If LOST had lips, I'd never work up the courage to kiss it.

It’s been about a week since the Lost box set has come out. Enough time to finish all 5252 episodic minutes along with all the extra features. I’ll assume each and every single one of you has done so. You’ve read the pull out thing-y with your black light. The stone pieces reflected a distorted version of your smile as you set them on the board to a game you don’t know how to play. You got frustrated trying to roll up Jacob’s message in the ankh, which was nothing but gibberish symbols that meant nothing. You are done. You’ve finished all that is Lost: The Complete Collection on blu ray or dvd. Or have you?

wwwwWWWWAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaannnnnnhhhhhhaaaaaaaeeeeaaaao

(That is my typographical interpretation of the theme music.)

Continue on to get mind fingered. WARNING: SPOILERS!

So you got answers to things you didn’t care about, Walt is infecting your dreams again, and you teared up during the behind the scenes stuff. Time to pack it up. That’s everything. WRONG! You didn’t think the people behind the most picked apart series ever would spoon feed you all of the extras, did you?

Grab your black light and go at that map like a forensic investigator goes after people stains at a motel murder scene. Do you see the heart of the island? Of course you do. You did this already. It’s beautiful isn’t it? Like a holographic Mew. Anyone a member of the Pokemon League circa 2000? Take notice of the arrows and turn the map accordingly. Some of you are going, “Duh! Idiot. Shut up. Like, whatever.” The rest of you are going, “Holy Smoke Monsters! A hidden disc! I could have went years without finding this!”

There’s a hidden disc in the lid. How freaking cool is that?! Plenty of more things to geek out about, until you’ve hit play on everything. Then, that…is…it. Done. There couldn’t possibly be more. WRONG AGAIN! There are a ton of easter eggs throughout this thing!

You could try to find them all on your own like I did. (I failed.) On the other hand, you could go to Annie Chu’s complete list at the Examiner. She does a wonderful job of exposing all the secrets, I think. If more popped up on some other list, I wouldn’t be surprised. Lost is pretty much a giant middle finger pointed straight at you. Are we sadists for enjoying Lost so much? Eh, who gives two farts? Have fun.

See you in another life, brotha.

Disney is attempting to make their classic (and still perfectly hilarious) content hipper, phatter and/or qualitatively phresher by adding douchebag overdubs to many of their timeless cartoons. As in the ones that were doing just fine the way they were—thank you very much—you cynical, soulless, money-grubbing corporate savages.

But the results are goddamn fantastic…in a gallows humor, psyche-shattering, has-the-world-really-come-to-this(?), sort of way.

This, I can handle with a slow, dry, world weary guffaw. BUT! They just had to go and push the envelope a little further…

[NSFW Duck Ranting]

The only upside I can see to all of this is that it conjures up the mental image of a towering, half-frozen Walt Disneystein corpse-monster slap fighting with the 400 ft. Jedi ghost of Stanley Kubrick in the middle of downtown Tokyo.

…or maybe that’s just me and my way of dealing with this traumatic assault on my childhood. Everyone has their own process.

Boardwalk Empire

It’s the Labor Day holiday this weekend, which means the fall TV season is almost here! Even though television programming in the 21^st century doesn’t adhere to the same strict schedule as it did decades ago, when September meant actual salvation from a constant stream of re-runs. (Many of the best shows on TV air during the summer now – and before you say anything, yeah I haven’t been using blog time to trumpet Mad Men or Breaking Bad, because to be honest I have a lot of catching up to do with both those shows. I will get to them. TV nerd penance forthcoming… eventually. </flog>)

Anyway, before autumn kick-starts our internal DVR’s, I thought I’d run down my own personal highlights coming up – some returning shows I love, some brand-new ones I’m hoping will tickle my boob-tube fancy… and others that I’m iffy about but am hoping will surprise me. (Warning – there will be SPOILERS for the returning shows, so scroll past if you must):

