Lost (spoilers)

[cron]

i like your wallpaper , mogs. very scandinavian .

[MacGuffin]

New Trailer

[MacGuffin]

Lindelof: No Lost Movie

Damon Lindelof, co-creator and co-executive producer of ABC's Lost, told reporters that there will not be a feature film based on the show. Or, he hastened to add, it won't happen on his watch.

"The answer is no," Lindelof said in a Dec. 2 online roundtable with journalists while promoting the upcoming season-four DVD set and year five of the hit ABC show. "At least not by us. We've always felt that the show should definitively end the same place it started ... on television."

A film, Lindelof argued, would be unfair to those devoted viewers expecting to see story threads--What's up with that island? What is the fate of the Oceanic Six? And everyone else?--resolved by the time the series ends in 2010, following the last episode of its sixth season.

"To bring our characters to some sort of cliffhanger," Lindelof explained, "where the audience gets none of the answers that they really care about, and then say, 'Now give us 10 bucks. Buy some popcorn, and we'll give you the rest!' [That] would pretty much be the worst thing ever."

Lost returns for its fifth season on Jan. 21, 2009, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

[MacGuffin]

Sneek Peek scene:

[SiliasRuby]

kickass shit!!!!

[picolas]

the squinty, untrustworthy guy stole the scene.

[MacGuffin]

Lost Season Five Will Change Things

ABC's Lost, unlike most television series, actually tries to jump the shark, producers said. Shorter seasons mean faster-paced stories with no so-called "stalling." And audience reaction will not--and cannot--affect most episodes in the upcoming fifth season of the SF show.

Those were a few more of the season-five-centric spoilers dropped by executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse on Dec. 2 in an online roundtable in support of the Dec. 9 release of Lost: The Complete Fourth Season on DVD and Blu-ray.

Following are excerpts from part two of the conversation with Lindelof and Cuse.

It seems that next season will have A-stories set in two time frames. Does this mean you have to outline stories in advance in ways you never did before?

Cartlon Cuse: Our approach to the storytelling changed drastically once we were able to negotiate an end date to the show. Before that we didn't know if the mythology had to last two seasons or seven seasons. Once we knew there were only going to be 48 episodes of the show left, we were able to start charting out the remaining journey. We approach it on three levels. First, we have discussions about the uber-mythology and plant the big landmark events in rough locations. Then, at the end of each season, we have a writer's mini-camp where we discuss the arc of the upcoming season in great detail. Then we break each individual episode and see where we end up at the end of each break. We give ourselves a fair amount of latitude to listen to the show and react--writing more or less for various characters or situations depending on how they play.

By having shorter seasons now, do you feel the storytelling has become much easier, or do you feel regret and often go, "Man, it would be great to have three more episodes?"

Damon Lindelof: The storytelling has never been easy, but we've always felt that "less is more." The complaint that we got most often in the first couple seasons of the show is that we were not moving the story forward fast enough--"stalling"--which, unfortunately, is a necessary tactic when you're doing 25 episodes a year. The truth is that we actually liked those episodes low on incident--Claire sends a message on a bird, anyone? But the show is much more fun to write when we can just power through and give you guys a hearty meal as opposed to a zillion little courses that never quite get you full.

We hear a lot of shows accused of jumping the shark. Is it even possible for a show as time-bending and surprise-laden as Lost to jump the shark? In other words, how often do you guys say, "Hmm, that's going too far?"

Cuse: We actually try and jump the shark all the time. The last thing we want to do is feel like the show is falling into a tired paradigm. In fact, this season we start out with a new narrative approach. Not the now traditional flashbacks or flash-forwards. We always are trying to keep the storytelling surprising.

Now that you are nearly finished with writing season five, how does it feel to know you are so close to the home stretch in this odyssey? Has it brought out reflections or feelings you didn't expected either personally about the process or towards the storyline?

Cuse: I think all of us who work on the show know what a special experience it is. Our ability to negotiate an end date to the show so far in advance was, I believe, unprecedented in network TV. It has given us a real sense of what the journey is going to be. Normally when you work on a TV show you never know when it is going to end. You're just trying to survive season to season until the proverbial horse drops out from underneath you. We're not quite far enough along yet to start to wax nostalgic, but I think we all recognize that we've had a chance to do something really extraordinary. I was watching all the bonus features (on the season-four DVD) and thinking about the special alchemy of Lost. You can do your best as a storyteller, but on TV you also need a great cast, crew, directors, composer, etc. You really see on those features what a collaborative art form it is. We are truly blessed that this assembly of talent came together for this project. The journey of making a show over six years and the hours it takes really makes you a family, and we're about as happy and as functional a TV family as I've ever seen or worked with.

