BuzzSugar

If Lost Had a Theme Song, What Would It Sound Like?

BuzzSugar — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:30:16 -0700

If you can answer this question using a guitar or piano or your voice, the Lost peeps want to hear from you. Some might say that Lost already has some sort of theme music: that spooky warpy sound that we hear when the title comes up in the beginning of each episode. But Lost producers want a real song - and they want it to come from the show's biggest fans. Here's more:

The Lost producers want all you musicians out there to compose and submit a Lost theme song. The winning entry will be premiered to 7,000 screaming fans in Hall H during Lost's Saturday panel at San Diego Comic-Con.

So, basically what the winner gets is just bragging rights and some attention from Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, but in the world of Lost fandom, that's pretty dang cool. And having experienced the sweet lovefest that goes on between the Lost producers and fans during the panel at Comic-Con, I think it's a very adorable and special addition for this year's throng of Lostheads.

Think you could come up with a kickass theme song for the show?

Hey Lostheads: Name the Final Scene of This Season!

BuzzSugar — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:30:39 -0700

In every season of Lost, there's a code name given to the final moment of the season finale. Some have made perfect sense while others ("Bagel"?) . . . not as much. This year, the show's executive producers, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, are asking fans to nickname the final scene of season five.

TV Guide notes, "In seasons past, that head-scratcher has been dubbed 'Bagel' (Walt is abducted by the Others!), 'Challah' (Penny's research team locates the island!), 'The Rattlesnake in the Mailbox' (Jack is flashing forward!) and 'Frozen Donkey Wheel' (which, quite literally, Ben rotated)." We don't know for sure what the season finale will be about, so there's some guesswork involved in thinking up a code name for this final moment. There is a (possibly spoilery) clue in that TV Guide post, however, if you want a jumping-off point.

Ideas can be submitted here, and the producers' pick will be announced during ABC's weekly Lost podcast on March 26. Thinking caps: Activate!

Peek Into the 5th Season of Lost, Thanks to Ajira Airways

Molly — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:30:00 -0800

Note: I was the representative Lost fan at the show's panel in LA at TCA. Here's a bit of what to look forward to at the beginning of this season.

The fifth season of Lost kicks off tonight with the first two episodes and while we were down at the TCAs in LA last week, we got to see the third one as well. The first two are good, don't get me wrong, but episode three had the whole room gasping. Full sections of my notes look a bit like, "OMG, this hurts my mind grapes." Needless to say, Lost fans should be super excited. All the promo photos emphasize the dual nature of this season - some will be in the outside world, as evidenced by the cityscape, and some will be back on the island.

While the cast of the show is still filming on location, executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof were there to tenderly step around reporters' questions without revealing too much of what's to come. The lunch panel was brought to us by Ajira Airways, though the exec producers were careful not to enlighten us with its meaning. If you want to see a few tidbits from the panel as well as a little of what to expect from the first three episodes just read more.

While Cuse and Lindelof admitted that this season deals with an awful lot of time travel, they said that Sawyer is shirtless for the entire first episode as consolation to those who are not fans. In fact, they referred to this as the "Season of Sawyer." Um, yay.
Daniel Dae Kim does have a contract to appear in episodes this season. Emilie de Ravin does not, but will return at some point before the series finale.
Early on in the season, expect to see some sudden deaths. That's all on that.
There was a lot of talk about Richard Alpert's possible over-application of eye makeup. According to Cuse and Lindelof, they had the same initial reaction but he is not wearing any eye liner, mascara, or eye makeup. Ha.
Overall, the producers were incredibly thankful that ABC execs let them set an end date to the series so they will be able to tell their full story.
On risky plotlines Lindelof said, "I think we’ve become fairly masochistic in our writing. You say fraught with peril like it’s a bad thing…[we say,] let’s do it. That’s what keeps the show exciting. The show has been a time travel show for the past four years…as season five unfolds it will be apparent that time travel has been in the DNA of that show.
We are going to learn a lot about the history of the island, including about that four-toed statue.
Don't worry about the recession affecting Lost - Cuse and Lindelof assured everyone that while they may look closer at their spending, don't expect the show to tone down on the stunts.

It's just a few hours away at this point. Get ready for time travel, mind blowing moments and, well, sexy shirtless Sawyer. Lucky us, who is excited?

