Tuned In+Uncategorized | July 19, 2010

Lost vs. Inception: Solving the Puzzle of Ending a Puzzle-Story

By James Poniewozik

Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb in Inception.

SPOILER ALERT: This post totally spoils the TV series Lost and the movie Inception. If you haven’t watched either and don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading. I said stop!

Over the weekend, Lost producer Damon Lindelof tweeted his admiration for Christopher Nolan’s new movie: “I wish that someone would break into my dreams and give me an idea HALF as good as INCEPTION.” If you’ve seen the movie (and a lot of you did, apparently) and watched Lost (and I have to imagine that Venn diagram has a pretty big overlap), you may already have thought that, in some ways, Lindelof already had that idea, and it was called “Lost.”

There are, of course, plenty of differences between the TV series and the movie. But there are also enough similarities—superficial and more deeply thematic—that the two raise some questions about the genre of the puzzle-like story, and what constitutes a good ending and a good narrative in it.

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Tuned In+Advertising | June 1, 2010

Lost Audience Not Record Setting, But Watched Ads Really Hard

By James Poniewozik

When I wrote my print TIME feature on the end of Lost, one section I had to drop for space had to do with how much money ABC was asking for ads in the finale—reportedly $900,000 a pop—even though Lost was not close to the highest-rated program on TV. That fact points to something that [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 27, 2010

The LOST Finale and Season 6, Reconsidered

By James Poniewozik

In the Lost podcast I posted Tuesday, Maureen Ryan, Ryan McGee and I hashed over how our thoughts on the finale had evolved over a couple days. Before the finale aired, I had considered following up a few days after the finale with a second review. I’m not going to do that, yet anyway. In [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 25, 2010

Because You Haven't Heard Enough LOST Finale Talk…

By James Poniewozik

…here’s an hour and change more, courtesy of the good offices of Ryan McGee of Zap2It and Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune, plus yours truly. We walked about how our views of the finale have evolved (or not) over 36 hours, the polarized online debate over the ending, our thoughts on the ending itself [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 24, 2010

Watch Together, Judge Alone: What Everyone Else Thought of Lost's "The End"

By James Poniewozik

I’m not going to be good for much today beyond reading other critics’ and bloggers’ writeups of Lost, so I can at least be of some use to you and refer you to some of the other opinions I’ve been reading this morning: Myles McNutt, Cultural Learnings: “Beautiful and heartwrenching, ‘The End’ captures more than [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 23, 2010

Lostwatch: All of This Matters

By James Poniewozik

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, gather some of your closest friends together in a special place, and watch the last episode ever of Lost. The great puzzle of the last season of Lost has been: how can both the flash-sideways universe and the Island universe mean anything? If Sideways is the universe in [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 21, 2010

Lost Endweek: The Actors Speak, Part Two

By James Poniewozik

This is the second of two parts of a batch of actor interviews I conducted on Lost’s set in Oahu (and in the case of Matthew Fox, over the phone) in April for my feature in TIME. Part one, with Terry O’Quinn, Evangeline Lilly and Josh Holloway, posted yesterday. As I said then, there’s nothing [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 21, 2010

My Lost Weekend; Plus, Instant Analysis and the Magnolia Factor

By James Poniewozik

This is it. The big one. T minus two days. A couple notes on what I’ll be doing to mark the finale of Lost this weekend. First, for those of you in the New York City area, I’ll be at the Paley Center Saturday afternoon, talking about Lost on a panel that also includes Alan [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 20, 2010

Lost Endweek: The Actors Speak, Part One

By James Poniewozik

If your job is covering TV and not, say, Somali warlords, you do not expect ever to conduct an interview with someone who is holding a deadly weapon the entire time. But then I talked to Terry O’Quinn, in his trailer on location with Lost, last month. O’Quinn was sent, as a souvenir, an inscribed [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 19, 2010

Lost Endweek: Cuse and Lindelof Interview, Part Three

By James Poniewozik

This is the last of three parts of my interview with Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof on April 19. Here’s part one and here’s part two of the interview. * As a result of [the growth of media platforms], you have a very involved fan base. Is there there a point at which you kind [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 19, 2010

Lostwatch: Your Mission, Should You Decide to Accept It

By James Poniewozik

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, grab yourself a nice, cool refreshing cup of water—NOW YOU’RE LIKE ME—and watch last night’s Lost. There’s been a lot of discussion lately about how much of Lost its creators planned out long ago, and how much they’ve made up as they went along. Of course, it’s impossible [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 18, 2010

Lost Endweek: Cuse and Lindelof Interview, Part Two

By James Poniewozik

This is part two of my interview with Lost producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof on April 19. See here for part one. * To shift up a little bit: You stab at a lot of big ideas in the show, free will versus destiny, predetermination, and so on.  And you have over the course [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 17, 2010

Lost Endweek: Cuse and Lindelof Interview, Part One

By James Poniewozik

It’s now less than a week until Lost is no more. For this last week before the Lost weekend—call it the Lost Endweek—I’m going to post some daily transcripts from my on-set interviews with Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, and some of Lost’s cast members. I visited the set on April 19, and hadn’t seen [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 14, 2010

Dead Tree Alert: The Meaning of Lost; Plus, Lost in 108 Seconds!

By James Poniewozik

Yeah, so I flew to Hawaii to visit the Lost finale being shot. I know. I have a really lousy life. And I saw a pretty spoilery scene, which I can’t tell you much about. And I did some interviews with the cast members and producers, which I can tell you about. Then I wrote [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 13, 2010

Lost and Heroes: In Defense of Arrogance

By James Poniewozik

After May 23, Lost will be no more. And judging by the fan reactions to the “Across the Sea” and the waning days of season 6 generally, we’re seeing a lot of restlessness among the fans about how and whether Lost is answering questions, and whether it’s staying true to its vision and characters as [...]

+Uncategorized | May 12, 2010

Lostwatch: Original Sin

By Krista Mahr

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, tell your brother not to sit too close to that brightly glowing TV set, and enjoy a nice episode of Lost together.

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 10, 2010

Lost's Music Man

By James Poniewozik

For a TV show with such a vast, sprawling plot, expansive visuals and everything-but-the-Dharma-sink philosophy, Lost is also distinguished as a show with not much in the way of main-title theme music. (It has more of a theme note, or sound, or something.) But it’s certainly not a show without music, and in this week’s [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 5, 2010

Lostwatch: Here Come the Waterworks

By James Poniewozik

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, grab your things—here, take this backpack—and watch last night’s Lost. While Lost was airing on the East Coast last night, I was at the Time 100 gala at the Time Warner Center, seated between Rachael Ray and Lost producer Carlton Cuse. (Through dinner, Cuse was getting text updates [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | April 27, 2010

Lost Discussion Group: Who Lives? Who Dies?

By James Poniewozik

There’s no new Lost tonight; ABC is rerunning “Ab Aeterno” before resuming the series’ run to the finale, so tonight you have extra time to ponder the significance of Richard’s history on the Island, or simply to vote extra times for American Idol. On the Twitter suggestion of regular commenter Chaddogg, then, I’m reviving Lost [...]

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Tuned In+April 21, 2010

Lostwatch Addendum: Who the Hell Is Anakin?

By James Poniewozik

John Cloud has already done an excellent job recapping last night’s Lost, “The Last Recruit,” and I don’t have much to add on the overall architecture of this moving-pieces-into-place episode. But because this is Lost, there are four episodes left, and I can’t shut myself up,  I can’t resist chiming in with a few (semi-spoilery) [...]