Nikki and Paolo did not strike a chord with the audience and were killed off. How do you draw a line between making the audience happy and telling the story you set out to tell?

Cuse: It's now kind of a moot point. Moving forward, it will be virtually impossible for us to adjust in-season to audience feedback. By the time the show premieres on Jan. 21, we will have written 14 of the 17 hours and probably will be deep into the specific scene plotting for the finale. This season we're going to be completely relying on our own instincts and judgments, combined with the feedback of our collaborators here on the show and at the studio and network.

Do you feel that the various viral campaigns that have been tied to the show are essential for understanding the mythology? Is there a risk of losing more casual viewers who can't keep track of the complex mythology?

Cuse: We consider the viral campaigns to just be additive and non-essential. Our rule of thumb is you should not need to watch anything but the mothership, the network show, to have a complete understanding--or at least as much as that is possible--of the show.

[MacGuffin]

New Clip:

[MacGuffin]

New Promo:

[Kal]

Less than a month to go...

[Kal]

So the excitement got to me and for the past two nights I re-watched the last 3 final episodes of Season 4, in preparation for the new season. Two problems: One, I should have watched the entire season from the beginning. Two, I should have done it closer to the date because now I have the fucking anxiety for this all over again!

[MacGuffin]

'Lost'
Time travel? Rescue? Expect the creative forces to keep viewers on a roller coaster during the penultimate season.
By Maria Elena Fernandez; Los Angeles Times

It's been eight months since the island moved us. Yes, we know that's not island time -- because we also know that we have no idea what island time is.

What we do know is that we, the " Lost" couch potato castaways, saw Ben turn the wheel hidden in a room below the unfamiliar Dharma Orchid Station, the sky white out, and the island vanish. All of this culminated a time-traveling, Emmy-nominated season of past and future stories that split up the "Lost" tribe -- rescuing some people after 108 days, leaving some to linger on the island, and killing others.

If none of the above makes sense to you, yes, it's too late to pick "Lost" up now. That's what DVDs are for.

For four seasons, viewers have flashed back and forward through a maze of puzzles. When the penultimate season of the ABC hit premieres on Jan. 21, executive producers promise that answers will come our way, but it might take fans a moment to notice -- because the fifth season takes viewers on yet another narrative roller coaster.

"Although the show occupies the same world, we're always driven not by rules but by what is the best way to tell stories in any given season," executive producer Carlton Cuse said. "Viewers will have to adjust to a little bit of a different mode this year, but we think that in that challenge also is the excitment that keeps 'Lost' fresh."

First, we got to know our castaways through flashbacks of events that happened before Oceanic Flight 815 crashed in the South Pacific on Sept. 22, 2004. Then, viewers caught glimpses of them in the future, a future that revealed that some of them were rescued. The groundbreaking storytelling then took another turn when viewers became privy to future events that predated the future they'd already seen.

This season, the flashbacks and flashforwards will still exist, but another storytelling approach will dominate. And in classic "Lost" tradition, the producers won't explain what they're doing ahead of time.

"We're really happy with the scripts that we're writing, but at the same time, there's this complete sense of fear and second-guessing in terms of whether or not the audience is going to groove on what we're doing," co-creator and executive producer Damon Lindelof said. "The show is taking on a new model in terms of the way we tell stories and finding a balance between what's happening off the island and on the island. Are the characters having an emotional experience no matter how crazy it is? That's the part we're focused on."

The first seven episodes will focus on the aftermath of Ben's (Michael Emerson) pronouncement to Jack ( Matthew Fox) in the last scene of last season that the Oceanic 6 must all return to the island, including Locke (Terry O'Quinn), who has died. Jack's challenge is to enlist the rescued castaways to go back, but that will prove tricky since he and Kate (Evangeline Lily) have broken up; Sayid (Naveen Andrews) is trotting the globe, killing people for Ben with Hurley (Jorge Garcia) in his custody; and Sun (Yunjin Kim) has gone rogue.

