A new feature has just been added at the official Lost website. It’s called “LOST: Showdown,” and it’s an interactive app that allows your votes to help pick “the ultimate moment from the past four seasons.” The selection and voting process includes video clips of the moments that are available to vote for, and the process finds you whittling them down in a tree structure, March Madness style. It’s a fun little diversion while waiting for Season 5 to come.

n

Lost
Season 3 Box Set

Okay, kind of strange! On the Front of the Season 3 box set (released in the UK) there is a message written that says “JACOB LOVES YOU”.

I love you too Jacob!

Jack Bender, Lost director, tells Variety that he has some regrets over the Mr. Eko death scene.

It’s not that Bender, the Lost helmer who directed the fatal encounter, wishes he’d kept Eko alive. If he had it to do over again, he’d just show less of the monster.

“Occasionally you look back on an episode, and you say that ‘That was the best choice in post that we could have made at the time,’ ” Bender says. “There have been certain choices that we’ve been forced to make because of the nature of scheduling.”

Source: Variety.

There’s been some talk of a Lost castmember alientaing his/her costars. Kristin at E! Online has the following to say:

Heather in Washington D.C.: In today’s Vine show, you tell us that a certain castmember on Lost is on the outs with most of the other castmembers. Please, please reassure me that you’re not referring to Naveen Andrews or Terry O’Quinn!
I am not.

Cory in Homeworth, Ohio: Tell me, please, who is it on Lost that had a falling out with the rest of the cast? Will this affect their character or story at all?
Ding, ding, ding! It already has! There was a pivotal line during a scene on the beach near the end of one of the last few episodes. It was very telling about what’s happening behind the scenes. (Feel free to post your theories below.)

Source: Watch with Kristin, E! Online.

Popular Mechanics weighs in on the Lost season finale with a reality check on some of the events. Writer, filmmaker, military adventurer and former dynamite wrangler Robert Young Pelton weighs in on the good, the bad and the fake from Wednesday’s mind-bending finale.

1. Is it possible to ignite dynamite with a gunshot?

The Others vs. the Castaways battle on the beach began with a bang-literally. The clever beach dwellers set up piles of dynamite and, when the Others launched their attack, used rifles to detonate the sticks. That much holds up to Pelton’s expertise, but it might not be as impressive as the Lost creators would have us believe. “Dynamite in an open space is not that impressive,” he says, “and the blast would probably scatter the pile before it detonates it all.” And that’s not the only falsity: Pelton doubts that product from the 1800s would even explode. “The outside wrapper would be paper and the powder would dissolve [in water],” he says. Maybe the island’s mysterious powers of healing work on dynamite as well.

2. Would a grenade really work under water?

Never mind his nine lives: It was one-eyed Other Mikhail’s grenade assault on the Looking Glass communications station-and rockstar Charlie’s subsequent drowning because of it that had us talking. But it’s probably not plausible, says Pelton. “Grenades would have a much diminished effect in water compared to air,” he says. The two products of a grenade detonation, shrapnel and blast, could both break a window. However, according to Pelton, most underwater windows are made of thick plexiglass that tends to be the strongest part of a sealed vessel. But, because Mikhail was so close to the blast — putting his lungs and internal organs at risk — maybe he’s finally made his way to the big hatch in the sky.

3. Can you really break someone’s neck with your legs?

It was hard to believe that Iraqi interrogator Sayid allowed himself to get captured, but he redeemed himself when he tripped an Other and, hands tied behind his back, broke the man’s neck with his legs. Pelton says the move is definitely possible: “It’s taught in combatives, but obviously difficult to do.” Still, as we’ve seen in the show’s first three seasons, there’s not much Sayid can’t do. Except maybe control his temper.

4. Would Rousseau’s radio transmission really have blocked the sat phone’s signal?

Once Charlie turned off the Looking Glass hatch’s signal-jamming devices, the Losties still had one more obstacle to overcome before they could make the call that would get them rescued: Rousseau’s distress message, broadcasting for 16 years from the island’s radio tower. But that, says Pelton, is impossible. “Sat signals are only blocked by jamming devices or solid objects that block the line of sight to the satellite,” he says. “Radio signals would have no effect.”

Source: Popular Mechanics.

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse speak out on the huge amount of spoilers released prior to the finale showing. It seems that Disney is not very happy and may seek payment next season to those sites releasing spoilers!

When LOST’s Season Three finale twist was revealed weeks in advance, the vast internet fan community for ABC’s hit show was divided between those who thought such information was an entitlement, and those who felt it shouldn’t exist at all. As LOST Season Four looms on the horizon, the backlash from the production end of things has finally reared its head. How did the producers react to the leak, and what plans do they have to keep LOST Season Four under wraps?

Lost producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse popped up individually this week at E!Online and TvGuide.com respectively to address the awful incident of spoiling, which took place weeks prior to the airing of LOST’s finale.

Lindelof described his philosophy on the leak to E!’s Kristin Veatch “…no one skips to the end of life. You have to live it, and it’s just disappointing to me that people don’t respect the integrity of the show enough to let it unfold naturally.”

