Secret References to Lost in TV and Film

In no order at all...

1. Once upon a Time
This fantasy drama shares a writer with Lost, and man do they MILK IT. So many small references to the show make their way in, I can't even list them all. Luckily, somebody else has done that for me already, on this fantastic website HERE

2. Cloverfield
Right at the start of the film, they show a still before the movie.  Note the Dharma logo.

3. Super 8
Another Abrams work, so unsurprisingly, something slipped in.2 Things actually. Firstly, Kyle Chandler's character is called Jack Lamb. Hmmm. Jack Lamb..Jack Shepherd...co-incidence anyone?
2ndly, credit to slashfilm.com for finding this excellent shot of Locke Jewellers.

4. Veronica Mars
Probably my favourite reference of all, because its just so random, has nothing to do with the plot, and isn't explained in the slightest. Veronica Opens a fortune cookie in Season 2, episode 11. This is what she finds:

5. Mission Impossible III
Another Abram's flick, another Lost Easter egg. This one comes right at the end credits. In addition to the Hanso Foundation being credited with a "Special Thanks", Lostpedia informs me that the building which Ethan Hunt infiltrates to steal the "Rabbit's Foot" also carried the 'Paik Heavy Industries' logo.

5 Reasons The Avengers is Better than you Thought it Was

When The Avengers was finally released, there was a lot of talk on the forums and blogs about how it it okay, good even....but not great. A lot of that has been blamed on the script.

Ive been working on some screenplays myself and so I have a decent idea of the problems a writer can face: problems with progressing elements of the story, issues with protagonists/antagonists, and the general holes they can write themselves into. It is with this in mind, that I have to say, there is some truly impressive stuff at work in Joss Whedon's screenplay that 99% of the audience wont appreciate.

1. The Back story problem

A.k.a how much back story to include.

The Avengers was feted as the ultimate superhero movie, coming off the back of 5 other films which were essentially building up to this. As it happens, this created a problem. Most of the audience wont have re-watched all these films in the build-up (I did, but that's because I'm a nerd). The script then has to strike a fine balance, making sure to give the audience the vital information they need, without making it feel like everything is being repeated. Whedon's script makes it seem as though we jump straight into things full throttle, with no background, but the beauty is that you never feel lost, because all the vital information is still provided, without dragging the plot down by rehashing old stories. And this all happens with perfect subtlety

2. The origin story problem

Origin stories are great for comic films, and Marvel has had numerous successes with these in the past, including all the Marvel Universe films that preceded The Avengers. These generally involve the origins of one hero, and its here the difference lies. The Avenger is the origins of a group, a story which takes inherently longer to tell as their are more primary characters. In addition, origin stories work by humanising their characters, and drawing a connection with the audience based on where these characters came from. The Avengers can't use this trick because these stories have already been covered in previous films. It is with great skill the the script manages to give us a decent story of how the avengers formed, one which draws us into the story and the characters, without disproportionately bloating the running time, and allowing room for a main plot too.

3. The Hulk problem

Whedon himself has been vocal about this particular point. The thrill of the action is in watching characters with vulnerability; characters with something to lose. The Hulk is pretty indestructible, so watching him destroy enemy fighters becomes somewhat soulless and uninteresting. Whedon identified this problem, and focused the script on banner, not his green alter-ego. The Hulk falling from the SHIELD ship also takes him out of the action, shifting the focus to other characters in the fight

4. The Captain America Problem

Captain America is so archaic and jingoistic a hero, that it was a brilliant feat making him a vulnerable hero in his own film. This created a problem, because for those unfamiliar with the rich back story of the comics, it simply doesn't make sense that Steve Rogers is the leader of The Avengers. His powers are the weakest, and in the context of the films, he's not even fully acclimatised to the modern world. Rather than shy away from this issue, the script confronts it head-on, and shows you that Captain Rogers has heart. He does the right thing, and makes the sacrifices and, in the end, that's what allows him to command the respect to lead. It also deftly uses Stark to make this point, being the most cynical and difficult to control of the bunch.

5. The hero/protagonist problem

Films work by having protagonists face a series of personal challenges, and eventually rising up to face those challenges. This is truest of all in a superhero tale. Whedon realised this, and thus, in his script, he allows for a protagonists tale to take place within the ensemble. With Iron Man, he creates a moment of nobility, where Stark realises the error of his ways, and is prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. This whilst still running an ensemble story

Awesome Recurring Stars on CHUCK

Chuck is one of my favourite shows, and one of the reasons is all the really dorky references to things. It lives in a Geek paradise, and that extends right through to its excellent recurring characters.