Viewers also will see what's happened to Penny (Sonya Walger) and Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) after she rescued him and learn how Locke left the island and later died. The story of Walt (Malcolm David Kelley), who left the island two seasons ago, will continue, though his father, Michael (Harold Perrineau), died attempting to return to the island in the season finale. Sawyer (Josh Holloway), Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) and Charlotte (Rebecca Mader) survive on the island.

"The conventional thinking might be that we're going to spend the entire season telling the story of how and if these charcters are able to make it back to the island," Lindelof said. "That's not what we're doing. Not by any stretch of the imagination."

Since death on "Lost" is a relative term, as Cuse likes to say, fans can expect to see more of Jin ( Daniel Dae Kim) whether he survived the freighter explosion or not; the mysterious Christian Shephard (John Terry), whose death caused his son, Jack, to be on the doomed airliner; and Rousseau (Mira Furlan), who was shot to death. The ageless Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell) will pop up again. Although fans do not know what happened to Claire (Emilie de Ravin) -- the actress does not have a regular role this season, mind you -- she will appear during the season.

For that matter, so will Vincent the dog, the only character the producers have committed to keeping alive for the entire run of the series.

[MacGuffin]

A 'Lost' season of time shifting, Sawyer ahead

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. – The producers of "Lost" say the new season will emphasize time shifting along with Sawyer, the repentant con man played by Josh Holloway.

"Lost" executive producer Carlton Cuse says navigating between the past, present and future is a challenge but the potential for exciting storytelling makes it worthwhile.

Cuse and fellow executive producer Damon Lindelof told a meeting of the Television Critics Association Friday that the character of Sawyer has a lot to do this season — and viewers will see a lot of him from the start.

Cuse says there's even something in the show for people who aren't huge time travel fans. The first episode features a shirtless Sawyer.

The fifth season of "Lost" opens with a two-hour episode 9 p.m. EST Wednesday, Jan. 21, on ABC.

[MacGuffin]

Breaking News: 'LOST' PRODUCERS TALK ABOUT TIME TRAVEL IN SEASON 5
Plus more on that four-toed statue as the series begins Season 5 on January 21

THE SKINNY: While speaking from ABC's Winter TCA session today, LOST executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse teased about what to expect during their fifth season which debuts January 21.

"Part of what we hope to give the audience this year is some greater sense of the island's history, starting and stopping, and what is that four-toed statue?" says Cuse who notes time travel will play a huge part of the season as well. "When we introduced [the statue], it was to sort of show that the history of the island was a long one and that statue was built a long time ago and people have been on that island. What this season will explore, as they're skipping through time, we'll learn more about what happened to the island in the past."

The producers also talked again about setting an end date for LOST, so they could wrap the stories up properly.

"We got to the point in Season 3 where the show had reached that point where it was treading into an area of complete and utter suckiness and we had a decision to make – 'is it going to have an end date or get cancelled?'" says Lindeloff. "It simply couldn't go on the way it was. The story we would be telling, if we didn't have an end date, [would have resulted in] someone being up  here talking about LOST. All these ideas, flash forwards, and entering into the end game of our story, the significant amount of time travel story, was part of our plan. We couldn't do any of that, until we worked toward an end point."

For Cuse, he feels that the mystery has been a big part of the show for longtime viewers, but being able to pay that off slowly has also been part of the fun of working on LOST.

"The show is ultimately a mystery show and the viewers are engaged by the mystery," says Cuse. "I think one of the things, moving into the fifth season, we always said two things would become more apparent as you watched. It doesn't reduce things down to one simple thesis statement. You don't know enough to theorize how it's going to conclude. You don't have enough information. I think it's fair in that sense. The people who like LOST the most, appreciate the journey, not the destination, and that's how we hope viewers will approach the show."


'LOST'S' JIN WILL BE A REGULAR IN SEASON 5, WHILE CLAIRE WILL SHOW UP IN SEASON 6
The executive producers say her story is not over yet

THE SKINNY: While speaking from ABC's Winter TCA session today, LOST executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse teased about the future of the characters of Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and Claire (Emily de Ravin) on the long-running show.

"You will definitely see Jin this season," says Cuse. "We're not saying Jin is currently alive after the explosion of the freighter. Since we're telling stories both in the past, present and future, we just won't tell you when it's occurring. Claire is not a series regular this year and her story is not over. You'll see more of her in season 6. "

[ElPandaRoyal]

Just... start... already...