February, 2010: Benicio Del Toro as The Wolfman.

I understand now..

I understand now why Dr. Marvin Candle, in the Swan Orientation film, cautioned the button-pushers not to try to use the computer to communicate with the outside world: the Hostiles never knew of the Swan's existence, and he wanted to keep it that way. Possibly he also knew that Dharma would be wiped out, and he wanted to keep the button-pushers inside so that the button would continue to be pushed. The Mule in this scenario is Radzinsky: How did he end up pushing the button, 15 years after the Incident, and why would he be the one to cut out the warning from the orientation film? Given Radzinsky's extreme paranoia, wouldn't it be dangerous, from his point of view, to remove it?

I understand now that John Locke is, and always has been, "amenable to coercion." He was conned by his father, he was conned by Eddie, and he has now been conned by the Nemesis. Who put the idea in Richard's head that Locke would have to die when he left the Island? The Nemesis. Who did Locke hear it from? Christian, the same Christian who inhabited the cabin that we now know belonged to The Nemesis. (Speaking of the cabin, if Locke's vision of Horace is to be believed, Horace himself built the cabin. Maybe Dharma was one of the Nemesis's plans to kill Jacob and destroy his people.) We thought that Locke had been taken advantage of and put upon his whole life, until he came to the Island, but what if he was still being conned? The Nemesis played on Locke's fears and hopes, making him believe he had a destiny, all the while just using Locke to get inside the statue with Ben so he could see Jacob die. The Mule in this scenario is Locke himself: he's done just enough good, just enough to help Jacob and Jacob's people, to maybe thwart or at least delay the the ultimate plan of the Nemesis. Only time will tell.

Lost timeline reset would be a terrible idea, says local blogger

BOSTON- Oceanic Flight 815 has to stay crashed in the final season of Lost, says F. Toaster, a local man who, owing to the fact that he was able to secure a space on a free, open to the public blog hosting site, has very important opinions.

"It would just gut the show," said Toaster, "for Jughead's explosion to reset the timeline of the show to where the plane never crashed at all. It would just be really stupid. Whatever happened, happened, right? Right?"

Bubbles and me: My 51 day journey through the streets of Baltimore

[COLETTA FACTOR:THE WIRE:ALL]
Working at the neighborhood video store this summer, I decided to take in a new TV series. I considered Weeds, Dexter, Deadwood, and Rome, but I settled on the Wire, which had, as far as I'd heard, 100% positive feedback, from critics and friends alike. I'd heard that each season took a look from a different angle at the drug trade in Baltimore: one season about the streets, one about the port where the drugs come in, one about City Hall, the schools, and, finally, the newspaper, that famous enabler of a city's neurotic behavior. I'd heard that it was one of the most gritty, realistic, and one of the smartest series out there. I'd heard that I would see a lot of familiar faces, faces I'd seen on Oz, Lost, various cop shows, and even two faces from The Office. (Charles Miner, the new DM, and Michael's girlfriend Holly.)
All that I'd heard was true, and more. While each season has a different focus, most characters stick around the whole time, except those whose story comes to an end, one way or the other. (In Baltimore, that means dead or in prison.)
I'm having a hard time writing about this one, because it's so dense, and there are so many characters, each with their own arc, their own journey from A to B, I don't know where to start. My two favorites, I think, are Bubbles and Omar, each of whom makes it to the final season. (I won't reveal anyone's ultimate fate.)
Bubbles is a dopefiend, a hustler, a C.I. (confidential informant) for the police unit investigating the dealers. We see him steal, lie, try to buy drugs with fake money, and yet Bubbles is arguably the most morally centered character in the entire series, probably because he is not beholden to a bureaucracy like the police department or the school system. Bubbles is his own man, skillfully played by Andre Royo, who conveys the sadness, guilt, hope and hopelessness of a man at the bottom of everything.
Omar is a thief and a killer. He wears a kevlar vest and a trenchcoat; he carries a sawed-off shotgun, and every time he walks down the street, all the men and boys call out, "Omar comin' " and scatter out of the way. He makes a living by robbing drug dealers, and he's got a lot of blood on his hands: not only the people he's killed, but those who were with him, those who could be gotten to while Omar couldn't. For all that, Omar is a total badass, but he doesn't curse, doesn't drink or use drugs, and he would never turn his gun on "anyone who wasn't in The Game." He lives by a code; there is honor among thieves. Also, and totally incidentally, Omar is gay.
Nearly every other character is, in some way, enslaved by a system. The police are hamstrung by the need to report good numbers to City Hall, and we often see justice sacrificed in the name of protecting the department or one of its higher-ups. Officer McNulty, who is a lovable rogue of an Irish cop, gets the ball rolling in season 1 by telling a judge about a drug lord by the name of Avon Barksdale who has taken over the projects on the West side and is responsible for at least a dozen murders in the last year. The judge orders the creation of a detail to investigate and shut down the Barksdale operation, pulling officers from homicide and narcotics off their regular rotations. McNulty's superiors are none too pleased with him for talking out of school, and they miss no opportunity to berate, threaten, and otherwise interfere with the members of the detail, honest cops who are doing what cops are supposed to do, going after the bad guys. McNulty's dogged pursuit of Barksdale and his crew, which by season's end sees most of them dead or in prison, results in his demotion and assignment to the marine unit, the one place he did not want to go.
We see it over and over again: the union boss on the docks, driven by the slow death of business at the port, into bed with traffickers of drugs and sex slaves, the mayor who can't make a move without considering how the ministers and city council will respond politically, the teachers who can't do anything except teach to the test and babysit their charges. A modern American city has all these institutions, built up over the years, which are supposed to function for the people, but instead function for themselves, and the people, the good, honest people who got into public service to do good, end up compromising themselves and their work in order to protect the institution. As much as The Wire is a cop show, it is also a comment on urban America in the 21st century, a testament to how we have let our government and our businesses run rampant and grind everyone under the wheels.
There are so many other good reasons to watch, so many great characters, each with their own arc. Briefly in the first season, we hear about a city councilman named Clay Davis, then we see a bit of him again on season 3, but his story comes full circle in season 5, when he becomes the target of the investigation. The series rewards the attentive viewer; how many times do we hear about Fat Face Rick before we actually see him? The writers and creators are actually from Baltimore, and infuse the show with dialogue straight from the streets, so distinct it's almost a different dialect.
So there you have it: 60 episodes, 51 days, and I loved it, I wanted more. It's entertainment, yes, but I really feel like I learned something; it had the ring of truth, the feeling of reality, and I could think of no higher compliment. If you have seen The Wire, I ask, do you agree? What did you like, or not like? If you haven't seen it, what are you waiting for?

