Monday, March 31, 2008

Lostpedia: Where 'Lost' Addicts Go to Die...

Ok, it's no secret that I'm a huge Lost fan and since it's gone off the air last week I've been reeling with Lost withdrawal. So, one way for me to deal with this lack of Lost is by posting my favorite blog sites for Lost. Most of you probably don't care, but for the die hards you might find some that you'll enjoy.

1. Lostpedia. This is the ultimate Lost website. It's designed in a Wikipedia format so you can search pretty much anything that your heart desires. Be careful, however, it's easy to spend hours on this website. Here's a post from the last episode dealing with just that episode's cultural references:

  • Kurt Vonnegut: The author of Slaughterhouse Five is mentioned as an answer on the game show Michael is watching. (Literary works)
  • The Shining: Minkowski remarks that Michael reminds him of the main character from this 1980 horror film directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on Stephen King's novel of the same name. (Movies and TV)
  • Star Wars: Before he is shot, Karl says, "I've got a bad feeling about this." This is a line that is spoken in every episode of Star Wars. (Movies and TV)
  • Cass Elliot: The song playing in the car when Michael tries to kill himself is "It's Getting Better" by Cass Elliot, who also recorded "Make Your Own Kind of Music." (Music)
  • The Hotel Earle: This is the former name of the Washington Square Hotel. [1]
    • In the 1991 Coen Brothers film Barton Fink, this is the name of a fictional hotel, which is a metaphysical manifestation of hell for an awkward, isolated New York City writer. (Movies and TV)
  • Star Trek: The second sneak peek for this episode featured the "red alert" sound effect from Star Trek: The Next Generation as the freighter's alarm. This was altered for the broadcast version. (Movies and TV)
  • Hinduism: When we see Ben talk to Michael on the radio, at the beginning of the shot there is a statue of a Hindu deity in the foreground. (Religion and Ideologies)
  • The Great Escape: Michael throwing on the ball against the wall references Hilts doing the same whilst in the cooler in The Great Escape.
2. Doc Jensen: EW.com. Here you'll find one of my favorite Lost experts who gives thoughtful and almost touching analysis to the Lost world:

They never made it to Albuquerque in the flash-forward future (at least, not yet), but Jin and Sun landed somewhere deeper in last night's moving, deviously tricky installment of Lost. Back on point after last week's subpar Juliet-centric episode, ''Ji-Yeon'' had me dabbing my eyes repeatedly. You're always going to get me watery with a story about the sometimes perilous road of bringing new life into the world; it's a personal thing, and Lost tapped it well enough, so there you go: I'm sold. Even better, I loved how this story, unexpectedly, dealt with resolving Sun's sin against her husband — her infidelity with Jae — yet also completed Jin's redemptive reconstruction into a husband worthy of his wife's faithfulness. I'm not sure if Jin really is destined for death, as the final moments of the show seemed to suggest, but in many ways the episode felt like a valedictory for the character....More.

3. J. Wood: PowellsBooks.blog. This blog is over-the-top amazing, even if most of it is over my head. If you want analysis so deep that you'll need a dictionary and wikipedia close at hand just to understand it, then this is your blog. Here's an excerpt:

The theme of the number (our constant?) is reflected in the very architecture of the episode, making "The Constant" possibly the most intricately structured episode of Lost to date. This kind of thematic structuring is what classical and Renaissance artists and architects did when they took classical ratios and had them reflected at the macro and micro levels of the work to create intrinsic harmony and resonance. The eight idea resonates throughout the episode in theme, structure, symbolism. This is not to say that the episode was designed as carefully as suggested above, but at this point many of the themes have already been established and are now being recuperated while questions are answered. If all the thematic pieces were designed to fit together, the writers may not need to over-plan an episode, because the structure is implicit....More.

4. Lost Screencaps and Easter Eggs. This little website takes HD stills of important shots that you probably missed on initial viewing. I'm always amazed when I check it out because I realize how much I overlooked. For example:



A glimpse of Alvar Hanso (founder of the Hanso foundation) next to Michael in a hospital bed. Hanso is Danish for 'his island.'


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the good word on J. Wood's posts over at Powell's.

All the best,
G.K. Darby
publisher of J. Wood's Living Lost
www.gcpress.com

JedBoy said...

G.K. Darby - No, thank you. And thanks for reading.

Dr Mum said...

Hans O Alven was a nobel prize winner working in a field called plasma physics which relates strongly to the phenomena on Lost island.
This series is just clues reiterated.
I suppose everyone loves their own theory best but I am going with the island being a 4d chessboard on which roles are played out.
See Checkmate Shall we make it the best of 7? on Dark Ufo Theories for more.

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