Check It: Season Five Preview For Lost

BuzzSugar — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:30:59 -0700

Here we go: a preview for the next season of Lost, which starts up in February 2009. The first part of the preview is a montage of certain plot points we've learned in the past, setting us up for some new footage we can look forward to in season five. After the fourth season with all the Oceanic Six stuff, the next season appears to deal with those six going back to the island:

Jack: "Everyone we left behind, they'd die too if I didn't come back."
Ben: "Well, thank God for second chances."

Want to check out the video and chat about it? Just read more.

EW's Television Visionaries Talk Sci-Fi and Pies

BuzzSugar — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 05:30:36 -0700

Yesterday, I told you about the rowdy panel of filmmaking greats I attended at Comic-Con. Today, I've got some notes from the television "Visionaries" event, which brought together showrunners Josh Schwartz (Chuck and Gossip Girl), Josh Friedman (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (Lost), and Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies). Here are just a few of the highlights:

A running joke throughout the panel was teasing Josh Schwartz about Gossip Girl in any way possible. At one point, when the show came up in a question, he said he thought that mentioning it was "a little verboten at Comic-Con," which led the - considerable! - GG fans in the audience to make their presence known. Later, in response to a question about so-called "genre" shows getting lots of buzz over the past few years, Schwartz quipped: "Serena is now a cyborg."
On a related note, plenty of people (rightly) saw the Q&A portion of this panel as their best chance to ask questions of the Lost producers before the mad crush of the Lost-specific event the next day, prompting one panelist (I unfortunately couldn't see which one, as I was on the other side of the huge line) to point at the questioners and count them down, saying, "Lost, Lost, Lost, Piemaker, Piemaker, Lost . . . [mooney voice] Gossip Girl!"
Bryan Fuller is just a big bundle of cotton candy and flowers and goodness. Some various quotes summing up the sweetness: "I am a very sensitive soul. I couldn't do a series like CSI or Criminal Minds where you have to be in a negative headspace all the time. I just wanted to cram a show with as many things that make me smile as possible, like puppies and pie." And, later, "I think we need more awe."
Also, why is the piemaker not, say, a cake baker? "Cake is dry," Fuller said.

To find out which of these guys likes Project Runway, just read more.

Poor Josh Friedman was the most overlooked member of the panel, but he acquitted himself well whenever a question did come his way, showing a good sense of humor about the whole thing. My favorite line from him: "I don't think Terminator works in movie form. I think it's either TV or musical."
Friedman also told the story of casting Brian Austin Green the night before his character was scheduled to make his first appearance. At first, Friedman said, he just assumed the audition was going to be awful. But as soon as Green walked into the room, he had a very different reaction: "When did you get to be so hot?"
Could there actually be too many shows with sci-fi elements on TV these days? "The greatest thing that could ever be uttered in the halls of the networks is 'We have too many shows about time travel,'" Lindelof said.

One of the biggest laughs of the session: Cuse, Lindelof, and Schwartz talking about the Chuck episode where Chuck reveals that he might know the whereabouts of Oceanic Flight 815. What was Schwartz trying to establish by having Chuck mention Lost? "Lost is a TV show," he said, "and Chuck is real."
At the end of the session, someone asked what shows the panelists watched. They mostly cited each other's shows - until Fuller admitted to really liking Project Runway.

Lost Producers Say Seasons Five and Six Will Be Rewarding

BuzzSugar — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 12:43:26 -0700

I'd expected the Lost panel here at Comic-Con to be as intense, fan-wise, as the Heroes one was, and there were certainly lots of fans in the audience, but the whole vibe of the thing was a little different - totally playful and fun. Executive producers/writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse sat onstage fielding questions from the audience and giving out gifts to each person who asked a question. The gifts were chosen based on what the topic was that the fan was asking about, so for example, a young man who looked a lot like Hurley was awarded a large tub of Dharma-issued ranch dressing. The producers also claimed that Dharma was sponsoring the panel here at Comic-Con.

They also chose a few of the people who took the tests at the Dharma recruitment booths on the exhibit floor to come onstage and then leave with a Dharma recruitment guy, Hans von Egan. They gave one of these chosen people a camera with which to "secretly" capture what went on when Egan took the group to a booth where they were shown a scratchy Dharma video of Marvin Candle who revealed that his real name is Pierre Cheng. In the video (which Cheng said was filmed 30 years ago), there was a screaming baby in the background until Cheng instructed someone to take the baby away. He implored the viewer to "complete the research." He said the Dharma Initiative "must be reconstituted" and he mentioned Einstein's field equations.

