MAGIC         PORK

*** SPOILERS from last night’s Lost ***

I liked last night’s episode of Lost, although the flashback story with that woman was a little reminiscent of David Mamet’s House of Games. Except that in House of Games, the woman was a psychiatrist so it makes a little more sense why she would be fascinated by the art of the con. Mamet must like stories about con artists because he also wrote The Spanish Prisoner and Heist, and possibly others that I haven’t seen. I haven’t seen Wag the Dog, but I know it’s about some people that try to fake a war so I guess that can be considered a con too.

If Mamet had written this episode of Lost, he would have had at least two more levels of deception going on, like the woman would have really been a con artist too but Sawyer knew she was a con artist and planned on her double-crossing him, and so on. Plus every other word would have been bleeped out and Mamet’s wife Rebecca Pidgeon would have been in it.

If you really dissect these movies, they aren’t very realistic. The whole plot might depend on some character anticipating the behavior of some other character that would have been impossible to predict - but it’s fun to watch nonetheless.

Mamet also made State and Main which stars Oscar-nominated Philip Seymour Hoffman!!! Sorry, he grew up here, so it’s been all over the news. It is kind of cool, but come on, it’s just making us look lame that we’re going ga-ga over this. It’s not like he still lives here. It seems to me like all this excitement over Hoffman just draws attention to the fact that to make something of himself, he moved out of Rochester.

It’s not like he’s some new star either. It’s his first Oscar nomination, but he’s been doing great work for years. For a while there, it seemed like he was in every other movie I saw. Anyway… State and Main’s a good movie.

OK, back to Lost. Part of me feels like Charlie’s acting a little out of character, but I’m willing to go along with the writers because:

1. He seems to be going a bit insane what with the wacky dreams & sleepwalking.
2. You’d probably go a little nuts too if you were deserted on an island perhaps for the rest of your life and you had a chance at sealing the deal with some really cute blonde chick.. she’s even got a funny accent like you.. hey you think, maybe this deserted island thing won’t be that bad.. and suddenly the weirdest guy on the island is taking your place. Guess it’ll be listening to old records with Hurley the rest of your life instead. Ouch.
3. Monaghan makes some awesome creepy facial expressions. If he gets to do that more often, all the better.
4. I trust that the writers are setting up something really good with this new dark turn in his character.

Some people are getting antsy because they want more answers to the show, but I say keep it going nice & slow. I love it. I wouldn’t feel that way if it seemed like the writers didn’t know where it all was going (like on X-Files where it started to get frustrating), but I think they know exactly where it’s all going and I say let them tell it and have fun watching how all the pieces fit together.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2006 at 6:51 pm and is filed under movies, tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.