Nerd alert!!!

I just found out some totally geek-tastic news: Katee Sackhoff, aka Starbuck, will be joining the cast of 24 for its eighth season. There are so many ways this could be awesome: catfights with Chloe, chasing bad guys with Jack, laying the smackdown on dudes trying to kill innocent Americans. I wasn't sure I would enjoy another go-round with 24, but this pretty much guarantees that I'll be there, every Monday night, for the whole season.

What have I been doing lately??

[COLETTA FACTOR: VARIOUS MOVIES, ALL HAVING BEEN RELEASED TO THE PUBLIC.]

So I haven't written in a while. Maybe I've been busy, or doing nothing at all. I can't really tell at this point. Either way, I have watched a hell of a lot of movies lately, And I've thought it would be really hard to write a post because it would be hard to narrow down what I want to talk about, but I'll give it a shot.

First, the bad. I had high hopes for In Tranzit. It's the story of Nazi prisoners in a Soviet prison camp run entirely by women. I know, I know, sounds like the setup for some awful Euro-sploitation flick from the 70's, but it starred John Malkovich and Vera Farmiga (more about her later,) and it had great production value: lighting, costumes, acting, location, all superb. It was really trying to be a dark horse Oscar pick, but someone forgot to write the damn thing. It looks like they got through the first draft, which must have been written by ten different writers, and called it a day. Way to waste the Malkovich, guys. Dishonorable mention to Paul Blart: Mall Cop, which I swear I've never seen, just for being so awful that that the 3 seconds I spent looking at the cover seemed to go on for 107 minutes. 107 dreadful minutes.

Eden Lake was good horror; a good example of the new horror where it's not supernatural or spooky or guys in masks, just people being awful to each other. Kelly Reilly, from L'auberge espagnole, stars in that one. You want Zombies? Try The Zombie Diaries. Maybe you don't want a Zombie flick, but you want to see some Zombies? You could see a pair of movies called REC and Quarantine. REC is Spanish, made in 2007, and of course, an American came along and made the damn thing again, as Quarantine. The story is simple: A young, pretty reporter and her camera guy are following a fire crew around for a night, and the first call they respond to is from an apartment building with some very ill, very violent people in. Once the camera is inside, all entrances are blocked; the building is quarantined by some unknown government agency, and we get to watch as each person locked inside gets bitten by an infected and becomes infected themselves. Shot for shot, it's almost exactly the same, except for a bit of misogyny added at the beginning for American audiences, and the end, where we discover the origins of the infection, which is far richer and more satisfying in the Spanish version.

Vera Farmiga, what can I say? The Departed, Dummy, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, each movie vastly different from the next, but she was a bright spot in each one. Surely we can, like a math teacher throwing out your lowest grade, just forget about In Tranzit? Also, she was in Nothing But The Truth, which was a fictionalization of the Valerie Plame affair. (You remember: Ambassador tries to discredit Bush's case for war, Cheney retaliates by outing Mrs. Ambassador as an undercover CIA agent. Scandal ensues.) Farmiga played the CIA agent in question, with a great ensemble of actors: Matt Dillon, Angela Bassett, David Schwimmer, Noah Wyle, ALAN FREAKIN' ALDA, and not one, but two police captains from Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Even with all this talent, it's really Kate Beckinsale's ballgame to lose, and she really knocks it out of the park.

Watchmen. There. I said it. Never read the novel, but the movie blew my mind. It had action, effects, cool costumes, great characters, and the kind of epic story you never see in a big-budget multiplex seat-filler. The story definitely bears discussion on so many levels: personal, political, moral, sociological, historical. I am particularly interested in Rorshach, Dr. Manhattan, and the parallel history of how the American Century would have gone if we'd had costumed heroes flying around (Spoiler: We "win" Vietnam, but it doesn't make a bit of difference.)

The Cinema? Star Trek Good, Half Blood Prince not so much. Anxiously awaiting Inglourious Basterds, GI Joe, and especially H2, aka "Rob Zombie's 4th film". (chills down my spine!)

That is all.

Stringer Bell is not impressed.