May

What Lost S6Ep16 “What They Died For” Did For Me

Posted by: Keram Malicki-Sanchez in culture, mainstream media, music, skepticism, social networks

Lost Season 6 Episode 16 - What They Died For

Lost - The candidates before Jacob

NOTE: The following should be spoiler-free. It may not be recommended for devout followers who haven’t yet seen the episode, but I really have taken measures to avoid giving anything away.

I am going to be uncharacteristically emotive and offer little insight for the typical Culturepin post, but I really needed to capture and share the amazing feeling of buoyancy after watching tonight’s episode of Lost – “What They Died For.”

It is not only for the relief in having bold answers at last, or for the myriad connections and subtexts provided. I have debated, opined and otherwise pontificated at length on some of the social media platforms I frequent, only with friends, and never at any great length publicly, so I will not go into my take on what the mythology, story arcs or implications of ABC’s hugely successful epic series ultimately means. There are so many sites that have squeezed every last drop of possibility out of the material.

I just really wanted to take a moment, as the series comes to a close, to commend the people who made the show on what they have accomplished; to engage us in a fascinating, captivating, thrilling, mesmerizing story often quite literally around a campfire (albeit one we see on the television screen, an electronic campfire in itself) in a way that at least I haven’t felt since my grandfather used to put me to sleep with bedside tales culled from Greek mythology.

Tonight’s episode was beautifully acted (Terry O’Quinn was simply incredible, as were Mark Pellegrino, Michael Emerson, Henry Ian Cusick and even Evangeline Lilly – all completely adept at harlequin-type vacillations in motive and emotional structure) beautifully lit (Ben Linus’ hellfire orange glow in the secret room while talking with Flocke, or the ethereal tonality of the prisoners in the paddy wagon as Desmond makes his offer) and brilliantly scored by Michael Giacchino. The makeup was excellent, and the sound design as meticulous as ever.

I had the rare opportunity to work with a bunch of the crew from Lost last summer 2009 while acting in an independent film called One Kine Day in Kailua. The crew was on hiatus and so many of them took on the job and I was able to get to know the people who work diligently behind the scenes on those details that we might often overlook – the grips, the costumers, the makeup team.

Many shows take time, even seasons, to catch their stride, but Lost seemed to be quite well formed right out of the gate. Most of the characters already felt well rounded, and though admittedly the actors were getting to know the characters even as they were getting to know one another within the world of the play, it felt unusually present. But now, six years later, and on the eve of its death, the whole is reaching new heights.

Now don’t be fooled into thinking that I am uncritical or not skeptical about many points concerning the series let alone this last season. There have been stronger and weaker episodes, certainly. But every so often I would take a step back and simply marvel at the scope of what was being accomplished and presented within 47 minutes of television entertainment on a weekly basis. And then, there were times, like at the end of tonight’s show in particular, where I realized I hadn’t taken a breath in minutes. As the show ended I was completely in awe. I felt my body tingling, my heart thumping, and this strange sort of euphoria at the end of an incredible tale.

I am certain my buzz will dull considerably with time, and so again, I wanted simply to catalog this amazing feeling of excitement for posterity, because what I just witnessed was nothing short of a wonder, a gift.

Thanks guys.

Post your reaction to this episode or the ideas above in the comments section.

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Tags: ABC, acting, Ben Linus, final season, Hawaii, lighting, Locke, Lost, mysteries, show reaction, storytelling, Terry O'Quinn, the island, What They Died For

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May

Watching Stephen Hawking’s Into the Universe

Posted by: Keram Malicki-Sanchez in NAB, National Association of Broadcasters, Vegas, culture, mainstream media, social networks

At the 2010 National Association of Broadcaster’s convention in Las Vegas, I had the good fortune of attending a preview at the Sony 4K Digital Theater of Discovery Channel’s newest four part series Into the Universe – a mammoth undertaking that spanned three years of production and painstaking attention to detail working alongside Professor Stephen Hawking – around whose ideas this exploration is based.