His most clear message was this: "Time is not just of the essence, it is the essence." In typical Lost form, the person running the camera eventually said that making the video was pointless, and the footage cut out as Cheng protested that they should keep taping.

So, there was that. From all the fan questions, we got a few more tidbits, though nothing too juicy. There was also no real footage to show, of course, since they haven't started shooting yet. Still, it was so much fun to be in a room full of Lost nerds who got every reference and insider joke. To see some of the little things we learned from the panel, read more.

The producers said Jin would still be on the show in some form, with Carlton Cuse adding, "Death is a relative term, really."
Cuse's favorite episode so far has been "The Constant." (I then wanted someone to ask the men who their constants are, but nobody did.) Both producers say the last season, season four, was their favorite season of them all, and promised that in seasons five and six the show would just keep getting better and better. "You guys never lost faith in the show," Damon Lindelof remarked. "You will be rewarded for hanging on all the way to the end of season six."
In addition to flashbacks and flash-forwards, they're going to do something "completely different, to mix it up."
Though they said they wanted to avoid using the word "flashbacks," they promised that we will see Rousseau's story.
Vincent the dog will be in season five.
Cuse, in particular, expressed his continued interest in the Kate-Jack-Sawyer love triangle, and said we'll see more about the triangle in the coming seasons.
They acknowledged that it's pretty silly that Daniel Faraday still hasn't taken off his skinny tie, but now it's kinda become a thing. They even gave out one of the ties that the actor wore on the show as a gift for someone who asked a question about Faraday.
Lindelof promised: "When season five starts, you're not going to know when or where you are." They are going to play (even more) with different places and periods of time.
One woman asked how old Richard Alpert really is, and how many toes he has. The producers just said "very old" and that we'll "see him barefoot in the very near future - and that's pun intended, 'near future.'"

Cryptic as always, but pretty fun, too.

The Lost Book Club: Read the Books Referenced in the Show

BuzzSugar — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:38:19 -0700

Do you miss Lost? Are you jonesing for a new book club (perhaps you've already read my book club selection for this month)? Are you slightly obsessed with any scene in the show that includes Sawyer reading? (Or is that just me?) Well, ABC is offering one solution to the no-Lost-'til-January-2009 blues: a Lost-themed online book club.

As ABC explains it, the book club section of Lost's official website will feature a list of "the books that have been either seen or referenced throughout the dynamic four seasons" of the show, and will include "a message board to discuss the titles, a synopsis of each book, along with when and how it was referenced in the show, and an introduction by co-creator/executive producer Damon Lindelof and executive producer Carlton Cuse."

There are many titles I've never noticed in the show, though I definitely recognize some of them. Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, for example, has been clearly referenced in Desmond's storyline, with all the weird time stuff he experiences. Others have been used as titles for specific episodes, like Stranger in a Strange Land and The Shape of Things to Come. Oh, and of course I'll always remember Sawyer reading Are You There God? It's Me Margaret on the beach.

Sawyer + Judy Blume? That is my kinda beach day.

Anyway, click here to start checking out the Lost book club for yourself!

Lost Fans: Is Michael's Plotline a Racial Issue?

BuzzSugar — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:27:09 -0700

Since I know some of you may not have watched the season finale of Lost (or this season of Lost in general, perhaps), I'm going to start this discussion about Michael's story arc after the jump.

To see why Harold Perrineau (who plays Michael on the show) called his plotline "disappointing" and tell me if you agree or disagree, read more.