9. Chevy Chase

Currently doing the rounds on Community, I think everyone can agree, that this one doesn't need any further explanation! A comedy legend then, a comedy legend now


8. Kristin Kreuk

KK is my ultimate all time crush, who I have and always will be in love with. So its awesome that in season 3 she plays Hannah, a tech consultant, who also serves as a love interest for our main man. Not that keen on the short hair though

7. Bruce Boxleitner

Morgan Fairchild may play Devon's mother, but his father the the true star. Something of a geek/cult hero, Bruce played Tron in the film of the same name, as well as Captain John Sheridan in the fiercely political Babylon 5.

6.Gary Cole

For those who don't know who Gary Cole is...trust me, you do. He pops in everything. West Wing, Supernatural, Frasier, Entourage...the list goes on. Not to mention the 40 films he's starred in! An immensely charismatic actor, he's the perfect choice to play Agent Sarah Walker's father

5.Carrie-Anne Moss

Trinity from the Matrix was in Chuck! There's something about Moss which is grizzled and hard, making her the perfect choice to play the head of a private security company, and the perfect woman for the hulking John Casey.

4.Brandon Routh

Superman. Chuck managed to get freaking Superman! Routh has that corn-fed Iowa farm-boy look down pat, so he was a perfect fit for Clarke Kent. However its that same innocence, which make shim so great as arguably Chuck's greatest nemesis

3.Scott Bakula

Bakula is a really fun actor, cut from the same cloth as Gary Cole, and something of a legend in his own right. Younger viewers will probably know him as Star Trek: Enterprise's Captain John Archer, but for most of us, he will always be Sam Beckett from cult Sci-fi favourite Quantum Leap

2.Linda Hamilton

 Forget Beauty and the Beast, we all know her for one reason: Terminator's Sarah Connor. The original and still the best (sorry Lena Headey), she's one of the quintessential 80s badass babes, and here we find her as the absentee mother of 2 kids working in the suburbs. Also she's a spy, so still bad-ass

1.Timothy Dalton

James Bond! Yep, Chuck does it again, bagging Dalton as international bad guy Alexei Volkoff. A confusing mixture of insecurity, silliness and ruthless callousness, its a credit to Dalton's versatility as an actor that he makes this crazy Villain work convincingly. Dalton's also one of my favourite Bonds, so I have something of a soft spot too.

Top TV/Movie ways to Travel Faster than Light (That's FTL to the fanboys)

1. Hyperspace/subspace
The basic idea is that there exists an ultra condensed type of space somewhere outside of our reality. Entering Hyperspace, and travelling the same distance as normal space, leads to one having travelled further in our reality upon exiting. This imaginary type of space is called Hyperspace (usually). An alternate theory is that the laws of physics don't apply the same way in Hyperspace, so the laws of relativity that limit mass to the speed of light, no longer apply here. This is used in everything from Star Trek, to Stargate, Star wars...I guess anything with the word star in it.

2. Warp Drive
We all know where this comes from..and trust Star trek to have the one method with some factual viability! The theoretical method is actually referred to by physicists as the Alcubierre drive (or Alcubierre metric) but the principal is the same. Space can be stretched or dilated, which is the defining element of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. By that logic, if one stretches a small part of space, flies over it, then returns it to regular length, they will have travelled further than through normal space. The Alcubierre drive in question creates localised areas of stretching, and like elastic, the ships ride the wave.

3.Wormholes
Technically called an Einstein-Rosen bridge, a wormhole is a theoretical 'tunnel' that connects two points of spacetime, whilst avoiding the need for mass to technically travel through the distance/space between them. Whilst technically possible, naturally occurring wormholes are highly unlikely. Furthermore, they present an unusual problem. Minkowski space is composed of 3 space dimensions and one time dimension, which are connected into one entity, so called space time. As such, a wormhole can potentially cause travel not just through space, but time as well, and in doing so, violate causality, one of the basic principals of the physical world. It is thus theorised that any wormhole would be 'unstable' meaning that no classical information would actually be able to pass through without compound errors being introduced which would collapse the whole thing. Alternate soultions suggest that the wormhole would collapse before anythign could get from one side to the other.
A theoretical version of an artificial wormhole was proposed called a Krasnikov tube, which apparently allows for stable FTL travel without violating causality, but calculations by subsequent physic ts have placed this into doubt.
Wormholes were a central plot point in Australian series Farscape, as well as Star Trek DS9, Stargate, and Babylon 5 [so called jump gates, which more closely resemble Krasnikov tubes]

4.Black holes
The principle here is similar to with wormholes. Black holes are are specific form of singularity, which in physics terms means that they are formed by a super-dense gravity field, which causes spacetime to become so warped that its curvature effectively becomes infinite. The theory is that this infinite curvature has a solution, in the creation of a link with another entity. Some postulate this could be an entirely new universe, while some theorise this could connect to another 'White Hole' as an exit point, similar to the exit of a wormhole. However the fact is, that this is all speculation, and furthermore, the nature of a Black hole arguable destroys information entering it [in a classical sense. Various quantum theories have been designed to explain how Unitarity is maintained and thus conservation of energy, but for all intents and purposes, its a dead end]. The film Event Horizon had a graviton drive that caused FTL travel through creation of artificial black holes. Obviously the science was a little ropey - after all, how do you scientifically explain the ship ending up in a hell dimension?

