Comments (0)

By stephen, July 1, 2010 10:58 pm

Well that was a pretty hefty break. 6 weeks I’m guessing Lots of reasons why, some of which I’ll touch on later, but I thought it probably about time to hop back onto the blog bandwagon…

The main reason for my recent lack of bloggage has been work. And as a self employed artist, an insanely busy 2 months of work is a rather nice problem to have Teaching has been madly hectic, I’ve been given an empty shop in Derby to make art in during August, which I need to sort out and then on top of that, after 9 years I’m moving studios in a few weeks. It’s pretty scary the amount of ‘stuff’ you can amass in a large art studio over 9 years I’m currently ploughing my way through that ‘stuff’!!!

So 6 weeks… What have I missed?

• Lost has gone I did enjoy the finale, although it took a couple of viewings to fully appreciate it. I’m now looking forward to a complete & utter Lost season 1 – 6 re-watch
• Dr Who has also gone, but will at least return at Xmas. Must say I thoroughly enjoyed this series. The finale was excellent and Matt Smith throughout was brilliant.
• England had yet another stunningly inept World Cup… When will we learn?
• People queued for hours to get their sweaty hands on the new iphone 4… When will they learn?
• Murray’s doing rather well at Wimbledon… Until tomorrow maybe?
• We’ve had rather a lot of sunshine… Again, until tomorrow maybe?
• Our lovely cosy new coalition government is finally revealing it’s true colours… Grim times await I’m afraid.
• Our TVs are now filled with the final instalment of the truly dire Big Brother… Again, very grim times await I’m afraid.

At least I’ll probably be out of the country, somewhere in Italy when it finally finishes

Did I miss anything?

So, now I’ve managed to crawl back onto this blog bandwagon I’ll hopefully post something a tad more interesting next time…

Comments (0)

By stephen, March 23, 2010 1:14 am

We’re now 8 episodes into the final season of Lost, so thought it about time to share my views once more…

I’ll get the shocking bit out of the way first… I’ve recently been getting a little cheesed off with Lost And this is coming from one of the most die-hard Losties around!!! Season 5 was simply awesome and I think we’ve all been expecting even greater things from the final outing. Sadly for me, the great bits have been few and far between so far. But thankfully things have started to pick up. The last 2 weeks especially.

So, what do we now know that we didn’t since my last Lost post…

Richard Alpert – Can’t kill himself. A gift from Jacob apparently and one that Richard is far from happy with. There’s just no pleasing some people

• Richard (A) is thoroughly pissed off with the now dead Jacob and has spent most of this season marching through the jungle trying to die.
• Richard (B) there has been absolutely no mention of. I’m assuming he was still on the Island when the bomb went off? If he wasn’t then where is he?

Sawyer – Still angst ridden and still keeping himself to himself.

• Sawyer (A) has been taken under the wing of dead Locke and has been shown his name on the wall of a cave. Sawyer is a ‘candidate’ apparently and was chosen to come to the island. Candidate or not, Sawyer (A) seems intend only on leaving and is currently pitting Widmore & dead Locke against one another to clear the way for his escape. Why do we all know that it won’t work!!!
• Sawyer (B) is now a Cop and is still hunting down the conman (Sawyer) who ruined his family. This alternate reality storyline was mostly mundane, but one thing has been bugging me about Sawyer… He was visited by Jacob after the death of his parents. I’m not sure if there’s any mention of an exact year, but it’s certainly well before the original plane crash and I’m guessing it’s even before the bomb went off in 1977. Does this mean that both Sawyers have been visited by Jacob?

Jack – Still my least favourite character and still gets the most air-time

• Jack (A) after seeing his name etched into a compass and after seeing his house in a lighthouse mirror, now thinks he’s Mister Indestructible… I bloody hope not
• Jack (B) is moping about after his son and still hasn’t found his dead father. I’ve no idea why, but I really think Jack (B) is going to have pretty major things to play as this season evolves. On the whole the alternate reality storylines have gone nowhere and have even seemed pretty pointless, but that’s not really in keeping with Lost and I’m sure reality (B) will really kick off some time soon.

And what don’t we know…

• What’s with all the dead people?
• How did Widmore find the Island?
• What’s locked away in his sub?
• Why isn’t Kate a candidate?
• What’s with dead Locke’s mother & back-story?
• And when are the Apollo Bars coming back?

There is of course much more. So much more. But that’s just my two penneth worth…

Comments (0)

By stephen, February 7, 2010 6:28 pm

So after much waiting the final season of Lost is under-way and before we know it, it will soon be all done & dusted and gone forever which I’m sure will please some people. The Lost love/hate Marmite effect seems to be in full flow at the moment!!!

So what do we now know after the season’s 2 hour opening and more importantly, what don’t we know?

