Feel like you're sufficiently getting Lost? Here to help you each week is TVGuide.com's new "Getting Lost" video series. This latest installment finds executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof addressing three hot topics coming out of the Jan. 28 "Jughead" episode (spoiler-ish alert):
In light of the shocking "introduction" made at the end of "Jughead," might the time-tripping castaways run into other (albeit younger) familiar faces? Exactly who is gun-toting tough-gal Ellie? Going against the popular consensus (which I find just a bit too pat/obvious), I run my own theory by Team Darlton. And speaking of mystery women, who is this comatose Theresa? And how big a role will she play in future episodes? Also, be sure to read Mickey O'Connor's Lost recaps every Thursday morning.
LOST DVDHEROES DVD
2009年5月15日星期五
"Getting Lost" Video Premiere: Producers Discuss Time Travel, What Exactly "All" Means & More
In this premiere of a new recurring video series, TVGuide.com's Matt Mitovich (aka me) will get answers to the burning questions coming out of each week's episode of ABC's Lost.
Here in Episode 1, I ask executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse if the time-tripping remaining castaways are at risk of running into their "younger selves." The answer? "The characters are trying to avoid [that]," says Cuse, "but they may encounter other iterations of themselves."
Cuse goes on to say that Lost hopes to avoid the obvious clichés of such storytelling, pointing out that "the big problem with time travel is that if you can create multiple futures, the future doesn't have any stakes. So we're approaching [it] a little differently ... than you've seen on other shows." [CoughHeroescough]
Other questions answered in this "Getting Lost":
? If Jack can't get "all" of the Oceanic 6 back to the island, might the island cut him some slack?
? Will some sort of wild new "frozen donkey wheel" apparatus/setpiece be involved in getting the 6 back to the island?
Watch the video for that scoop, then brace yourself for the third hour of Lost's Season 5, which features one of the series' best character introductions ever.
LOST DVDHEROES DVD
Here in Episode 1, I ask executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse if the time-tripping remaining castaways are at risk of running into their "younger selves." The answer? "The characters are trying to avoid [that]," says Cuse, "but they may encounter other iterations of themselves."
Cuse goes on to say that Lost hopes to avoid the obvious clichés of such storytelling, pointing out that "the big problem with time travel is that if you can create multiple futures, the future doesn't have any stakes. So we're approaching [it] a little differently ... than you've seen on other shows." [CoughHeroescough]
Other questions answered in this "Getting Lost":
? If Jack can't get "all" of the Oceanic 6 back to the island, might the island cut him some slack?
? Will some sort of wild new "frozen donkey wheel" apparatus/setpiece be involved in getting the 6 back to the island?
Watch the video for that scoop, then brace yourself for the third hour of Lost's Season 5, which features one of the series' best character introductions ever.
LOST DVDHEROES DVD
'Lost,' 'Heroes' among leaders in power ratings
While ABC's "Lost" and NBC's "Heroes" have lost some steam in the Nielsen ratings over the past year, they remain two of the most valuable program franchises a marketer can tap into, according to the just-released calendar year "content power ratings" (CPR) released by Publicis Group's Optimedia.
The CPR rankings, which the media shop first launched a little more than a year ago, try to assess the overall value of network and cable TV programs to advertisers by going beyond the Nielsen TV ratings to look at factors such as program environment and viewer involvement, as well as by monitoring chatter on blogs and social networks about programs. (These are assessed in part by in-house qualitative research, involving a panel of several thousand viewers). The Optimedia ranking also considers a program's cross-platform viewing performance and trends on mobile and online.
As Optimedia U.S. CEO Antony Young explained in a Webinar unveiling the new rankings today, "TV isn't just TV anymore. Agencies buy shows, not ratings."
The conversation about declining TV ratings needs to be reframed said Greg Kahn, senior vp, director of strategic resources at Optimedia. "It's now about viewership and engagement on multiple platforms."
The shop's power ratings have also helped shape the agency's agenda for the upcoming upfront market place, said Young. "We're going to be really interested in the network's online video strategy," he said. "We're very interested in the cross-platform extensions for individual TV shows, which our power ratings indicate have a meaningful impact on their overall ranking." Young also said the shop will be interested in marketing plans the networks are preparing for individual shows.
