The Rabbit Hole

( There are no spoilers here, just some musings on what I got from the show over its run. )

As touching as the finale was, I'm not really all that sad for LOST to be over. I mean, I'll miss the fun of watching it, of being constantly on the edge of going crazy trying to work things out, and I think I'll never love some of the actors in it in anything else they do. But the show itself needs to retire, gracefully--something I think the finale will help. It's not LOST's fault that it got over-exposed in its last season, that it was so popular that there were, I shit thee not, about five covers on Entertainment Weekly alone devoted to tales of the last days and episodes of LOST. They worked hard to build their audience, to respect their creation as much as exploit it, and they deserve some measure of popularity. If pop culture is a waste zone in this depressed time, it makes sense that LOST would be everywhere.

Doesn't mean I'm unreasonable when I say I'm tired of it, though. I'm happy to geek out about the finale with folks for a while, but I'm most looking forward to that point, in a month or so, when the distractions of summer and what-not put LOST on the back burner indefinitely. I can only hope that what people learn about this show is not that it needs to be extended (no spin-offs, please), copied (Flash Forward has shown how poorly the imitations are received), or prolonged in the pop cultural memory. I hope, instead, what they see is a show that thrived on trusting its audience to follow it and benefitted from breaking the mold, not re-inventing it. If the most studios learn from LOST is to grant creators of popular shows the ability to call the show off when it needs to be done, I'll be happy.

So long, LOST. It's been a long, strange road, and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

(Note: there may be spoilers in comments!)

moonlightalice: I love that Kenneth Branagh as a director basically creates Kenneth Branagh Mary Sues. Thor looks just like him. Also, hi.
trinityvixen: hi! he does! totally! For those times when he can't play the hero, he substitutes his doppleganger.
moonlightalice: What a self-absorbed weirdo. I'm surprised he didn't insist on casting himself to begin with
trinityvixen: I'm surprised he cast anyone BUT him as Odin. It would have been better than casting Anthony Hopkins, though. As blowhard-y as Branaugh is, he does still try. Anthony Hopkins got an Oscar and gave up on acting.
moonlightalice: He doesn't NEED to try anymore. You're lucky he even shows up to film things. He put in his time as a real actor. I mean, it's not like he's doing commercials coughShatnercough He has some dignity left.
trinityvixen: NO ONE would hire Anthony Hopkins for commericals. People would cross the street rather than buy their products.
moonlightalice: If Hopkins were to do ads, what do you think he'd hawk?

Inquiring minds want to know!

( Naturally, Moonlightalice has plenty of her own ideas on the subject. )

ETA: This, for my money, is the best ostrich scene in a movie ever, so there really isn't any reason to make another movie with an ostrich in it, is there? Unless it's a documentary about ostriches, I guess.



Sorry it's in...um. Just imagine that Seannnnnn William Scott is telling Ashton Kutcher that those are not, in fact, llamas, but ostriches. Which they are.

So. You may not remember, but you are all bound by loyalty oaths of friendship to me. By agreeing to be my friend, you clicked past the EULA that said, explicitly, that you will abide by certain terms and conditions in being my friend. One of those terms is my right to rewrite history. In return for giving me this right, I promise not to abuse it in fights about anything substantial. I just get to pretend I never said things that I said, possibly in this very forum where it's all still there for anyone to see. For instance, you're not allowed to look back at my review of Avatar and go, "Gee, you seemed to like Sam Worthington in that," when I, eventually, post about what a non-entity he is as a person and character in Terminator Salvation. You can't. I invoke my right.

I have the right to rewrite history, which is ironic given that I'm invoking that right again about the Prince of Persia movie. (For those of you not immediately understanding the irony, God, read Wikipedia will you?) I may have said to some of you that I don't particularly think that Prince of Persia has to be bad. It looked like The Pirates of the Caribbean in Persia, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially since the in-the-works fourth Pirates is the worst thing I've heard of in a while. It didn't have to be terrible. From the trailers, it looked about as good or bad as Pirates did, which, hey, could mean it's awesome even though Jake Gyllenhaal has about as much talent as some of Johnny Depp's toenail clippings. (No knock on Gyllenhaal, there, just, it's Johnny Depp, people.)

Then I read the following blog post and watched the video about shooting the movie. If I could sum up the reason for invoking my friendly obligation rights in two words, those words would be ostrich racing. If I could sum up the reason in four words, they would be the ones coming out of Alfred Molina's mouth in that featurette: Behold, the mighty ostrich!

Please, don't watch that featurette. Just don't. Besides the ridiculousness of Jerry Bruckheimer going "Dur, we filmed in Morocco 'cause it's OLD!" there was, I believe, a very spoiler-y part that is in the trailers to a lesser degree. If you've played the game the film is ostensibly based on, you'll know which scene I mean.

Yes, so, remember how I never said Prince of Persia couldn't possibly be an entirely worthless movie? Well, I never did say that. Never happened. I don't know what you're talking about.

(Of course, I also invoke my right to reverse myself without warning should this film turn out to be slightly less mortifying to watch than, say, Aztec Rex. It's all there in the EULA, folks. You really should read those things.)

Four words: Dynasty Warriors Credit Card!!!!

One thing though: I have no idea who that dude on the cover is. Is he Lu Bu after his Ice Mage transformation stage or what?

The folks who posited "JAFO" as an answer to my "Quel de Fuck, NG?" post from yesterday are probably closer to the money.

He just asked me if I knew anything about pipettes.

::headdesk::

Specifically? He didn't know how to read the numbers on the micropipettor so that he could pipette the amount he wanted

Maybe I should show him this:


Now, maybe that is all impenetrable nonsense to non-science folks. However, if you watch at 1:25 or so, you'll see exactly how to read a micropipette in order to select exact quantity of solution you wish to aspirate. You twist the numbers until they read, top to bottom, the number. NG was sure that it read bottom to top.

He had two weeks of training with his predecessor before he started. WTF?