Lindelof, the co-creator of LOST, went on to say this about how LOST Season Four information will be disseminated. “Well, with regard to [LOST] season four, Carlton and I are going into complete and utter radio silence. I know a lot of people are going to be frustrated, but I think if things had gone a little differently in terms of the finale getting spoiled, we might have been a little more open to talking about it.” His later comments, though, were self mocking and indicated that the reason for the silence is more to suspend the audience in this state of vertigo over where the show was going, and not about getting revenge against those that spoiled the finale’s big surprise.

Over at the Ausiello Report on TvGuide.com, however, Carlton Cuse, the co-show runner, indicated that while the producers may be limiting themselves to well tempered displays of disappointment, the brass at Disney are the path of Vengeance. When Ausiello asked Cuse whether they knew who spread the info or not, Cuse replied, “Disney security is trying to establish a full and complete list of all of the people through whose hands the show passed, We did everything we felt we could do.”

What could this mean for the fan community leading up to LOST Season Four? If Disney has a heightened sense of the damage to the property, it could conceivably set up a DMCA hit squad to take down sites that have a tendency to be too loose with LOST Season Four spoilers. In reality, ABC and other networks tolerate a lot of unauthorized use of copyrighted materials such as videos, logos, and pictures. Exercising their rights as copyright holders, Disney could make spoiler sites pay aesthetically for crossing the line, and in some cases, the removal of copyrighted material could conceivably cause a site to shut down. Unauthorized set photographs, the essence of many spoilers for instance, can sometimes be considered copyright violations.

Overall, even with a lightened tone, it appears that LOST Season Four will present a more tight lipped creative team and, likely, a more locked down production than previous seasons.

Source: BuddyTV.

The newest (May 21st) issue of Video Business trade magazine has an ad with a small sneak preview of the art for several upcoming TV-DVD sets from ABC and Disney/Buena Vista Home Entertainment. One of the box sets shown is Lost - The Complete 3rd Season: The Unexplored Experience. The exact title comes from a trailer currently showing at Disney’s new TVonDVDHits.com website (and don’t think that we didn’t notice it sounds a little bit like our own URL… so don’t get confused, okay?). So, when will this release hit the store shelves? The street date hasn’t been revealed yet, but expect it to come out timed to help promote the next new season of the show. Disney/Buena Vista is planning to announce each of these on May 31st, so stay tuned for more developments! Our thanks to readers like longtime friend Scott Lovelace, who helped us spot the art in the ad, and like Nick Sebek, who tipped us off about the trailer.

Source: TVonDVD.

Kristin scores an interview with Damon and gets us answers we’re dying to know!! Including why Charlie was killed off.

Damon, first, I want you to know that last week, I hated me. I hated people who do what I do, because it honestly broke my heart that the huge “flash forward” twist of the finale was spoiled on a Website. I know you were trying extremely hard to protect that.
It was unfortunate. I think there will always be people who want to turn to the last page of the book, but I feel that those people are almost universally disappointed with what they read there, because if it’s cool, they don’t understand the context, and if it sucks, they feel like they’ve saved themselves time. But no one skips to the end of life. You have to live it, and it’s just disappointing to me that people don’t respect the integrity of the show enough to let it unfold naturally. There is a fine line between intriguing the audience with what’s to come and giving them the whole shebang. And I feel the line was crossed with the finale this year, and it’s really disappointing. Which is why, if we’re going to talk about these things, I would at least like to come to you, because I know you’ll handle it responsibly and not cross that line.

How are you dealing with the Spoilergate aftermath?
Well, with regard to season four, Carlton and I are going into complete and utter radio silence. I know a lot of people are going to be frustrated, but I think if things had gone a little differently in terms of the finale getting spoiled, we might have been a little more open to talking about it. But now we’re all bitter. [Laughs.] No, honestly, the reason for the silence is we don’t want to tell the audience what to think about where the show is going to be next year. The way the finale concluded and what happens next is open to interpretation. I think it had a real imaginative quality to it that hopefully engaged the audience’s imagination the way the show did when they first saw the pilot.

Does that mean you’re not going to answer all my probing questions about the fate of our Losties now?
You can ask, but I can’t guarantee anything.

Fair enough. How about a harmless little game of False, True or Hell No, I Won’t Tell You?
Let’s do it…

Lost returns in February.
True.

Lost stays on Wednesday nights.
Is there an I Don’t Know category?

The finale’s twist, the flash forward, is something that you’d planned all along, from the very beginning.
Oh, absolutely.

The show will flash forward and flash back from this point onward.
Hell no, I won’t tell you.

You are shooting in Hawaii next season.
Yes. Mostly.

Kate is pregnant.
Hell no, I won’t tell you.

The role of Jacob has been cast.
False.

False? Okay, interesting. People were having all sorts of interpretations of what he looked like.
You do see a guy, but… I’m still sticking to my false.

The monster can reanimate the dead.
Hell no, I won’t tell you.

The Others are in danger of extinction.
True.

