M.I.A. Wants To Be Summer's Most Interesting Person (But The NYTimes Does Not Agree)

There was once a time when the letters M.I.A. only referred to their original meaning of missing in action. But then Slumdog Millionaire came out, and hipsters all over the world were heartbroken to discover their favorite Sri Lankan female rapper splashed all over the iTunes top 100 charts. And since then, all M.I.A. (real name: Maya) could do was make headlines: she insulted Lady Gaga, she ragged on Justin Bieber, she made a video about redhead genocide, she told Nylon that Facebook and Google are evil tools of the government. She came her new album, out July 13, an un-Google-able name: /\/\/\Y/\. She complained the US was trying to stop her from travelling out of the country. But now, it appears, she's just lost her mind: after being interviewed for a profile piece for the New York Times and feeling insulted by it herself, she tweeted the journalist's telephone number and encouraged her fans to call it. The article points out several parts of Maya's lacking personality traits: her desire to perform at the Grammy's last year after her baby's due date ("The combination of being nearly naked, hugely pregnant, singing incendiary lyrics and having the eyes of the world upon her was too much to resist."), her polarizing stance on Sri Lankan politics ("She only made the situation worse. What happened in Sri Lanka was not a genocide. To not be honest about that or the Tigers does more damage than good. When Maya does a polarizing interview, it doesn’t help the cause of justice."), and her comments on terrorism (" 'All of what I’m wearing is American,' Maya said. 'If I was a terrorist, I wouldn’t be wearing American clothing.' "), among other things. Maya responded by posting the author's private phone number to the web, in a classic case of not being able to take what you dish out.

How will tonight's LOST stack up against other season finales?

Okay, after my last, rather hate-filled post about LOST, I promise to be nicer. I can't stay mad at you, LOST. Not this close to the end. Season finales are usually always good- they have to be, it's in their definitions. LOST finales in particular are very good at sending curveballs to us in their last moments. How will tonight's episode, the sixth season finale and series finale, rank among the others?

SEASON ONE:

What happened: Danielle Rousseau, the French woman, attacks Claire and steals her baby, hoping to make a trade with the Others, only to find them gone when she gets there. Locke, Jack, Kate, and Hurley successfully  blow open the hatch as a possible shelter from the Others. Michael, Walt, Jin, and Sawyer sail away on the raft. They are a found by a fishing boat and, thinking they've been rescued, celebrate. The Others on the boat steal Walt and shoot Sawyer before blowing up the raft.
WTF Factor: 6. Although everyone was a little disappointed they'd have to wait until next season to find out what was in the hatch, the event on the raft more than made up for it. "We're going to have to take the boy," can still send shivers up your spine. This was also our complete confirmation of Others on the island, and that they weren't the survivors' friends. However, compared to later episodes, this almost seems tame.

SEASON TWO:

What Happened: Michael, Jack, Hurley, Kate, and Sawyer are all captured by the Others and brought to a dock, where they discover Ben is their leader and that Michael has been working with the Others. Hurley is released. Sun, Jin, and Sayid use Desmond's sailboat to try and meet Jack, discovering the four-toed statue. Locke and Desmond are successful in preventing Eko from pressing the button in the hatch, but when they realized it was a mistake, Desmond is forced to use the failsafe key, causing the Island to emit a strong electromagnetic emission. This is noticed by scientists in the Arctic, who call their employer, Penelope Widmore, Desmond's lover.

WTF Factor: 6. There were some mighty odd things in this episode. The four-toed statue, the purple light, and most of all, the fantastic ending with Penny. But while everything was odd and interesting, it was not necessarily shocking.

SEASON THREE:

What happened: Charlie is taken captive by the Others in the Looking Glass station underwater while trying to turn off the jamming equipment. He is successful, contacts Penny, only to discover that the rescue boat they believe to be hers is not. Charlie is killed by a grenade blowing out the window to the underwater radio room, leading to the most tragic Sharpie writing on hands ever done. Naomi is stabbed in the back (literally) by Locke, who doesn't want rescue to come. We see Jack, fully bearded, struggle with substance abuse, only to discover that this is the 3 years after leaving the island.

WTF Factor: 9. Charlie death, while we were warned about it again and again by Desmond, was unexpectedly sad. The stabbing of Naomi sets up interesting battle lines between our survivors as they are torn apart by the belief of the goodness of those on the rescue boat. But what made this finale most successful was the flash-forward, which no one saw coming. The survivors would get off the island, but for some reason, it was very important for them to return. 

SEASON FOUR:

What Happened: A group of the survivors manage to get to the rescue boat, only for it to blow up in front of them. The Oceanic Six, as they would be known, manage to find Penelope Widmore's boat and use her lifeboat to make it to a small Pacific Island, where they are rescued. Ben is forced to move the Island using a donkey wheel, making it look like the rescue boat had disappeared and all hope was gone. In the future, Ben confronts Jack and tells him that they all need to return to the Island, including Locke, who is dead. 

WTF Factor: 4. This was a good episode, clearly, but nothing was especially shocking. We already knew the survivors would get off the island; perhaps the most shocking thing was the explosion of the rescue boat and the "death" of Jin and Kate taking custody of Aaron. Locke's death was also surprising but not entirely shocking- after all, there weren't many people that it could have been. Oh, and the Island moving thing. Yeah. That. How does Locke get off the Island? Maybe this episode was more shocking then one would think....

SEASON FIVE:

What Happened. I cried. Oh, in the show. We finally get to see Jacob's adversary, the Man in Black. We also see, off the Island, Jacob touching each of our remaining survivors sans one: Juliet, who is tragically killed while she, Kate, Jack, and Sawyer try to set off the hydrogen bomb and reset time to 2004. Juliet manages to hit the bomb with a rock and a white light is emitted, and every LOST fan twiddles their thumbs for nine months. We also see Jacob being killed by Ben under the orders of who we think is Locke but is actually the Smoke Monster/MiB.

