutes in I would have stated the ending as fact because I couldn't help myself. I really have to stop doing that. For what it's worth, I don't do it to be irritating, I swear. I actually wish I could be surprised by TV.

Two, the Oscars are on Sunday. For the first time in years I think I'll just watch them timeshifted on Tivo. No Oscar party for me this year.

Three, I just saw that in June we'll get Lego Indiana Jones and in October we get Lego Batman for the Wii. Considering how much I love Lego Star Wars, I think I'll preorder them both.

I'll try to keep this spoiler free for anyone who hasn't seen the premiere yet. There will be mild spoilers for the season three finale, but if you haven't heard what happened by now you've been living under a rock. It's been eight months, people. I really enjoyed the "enhanced" season three finale. I watched it and the premiere back to back, and I think it helped. The only thing that was problematic is that I actually had to look at the screen the entire time, which, I learned last night, isn't something I tend to do. There was a lot of eight second skip back in my viewing of the finale. I didn't think it was as stupid the second time through. The Charlie plot was still the best part. I know I'm in the extreme minority here in that I wasn't blown away by the "game changing, mind bending" twist that was the whole flash forward device. It was an interesting idea, and a good way to keep adding questions without actually answering any, so at least it was consistent with what, as far as I can tell, the show is actually about.

That said, the premiere was pretty good. Lots of action, some good twists, and they've really figured out how to work the flash forwards in to the plot. They're certainly screwing with the time line a lot since the flash forwards we got this time were actually before the ones from the finale. So now we know who three of the "Oceanic 6" are. I wonder how long it will take to find out the rest. Any bets on whether we'll get them all in this eight episode run? I bet not. Overall I'd give the premiere a thumbs up. It had a few oh-snap moments and not as many eye-rollers as I'd expected. I think I'd managed to resist the hype so my expectations were about as low as they were at the end of last season. One down, 47 episodes to go until we allegedly end, and only seven more for this season. It looks like even if the strike ends in the next week, most if not all shows are done for the year.

Happy Friday everyone! I think there's like, a show with a bunch of expensive commercials on Sunday. A football game or something? Try not to eat too much junk.

I'm not as excited about this as a lot of people seem to be, but Lost is returning this week. ABC has added a special airing of last season's finale in addition to the recap special that airs right before the premiere. They're calling the airing of the finale "enhanced" which to me sounds like pop up video. They're going to put text on the bottom third of the screen that points out factiods with the intent of filling you in on what you missed and provide backstory info for new viewers. The enhanced finale airs Wednesday at 9. The review show is Thursday at 8 followed by the premiere at 9. I'm still convinced they have no idea what they're actually doing, so I'm hoping that someday Lost will pleasantly surprise me.

Much sillier and potentially more entertaining, the second season of Torchwood starts tonight on BBC America. Torchwood is, of course, the Doctor Who spinoff. I've seen the premiere of season two already and it's dumb but satisfying. Torchwood had a very hit and miss first season, but it started to finally find its voice at the end. I have high hopes that season two will continue that. Bear in mind that the BBC America version will be edited for time and possibly content, so to see the real version, you've got to get it by some other means. I went to the bbc.co.uk website the other day to see if I could get any Torchwood info and unlike their Doctor Who pages, the Torchwood pages are completely blocked if you're not in the UK. Bummer.

The other new show of interest at the moment is a show called Breaking Bad. It started this week and is set to run for something like 8 episodes. I have recorded but not watched the first episode. It's supposed to be pretty dark. The show is about a middle aged chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with terminal cancer. He decided that the best way to take care of his family is to use his chemistry skills to cook up crystal meth with the intent of making enough money so they're ok when he dies. Dark. It's getting great reviews and I'm looking forward to watching it. I think you might have another shot at the premiere before they air episode number two. It runs on AMC which also brought us the show Mad Men. Mad Men just won a couple Golden Globes and was apparently the best show I wasn't watching. AMC is rerunning Mad Men after Breaking Bad on Sunday nights. So I'm recording it too.

Discovery Channel is still running new episodes of Mythbusters for what it's worth. I love that show.

My only excuse here is that I was traveling for five days. And I think I froze my brain and/or fingers in Chicago. It's taken me this long to get warmed up again.

Obviously the biggest news out there right now is the shocking death of Heath Ledger. I don't have anything original to add to the chorus here, so I won't. Truly tragic. He was done shooting his role in The Dark Knight, which I'm very much looking forward to, but he was in the middle of shooting a movie for director Terry Gilliam called The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. Yet another Gilliam movie we'll probably never see. Bummer.

The Academy Award nominations came out on Tuesday. Once again I've seen exactly none of the nominated films.

The Golden Globe "awards" happened last weekend. There was a big hoo-ha about the show being canceled due to the writers strike. It turned in to a press conference and I ended up not even recording it. Of course I didn't know the movies. The TV categories were dominated by cable shows, many of which I hadn't seen. Also interesting that CBS and Fox were denied any nominations at all. Zip.

To complete the awards show trifecta, the SAG awards are happening this weekend. This is one show that was granted a waiver from the WGA. I always enjoy the SAG awards, so I think I'll set the Tivo.

In the latest strike news, the DGA has signed a deal with the AMPTP. This has opened the door for the producers and the WGA to at least begin talking again. They've opened "informal" talks. The DGA deal isn't right for the writers to accept wholesale, but it did include some provisions for new media, so it feels like the producers will at least talk to the writers about it this time.

In continuing fallout from the strike, every studio has canceled a significant number of production deals with writers. Not all of them, but a lot. NBC has announced that it's canceled its upfronts, which is when they introduce new shows to advertisers, not to be confused with the TCA press tour which was canceled a long time ago. Pilot season is all but nonexistent, with no scripts. And again, NBC with the announcements, the president of NBC has declared they will no longer even make pilots. Now how they're going to pick shows to produce or not is a little unclear. Usually a bunch of pilots are produced and then the networks pick a handful to turn in to actual shows. I guess he thinks that just picking a bunch of shows to put in to production will overall save them money. But if they're putting nothing but crap on tv, then they're not going to make a lot of money once the advertisers catch on. Some optimism is floating around town that the strike might be over within the next month, but it's unclear whether that will rescue any of the season. Most of the actors' contracts have the summer hiatus built in, so as soon as we start bumping up against that time, actors can go off and do their hiatus gigs. Now because of the strike there might not be so many of those, but still. It would appear that the season as it stands is what we're going to get.

In the countdown to running out of shows, the last two episodes of Chuck will air tomorrow night. One at 8:00 and one at 10:00 with an episode of The Apprentice in between. Go figure. I thought tonight's was the last episode of CSI:NY, but apparently there's at least one more. Moonlight ended last week too. I really wanted to hate that show, and it's poorly written and the acting is wooden, and yet I find it strangely compelling. Chuck and, I think, Moonlight had received full season pickups. A symbolic gesture at this point, but it means they're likely to return next season if there's a next season.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles only had eight episodes produced to begin with, so there are five left, I think. I've only seen the pilot so far, but it was fun. Apparently it's kind of tanking in the ratings, so we'll see if it sticks around.

And of course, this is your eight day countdown to the return of Lost. ABC wants you to think that the premiere is a two hour long affair, but it's really an hour long recap followed by an hour long premiere episode. Lost got eight episodes produced before the strike. What that means in the long term, since it was supposed to wrap up with three 16 episode seasons, is hard to say.

I'm so behind, and I've got lots more to talk about, but for now I must go to bed.