SOURCE: Real Life Comics (7:59 AM)

SOURCE: Joe Loves Crappy Movies (7:56 AM)

Lost's Elizabeth Mitchell and Naveen Andrews are both trying to fit comfortably inside a phone booth when their TV Guide photo shoot suddenly takes a playful turn. The actress - the show's Other-worldly Juliet - wraps one leg around her costar, exposing a long stretch of skin through the slit in her show-stopping black gown. "I'd like to have a gun strapped to my leg," she says with a giggle. "Or a nice, shiny Hitchcock knife."

Mitchell could be channeling a heightened version of her character. In the March 6 episode, Juliet is armed when she's instructed to kill for Others ringleader Ben - a job we also saw Andrews' Sayid tasked with in a flash-forward. Such twists are all part of Lost's creatively recharged Season 4. Not since Year 1 has ABC's Emmy-winning drama been this consistently thrilling. The flash-forward odyssey of the Oceanic Six - the survivors who made it off the island and back to the future - has infused the series with renewed urgency and richer emotional resonance. "It's heartbreaking to see these characters we love so hopeful [about] getting rescued," Mitchell says, "because we've seen that things after the fact haven't turned out so well."

That's an understatement. Besides sleek-suited assassin Sayid, Hurley's back in the loony bin, Jack's a suicidal pill-popper, and Kate's playing mommy to Claire's kid, Aaron. (That can't mean good things for Claire.)

According to executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, Lost rediscovered its focus when they secured a 2010 series-end date. "Working that out," Cuse says, "was immensely liberating." With that target in sight, the duo finally felt they could make like a Camaro-driving Hurley in this season's premiere and put the proverbial pedal to the metal. These days, when it comes to mapping out plot twists, Lindelof says bluntly, "We're no longer stalling."

Especially since returning to work in February after the writers' strike. The producers' first order of business was to condense what were supposed to be the season's final eight episodes into what Lindelof calls a "lean, mean" five. Those installments begin airing April 24 (in a new post-Grey's Anatomy time slot at 10 pm) and will reveal, among other tasty morsels, why in the future, Sayid is working for Ben and Jack is oh-so-tormented. "It's no shock to say this season ends with the Oceanic Six getting off the island," Lindelof says. "The real mystery is how, and what they have to sacrifice and what happens to the people who didn't leave. You get all that this year." We'll take it.

Read the full story at TVGuide.com. (10:58 PM)

Actor Terry O'Quinn is in an elite circle. Not just because millions of people tune in each week to see him on the hit ABC television series LOST, but because he can call himself that rare honor - a working actor.

"Work. Work when you can, any way you can," said O'Quinn, sharing his insights on the acting profession to a room full of theatre students at Illinois Wesleyan University on Tuesday. The actor addressed three classes and an open forum Monday and Tuesday before returning to Hawaii to resume filming of the television show.

O'Quinn is the older brother of Illinois Wesleyan's Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts Thomas Quinn, and offered to speak to his brother's theatre classes during a visit. "His wife's family lives on the East Coast, so he's flying back and forth all the time," said Quinn. "The trick was just getting him to land."

Sitting in a circle with nearly two dozen students in the E. Melba Johnson Kirkpatrick Laboratory Theatre, O'Quinn fielded questions and gave honest answers about everything from entering the acting profession, to working for television verses theatre, and being recognized.

"You know you are getting more famous when people say your name or even your character, 'Are you Terry O'Quinn?' or 'Are you John Locke?'" said O'Quinn, who had to change his name because another actor already has his name, Terrance Quinn, registered with Actors Equity. "I used to get people coming up to me and saying, 'You look familiar. Do you shop at Wal Mart?'" For O'Quinn, the recognition is not the reward of acting. "Really, I think of fame as distracting, it's something you have to get around," he said....

Read the full story at Illinois Wesleyan News. (10:54 PM)

Dr. Juliet Burke reveals herself to be a complex character on "Lost."

Or, rather, she reveals very little of herself. She is a combination of strength, cunning and wistful victimhood, all displayed on a face so enigmatic she could give the Mona Lisa a run for her money.

Introduced as one of the Others at the start of last season, Juliet has remained an object of delicious mystery, despite selective details parceled out by the show. Viewers still aren't sure where her loyalties lie - or even if they should dare to like her.

The only certainty: Elizabeth Mitchell does a bang-up job with the role, keeping viewers teased at arm's length even while drawing them in.

"I've had a tremendous amount of freedom to create something strange," Mitchell says happily.

Questions will probably multiply with Thursday's episode (9 p.m. EST on ABC), which is expected to give Juliet the spotlight.

Mitchell's rule of thumb in playing her: Don't act angry.

"She needed to be someone who could be a tremendous leader, who had an innate sense of power, but didn't behave in an angry or strident way," Mitchell says. "She needed to have a sense of toughness, but in a way the audience couldn't quite grasp....