The island’s mysteries can be explained strictly by science.
Strictly by science?

Strictly.
Hell no, I won’t tell you.

The love triangle will eventually be resolved in an unambiguous manner.
True.

Michael is still out in the ocean somewhere.
Hell no, I won’t tell you.

Tom is gay.
I’ll leave that open to interpretation.

Ben is a good father.
True. [Laughs] These are just my opinions, by the way.

Alex is actually Ben’s biological daughter.
False.

The big set for season four is called the Ruins.
False.

You’re a bastard for killing Charlie.
True.

Can we talk about that? ‘Cause we fans need to know why you did it.
Yes, of course. Dominic, Carlton, and I, and all the writers, really felt that when Charlie threw his Virgin Mary statues into the water last year, that was the end of his addiction arc. We weren’t interested in revisiting it and having him bounce between being drunk and being sober, so we began to really struggle with the idea of what was Charlie to play now. How was he going to evolve as a character?

At the very same time, we were starting to think about what the effect of the second season finale was going to be, with Desmond turning the fail-safe key. And we didn’t want to kill off Desmond, but because this fail-safe key existed as sort of a last resort, we wanted there to be really severe ramifications for Desmond turning it. We didn’t want him to get a free pass. And we felt that it would be cool if it involved time travel in some way. But instead of doing sort of a traditional time travel and creating paradoxes and all that stuff, we just did [the episode] “Flashes Before Your Eyes.” When that experience ended, we wanted him to be able to see the future, and we thought it would be cool if [his visions] always kind of related to Charlie and Charlie’s death, as opposed to seeing 50 different things. That way, he would struggle all season with the idea of whether or not Charlie’s death was inevitable.

Why Charlie?
We felt that would be a really interesting story for Desmond, but the way it would affect Charlie excited us even more. We thought it would make Charlie enormously heroic. He is a character who I think the audience has really liked, and he has, during the course of the show, demonstrated real heroism. Like when he killed Ethan for example. At the end of season two, we realized that if there was any character on the show who would sacrifice their life so that everyone else could be rescued, that would be Charlie. What we hadn’t decided though, was whether or not Charlie was actually going to die.

So, when did you actually decide to kill him?
Over the course of the year, we began to execute the story, and it was really working. I mean we just loved writing for Charlie. He had this whole new thing to play, and we loved how Dominic was working with Ian [Cusick]. Even with Hurley’s more light-hearted story, Charlie’s impending death gave it real gravitas. It was just a great storyline, and we were thinking, Is there a way for us to have our cake and eat it too? Can we continue prophesying Charlie’s death but not actually have him die, just have him willing to die? But we kind of got to the point — I guess it was during the writing of “The Brig” — where we were all just talking in the writers room and we realized it’s a cheat if he lives. It wouldn’t be fair, because we’ve made such a big story point out of it that Charlie now has to die. If he is going to accept his death, then he has to die. Otherwise, it’s like, why did we do this story at all? We can’t just let him off the hook. He has to die.

How did you break the news to Dominic?
You know, obviously, we started talking to him before we wrote “Flashes Before Your Eyes,” just so he would know what was coming. We told him that as soon as we knew definitively what Charlie’s fate was going to be, he’d be the first to know. And when we made the final decision, we called him and had a very reasonable conversation. He was completely understanding and appreciative and accepting.

On a personal level, was it a difficult decision letting him go?
Enormously. When you reflect back on the pilot, it was really Jack, Kate, and Charlie’s story. They’re the three people you experience the crash with. They’re the original sort of three amigos who go tromping out into the jungle. I think Dominic is, along with Jorge, really the heart of the show. And the idea of how would the show feel with Charlie not being in it anymore, that was a very dark tunnel to be looking down and it continues to be. But I think the reality is, after 72 hours of Lost, we have the idea of communicating to the audience that it’s not just the Shannons and Boones and Paulos and Ekos and Ana Lucias who are vulnerable. Everybody is vulnerable. Not everybody’s going to make it to the end of this journey. I think that was an important story point to make.

Are you expecting a fan backlash over this?
I hope so. I mean that honestly. I think that if people are like “we’re glad you did it,” that means we didn’t do a good job of emotionally bonding the audience to Charlie and making them feel like his sacrifice is really tragic and heartbreaking. But Dom’s work has been phenomenal, and in the last two episodes, he raised the bar even higher. And that’s not just a producer trying to be generous to an actor who has now left the show. I think the proof is in the proverbial pudding. I really hope that all summer long, I am derided by people for doing this, because it’ll mean that it meant something.

Source: Watch With Kristin.

So… I’ve been thinking about Jack’s flash forward and all the questions that have been left open! Please share your thoughts to the following questions in the comments area:

1. Do you think Kate and Jack were *together* when they first got off the island?
2. When Kate says “he’s waiting” — who do you think HE is?
3. Do you think Christian came back from the island too — or is Jack just so far gone he thinks his father is alive?
4. Why does Jack want to get back to the island?
5. How long do you think they’ve been off the island by this flash forward?