For the 2008 rankings, the science-fiction program genre fared exceptionally well during the year, as viewers sought escapist fare to distract themselves from the harsh realities of the recession, the Optimedia index showed. Lost was number two on the CPR ranking followed by Heroes at six and Fringe at 13.
Comedy made a comeback in the CPR rankings as six made the top 20 list in 2008, versus just two in 2007. "This is a genre the networks are sort of giving up on, and we encourage them not to do that, " said Kahn.
Politics impacted the rankings last year, boosting Saturday Night Live to the top-ranked late night spot, helped by Tiny Fey's take on vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. In the fourth quarter, search volume for SNL clips online quintupled, per Google Trends. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart--always heavy on political satire--placed second among late night programs, per the Optimedia CPR rankings.
American Idol repeated as the top-ranked show in the CPR prime-time rankings. It dominated viewing across multiple platforms, "but went way beyond that," said Kahn, with theme park tie-ins, iTunes downloads of the show's performers and merchandising. "It really has taken on a life of its own," he said.
Rounding out the top 10 prime-time CPR shows are The Office, Dancing with the Stars, Grey's Anatomy, Family Guy, CSI, Survivor and House.
The top-ranked cable show in the CPR index was AMC's Mad Men, about Madison Avenue in the 1960s, which placed 30th out of the 200 prime-time shows that the index measured.
Premium cable shows turned in a surprisingly strong showing said Kahn, noting that Showtime's serial killer drama Dexter placed 33rd while Weeds, another Showtime original was not far behind at 41st. HBO's Entourage placed 43rd. "They were all very viable online and received a lot of buzz generally," he said. Not every advertiser, of course, will want to integrate its brand in a show about a serial killer, "but the point is that these shows can compete on a different level as well."
In addition to its own research and the Nielsen ratings, Optimedia culled data from Nielsen Online's VideoCenus, Comscore's Media Metrix 2.0, E-Poll's FastTrack Television and Dow Jones Factiva to formulate its power ratings.
LOST DVDHEROES DVD
The CPR rankings, which the media shop first launched a little more than a year ago, try to assess the overall value of network and cable TV programs to advertisers by going beyond the Nielsen TV ratings to look at factors such as program environment and viewer involvement, as well as by monitoring chatter on blogs and social networks about programs. (These are assessed in part by in-house qualitative research, involving a panel of several thousand viewers). The Optimedia ranking also considers a program's cross-platform viewing performance and trends on mobile and online.
As Optimedia U.S. CEO Antony Young explained in a Webinar unveiling the new rankings today, "TV isn't just TV anymore. Agencies buy shows, not ratings."
The conversation about declining TV ratings needs to be reframed said Greg Kahn, senior vp, director of strategic resources at Optimedia. "It's now about viewership and engagement on multiple platforms."
The shop's power ratings have also helped shape the agency's agenda for the upcoming upfront market place, said Young. "We're going to be really interested in the network's online video strategy," he said. "We're very interested in the cross-platform extensions for individual TV shows, which our power ratings indicate have a meaningful impact on their overall ranking." Young also said the shop will be interested in marketing plans the networks are preparing for individual shows.
For the 2008 rankings, the science-fiction program genre fared exceptionally well during the year, as viewers sought escapist fare to distract themselves from the harsh realities of the recession, the Optimedia index showed. Lost was number two on the CPR ranking followed by Heroes at six and Fringe at 13.
Comedy made a comeback in the CPR rankings as six made the top 20 list in 2008, versus just two in 2007. "This is a genre the networks are sort of giving up on, and we encourage them not to do that, " said Kahn.
Politics impacted the rankings last year, boosting Saturday Night Live to the top-ranked late night spot, helped by Tiny Fey's take on vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. In the fourth quarter, search volume for SNL clips online quintupled, per Google Trends. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart--always heavy on political satire--placed second among late night programs, per the Optimedia CPR rankings.
American Idol repeated as the top-ranked show in the CPR prime-time rankings. It dominated viewing across multiple platforms, "but went way beyond that," said Kahn, with theme park tie-ins, iTunes downloads of the show's performers and merchandising. "It really has taken on a life of its own," he said.