The bomb – Well it seams as though the bomb did actually go off in 1970′s Lost. As a result, the Swan Station was never completed, there was never a button to push every 108 minutes, which meant that the infamous Oceanic flight 815 safely sails across the Pacific and lands safely in L.A. with all of the original Losties on-board and strangely leaves the present day Island now submerged deep under the ocean (did the explosion cause this? Was it a result of the huge magnetic energy being released?). Well that’s the story in one reality anyway, as our 1970′s Losties appear to have been zapped to the present day Island at precisely the same time as the bomb exploding, which gives us two intriguing ‘parallel’ stories or realities to follow, which I’ll call (A) & (B), with (B) being the new non plane crash reality. I guess for me the most interesting development with these two (A) & (B) realities is the fact that (A) Losties have no idea that their actions have indeed created a (B) reality… Well almost all of the (A) Losties and this intrigues me more than anything else…

Juliet - Once the love interest for the loathsome Ben, then switched her affections to Jack, only to spend her time in the 70′s with Sawyer.

• Juliet (A) was last seen crushed at the bottom of the pit at the Swan construction site, desperately trying to get the bomb to ignite. Now zapped into the present day, Juliet is where we last left her. After a frantic rescue attempt, Sawyer finally reaches his beloved Juliet, only for her to die in his arms Her final words to Sawyer… ‘I need to tell you something really important…‘ And with the aid of medium Miles we learn that the rest of Juliet’s sentence should have been, ‘It worked.‘ Now assuming that this refers to trying to stop the plane crash, then how the hell can Juliet know this???
• Juliet (B) I’m assuming is somewhere in reality (B)???

Jack – He’s never been my favourite character, but I guess I aught to give him a mention. So…

• Jack (A) is full of remorse. As a result of his ‘oh let’s blow up a bomb’ actions, Juliet is now dead and Sawyer is not best pleased. Sayid appears to die from the shooting he received in the bomb climax, which improves Jack’s mood even further!!!
• Jack (B) meanwhile finds himself a little confused on-board Oceanic flight 815. He has a strange little sore on his neck, which I’m sure is very significant. He also manages to save a choking Charlie’s life by dislodging a heroine bag from his throat. Back in L.A. while trying to get to the bottom of his father’s missing coffin, Jack (B) also offers to give the wheelchair bound Locke (B) spinal surgery, which brings us to…

Locke – Easily the most interesting Lost character.

• Locke (A) is dead. End of story!!! Well maybe? There is an evil version of Locke (Locke ‘C’???) on the Island, but that’s Jacob’s nasty enemy/nemesis AKA the Smoke Monster. Not sure about everyone else but I kinda miss the original John Locke.
• Locke (B) as I’ve already mentioned is wheelchair bound and who knows just where his story will go? Where ever it does go though, Locke (B) will be going there without his trusty knives, which along with Christian Shepherd’s coffin have mysteriously vanished.

Jacob - Who the hell is the mysterious Jacob???

• Jacob (A) has just been stabbed to death by Ben and his body has been burnt by Locke (C) AKA Jacob’s enemy AKA the Smoke Monster. A ghostly Jacob then appears to Hurley and instructs him to take a dying Sayid to the Temple to be cured. He also tells Hurley that he must take his guitar-case with him. A guitar-case that a living Jacob gave to Hurley off the Island in 2007. A guitar-case that contained a big wooden Ankh, with a hand-written message hidden inside from Jacob, telling the Temple folk to cure Sayid. Coincidence that the Ankh is the Egyptian symbol for eternal life? I think not… Lots of hows, whys and whens spring to mind with this particular issue But it does certainly imply that Jacob knew what was going to happen a long time before they did and decided to do something about it.

• Jacob (B) I’m assuming sinks with the Island??? I don’t actually believe this for one minute!!! I’m not actually convinced that there even will be a Jacob (B)

And a few other interesting points.

The two (A) & (B) realities appear to be portraying very opposite characteristics. A ‘cursed’ Hurley (A) is mirrored by a Hurley (B)  who claims to be the luckiest man alive. A lucky Hurley (B) who appears to have grabbed the interest of a certain conman Sawyer (B). Interesting to see how this plays out. Sun & Jin’s relationship is also in stark contrast in the (A) & (B) worlds. Jack & Locke’s brief meeting in the L.A.Airport Lost Property was I thought particularly poignant. These two characters have been at opposite ends of the spectrum in world (A) and it will be very, very interesting to see how this storyline develops.

And finally a few questions.

• How will the two (A) & (B) worlds collide? (Surely this is a given conclusion?)
• How did Juliet know that the bomb experiment had ‘worked’?
• How did the large Egyptian 4 toed statue (Taweret) get destroyed? A bomb going off and a sinking Island would surely cause this, but had it already happened by then???
• How does Desmond fit into reality (B)? He appeared on the flight next to Jack, but was never actually on this flight.

As with almost every episode of Lost I could write a whole website full of questions, so just for now I’ll leave it at that!!!

Comments (2)

By stephen, May 18, 2009 1:29 pm

Well that’s that then; it’s all over for another season and only one more to go before it all ends for good As usual Lost ended with the now customary WTF ending and we’ll no doubt have that all too familiar painful wait until next year, before we get any hints at answers & solutions!!! I do have a few theories about a few of the ‘things‘ that were crammed into last night’s finale, but I think I’ll expand on those in later blog posts…

So, what do we know and what don’t we know?