Films Inception ripped off

Nothing for days, and then 2 posts at once! Huzzah!
So anyway.. 
The release of Looper has led me to think about Hollywood's recent sci-fi offerings, and in particular how the plots are illogical or deliberately vague in an attempt to prove how clever they are. Worse still, most have become generic mashups of previous, better and yet sadly forgotten films. Nowhere is this truer than with Nolan's alleged masterpiece, Inception. While I have to give credit to the stunning visuals, overall the characterisation was sketchy and the plot was at best lacklustre; at worse so pretentious as to avoid disappearing up its own..ahem

So here is a list of better films, which Inception decided to 'borrow' ideas from... liberally.


10. Strange Days

This oft forgotten cyber-punk offering follows Ralph Fiennes as a cop, in a future where people have SQUIDs, implants that record their memories. The films plays out an investigation involving a brutal rape and murder, and the uncovering of an eventual conspiracy involving the SQUID recording.

09. Johnny Mnemonic

The first of 2 Keanu Reeves films featured on this list, this one is a strange tale, which suffers from having a good idea, and not knowing what to do with it. Johnny, our protagonist downloads data directly into his head, and transports it, but some rival criminals want whats inside his mind.Not strictly connected to the same concept as Inception, but watch it, and you'll see small ideas that have since blossomed in mainstream Sci-Fi

8. Last Year at Marienbad

This French film from 1961 in many ways began the trend of confusing films blending dreams and reality, in which the viewer sure quite which context to take what they are viewing. The two leads are friends who have met before..or are they?



7. The Cell

Jennifer Lopez delves into a serial killers mind to coax him out on a coma. All the basic dream motifs in Inception can be found for you, except this film doesn't just rest on its laurels..it actually has another plot involving real characters!

6. Virtuosity

The story of a cop chasing a virtual reality criminal that has escaped into the real world by way of an android, I admit this isn't very good, but you have to give it to Denzel and Russell Crowe..they try. Another early example of Hollywood enjoying the idea of different planes of reality, and naughty criminals jumping between them.

5. The Matrix

We all know the plot to this. Man discovers the world is all virtual reality, and is actually ruled by robot slugs. Oh, also he's the chosen one? Despite being one of the most basic tenants of existentialism, it was still hailed as a breakthrough at the time. Substitute a computerised virtual reality, with a dream state, and suddenly the similarities to Inception start to become overwhelming.

4. Ghost in the Shell

 If the above films only have tenuous links to Inception, the next few are corkers. Ghost in the Shell, from the Manga of the same name, was a revolutionary anime, and a must for any serious film-goer. Set in a dystopian future where dangerous hackers can hack into anything from powerful cyborgs to other humans minds, the concept of mental interchange has never been scarier

3. eXistenZ

This is almost as close as you can get to watching Inception, whilst not actually watching it.A complex plot involving computer games companies, and sharing minds whilst sharing games, its too complicated to properly summarise. needless to say, like many other films on this list, it uses this background as a guide to explore other concepts about reality AND AT THE SAME TIME produce an entertaining narrative with characters you care about. Pretty much all you can ask for. The only downside is the final line of the film, which echoes the cliched stupidity of Incepetion's ending.

2. Dark City

 This film is brilliant. Enough said.  A world where memories can be injected, and reality is in the eye of the beholder, one man wakes up with no idea how he got where he is, in a city he's never heard of. To say any more would spoil the excellent twist at the end. A masterpiece

1. Paprika

This Japanese Anime, base don a novel, is the film that Inception inevitably gets compared to, and with good reason. The story of a therapist using a machine to travel into his patients dreams, whilst exploring a mysterious theft, This pretty much set the standard for this kind of film, right down to the final act where reality and the dreamworld eventually and inevitably merge.

Indiana Jones and the films that...Weren't

It occurred to me that I wanted to do a list of all the Superman Films that never got made. I'm an opportunistic whore however, so I shall save that for nearer the release of Man of Steel.

In the meantime, here is a list of Indiana Jones films which were all fully scripted and afforded serious consideration, before finally being given the downward thumb. Any one of these could have ended up a cult classic, and while you can probably work out why they were rejected, its nice to see what could have been.