Rounding out the top 10 prime-time CPR shows are The Office, Dancing with the Stars, Grey's Anatomy, Family Guy, CSI, Survivor and House.
The top-ranked cable show in the CPR index was AMC's Mad Men, about Madison Avenue in the 1960s, which placed 30th out of the 200 prime-time shows that the index measured.
Premium cable shows turned in a surprisingly strong showing said Kahn, noting that Showtime's serial killer drama Dexter placed 33rd while Weeds, another Showtime original was not far behind at 41st. HBO's Entourage placed 43rd. "They were all very viable online and received a lot of buzz generally," he said. Not every advertiser, of course, will want to integrate its brand in a show about a serial killer, "but the point is that these shows can compete on a different level as well."
In addition to its own research and the Nielsen ratings, Optimedia culled data from Nielsen Online's VideoCenus, Comscore's Media Metrix 2.0, E-Poll's FastTrack Television and Dow Jones Factiva to formulate its power ratings.
LOST DVDHEROES DVD
2009年5月13日星期三
Michael Emerson: 'Lost' Ending Already Written
When it comes to mysterious characters, no one holds a candle to Michael Emerson's devious Ben Linus on ABC's Lost.
While Wednesday's season finale hints at the undoing of the fateful Oceanic Airlines crash and everything that followed, Emerson spills a few details that might surprise fans a€” including information on the elusive Jacob.
Going mano-a-mano with Benjamin Linus "I like Ben the way he's been imagined all along, and I don't think his character is going to alter much. But I do expect that new challenges will be thrown at him in Season 6. I have a feeling that we're going to have a shake-up up in the landscape of the show and the set of problems that the characters are faced with. New alliances and new missions are going to evolve."
Think you know Lost? Take the quiz!
Those eyes, that voice... "With every character I play, I have to think about how they live in their bodies and how they speak. I thought Ben needed a quality and it's a quality that's non-committal, a little bit flat, clinical and cool. He is in a cool palette where other characters are much warmer. That's definitely what sets him apart."
Enough is enough. Who is Jacob? "When you talk about someone like Jacob, the much awaited secret power behind the curtain, I'm not sure you even need a Jacob so much as you feel his presence. There's going to be a number of characters who's presence will be felt in the finale, who have by virtue of their power the ability to change the course of events."
Making friends with the enemy "Even though I'm at odds with most of the characters on-screen, I have a really good relationship with my castmates. Because I spend most of my screen time with Terry O'Quinn, he and I hang out quite a lot and we get along famously. He and I are of a similar age and we have similar philosophies about the craft of acting and we approach the work the same. We both have similar senses of humor and a similar sense of both the seriousness and the fun of what we do, so I'm always happy spending time with him.
Read: Michael Emerson Admits Lost Even Confuses Him
Ben and Juliet's unrequited love saga "Elizabeth Mitchell and I are Lost classmates. We were the ones who were freshman when everyone else was a sophomore. I will be forever linked to her that way. I like the way she works. She's a theater actress, and we always have a good time and a lot of crackle in our scenes."
Lost's ultimate ending, May 2010 "I feel a great sense of anticipation, but just like everyone else, I'm just so curious to see what it's going to be. How are they going to do it, and how can they do it in 17 hours? They know how the series ends. They have an outline in their minds, but the exact sequence of events, the trail of dialogue that leads us there, the details of it and who does what to whom, will be worked out during the course of the season. But yes, they know how it ends.
LOST DVDHEROES DVD
Lost and found: drama ends challenging season
How time changes things. Lost, the 2005 Emmy winner for outstanding dramatic series, has been lost in time this season. And casual followers have been Lost along the way -- literally and figuratively.
Literally: The average weekly audience has flirted with the nine-million mark in recent weeks, as Lost reaches its two-hour season finale Wednesday. Last year at this time, that figure was closer to 12 million.
And figuratively: Casual viewers who tune in one week and skip the next have become hopelessly lost in a story that has vaulted back and forth in time like something William S. Burroughs penned in a fever dream. (The April 29 episode alone featured no fewer than four switches in time, from the late '70s to the mid '90s, then to 2004, then back to 1977, and finally ahead to 2008.)