Read the full story at MSNBC. (8:39 PM)

You're a Lost fan. You've watched every episode. Scrutinized the supplemental material on the DVDs. Read Bad Twin. And the novelizations. Played through the ''Lost Experience'' and gobbled up the mobisodes on ABC.com. Now what? Lost completists - and, we caution, only them - might want to answer the call of Lost: Via Domus, a new game that bears the name of the TV series but is conspicuously lacking in its inventive soul. As Elliott Maslow, a heretofore unseen passenger of Oceanic Flight 815, you find yourself marooned on the mysterious island with no memory of who you are. Through a series of awkwardly presented flashbacks, puzzles, and interactions with some of the show's established characters, Elliott must cure his amnesia and find his way off the island. (Via domus, as the game reminds us 1,000 times, is Latin for ''the way home'').

Lost-ies will probably get a kick out of doing things they could only previously imagine, like getting a closer look at the smoke monster, punching ''4-8-15-16-23-42'' into the vintage computer, intentionally walking through the fence o' death, and exploring the various Dharma Initiative stations. Of course, they'll be far less pleased with the truly horrendous voice impressions of some of their favorite characters: the vocal stand-ins for Locke and Sawyer are particularly cringe-inducing. Following the template of most Lost episodes, Via Domus lobs a tantalizing plot grenade at you during its last few moments. We won't spoil it for you, except to say this: while it by no means provides any sense of closure, it does address a theme currently raising a ton of questions midway through this season. Indeed, it's here when the game most closely resembles the show - we were told that executive producer Damon Lindelof came up with this twist - and when you wish the rest of the game didn't leave fans so...stranded. C

Read the full story at EW.com. (8:36 PM)

Watching the tense faces of actors carefully carrying dynamite made for several minutes of very exciting television in season one of ``Lost.'' Watching the back of an animated character carrying dynamite as you make him walk through the jungle in slow motion? Not so much. That's the fundamental problem of ``Lost: Via Domus,'' Ubisoft's new adaptation of the ABC series that hews so closely to its source material it never gives players anything remotely interesting to do. The only people bored enough to play through this tedious and poorly conceived videogame would have to be stranded on a remote island.

Serialized television has never translated well to videogames, but Ubisoft's Montreal development studio went to great pains to make ``Lost: Via Domus'' resemble its source material. Not only does the game look and sound just like the show, it's even divided into seven ``episodes,'' each of which starts with a ``previously on'' summary. The playable character, Elliott, is a new survivor of Oceanic 815 who, like everyone else on the island, has a dark past that's slowly revealed through flashbacks.

Immersing players in the world of ``Lost'' is one thing, but finding something compelling for them to do is a different matter. The series has a lot more talking than action, and the developers don't mess with that formula, which leaves not-so-exciting challenges like walking through a cave without letting a torch burn out, hiding behind trees from the black smoke, and following signs in a jungle. In several different instances players have to fix a circuit board by playing a minigame that's almost directly ripped off from ``Bioshock,'' right down to the sound effects.

``Lost's'' trademark flashbacks are as integral to the game as they are to the show, but the developers' weak attempt to turn them interactive is an exercise in frustration. Players have to make Elliott, who's a photojournalist, take a precise picture of something happening in the flashback in order to trigger the full memory. But the game demands that the shot be famed and focused in just the right way, which can lead to dozens of maddening attempts before, seemingly arbitrarily, the memory progresses.

There are only a handful of stabs at amping up the snail-like pace of ``Lost: Via Domus,'' which include a pair of running sequences and a gun that needs to be fired only five times in the entire game.

Not every videogame need be a nonstop adrenaline rush, of course. However, most that aren't replace action with multiple story paths and mental challenges. The plot of ``Lost: Via Domus'' - which sheds new light on the Hanso foundation and the Others and ends with a surprising twist - is just as intricate as an average episode, but it's short and completely linear. There are lots of visual and dialogue clues to pick up on, though, since Elliott's journal explicitly reminds players of everything important, and there's no real incentive to pay attention. The biggest intellectual tasks are a few SAT-like logic questions and a single puzzle tied to the name of the game.

That solution, like most of the information in the game, comes from conversations with Locke, Jack and the show's other main characters, only some of whom sound remotely like themselves. While they're all rendered realistically, the animation is so static that they never display a hint of emotion while talking. They look just as uninterested in the game as players will be.

Read the full story at Variety. (8:14 PM)

In the final minutes of "Six Feet Under" in 2005, the story sailed exhilaratingly ahead of us into the future, listing as it raced forward with all its characters on board. The sequence, TV's most epic epitaph ever, told the fates of each major character up to their deaths. After five seasons of gradual serial advancement, from A to B to C, "Six Feet Under" gunned it to Z.

