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Money is Good, and so is Lost.
Oct. 8th, 2004 12:11 amWell, PSU finally got my paycheck situation straightened out, so I actually have a modicum of cashflow once again...even though 98% of it is already gone in bills. Ohwell, big deal: I can at least afford food and cat-toys again, so I'm good to go.
An amazing thing has happened over the past few days. I've gotten back into watching TV again. Not on an actual TV, mind you--I never even turn the damn thing on anymore--but I've found myself caught up, for the first time in a millenium, with an honest-to-gods television programme: Lost.
When I first heard of this show, I immediately figured it was going to be stupid as hell: a bunch of people stranded on a tropical island after a plane crash? Allright, so who would they get to play the Skipper and Little Buddy? Later on, I heard that it was actually a neat, mysterious sort of surrealistic programme with a heaping of bizarre occurrences, strange gigantic things in the woods, bizarre characters, what have you....Definitely enough to get me interested enough to actually download the pilot episode via BitTorrent and give it a watch.
Godsdamn, I was impressed! Sure, not all the performances are that great and many of the characters are your usual stereotypes (the Cute Doctor, the Hot Dumb Chick, the Brainy Fat Kid, etc.)--it is an ensemble-cast show, after all--but the plot is surprisingly engaging, alternating between surprisingly tense scenes of the plane-crash survivors' attempts to get organized and figure out what's happening to them and scenes of events from their past before the crash. Such a wonderfully atmospheric series, it is! Nice camera work, using lots of natural lighting and weather effects to amplify the tension surrounding the characters and the Invisible Thing in the forest. Exposition is handled pretty nicely, each episode piling another one or two hints on top of the previous ones in a crazed jumble that has me completely dumbfounded as to where this series might possibly go--which is a damn good thing. Are these people actually trapped on Gilligan's Island? Or Monster Island? What the hell is a polar bear doing on a tropical island? What's up with the old bald guy? I haven't a clue...which is very refreshing. I haven't felt this engaged by a series since Millenium and the first two or three seasons of The X-Files, and, quite frankly, I'm amazed that something this cool is on ABC of all things.
God bless the world of .avi rips of television programs! I can carry the entire series around on my laptop and actually watch it whenever I can, rather than being tied to a broadcast time and my couch....Superior. I'll definitely be buying this one when they release it on DeeVamaDee in a few months.
OK, now to finish grading a few hundred more papers and then go to sleep.
(Ohyeah, that site linked to above is a really good intro to the series, but watch out! It contains a number of spoilers that somehow I've managed to avoid...but I don't think they'd give away anything too major-league anyway.)
An amazing thing has happened over the past few days. I've gotten back into watching TV again. Not on an actual TV, mind you--I never even turn the damn thing on anymore--but I've found myself caught up, for the first time in a millenium, with an honest-to-gods television programme: Lost.
When I first heard of this show, I immediately figured it was going to be stupid as hell: a bunch of people stranded on a tropical island after a plane crash? Allright, so who would they get to play the Skipper and Little Buddy? Later on, I heard that it was actually a neat, mysterious sort of surrealistic programme with a heaping of bizarre occurrences, strange gigantic things in the woods, bizarre characters, what have you....Definitely enough to get me interested enough to actually download the pilot episode via BitTorrent and give it a watch.
Godsdamn, I was impressed! Sure, not all the performances are that great and many of the characters are your usual stereotypes (the Cute Doctor, the Hot Dumb Chick, the Brainy Fat Kid, etc.)--it is an ensemble-cast show, after all--but the plot is surprisingly engaging, alternating between surprisingly tense scenes of the plane-crash survivors' attempts to get organized and figure out what's happening to them and scenes of events from their past before the crash. Such a wonderfully atmospheric series, it is! Nice camera work, using lots of natural lighting and weather effects to amplify the tension surrounding the characters and the Invisible Thing in the forest. Exposition is handled pretty nicely, each episode piling another one or two hints on top of the previous ones in a crazed jumble that has me completely dumbfounded as to where this series might possibly go--which is a damn good thing. Are these people actually trapped on Gilligan's Island? Or Monster Island? What the hell is a polar bear doing on a tropical island? What's up with the old bald guy? I haven't a clue...which is very refreshing. I haven't felt this engaged by a series since Millenium and the first two or three seasons of The X-Files, and, quite frankly, I'm amazed that something this cool is on ABC of all things.
God bless the world of .avi rips of television programs! I can carry the entire series around on my laptop and actually watch it whenever I can, rather than being tied to a broadcast time and my couch....Superior. I'll definitely be buying this one when they release it on DeeVamaDee in a few months.
OK, now to finish grading a few hundred more papers and then go to sleep.
(Ohyeah, that site linked to above is a really good intro to the series, but watch out! It contains a number of spoilers that somehow I've managed to avoid...but I don't think they'd give away anything too major-league anyway.)