And here's the funny part. Lost's true fans, who've pored over every small detail and obsessed over every major story twist since the series' inception in 2004, don't seem to mind. The message boards and online chat forums are as active as ever, as Lost draws down the curtain on its fifth season with a two-part, two-hour episode called "The Incident."
ABC's official episode synopsis is deliberately oblique. "Jack's decision to put a plan in action in order to set things right on the island is met with strong resistance by those close to him, and Locke assigns Ben a difficult task."
A cynic might suggest that Ben's task is to explain Lost's fifth season to viewers more inclined to watch undemanding forensic procedurals like, say, Criminal Minds or Bones, two shows that air in Lost's time period on other channels. And then there's American Idol's results show -- a whole different program, aimed at an entirely different audience.
Lost's fans understand that the show's makers have adopted a cheerful, almost wilful disregard for pandering to the demands of a mass TV audience afflicted with a short attention span.
This season, more than most, Lost has been the kind of TV drama that rewards the obsessive nitpicker with an eye for detail -- the kind of consumer who chooses DVDs over network TV. As writer-producer Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have shown in their weekly audio podcasts -- available for download free of charge from Apple Canada's iTunes store -- not a single moment goes by in Lost without some hidden meaning or calculated effect. Lost is the ultimate DVD Easter egg, a serial thriller that respects its loyal audience, while ignoring everyone else.
Next season will be Lost's last: It will end in May 2010. Given the state of the economy, rising production costs and the new trend toward prime-time singing competitions, weight-loss contests and, starting in September, a five-night-a-week prime-time talk show hosted by Jay Leno, Lost may well be one of the last complex, expensive, intellectually challenging serialized dramas to play on broadcast TV.
Baffling or brilliant? The real answer is, probably both.
Lost's fifth-season finale airs Wednesday, May 13, on A channel and ABC at 9 ET/PT. Note its expanded, two-hour running time.
LOST DVD
HEROES DVD
2009年5月11日星期一
What Are They Up To? Will and Grace's Debra Messing
Debra Messing was best known for her role on Will & Grace. As Grace Adler, she depicted a Jewish interior designer who lived in New York with her gay best friend Will Truman. Throughout the show, she became infamous for her string of boyfriends, many of which were portrayed by notable guest stars such as Gregory Hines and Woody Harrelson. In a span of eight years, she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, and earned nominations for 6 Golden Globe Awards among others.After her stint on Will and Grace, Messing served as the voice of the character Park Ranger Beth in the animated film Open Season. Recently, she starred in the movie Lucky You, in which she played the role of Suzanne Offer.
This year, Messing will star in the film Purple Violets as the character Kate Scott. The said movie is a romantic comedy about an unhappy woman who finds new love with her old boy friend. The cast includes Selma Blair as Patti Petalson, Patrick Wilson as Brian Callahan, Edward Burns as Michael Murphy, and Dennis Farina as Gilmore. Currently, she stars on USA Network’s The Starter Wife as Molly Kagan, a 41-year-old wife and mother who is eventually abandoned by her husband and is forced to move on with her life. The miniseries also features Judy Davis as Joan McAllister, Peter Jacobson as Kenny Kagan, and Miranda Otto as Cricket Stewart. In addition, she will also work in a 2008 film called The Women. Based on the 1939 film of the same title, the comedy-drama follows the life of a wealthy New Yorker as she leaves her unfaithful husband and bonds with other society women.
Gillian nearly lost her X-Files job
New York: Actor Gillian Anderson has revealed that she nearly waved goodbye to her job on cult TV show The X-Files after getting pregnant. The 40-year-old said had it not been for her on-screen chemistry with co-star David Duchovny, she would have been sacked.
"They would have loved to have punished me but realised there was steam picking up," Contactmusic quoted her as saying. "I thought they were overreacting but now I see it from their perspective. I would have been really upset if I had been them and had cast a girl who got pregnant after the first season," she added.
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"They would have loved to have punished me but realised there was steam picking up," Contactmusic quoted her as saying. "I thought they were overreacting but now I see it from their perspective. I would have been really upset if I had been them and had cast a girl who got pregnant after the first season," she added.
Supernatural dvdThe X Files 1-9 dvdWill and Grace 1-8 dvdTwin peaks seasons 1-2 dvd box setBattlestar galactica dvd
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