Sylvester Stallone returns to B-Movie badassery with “Bullet to the Head”, a straight forward action flick about a hit man who teams up with a cop in order to track down the clients who double crossed him and killed his partner.
It’s a decent use of your entertainment dollar, especially if you’re a fan of 80s action films, where the lone hero has to shoot his way through a string of underlings in order to get to the big baddie.
Ok, boys and girls. The Holiday Season is over… and the Spring Season, full of mini Blockbusters, is still months away.
Between now and then lies Hollywood’s dumping ground. The Hollywood fields lie fallow in the winter, bearing little quality product. It’s the two months of the year we need to “Get through”. While January typically offers some limited releases from the prior year going wide, there’s typically little else to get excited over.
Will this year be different? Are there any movies to get excited about these next two months? Let’s take a look at the release slate and see what we’ve got!
Soooo… So you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
Blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
Did they get you to trade Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange A walk on part in the war For a lead role in a cage?
For “LOST” fans, Season Six was the promised land. All would be revealed.
Over the years we had been taken on a journey that included two survivable plane crashes, a fake plane crash, a crashed plane full of heroin, polar bears, baby kidnappers, ghosts, visions, world saving buttons, a cloud of noisy smoke that kills people, cursed numbers, miraculous healing, a phantom “sickness”, a real sickness that kills pregnant women, impossibly linked people, ageless people, a crazy French woman, an ancient four toed statue foot, torture, an inescapable island, a brainwashing chamber, time travel, an ancient wheel device that teleports the island and/or causes time space disruptions, a seeming resurrection, a couple of real resurrections, a magic cabin, a magic temple, this weird device that pinpoints the island with a pendulum, nukes, nerve gas, mysterious jungle gypsies, mysterious science organizations, you %$&#ing name it, this show threw all kinds of crazy shit at us. My list doesn’t even cover everything.
And now it had 18 episodes to explain itself once and for all.
We had been promised answers, and I wanted nothing less.
In 2008, after the end of season 3 of “LOST”, all had been forgiven with the show. I didn’t care that the show was answering questions more slowly than a busted morphine drip, I didn’t care that they continued to throw new mysteries at us left and right. Season 3 ended with a mind blowing episode that reminded me (and the rest of “LOST”s audience) just how awesome the show could be when it was on top of its game.
And then… Season 4 happened.
I thought I was upset with episodes that were complete stall jobs? How about entire seasons?
I’m pretty sure that the season premiere of “LOST”‘s second season had to have been one of the most highly anticipated season premieres of all time. (The only other I could think of that would be comparable would be the season premiere of “Dallas” after “Who shot J.R.”?) All that summer, people had been crazy debating what was “in the Hatch”, the largest of the cliffhangers at the end of season one. And the viewers showed up for it, too. 23 million viewers tuned in, a huge audience for a modern tv show.
And the producers didn’t let us down. They showed us what was in the hatch alright.
But in doing so, they also also exemplified two of the things that made “LOST” the most frustrating show of all time:
1) Answers to questions only led to more questions.
and
2) When you finally GOT an answer to a question… it was less interesting than the question had been.
Oh…. Boy.
Here we go.
Welcome back to Hollywood Mysteries. My essay series where I blow steam about things in Hollywood that confuse me to no end, and probably in all likelihood, piss me off.
Case in point? “LOST”
This series will run all this week, looking back over the entire run of the series. But don’t worry, I’ve had this in the can for awhile. So those of you who aren’t fans of the show won’t “miss” anything, I’ll still be posting up the exact same content this week I would have, Just with this getting posted up as well.
Now, prior to even launching this, I’m going to give two big warnings before you dive in:
1) Spoilers from this point forward. “LOST” was a show that to a major extent revolved around mystery and the unknown. If you click past the “Continue Reading”s on each post, I’m going to assume you’ve either seen “LOST”, or don’t care to, but want to know what the deal is. Because I will be discussing the series in detail.
2) I like to encourage discussion on this site. I am honestly hoping to build a place where I can post something up about movies and tv and then people can post their thoughts. But on this particular subject, I’m just telling everyone. Even a year later, I am still furious. I am “a racecar in the red”. So since “LOST” fans are split into two camps – those that like and accept the end of the show, and those who feel ripped off… I’m just going to put out the warning. If you want to counterpoint, if you’re one of these happy dappy Cuse/Lindelof sycophants, come big or not at all. Because “I am Superfly TNT, I’m the Guns of the Navarone.”
Let’s get started.
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