Notes: On Lost, Criterion, and the Winter Olympics
February 19, 2006
Lost: I mentioned “Lost” last week at the beginning of my review of “The Shield”, as a way of connecting two of my favorite shows with the similar ways they deal with confrontation, but since “Lost” returned from mid-season break, I’ve yet to devote significant space to the show which I like to call the best drama on TV. Have I been ignoring the show because, as some internet crabs have suggested, it’s become labored and boring, spinning its wheels and getting bogged down in overly melodramatic back stories without moving the story further? No (and no, I don’t agree with the criticisms either), I’ve just cooled down on the show a bit because I so heavily overplayed it the first half of the season, and I’ve since been torn on whether it hasn’t lost the coveted Best Show on TV title to “24”, which has kicked off season five in typical hellacious fashion, but with this down week between new episodes, it’s a good time to update what’s been happening on everybody’s favorite island of mystery. Since the return, we’ve had five new episodes, some containing more than others as far as enhancing the mystery, that have varied in dramatic weight, from the breaking down of Jack’s marriage (he kissed a hot Italian woman, his wife had an affair) and the decline of Charlie’s popularity, to Sawyer’s sudden power grab for island control and Sayid’s tortured past as a Republican Guard torturer.
The Charlie episode caught fan ire for being pointless and overly religious (something the show wears on its tattered sleeve), and Sawyer devotees (mostly women salivating over Josh Holloway) were disappointed with his black hearted con on his fellow lostaways, hijacking the hatch’s supply of guns to overthrow Locke and Jack as the island’s (their side anyway) new Sheriff, but for all the quibbling over semantics (for which I don’t agree), there were moments in the five episodes that fans die for, like the meeting between Jack’s hunting party and the bearded ringleader of the Others (Saywer calls him “Zeke”), Kate’s mom crossing into Sawyer’s back story, and her dad into Sayid’s, and the near fatal countdown lapse of the hatch doomsday counter, which mysteriously flashed Egyptian hieroglyphics after it got down to zero, before Locke hastily typed in the numbers. Read the internet sites and the hieroglyphics are big news, with interpretations ranging as far and wide as spelling out cast names in code (Sayid is a popular theory, but probably false), to spelling global death (further playing up the nuclear reactor theories), but I think it’s all a big joke by the producers on the hysterical fans, a red herring, like the numbers, to amuse the fans while the writers concentrate more on continuing to develop the fascinating characters that make the show so compelling. Whether it matters that Kate’s dad showed Sayid a picture of Kate eight years before they’d be stranded together isn’t important, what is important is that we continue to believe that, on a show where polar bears and black horses roam a jungle, and a one-armed Korean doctor can so chillingly, and vaguely, warn us of a catastrophic “incident”, which we’re possibly never to uncover, anything is logical, and more likely, anything is possible. As far as I’m concerned, one and a half seasons into “Lost”, it hasn’t missed a beat, and stubborn with answers or not, it continues to be the most eagerly anticipated hour on weekly television.
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Criterion: Maybe you’ve noticed that January and February have been riddled with uninteresting, and downright lazy movies at the cinema, one weak horror or clichéd comedy after another. It is during this time of the year (Hollywood’s dumping ground for it’s problematic leftovers) that one should either focus their priorities on TV, or treat themselves to a DVD one normally wouldn’t find at Wal-Mart or Blockbuster, and the best, in my opinion (and most would agree) is The Criterion Collection, who already have an impressive lineup for 2006 in stores, or awaiting release over the next few months. The best website to buy a Criterion disk is Deep Discount DVD, who usually prices the expensive disks at under 30 dollars, but if you belong to Netflix (and if you don’t, what are you waiting for), every disk in Criterion’s catalogue is waiting to be rented, so here are a few choice suggestions for now, or the not too distant future.
My man Kurosawa is well respected by Criterion and recent releases of “Ran” and “The Bad Sleep Well”, two of his numerous Shakespearian-tinged epics (the later a dense wide-screen morality play loosely based on “Hamlet”), do the master well with expert commentary tracks and informative essays and documentaries. I’d expect nothing less for the greatest director of all time. Similarly, Swedish genius Ingmar Bergman, a Criterion favorite, and French legend Jean Renoir, recently had two of their lesser known works, “The Virgin Spring”, and “La bete humaine”, respectively, released in sparkling new prints befitting their stunning black and white photography (Criterion really does a number on Sven Nykvist’s masterful work for Bergman). Upcoming releases of Alec Guinness’ all time comedy classic “Kind Hearts and Coronets”, in which he plays no less than eight characters; Louis Malle’s “Elevator to the Gallows”, as well as a box set containing three of his most respected, and famous, French works, “Murmur of the Heart”, “Lacombe Lucien”, and “Au Revoir Les Enfants”; Vittorio DeSica’s important early neo-realist work “The Children Are Watching Us”; Yasujiro Ozu’s seminal masterpiece “Late Spring” (coupled with Wim Wenders’ heretofore rare 1984 Ozu appreciation “Tokyo-Ga”); and Richard Linklater’s nostalgic cult classic “Dazed and Confused”, just in time for summer break, only solidifies my opinion that when it comes to DVD presentation, and classy material, nobody beats Criterion.
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Winter Olympics: This piece is being written during the second weekend of the Winter Olympics, so for all I know, the concluding days could hold some spectacular feats of athleticism, but from where I’m sitting now, these games have been putting me to sleep. I don’t know what’s more exciting, Women’s Ice Hockey, Men’s Skeleton, Women’s Cross Country Skiing, Men’s Curling, or watching my toe nails grow. What’s great about the Winter Olympics is that it only comes around once every four years, so we only have to put up with dudes in frilly leotards and skating tights for a few weeks every decade, but during those excruciating few weeks, the hype leading up to the games bursts in an uneventful, and terribly slow, marathon of mediocre runs and very brief personal triumphs. Watching the Canadian Men’s Hockey club is fun, they’re stacked with superstars, and there is a certain thrill that comes with watching the Super G (with the great possibility of a horrible crash fulfilling our need for destruction), but too many of the winter sports are laborious, and even the famed freestyle ice skating has seemed less than inspired this year.
It’s kind of shameful to watch these skaters and skiers and secretly hope for a crash or a fall, but there’s something ultimately fatal about an Olympian crashing and burning that makes you that much happier (or less guilty) to be the couch potato that you are, casually flipping around the channels, hoping to catch that rare disaster, and that rare glimpse of Olympic hilarity the cynics just die for. Personally, I could care less about it all, and would have been happy to quit right there at the end of the opening ceremonies, with wild eyed Pavarotti belting out an Italian opera ditty to his unusually large heart’s desire, it would have spared us countless hours of NBC promos, tape delayed Ice Dancing, the collapse of Bode Miller (America’s biggest shill), and Snowboarding, a sport for all I know has been considered Olympic for all of ten minutes (what’s next, Summer Texas Hold ‘Em; sign me up). I may be a cynic, but when the supposedly glorious Olympics is getting beat in the ratings by “American Idol” and “Grey’s Anatomy”, than something is definitely wrong, and barring something as grand as another Miracle on Ice, than this year’s games will amount to total and unabashed futility.
by Adam Suraf