The Walking Dead

New Shows

The Walking Dead: No, I’m not about to stop flailing about Frank Darabont and Robert Kirkman’s forthcoming zombie saga, and neither should you. It promises to push the envelope of television on the horror front, the human drama front, the filmmaking front (They shot on Super 16! How geektastic is that?!), and probably 15 other fronts we haven’t discovered yet. We’re only getting six episodes in the first season, so it’ll be shorter than most but it should still be a hell of a ride. Everything about The Walking Dead promises must-see TV, particularly as it could be the show that blows open the possibilities for long-run comics and graphic novels being adapted for television, where they are infinitely better suited rather than a two-hour feature film which doesn’t give them room to breathe. Exciting times. (October 31, AMC)

Undercovers: Long story short: I love J.J. Abrams. I love spy shenanigans. Even though I have lingering nerd gripes about that last season of Alias, it was one of my favorite shows in its time and I miss it like burning, yo. Pre-premiere buzz has been mixed, but for those reasons listed above I’m still anticipating Bad Robot’s latest, about a married spy team re-kindling their romance by coming out of retirement to kick some international-espionage ass, despite the fact that it seems a lot like familiar ground. I do hope the quality of the scripts and plots offer more than just Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw being very pretty and stuff going “BOOM!” real good, but who are we kidding, I’ll probably still be entertained. (At least until NBC cancels it. I keeed! Really, watch it with the itchy trigger finger, Peacock…) (September 22, NBC)

Boardwalk Empire: HBO presents a Martin Scorsese production. Read that sentence again. Do I really need to say anything else? Really?! Okay, it’s a Prohibition era gangster epic, penned by Sopranos writer Terrence Winter, and stars a tremendous cast (Kelly Macdonald, Michael Pitt, Michael Shannon… Dabney Coleman! The Dabster is back!!), lead by master scene-stealer Steve Buscemi… Want me to go on? If you’re not already slavering in anticipation, check your pulse. (September 19, HBO)

Fringe

Returning Shows

Fringe: I geeked out about the awesome potential that Fringe is offering us in its third season already, but we’re about to find out just what new and exciting alternate-universe mayhem the show has in store.  After the Season Two finale, it promises some hairy dilemmas for Anna Torv’s heroine in particular; Olivia’s still stranded in the “other” universe while her counterpart has taken her place in our world. Can’t wait to see John Noble continue to prove the Emmy voters thoroughly inept with his performances as both the batty, tragic Walter Bishop of our world and the alt-verse’s devious, ruthless “Walternate.” Only real drawback is that apparently, Leonard Nimoy is definitely retired and won’t be back as William Bell, though I have a feeling his Svengali-like presence will still be felt in other ways. Bring it on. (September 23, Fox)

Dexter: It’s exciting, and a little bit scary, when a show you love reaches a completely game-changing moment, and that’s exactly what happened at the end of season four.  His wife’s murder in their own home presents implications that make it impossible to imagine Dexter Morgan being able to return to his previous clandestine-killing ways without some very, very tricky negotiations, let alone whether or not he’s even going to get the urge for a while after finding baby Harrison in a pool of Rita’s blood, mirroring his own “birth” in the killing way. And don’t forget that now that she knows about his biological family, sister Deb is closer to finding out the truth than ever before. It feels like the beginning of the end for Michael C. Hall’s definitive anti-hero, so here’s hoping the show continues to surprise and shock as it always has. (September 26, Showtime)

Community: In general, I’m a much bigger drama watcher than I am sitcom regular. Yet I’m as excited for Community’s return as I am for any hour-long thriller, because quite simply it’s gag-for-gag the funniest show on TV. I felt like it took a few episodes to really find its legs, but by the time I’d finished the first season I was totally sold; if you’re not watching, you’ve probably still heard plenty about the paintball episode, and every bit of it is true. As ingeniously geeky as any five episodes of The Big Bang Theory put together – my god, the John Woo and Die Hard references alone. Superb! (September 23, NBC)

The Event

On-the-Fence New Shows

The Event: Call it the FlashForward effect, but when I started hearing the “It’s the new Lost!” rumblings about NBC’s upcoming conspiracy thriller, I slammed the “caution” button with both fists. Then they screened the pilot at Comic-Con, and though I didn’t get to see it, my interest was suddenly piqued by the enthusiastic responses on the interwebs. No, everyone seemed to agree, it really is good and very promising. Okay, you’ve got me, I’ll give it a shot. Advantage in that it co-stars Laura Innes, who from when ER was good through when ER was laughably bad and I stopped watching, she was always consistently excellent and underrated. (September 20, NBC)