If you've seen the season finale of Lost, you know that Michael appears (since things are rarely as they seem on this show) to meet his untimely demise when the boat explodes, with Michael and Jin still on it. Perrineau recently told Entertainment Weekly why he's "disappointed" - but "not bitter" - about Michael's death and how it's handled on the show. Here are some highlights from the EW interview:

Perrineau: I thought it was really significant when Michael dropped those people off with the Others; I thought he was going to have something just as significant when he came back. I was disappointed that he didn’t. He didn’t get to make amends with those people.
EW: You were quoted as saying that the loss of Michael meant that Walt "winds up being another fatherless child, [and] it plays into a really big, weird stereotype." Did you voice that concern to the producers?
Perrineau: There’s not been any conversation about that. That was just my point of view in an interview. This is nothing that I’ve ever talked to the writers about, or I think is necessarily anything I should talk to them about. Their job is to make the story work. My feelings about the social implications are my feelings.
Perrineau: It's just an observation. Michael's a black character and I’m a black person, so I have feelings based on it. I can’t really separate those two things - my race and my country and all that stuff. . . . I accept that this is what [the producers] need to happen for something else to happen later.
EW: If you had known that this was going to be the story line, would you have come back?
Perrineau: If I had known, I think I would have asked if I could have a conversation about it. . . They are brilliant guys. They have a fantastic show. The show’s been great since we’ve been on it; it’s going to be great when I’m not on it. They know exactly what they’re doing, so I don’t question that.
EW: How would you have liked Michael’s story to have played out?
Perrineau: I didn't think he got to redeem himself especially to the people who I feel like he wronged. I wanted Michael to go back and do something for them so that they felt like he really put out and that he did something to satisfy his own guilt and their anger. . . I wish Michael would have gotten to be the father that he had always wanted to be, because he’s a good dude.

This seems like a totally valid observation to me, and Perrineau is voicing it in a very careful manner. I'm not convinced that this is a racial issue, though as he points out, it's hard for him to not see it in that light. What do you think? Were the writers irresponsible for not considering these points before writing Michael's story?

And in other news about Perrineau, he will apparently stay within the ABC family as he has been cast in one of the network's pilots, The Unusuals, a dramedy set in an NYC police precinct.

Lost Producers Answer Questions From the Lost Cast

BuzzSugar — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:29:13 -0800

If you think you're befuddled about all the many mysteries and puzzles presented in Lost, try being a cast member of the show! In the latest issue of TV Guide, the main cast members get to ask showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof their burning questions about the show, and it's interesting to see what each actor is most curious to know about.

I figured the actors would ask questions specific to their own characters, but this isn't always the case. Some of them are just generally interested in the same questions we ask each other here in the Lost posts every week. For example, Yunjin Kim, who plays Sun, asks a question about the Oceanic Six that's been front and center in my own mind. Of course, Cuse and Lindelof deflect the really pressing questions, but still, there are some gems of information in this article. Also, one of the ways they deflect is by telling us in which episodes we'll get certain answers (the March 20th episode will bring us answers about Michael, for example).

To see a few of the questions and answers from Cuse and Lindelof that I found most intriguing, read more.

Jorge Garcia (Hurley) asks if Ben is in the coffin that Jack sees when he attends the funeral in the flash forward. Of course, we don't get an answer to this question besides "Before the end of the year, you will know who's in the coffin."
Yunjin Kim (Sun) asks my burning question: "Is Aaron actually one of the Oceanic 6?" to which we get another non-answer, but the assurance that "Who the actual six are is very much in play through the end of the [March 13th] episode. We'll confirm or deny after that."
Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond): "It's 2004 on the boat. What year is it in Penny's world? What year is it when the Oceanic 6 get home?" There's more avoidance with this answer, though Carlton Cuse mentions, "There are some growth issues when you go on or off the island. But I can't say more about that."
According to Damon Lindelof, in response to a question posed by Josh Holloway (Sawyer), "we haven't seen the last of Sawyer and Kate this season. Not by a long shot."
And here's my favorite gem: Henry Ian Cusick asks, "Did Jack's flash-forward in the third-season finale take place after the events of Sayid's most-recent episode?"
Cuse and Lindelof: "Yes."

For more from the producers/cast Q&A - including Holloway's request for a damn haircut - click here.

The Lost Season 4 Preview Is Here!

BuzzSugar — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:34:05 -0800

Well, we still have to wait until February to launch into the fourth season of Lost, but today we at least have something to whet our appetites.

This 30-second preview isn't particularly extensive, but there are definitely some intriguing glimpses. There are some vague references to the Losties getting saved and a highly dramatic assertion from Ben that everyone on the island "will be killed," and then a series of images flash quickly on the screen. Some of these are extremely interesting, such as a glimpse of Charlie (probably a flashback, but still), and a shot of a knife sticking out of someone's back.

Man, I can't wait for this show to come back. To check out the Season Four preview and tell me what you think, read more.