We know that…

Jack does succeed in dropping the bomb down the shaft at the Swan Station – It hits the floor but doesn’t detonate. I thought it was primed to go off on impact or was that something that Sayid failed to set up?

The drill at the Swan Station does indeed penetrate too deep and does release the magnetic energy – Everything metallic is sucked down the shaft, including Juliet wrapped in a metal chain.

The ‘incident’ does happen as foretold by Daniel – The powerful magnetic energy is released and the show ends with a blinding flash of white light. Is this flash the result of the magnetic power? Is it the result of Juliet getting the bomb to detonate? Or is it a combination of the two?

John Locke did die and his corpse is still in a cargo-box taken from flight 316 – This is something I’ll expand on later (basically because I don’t know where the hell to start with Locke!!!), but the simple facts are that the present day island now appears to have two John Lockes… One who is in fact dead and lies in a cargo-box and another supremely confident Locke who leads the ‘Others’ to Jacob, where he persuades Ben to kill him.

Jacob has visited some, if not all of the original 815 survivors in their past and has resided on the Island for a long, long time – Again, another expanded theory may follow on this one. I guess the big question for me is why did he visit them? And was there any significance in when he went to visit them and what he said to them? Jacob was the reason Sayid’s girlfriend Nadia gets hit by the car, Jacob also persuaded Hurley to return to the Island. After Locke gets pushed from the building Jacob tells him, ‘Don’t worry, everything is going to be alright. I’m sorry this happened to you.’ He tells Sun & Jin  ‘I’d like to offer you my blessing. Love is a very special thing. Never take if for granted’ at their wedding. After handing Jack one of those mysterious Apollo Bars, he tells him ‘I guess it just needed a little push,’. He crops up when a very young Kate gets caught stealing and says ‘You’re welcome. You’re not going to steal anymore, are you?’ and at the funeral of Sawyer’s parents he tells the young boy ‘I’m very sorry about your mother and father, James.’ He also visited Ilana in hospital and asked a favour of her… Why? why? and why? and what was he there for?

Somebody else has been on the Island for as long as Jacob and this man wants to kill Jacob – The finale begins with a man seen with Jacob way back, when the Black Rock sailing ship arrived and when the four toed statue was still complete.  He tells Jacob ‘Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?’ and that ‘One of these days, sooner or later, I’m going to find a loophole, my friend.’ The finale ends with Jacob telling Locke “You found your loophole,’ before Ben stabs Jacob, which kinda implies that Locke is somehow the man at the beginning with Jacob. There is the obvious Biblical link here with Jacob and his older brother Esau. The latter hating his brother after selling his birthright to his younger brother. The Hebrew translation of Esau is ‘Hairy’, linking very nicely with the mysterious Lost character and there does seem to be a very clear black & white, good v evil theme with him & Jacob…

Jacob tells Locke/Esau/whoever that ‘They’re coming…’ before being pushed onto the fire – This could be a reference to Ilana’s small group with the corpse of Locke or maybe it’s refering to the 1977 losties possibly being zapped back to the present day? Or maybe it’s something or someone entirely different!!!

I still think this has been one of, if not the, best Lost season so far and I’m sure the Web will be awash with theories all year… Don’t get me started on that four toed statue

Comments (0)

By stephen, May 14, 2009 10:08 am

Went to see the new Star Trek film last night… And came away with mixed feelings…

Yep, it’s a really good film, it looks stunning and has been incredibly well cast (quite uncanny in places!!!), but something left me a little flat and it’s taken me a while to work out exactly what. I really, really enjoyed the first half/introduction to the film; it was great to see all the history behind the famous characters. We get to see Kirk’s birth and the tragic death of his father and we also get snippets of Spock’s childhood. There’s also a great section of the film showing how the young crew members all ended up on the Enterprise in the first place… Not being much of a Trekkie I’ve no real idea how much of this background history is genuine and how much is J. J. Abrams creation? Either way, this was by far the most enjoyable section of the film for me; it felt new and it felt a little special… From that point onwards the film seemed to settle down into what I can only describe as… typically Star Trek. Nice to look at yes, but to me it was just like watching any other Star Trek film. For many people I’m guessing this wouldn’t be a problem, in fact I’m sure they’d love it, but as I’ve already said, I’m not much of a Trekkie and never have been.

So in short, I’m really glad I’ve seen it (it is good), but I won’t be rushing out to see the next ones, which I’m sure Mr. Abrams has already started on, especially as the truly great Lost is finishing next year

I’d much rather see more of Lost than Star Trek, but that’s just me I guess…

Star Trek II

The Enterprise is mysteriously sucked towards a small jungle like planet and smashes onto the surface, leaving the surviving crew members stranded without any obvious means of escape or rescue…

Mmmm… On second thoughts