Hawaii Five-0: Yeah,  not the kind of show I usually get excited about. Reboots are difficult enough to pull off, and Hawaii Five-0 doesn’t immediately scream “Yeah, I can see the potential for bringing something original to the table.” That said, the creative involvement of Alias, Fringe and Star Trek vets Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci indicates some promise. (Pilot director Len “Underworld” Wiseman… well, less so.)  Probably not a guaranteed weekly watch, but the promos make it look as though it might be a lot of relatively brain-free fun. Plus, it’s got Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park; out of nerd loyalty, I feel obliged to check it out just to see Jin Kwon and Sharon Valerii kick ass in tandem. (September 20, CBS)

On-the-Fence Returning Shows

V: Typically, if a show fails to completely captivate me by the end of the first season, I won’t be back for more. In the case of V, however, I’m giving it a second chance, partially because I still have hopes that it might be able to pull off a remotely Battlestar Galactica-level of depth and relevance via a known but previously quite cheeseball sci-fi franchise. It never really got there in the first season, which I found wildly uneven, but now that the Visitors are primed to really start their global invasion it is do-or-die time. On a nerdy note, I’m definitely intrigued that they are bringing the original series’ big bad, Jane Badler, onto the new show as an as-yet-unconfirmed even-bigger-bad. (Richard Hatch seemed like stunt casting on BSG 2.0 at first, and look how great that turned out. Of course there is the rumor that Badler will be playing the exact same character, evil vixen Diana. Too meta?) (November TBA, ABC)

Which of these shows are also high on your must-see list, readers? And are there any other shows I missed and should check out? Have your say in the comments.

Every time we turn around it seems there’s new Doctor Who news.  Just the way I like it!  Yesterday saw a big huge piece of information directly from Steven Moffat himself.  As I originally saw via Radio Free Skaro, this came from the Edinburgh International Television Festival.  Read the full article here.  Split seasons worked okay for Battlestar Galactica so I’m fine with it.

What do YOU think?

Awesome surprise for Freshman moving into MIT as hackers placed a TARDIS on top of a building in Kendall Square.  These students really are geniuses!  ”Hackers” at MIT have been up to these pranks for quite some time now and in my opinion haven’t topped the work done in 1999.

via Boston.com\more pics HERE

North American Doctor Who fans got a mondo-enormo-sized bit of news on Wednesday regarding an upcoming DVD release.  In an exclusive interview with David and Marty Hooie of the spectacular Hoo On Who podcast, Daniel Hall of 2 Entertain, the folks behind many BBC DVDs, among them the fantastic line of classic Who, broke the news that the distributor finally reached an agreement to allow the 1996 TV Movie to be available on Region 1 for the first time ever!

The 1996 TV movie is the lone screen outing by 8th Doctor, Paul McGann.  The movie was co-produced by the BBC, Universal Television, and Fox with Universal retaining the North American home video rights.  It was long believed that Universal didn’t care enough about the property, or didn’t think it would yield much money, and as such we’d never get to see the movie in the U.S. or Canada anywhere but on bootleg or YouTube, which I suppose is also a bootleg.  But Mr. Hall’s announcement yesterday means sometime in the next year, R1 fans will get not only the movie, but the super deluxe special edition that will be released in the UK later this year.

The DVD will feature a number of excellent documentaries about the making of the movie and the adventures the 8th Doctor took in comic strip and audio form in the interim until the new series began.  I’m most excited for an all new commentary recorded by McGann and 7th Doctor Sylvester McCoy, whose regeneration is depicted within.  The DVD should be out sometime in the next 12 months and I’m as excited as a little girl.

You’re welcome.
-Kanderson

So far I haven’t really subjected you all to my own personal stash of FLAIL! regarding Frank Darabont’s AMC adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s comics series, but as the fall season is nearly upon us that’s going to change. Starting here – finally, a quality version of the AMAZING trailer they debuted at Comic-Con is online:

Begin nerdgasmic anticipation (if you hadn’t already) right about….NOW. (I will freely admit that I got so verklempt watching this trailer at the con that I cried a bit. Well, and it’s easier to admit to now since I already told The Walking Deadcast and they outed me – hi, Jason!) The 90-min. premiere of The Walking  Dead airs on Halloween (heeeee!) – Sunday, 10/31 at 10 p.m.