Hawking is a British theoretical physicist whose 40-year scientific career has produced key scientific theorems regarding singularities in the framework of general relativity, the properties and natural laws of black holes, developing new models for the universe that has no boundaries in space time, and set ablaze the imagination of countless armchair enthusiasts interested in time travel, alien life, and colonization of other planets.

Another amazing fact about Hawking is that shortly after arriving at Cambridge, he began to develop systems of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, that ultimately rendered him completely paralyzed and able to communicate solely by virtue of a voice synthesizer (developed by a colleague at Cambridge) that speaks what he has written by word selection on a screen controlled by the movement of his eyes.

But this show is not about Hawking the man, it is about his ideas, and more importantly, about rendering his mind-boggling ideas and theorems into visual form so that they can be more readily appreciated and understood by the rest of us.

The result is nothing short of awe-inspiring, daring, mesmerizing. Computer models were created to simulate maps of the universe at the bleeding edge of our capacity in order to depict on screen our place amidst the interstellar layout of our Universe, and as the program zooms us in and out of it, we begin to see just how extraordinary the scope of it is; it is one thing to hear the words “two hundred billion” when speaking about time, or miles or the count of stars, but another thing altogether when seeing it depicted in a matter of seconds.

Somehow the show also succeeds in reducing to third grade level comprehension the manner in which a slight disparity in perfection of the grand order led to the creation of matter and life and of all things in the universe as we know it, by way of that irrefutable force: gravity. (Is the “divine creator” then merely instability+gravity?)

Although I have been deeply interested in the cosmos, quantum mechanics and our place in the grand scheme of things all my life, reading Hawking’s work, even the slim best-seller “A Brief History of Time,” that sold over nine million copies, proves an exercise in determination and humility. What begins as an enthusiastic exploration on the part of the reader quickly turns into a soporific bedside coaster: the ideas, the mathematical formulas simply require a deeper understanding of the underlying mathematical quandaries. Now with the ubiquity of the internet and its propensity to transform even the most staunchly inquisitive end user into a curator of sound bytes, Hawkings book must be even harder to process effectively, and for this reason the Discovery series is on my recommended viewing list.

At the NAB screening, a member of the audience stood up during the Q&A and pointed out that Carl Sagan’s series “Cosmos” (1980) was the most widely viewed television show in the medium’s history. He wondered aloud whether the creators of Into the Universe understood the gravity of this fact and how it reflected the appetite among viewers for answers and if they believed that this show could replicate those numbers.

It is an interesting question. Do we still care? Are we still capable of sustaining inquiry long and far enough to engage topics of this scope and complexity, or will the show simply become another powder keg for debate between creationists and the scientific community? The show certainly doesn’t pander to all sides; in fact, Hawking goes right ahead and asks if the way things are turning out provide evidence of a grand designer, and then immediately answers that it doesn’t.

In the very first two hour episode everything from the nature of the Big Bang, to black holes, to the lifespan of our sun, to colonization of Mars and interstellar technology is covered, never in a sensational way but rather from a simple but deliberate set of unapologetic arguments for how these things must operate to how they could be solved. That it is all beautifully realized by way of well-executed computer generated graphics makes it all the more engaging and really fun to watch.

I happened to watch it in pitiful standard definition on my HDTV (for some reason, though the show states it is also available in HD, the high definition version of Discovery Channel on my Time Warner package was running paid ads) right after watching the third last episode of Lost. It was interesting to notice how, though Lost raises question upon question as the nature of its mysteries, it often turns to the distraction of the emotional interactions between the characters than to take the more courageous path of venturing theoretical possibilities, even metaphysical ones.

So to see Into the Universe plunge in headfirst with some of the really big questions, it occurred to me that Hawking, who has been subjected to a body without functionality, essentially a brain in a wheelchair, maintaining sustained inquiry into matters that his personal experience has never encountered, and coming up with very real possibilities for solutions that will affect our species irrevocably is quite a salve to the frustrations raised by ABC’s hit show.

Whether or not you have an interest in the stars, in space exploration, in the cosmos or how we came to be here and where we may be going, Into the Universe is extraordinary programming, a great antidote to the Facebook blues, perhaps even a restoration of childlike fascination, and for these reasons I suggest you give it a look.