Rich in mythology and character development, and tantalizingly complex, Lost is not something to be watched passively. Throughout its five years, the ABC series has brilliantly weaved a human drama about plane-crash survivors on a mysterious island into a Byzantine tableau. We’ve witnessed smoke monsters and polar bears, unearthed a bygone scientific initiative, met the native inhabitants, and sidled up to a four-toed statue and a hydrogen bomb named Jughead. There have been flash-forwards, time travel, meditations on faith and destiny and redemption, literary and pop-culture references, and the occasional Latin phrase. What’s more, all of these bizarre components are all somehow connected. The show’s intricate and cryptic details have sent many a rabid fan to reference books and online chat groups in an effort to unlock the show’s secrets.

But even for those who aren’t content to parse through the myriad clues to find out what it all means, Lost, while epic in scope, is also intimate in its relationships. The overarching story can be incredibly dizzying and confounding as it travels around the world and through time and back again, but its writers (including executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, or “Darlton,” as they’re called on message boards) take care to keep it rooted solidly in its characters—who, over the show’s duration, have grown as rich and deep as the mythology that surrounds them.

And this fifth season—which featured a return to the island for those who had been rescued and erratic time travel—was not only enthralling; it was satisfying. The energy intensified as the series began answering integral questions, ramping up acceleration and purpose as the show barreled toward its sixth and final year.
read the interview here

When the challenge was introduced to cook dinner for some of the writers and creators of Lost, you seemed to be the only competitor familiar with the show. Why?
It’s on at a time at night when chefs are working. The first time I ever saw Lost, my son, Max, and I went to rent a video. I told him, “I heard that Lost is really good.” So we got the first season. We started watching it in the afternoon and before we knew it, it was time for bed.

So when you saw the array of island ingredients what did you think?
It was like Christmas on a table to me! I could live off of those foods every day—oysters, green mango, chicken, wild boar. I just thought, “Woo hoo. I’m going to cook everything!” So I imagined myself on a desert island. Then I thought, “What would John Locke do?” Then I opened up six coconuts and used the water to make a stock for risotto.

source : tv guide

I can’t wait to meet them !!
source : Lyly Ford

and if you want more details of the event read it here “lost in paris” more infos

For now, at least, ABC’s sci-fi fantasy ended its time travel in 1977 — and if you haven’t watched this week’s episode yet, stop reading right here.

The reunion in Wednesday’s episode “sets the template for what the show’s going to be in the next phase of storytelling,” says executive producer Carlton Cuse. Kate, Jack and Hurley have rejoined Sawyer and Jin, disguised as new Dharma initiates; Sayid, deemed an island “hostile,” is imprisoned. “We’re kind of done with the rapid skipping through time for a while,” Cuse says.

In the seven remaining episodes (including a two-hour, game-changing finale May 13), he says the show asks, “What do they do now, and what are the consequences of that?”

Starting next week, the show returns to its original format, each episode built around a single character with the back story in flashbacks.

First up is Sayid (Naveen Andrews), in a bit of role reversal. Says producer Damon Lindelof, “He was the one who first captured Ben, and now he’s behind bars as a Dharma prisoner,” with a young Ben offering him a sandwich. Future episodes fill in histories of Daniel Faraday and Miles Straum.

The show “becomes a lot more character-centric,” Lindelof says. “For those people who were more confused or scratching their heads” at the time-traveling, “it’s sort of normalized.”

A major focus is the new love triangle of Kate, Sawyer and Juliet. Juliet is living with Sawyer, mysteriously known as LaFleur, Dharma’s tan-jumpsuited security chief, in the ’70s. “Juliet’s aware that Kate’s return will cause problems,” Cuse says. Yet Jack, who vied with Sawyer for Kate and was engaged to her off the island — still carries a torch.

The recalibration of Lost will temper the show’s most confounding season yet, a relief to ABC executives.

“We long had this idea to do time-travel storytelling,” Cuse says. “But we were afraid that once we started implementing it, we would become a more overtly genre show and that we would lose viewers.” (They did: Lost is down 18% this season and faced a big test Wednesday in the season’s first matchup against American Idol). “We kind of expected some people to be turned off.”

But Lindelof, conceding viewers were frustrated, likens Lost to coursework: “College gets harder as you go on, and you’re now taking Advanced Lost.” For those who follow the drama for its rich character entanglements, “all that really matters is that (Sawyer) likes Juliet, Juliet likes him and now Kate is back. But the real hardcore fans want mythology.”

Producers promise more answers in coming episodes: How was Sayid captured to return to the island? How did Hurley learn about the Ajera flight that brought him there? And how will Sun, Ben and pilot Frank Lapidus reunite with their castmates?

source : usatoday

Lost executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof promised to call me as soon as they came up with a nickname for the closing — and assuredly jaw-dropping — scene of this season’s finale, which is now slated for May 13.

The thing is, the boys aren’t nicknaming that moment this year.

You are.

TVGuide.com has learned exclusively that in this week’s official Lost podcast, posting to ABC.com on Thursday, Team Darlton will formally invite viewers to suggest a nickname for the season finale’s final moment.

In seasons past, that head-scratcher has been dubbed “Bagel” (Walt is abducted by the Others!), “Challah” (Penny’s research team locates the island!), “The Rattlesnake in the Mailbox” (Jack is flashing forward!) and “Frozen Donkey Wheel” (which, quite literally, Ben rotated to move the island).

