cine + octo = boo

OK Go’s latest video, the second they’ve produced for their song “This Too Shall Pass” sparked this post. My wife was catching up on the goings on around the web this morning at breakfast, and despite having been sent the video 100 times I’d yet to actually watch it. Mind you, I’ve followed the backstory and was totally aware of the motivations behind the move by the band. I’d just neglected to actually sit down and watch the damn thing. It’s good, and I’ve embedded below for those who, like me, were somehow living under a rock all week.

The driving force behind this post was to discuss the band’s deft use of transparency to create viral videos, promote their work, and singlehandedly become a household name through the use of social media and the Interwebs. I’ll get to all of that, because it’s fun. But first, a primer.

Media companies typically wrestle with issues of transparency, and to say that they “don’t get it” is an understatement. There are exceptions to every rule, but most of these exceptions extend from businesses and brands whose core business is closely linked to their consumers and customer support. Before we dive into this, let’s take a look at some of the brands that have successfully jumped onto the transparency wagon in positive and impacting ways.

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Onward with the LOST-pocalypse! The Substitute is spooling up, and here are the rules.

The live blog begins below:

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Tonight, the LOST-pocalypse continues! The episode on deck is What Kate Did. If you haven’t already, give my review of LA X a quick read, then head back over here tonight for the liveblog of What Kate Did. I’ve already gone over the rules, but give them another look when you get a minute.

The live blog begins below:

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LA X isn’t just a season premiere, it’s the beginning of the end. The ride we’ve all been enjoying since 2004 is gearing up for the last gasp, and expectations have been running high. For me, LA X needed to deliver in a way that added both shape and definition to all previous episodes while maintaining the mystery and illusiveness of the series. In some ways, what happened in LA X sets the tone and pacing for the rest of season 6, and prior to viewing I desperately wanted a balance between answering long-standing questions and offering more headscratch-inducing layers of labyrinthine confusion for the remaining 17 episodes. It succeeded.

Many are in this for the answers. They’ve come this far, they want to know what is going on. It’s admirable, but in a sick way that’s not my motivation. The part of LOST that compels me isn’t the promise of answers, although it’s nice to know that those will come in due time. But no, I’m in it for the sense of discovery and mystery. If season 6 were all answers and no journey it would cease to be as interesting and captivating as it has been for seasons past.

When Darlton (that’s Damon and Carlton) announced that time-travel was over with season 5, they opened a can of worms. How do you continue the narrative in a traditional LOST way without some sort of jump through time. We’ll they’ve figured it out. The opening of LA X presents us with a dual narrative — two distinct timelines that reflect two disparate outcomes following the Jughead incident. Let’s break them down.

Bizarro LOST timeline

The episode opens where the conclusion of The Incident left off, Juliet detonates Jughead and a flash of white fills the frame. Only this time we pull away from the white to reveal clouds through the cabin window of Ocean 815. We’re back on the flight that started it all. The implication is that somehow Faraday’s plan worked and that detonating Jughead diffused the pocket of energy at the construction site. What we are now witnessing is what would have happened had the crash never occurred in the first place. Only we’re not exactly. Things are different.

Jack’s hair is longer, Cindy gives him only one bottle of vodka, and Charlie doesn’t push his way down the aisle to the bathroom. Something is, off. Sort of like the title of the episode — there is an intentional space between the “A” and the “X” as if to say, “you’re supposed to notice that something is slightly off here.” These are intentional deviations from the Pilot episode, and we’re meant to take note. We’re not witnessing what would happen if the crash never occurred, we’re witnessing what happens in a timeline where the crash never needed to occur. We’ll discuss this more as the season progresses.

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Wow, it’s been six years. Reading Joshua Heller’s take on the passage of time according to LOST sparked my own reflection, but that is for another post.

Tonight is the premiere of the first of 18 final episodes of LOST, a show I’ve lived and breathed since 2004. The first episode out of the gate is LA X, and I’m going to set about liveblogging the final season. I’ve already gone over the rules, so go pull out your supply of snacks from the recent Dharma supply drop, pour yourself some McCutcheon’s, and get ready to soak in the beginning of the end.

Tonight, LOST-pocalypse begins, and this is where the action will happen. The live blog begins…now:

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Tonight I plan to soak in a show, the Mates of State have returned to SF and will be playing Cafe Du Nord tonight. Fantastic.

But tomorrow? Tomorrow is the beginning of the LOST-pocalypse. So first, a statement of principles regarding LOST season 6, and my intent to liveblog each episode. Yes, you read that correctly. I’m getting back on the horse for this final season, and we may as well go out with a bang.

Alas, I don’t want to ruin anything for anyone, so I’m going about this carefully. You see, it’s not my intent to destroy the bounty for anyone else. In the age of DVR technology, appointment viewing means less and less to many with each growing day, but in the rare case of a serial such as LOST it’s my humble opinion that the show is best consumed and dissected fresh.

Basically, I’m impatient. This is my one exception to the “meh, that’s what a DVR is for,” so take that at face value.

For those uninterested in the immediacy angle, I would like to respect your decision and keep Twitter free of potential spoilers, with a few caveats. So I’m setting up a few tiny promises to help these things along. If we all follow the rules below and re-input the numbers every 108 minutes we should all make it out of this alive.