Indiana Jones and the Monkey King a.k.a. Indiana Jones and the Garden of Life

This was the earliest of the rejected Indy films. Scripted by none other than Chris Columbus, the man who gave us the Goonies and the Gremlins, hopes were high. The plot involved Jones finding a map to the Lost City of the Monkey King, which was said to house a garden of Peaches which would grant immortality. This being Indiana Jones..Nazis naturally followed. Scottish ghosts, characters riding on rhinos, and monkeys driving tanks were a number of reasons cited by Lucas for rejecting the script. Too unrealistic for the Indiana Jones Cannon? Probably. Incidental 3 drafts existed, the first being called The Lost City of Sun Wu King. The most well known draft is the second, which is linked below. Most of the cited problems were actually corrected by the 3rd draft, but by that point the ship had sailed. The resurrection element did at least eventually make it into the Last crusade.
Click HERE for the screenplay of the first draft. Unfortunately I can't find a copy of his second draft anywhere!


Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars

Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars was planned as Indy 4, fresh from the momentum of the Holy Grail quest. Production began in the 1990s. The prologue is set in Borneo in 1949, with Indiana Jones proposing to Dr. Elaine McGregor after defeating pirates. She abandons him at the altar, because the government requests her aid in decoding an alien cylinder (covered in Egyptian, Mayan and Sanskrit symbols) in New Mexico. Indiana pursues her, and battles Russians agents, meddlesome CIA agents and US soldiers, and spider-like aliens, for the cylinder, which turns out to be a timebomb. The film was scrapped and eventually some elements of it made their way into Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Most notably the opening sequence). Harrison Ford in particular has stated that he wasn't keen on UFO's or Aliens, believing them to be out of place in an Indianna Jones film
The script was originally leaked on the Internet but has since been removed, and most traces of it have now gone. I'm a complete dork, and I have the full Draft Screenplay, but just for you guys, I dug this out HERE



Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods

Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods is regarded by most as an early version of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Written by Frank Darabont, at least 3 drafts were made before Lucas rejected it in 2004. The unusual thing was that Spielberg had read the 3rd draft and is reported as saying it was the best new Indy he'd read since the Last Crusade.
City of the Gods included elements 'suggested' by George Lucas throughout the film's long development: a late 1950s setting, the presence of the Red Scare, aliens, UFOs, Soviet agents, army ants, somebody swinging on a vine, a chase on a rocket-sled and Indiana Jones surviving a nuclear blast inside a lead-lined refrigerator. incidental these all made it into Crystal Skull, but there were enough plot differences to regard it as its own separate film
The full Screenplay can be found HERE

Top Bond Themes

With the looming release of the latest James Bond film, Skyfall, Sky Movies have taken the opportunity to turn Sky Movies Showcase into Sky Movies 007 and repeat every previous Bond film, ever made. I'm not sure how deep my love for Bond really is, especially when you weigh up that pretty much every film is the same. I couldn't hand on heart even say I've seen all of them. None-the-less, The latest Bond theme has now been released, and I have to say, I like it. I really really like it.

Its hard to say what makes a good Bond theme good, and a bad one awful [although Madonna sure knows, what with the terrible "Die Another Day"]. Adele's latest manages to draw on the great Bond themes of the past and create something that resonates with all the history of the film series, whilst retaining something of the modern flavour of the later additions to the franchise.

So, proving I can be just as opportunistic as the people at Sky, here is a list of the 5 greatest Bond themes:

5. Diamonds are forever

I'll say this, Shirley Bassey has a unique voice. Silky and smooth, yet somehow also authoritative and just slightly tempering a deep anger, it comes out in force when coupled with a terrifically catchy hook.

4. Goldfinger

Bassey again, but this time I have to give most of the credit to composer John Barry. He added an element of pop which started in force, the grand tradition of Bond themes. It's catchy, timeless, and the tune immediately brings to mind, thoughts of espionage and intrigue.


3. The World is Not Enough

When it was announced, Scottish alt. rockers Garbage were to create the theme for The World is not enough, many were sceptical. It' snot that they weren't a good band, its just that... well Scottish rock doesn't really scream Bond. Some also viewed them as too pop or mainstream, after their recent successes with Version 2.0. In the end it didn't matter: Their Bond theme was a beautiful nod to the themes of old, epic, sweeping and yet with as likable a tune as you'll find in the entire series.

2. Live and Let Die

 Paul McCartney did a fantastic job with this one. Combining elements from the slower, silkier themes before, with a new sense of pace and purpose, this was the tune that added excitement back into Bond themes. Also, Guns and Roses did an amazing cover version..so there's that

1. Tomorrow Never Dies

Murder, intrigue, lost love, the life of a spy and his discarded lovers. Sheryl Crow's theme somehow combines all of them, with a heartbreaking melody and lyrics to match. With an amazing set of pipes to her, the chorus just blows you away. The Greatest Bond theme of all time, now, and probably until the World falls away.