The ink is barely dry on the finale script and it’s at least a week from being filmed, so you’ll just have to go with your gut when conjuring up a nickname. There is talk, however, that the season-ender will (SPOILER ALERT) culminate with “the incident” referred to by Marvin Candle in the first orientation video.

Submissions can be directed to ABC.com/asklost, with the producers’ pick being announced on ABC’s March 26 podcast.

http://www.tvguide.com/News/Exclusive-Lost-finale-1004105.aspx

Damon Lindelof, executive producer and co-creator of ABC’s Lost, had a recent conversation with his personal trainer about Watchmen, Zack Snyder’s film adaptation of the much-beloved (and complicated!) 1986 original comic-book series that will be released in theaters tomorrow. “Have you heard of this Watchmen thing? What is it?” his trainer asked. “Little does he know, I’ve read it like nine times and am obsessed with it,” Mr. Lindelof told The Observer in a phone interview from his California office.

He was discussing the difficulty of marketing Watchmen, which he has loved since he first read it at the comic geek’s coming-of-age sweet spot: age 13. “You try to explain Watchmen to people and you say, ‘O.K., it’s 1985 and Nixon is still president’ and that’s when they just shut off—their eyes glaze over,” he said.

Mr. Lindelof also said that studios haven’t completely “cracked” the balance between catering to the fanboys and the “uninitiated.” Warner Bros. seemed to struggle with that for their Watchmen campaign, considering the centerpiece site: TheNewFrontiersman.net.

“The people who are most into the movie or going to be playing these games, are already buying tickets,” he explained.

Mr. Lindelof said he hasn’t played with too many of Watchmen’s online marketing materials. He saw a couple videos, including the news report on Dr. Manhattan and a government public service announcement about the Keene Act. “Also, a kind of 6-bit old school Nintendo game where you get to be Silk Spectre or Nite Owl and go around punching people,” he said. “If there was something to unlock I was unsuccessful in unlocking it.”

“If you’re gonna ask people to take the time and energy to seek it out, there needs to be a reward,” he said.

He is struggling with this himself as he helps plan the online marketing work for the new Star Trek movie he is producing (to be released May 8 this year). “You start to ask yourself, what is it? What is it for? Is it actually marketing or is it liner notes? Is it something that you’re doing to give love to the fans, to the core and the base, in the hopes that they will send this to the uninitiated or the fact of the matter is, I’m not winning over people who are like, ‘What is Watchmen?’”

And will the fanboys even want to spread that marketing material around to educate the masses about their Watchmen world?

“There’s a little bit about that feeling of Watchmen, in terms of the fans, it’s like, I don’t really know if I want it to go mainstream,” Mr. Lindelof explained. “It’s like if you discover a band in college and you can go and see them and you can be right up against the stage and you kind of know the members of the band on a first-name basis and you can have beers with them after the show and then they break. And now they have a single on the radio and everybody is listening to them and now you have to buy a ticket to go see them in a coliseum…I want to keep it sort of insular. It’s okay with me if people don’t understand it because they don’t deserve to understand it.”

Certainly, whether they’re motivated to or not, fanboys have trouble translating Watchmen for the non-comics-obsessed because it is so multi-layered and challenging. But so is Lost. Lost’s online campaign is successful because viewers who aren’t as familiar with the characters and plotline have plenty of content to explore and to learn more from, with detailed episode recaps, character biographies, and an interactive “Connections” map and supplemental videos, like the Missing Pieces feature.

Meanwhile, hardcore obsessives can get, well, lost in the online Lost world. There’s the Oceanic Air site, which looks just like any regular airline site—only all flights are canceled because of the Flight 815 tragedy. The Dharma Initiative, the Hanso Foundation and the Maxwell Group also have their own online portals and secret pages. Recently, there’s Find815.com, which includes a virtual desk (check your own voicemail messages! And emails, too!) and a Lost diary. Fun stuff!

But Mr. Lindelof explained why even the most interesting online marketing material might never get seen by the mainstream: “Let’s face it, what is the subset of your audience that is going online to seek this out? So suddenly like Joe from Poughkeepsie who doesn’t give a crap about the Internet at all has heard that you need to basically have this online experience to understand Lost, then he gets turned off of the mothership. He’s basically like, ‘I just want to watch the show, man. If you tell me I have to go online for an hour and unlock all these puzzles to understand the show, it’s hard enough as it is, don’t make it any harder.’”

So guys like Joe from Poughkeepsie might not understand every scene of director Zack Snyder’s version of the comic book, even if Warner Bros.’ online campaign was brilliant. But maybe that is the way it should have been if he was going to stay true to the material. “The nobility of the action of making the movie and trying to be as literally married to the original text as he was is so admirable to me that I think it insulates [Mr. Snyder] from any criticism from anyone who really loves Watchmen,” he said. “It’s the most married-to-the-original-text version of Watchmen that could’ve been made.”

http://www.observer.com/2009/movies/losts-lindelof-talks-marketing-watchmen-lost-geeks

thanks docarzt for those vids

Daniel Dae Kim is dishing a first look at “This Place Is Death,” next week’s all-new Lost episode, along with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. It turns out that the Danielle-Jin meeting plays a pivotal role in the Lost mythology. Press play above to see DDK and Darlton explain what this blast to the past means for the show.

source : kristin eonline