1. The minute details, revelations, and reactions from this season will be liveblogged, not tweeted. This means revelatory, “ZOMG! Vincent is smokies mom!!” statements will be kept off of Twitter, and instead posted to the liveblog for the hardcore to enjoy in real time. You’re welcome, Bill.
2. Tweets will happen, deal with it. I will use Twitter to inform others of the liveblog. I want to stoke some participation in this wherever possible, and Twitter is good for this purpose. That said, these tweets will be less revealing in nature. An example: “Not sure if the season 6 narrative device is working for me. You? Check out the live blog” or “Oh, Claire…where have you been? Check out the yadda yadda.” The latter is a free pass, as you know Claire has been away, and you know she’s coming back.
3. The liveblog will be spoilerish as all get out, so steer clear until after viewing. Unless, of course, you’d like some of your commentary to appear in my Fanboy Planet recaps and reviews. That’s right, incentivized participation.
4. East Coast viewing is off limits. Even I have limits. I’m staying away from Twitter and any other social media spoil boxes on Tuesdays, specifically during and following the East Coast airings. I’m liveblogging the West Coast feed, so don’t worry.

Simple right? That said, I think it would be fun to go through this final season with an open dialogue, so I hope some of you are interested in partaking/nerding out with me. Until tomorrow then, but tonight I’ll be unraveling “the edge of time, where proofs and postulations rise.”

Or is Darlton playing us like a fiddle?

Quick recap: ABC held a contest called LOST Message in a Bottle in which fans of the show competed to earn a chance to see the first opening minutes of LA X before the rest of the world. The winners received a message in a bottle — a Dharma USB key modeled to look like the one from the Swan station, a congratulatory note, and a more cryptic message comprised of “Nothing’s irreversible” on a piece of paper. On the USB key, the winners found video of the opening sequence, and some have subsequently turned to YouTube in an effort to share with the rest of the LOST community.

But here’s the thing, why would Damon and Carlton agree to this? After months of negotiating with ABC to embargo any and all new footage from appearing in promotional materials, and stating numerous times over that a single frame of new footage would give away what they are doing with Season 6, why would they allow this to happen?

My gut instinct tells me, this is all too easy. Either this footage is a red herring shot and distributed in an effort to throw all of us off, OR it actually is a part of the opening sequence and out of context it’s leading us to believe something that isn’t actually happening.

As always, click over at your own risk as thar be potential spoilers in the tubes of you.

It’s been just shy of a decade since I completed undergraduate studies, and I’ve yet to feel the urge to pursue my Masters. Yet lately, I’ve found myself back in that old routine — pouring over recommended reading, taking notes in lectures, and studying for exams. And all because of a TV show.

Yes, I’ve recently found myself knee deep in LOST University.

What is LOST University you ask? When concocting the final season, which is set to not only wrap up character arcs but answer and address some of the series’ longstanding mysteries, producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof came up with LOST University as a way to prep audiences for the developments to come. Plus, the producers have shied away from giving away any details regarding the upcoming season. So, the additional challenge lies in getting people excited for the new season without spilling the beans on the twists and turns of the final season.

Enter LOST University. The University is a set of courses based on LOST-related curriculum. This isn’t a schlock trivia concept, and the courses don’t focus on island lore — these are bonafide studies in subjects with professors and educators at the helm. But more on this in a minute. First, the setup.

I came a little late to the game, for a couple of reasons. Most blu-ray equipped LOST fanatics had the jump on me, picking up the set when it was released and diving straight into it head first. I’d asked Santa for the set, so I chose to wait it out. Surprisingly, I heard very little regarding the University feature from the usual circles. Odd.

Once the set was mine, I found myself consumed with other priorities. Yes, although I count myself amongst the LOST obsessed, some things do take precedence — like figuring out how to put together my daughter’s new kitchen play set. So when the opportunity arose to fire up ye olde blu-ray and delve into University I did so with earnest, only to be stopped cold in my tracks.

I’ve dragged my heels on connecting my blu-ray player to the Internets after reading about BD-Live fails, like live director’s commentaries for one. I pre-registered months in advance for LOST University, but never realized that the feature would require Internet connectivity to participate. So part of the holdup involved pulling the blu-ray out of the living room, moving it to the bedroom, and hooking it up to my router. Once that was set, I needed to update the player firmware, which took a while.

Once all of that was out of the way, I was ready to dive in. I quickly registered for the first semester, choosing to enroll in History 101: Ancient Writing on the Wall, Physics 101: Introductory Physics of Time Travel, and Philosophy 101: I’m LOST, Therefore I Am. In order to move onto the second semester, attendees must earn a total of 21 credits.

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The excellent music team at Current has a new special out called Embedded. The concept is simple: send a small two-person crew out to spend some all-access time with a band, get the story no one else is willing to tell, and make it available to the masses. Each episode focuses on one artist, and also includes shorter segments like “Tour Stop” (in which the crew spends a day with an artist in a town while on tour, typically the day of a show), “Soundboard” (short video mini-reviews from music bloggers and critics around the web), and “Impromptu” (segments shot in partnership with La Blogotheque). I absolutely cannot wait to see the final episode, a week spent with The Decemberists prior to embarking on their “A Short Fazed Hovel Tour.”

For now, please to enjoy two “Impromptu” clips:

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LOST
ep.0505 – This Place is Death

Since the first day Rousseau pointed a rifle at the losties of Oceanic 815, her backstory has taunted us. Finally, FINALLY we get the juicy bits we’ve all craved so much. The sickness. Montand’s arm. And Jin? With timejump flashes wreaking havoc on our dear losties, it makes sense (in a LOST sort of way) that Jin might find himself displaced in time, but this raises all sorts of questions about time and those pesky little things called paradoxes.

Case in point, when Danielle’s scientific team decides to explore the tunnel below the hieroglyph adorned temple, Jin senses danger and implores her to remain with him above ground. Later, Jin witnesses as Danielle murders her husband, believing that he has become infected by smoky. This certainly fits with the story present-day Danielle has told Sayid (and others). We know that the fate of Danielle and her team is a direct result of her decision to stay above ground. The question is, was Jin always the reason she decided to stay above ground in this crucial moment? Did she have any recollection of Jin in the present timeline?

“You’ll find it at the well.”

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