WTF Factor: 8. This finale asked a lot of questions: Who is the MiB? Why does he want to kill Jacob? Why did Jacob touch some of the survivors? How did the MiB take Locke's form? Why does Sawyer hit on Kate when he had a fulfilling life in 1977 with Juliet? Why did Juliet have to die? Why? WHY?

Internet Explodes After Last Night's LOST

There's no denying that last night's episode of LOST was, well, umm... it's actually hard to say. Because the internet has FREAKED OUT. Over polarization. Of last night's episode. And you know what... I have to agree with everyone.

The Man in Black is angry... over last night's episode. (Image from ontd_lost) 

While half the internet complaining about how last night's episode answered barely anything and what it did answer seemed kind of cop-out-y, the other half is smugly calling themselves the minority and saying that the writers can do whatever they want. I apologize if I sound a little biased; I'm a member of the former. To be honest though, I was kind of okay with it until I read an interview by Alan Sepinwall with the LOST producers (and the figureheads to be blamed for everything) Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. In which they are kind of complete jerks. Some highlights:

on not giving the Man in Black a name:

Okay, you've now said at a couple of points here that you're not going to reveal the name of the Man in Black. Is there a significance to that, or you've just decided you prefer the air of mystery it gives the character to not give him a name?

CC: I think for us to explain why we're not giving him a name veers too far into the territory of explaining things that we don't feel the need to explain.

on the famous "outrigger scene" from episode 5x04, "The Little Prince:"

Okay, finally, I have to ask, simply because it's been driving me nuts for a year and a half: what's going on with showing the other half of the outrigger shootout? 

CC: The outrigger shootout is not something we're bending around in gyrations so we can solve it. In the grand scheme of the show, that is a fairly obscure piece of the show. It is your particular obsession...

DL: ...and you're not alone in it.

CC: You're not alone in it. And yes, it would have been great if we had had the opportunity to close the time loop. But you can't get everything done and keeping the narrative going in a straight line. This is one of those things where we made a very conscious choice to ask, "What are the big questions? And most importantly, what are the paths of these characters? Where do they lead?" And we followed those paths and tried not to trip ourselves up getting too diverted from that. We felt that that's the thing that's ultimately going to make the finale work or not work. We got to the point where we made the finale we wanted to make, that was our approach, and I think it was the only approach we could take. We sat here in my office, had breakfast every day for six years, talked about the show, and we used this gut check methodology, where if we both loved something and thought it was cool, that would go in. We applied that same methodology to the finale, and that was the only way we could do it. We came up with a finale that we thought was cool, that was emotional and one we really liked. That's the best we could do.

DL: When we wrote that scene and somebody started shooting at them, we knew exactly who was shooting at them. That is not a dangling thread that we don't know the answer to. That being said, as we started talking about paying that off this season, it felt like the episode was at the service of closing the time loop, as opposed to what the characters might actually be doing in that scenario. It never felt organic. We decided we would rather take our lumps from the people who couldn't scratch that itch than to produce an episode that was in service of putting people in an outrigger and getting shot at.

and on something that particularly bothered me:

You've said many times that when people find out who Adam and Eve are, we'll all realize just how long you've been planning the mythology. Well, I went back and watched the "House of the Rising Sun" scene, and Jack says that the clothing looks like it's 50 years old. Is he just not very good at calculating the rate of decay on fabric?

CC: Jack is not really an expert in carbon dating.

DL: He's not really a forensic anthropologist. We need to bring in Bones.

CC: Or Charlotte. She's an anthropolgist.

DL: The other theory that I would like to throw out there is that Jacob and his mother were just expert craftsmen. They made those clothes on that loom so well, it would appear that they were only 50 years old in decomposition, when in fact it's several thousand.

CC: Or perhaps the fabric is magic. A lot of theories there, Alan.

Besides the obvious point that Charlotte wasn't really a forensic anthropologist either, just someone who could identify polar bear bones in Tunisia, what really grinds my gears is how jerk-y they are being about some of these things. How smug they say that they know information and are just choosing not to give it out. Way to get cocky guys!

Way to get opinionated, author.

Beyonce: Why Don't You Love the 60s?

I feel like music videos are going to get better ever since Lady Gaga upped the standards, especially with someone who has worked directly with her: Beyonce. Beyonce released a video for her new song "Why Don't You Love Me?" today, and it is way better than most videos. It's a clever throwback to classic Bond Girls, Valley of the Dolls, and, of course, vintage pin-up girls (the latter almost in excess). It's a charming video that, while not featuring the best song ever, manages to become art more than just something to put on MTV (like MTV plays music anymore).

Movie Review: The Trotsky

Looking for something to do on a weekend instead of studying for AP tests? Well watch an indie movie of course. Last night, moved by sheer apathy, I rented "The Trotsky" ondemand under a Tribeca Film Festival category that I didn't even know existed. Thankfully, I was not disappointed. In fact, I give this effort rave reviews. Given audience awards at both the Sofia and Tokyo International Film Festivals, this tale of a renegade youth leading a movement to unionize students at his Montreal High School is both humorous and inspiring. The main character, Leon Bernstein, played by Jay Baruchel, believes he is the reincarnation of Soviet hero Leon Trotsky. Obsessed with his destiny as Trotsky incarnate he even constructs a "destiny board" complete with possible allies and wives. A witty and articulate character, Leon first attempts to lead a strike against his own father's factory. Then, upon entering public school, he takes his principal hostage in an act of defiance.

All in all, I came away from this movie thoroughly amused and inspired by this incredibly life-like teen. Take some communism, a ridiculous number of Che posters and add in a dash of french, what's not to like?