Tune in next time for a small grip of most-anticipated fall TV premieres – some new, some returning – of which clearly, this is pretty high up the list.

There’s an underground movement of indie rock entitled “Trock,” or “Time Lord Rock,” which, as you might guess, is rock music about Doctor Who. It’s pretty awesome. The pioneering Trock band is Chameleon Circuit out of the UK. Here are a couple of their hits (videos made by users.) Enjoy the shit out of them.

You’re Welcome
-Kanderson

The Kids In the Hall are back, comedy nerds. I mean, the die-hardiest fans among us realize that they never really went away, having gotten back together numerous times since 1996’s Brain Candy feature for live tours, comedy shorts, and the like.  But this is their first substantial filmed effort in 14 years and hold onto your wigs and costume jewelry, because Death Comes To Town – which lands tonight on IFC at 10 p.m.  – is KITH turned up to eleven.

Our friends and fellow nerd brethren in the Great White North, of course, got to see this epic miniseries of oddity eight months ago. Okay, and some of us might not have been so patient for that U.S. air date. (Hey, if it’s good enough for Dave Foley, it’s good enough for me.) Britain’s The League of Gentlemen has been cited as an influence on Death Comes to Town, and if you’re familiar with the former you’ll definitely see its impact on the latter, in the often pitch-black comedy of a small-time town populated with big-time freaks. Even the lone return appearance by a character from the Kids’ 1990’s sketch series is one of their stranger, skeevier creations. And I don’t mean Bellini. Bellini is pretty much a requirement, isn’t he?:

Here’s the thing, though : While I can definitely lay claim to more than five laughs over Death Comes to Town’s four-hour cumulative running time, which as UK film critic Mark Kermode stipulates should be a fair litmus test for a successful comedy… wellll, I didn’t really love it. There’s a lot of high-octane insanity going on here driving toward the big mystery of who killed the mayor of Shuckton, Ontario and why, and though the set pieces involving individual characters and storylines usually work on their own, some repeat gags lose steam the more they’re utilized and the manner in which they’re woven together doesn’t always gel. (Caught myself around episode six thinking “Guys, you’ve got an hour left.  Denouement!” I know, probably a bad assessment for a surreal comedy, but maybe that’s my old-school miniseries gauge talking. I know, it’s not the fucking Thorn Birds. Shutting up now.)

I’m looking forward to watching Death Comes to Town again and seeing if the stuff that irked me the first time isn’t as much of an issue. That said, even it felt a little scattershot at times, there’s plenty to be enjoyed. Remember how Cancer Boy was minutely scandalous when Brain Candy came out? This show is crammed with Cancer Boys, each gleefully pushing the boundaries of good taste, and it’s hard to choose a favorite: Mark McKinney’s Death, holed up in a seedy motel getting hammered on owl’s blood and lusting after chubby redheads, is up there. So is Scott Thompson’s hairless town coroner whose, um, attachment to Bruce McCulloch’s late mayor gets a leeetle bit freaky. Foley’s scarcely grieving mayor’s wife is great, and his indistinctly foreign veterinary nurse is even better. And then there’s Rampop (Landon Reynolds-Trudel) – the mayor’s son who mostly runs around squawking and sees everyone, except Death, as giant psychedelic butterflies. Rampop is probably the most awesomely strange creation the Kids have ever realized. (Well, at least since “Sausages”):

Sound off about Death Comes to Town below – and share some of your other favorite KITH classics while you’re at it. (My pen! My pennnn!)

What was up with Crazy Claire’s squirrel baby from LOST Season 6?  The crew and cast members of LOST try to explain in this video, which can be found on the LOST Season 6 DVD/Blu-Ray Extras coming out 8/24/2010.

Btw, If you’re interested in procuring the squirrel baby for your own creepy collection check out the LOST auction this weekend in Santa Monica, CA. This sciurid tyke will run you $300-$500.