That ultimate flash-forward is part of what ABC's "Lost," CBS' "How I Met Your Mother," NBC's "Heroes," and Fox's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" are now turning into a TV fine art: The future. These four serials are playing around with time like never before, shaking up TV's usually quite conventional storytelling by giving us something like A to B to X to Y to C.

While "24" and "In Treatment" try to evoke real time by moving forward minute by minute in the present tense, "Lost," "How I Met Your Mother," "Heroes," and "Sarah Connor" are jumping all over the sequencing map, adding a fantastic new scope to prime-time narrative mostly seen until now in niche and hard-core sci-fi productions. They're pulling the mainstream scripted medium into further realms of potential, beyond the predictable beginning-middle-ending structure.

Time scheming with the future is more commonly used in 20th century literature and the movies - think of the Kurt Vonnegut novel "Slaughterhouse-Five," in which a man becomes "unstuck in time," or the "Star Wars" movie prequels, which hinge entirely on what we know is going to happen later on. Indeed, fractured time frames have been in vogue at the movies for over a decade now, with the likes of "Pulp Fiction" and "Memento." Television shows, which exist in time and are works in progress over years, have shied away from future shock and end game. Most series go on indefinitely, an extended middle ("Law & Order" is now in its 18th season) with a cursory finale if the network permits. Once you've seen the denouement, according to typical TV wisdom, the rest is anticlimax. It's the soap opera aesthetic, which has defined TV shows since serial storytelling leapt from the radio to TV.

But "Lost," in particular, has put the lie to that more Victorian-novel-style thinking, showing us how the future can increase a serial's mystery. By giving us the end, the writers are free to focus on the intrigue of getting there - what led up to the peculiar positioning of the characters later on. The future outcome is built into the ongoing structure of the series, not just a tag at the end, as it was on "Will & Grace" when the sitcom ended with Will and Grace's kids romantically involved down the line....

Read the full story at The Boston Globe. (8:12 PM)

Billie Doux's review of "The Constant" is now up. An excerpt:

Desmond: "Eight years from now, I need to call you. And I can't call you if I don't have your number."

Okay, Sherman. Set the Wayback Machine to 2.342, and oscillate at eleven hertz.

So. Now we know. The "side effects" of the Island combined with the Hatch explosion made Desmond bounce back and forth in time like Billy Pilgrim alternating between Dresden and Tralfamador. It wasn't actual, physical travel because only his consciousness took the trip. Desmond remembered the present while in the past, but had amnesia in the present. I'm sooo confused. And what on earth does Daniel Faraday's pink hairdryer in 1996 have to do with the Island?

Read the full review here. (7:38 PM)

Sure, Jack Bauer could escape from the island in Lost in 24 hours. But what about the rest of us? Could you find your way back to civilisation if you were stranded with nothing but your N95 and a handful of conveniently prepared accessories and applications? Well, we’ve hatched a plan and how to be best prepared should the need arise. Read on for our ultimate N95 escape plan...

Read the full story at NokNok. (10:07 AM)

Ken Leung, who plays ghost whispered Miles Straume, will be onstage in a new play entitled "TBA," a world premiere by Carla Ching, directed by Denyse Owens, and co-starring Michi Barall.

Here's a synopsis of the show: When Silas Park's girlfriend leaves him, he becomes a shut-in, pumping out blistering autobiographical writings in his little East Village apartment. Just as Silas finds himself unexpectedly on the verge of literary stardom as the next Asian American wunderkind, his brother Finn shows up on his doorstep, accusing Silas of stealing his life. TBA is a play in two acts, in the crevice between fact and fiction.

It's part of ELEVEN, 11 new plays in a month-long celebration commemorating Second Generation's Eleventh Anniversary and the next generation of Asian American dramatic literature. Produced by Artistic Director Lloyd Suh, ELEVEN features 36 performances in 34 days, and incorporates over 40 artists in a program of world-class, world premiere productions.

The shows are at the Milagro Theater at the CSV Cultural Center, 107 Suffolk Street, New York, NY. "TBA" runs on March 11-April 5.

For more information on the show, read the article in TheaterMania. More information about this show and others featured in ELEVEN are at www.2g.org. (9:56 AM)

Those expecting the typical lame action game based on a hit TV show (see "Alias" or "24") will be surprised by Lost: Via Domus.

Ubisoft worked closely with the creators of the hit ABC show "Lost" to craft a classic adventure game filled with puzzles, answers to the show's rich mythology and an occasional action sequence. Designed for fans of the series, this game puts players in the middle of the action as Elliot, an original character who is a fellow survivor of the crash that stranded passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 on a mysterious island.

With amnesia from the crash, Elliot has his own story that unfolds through seven chapters of the game, which lasts about a dozen hours. Flashbacks, so vital to the show, are interactive in the game: Elliot can walk around in his memories (including a sequence aboard Flight 815 before it took off) and snap photos to unlock clues to his past. On the island, Elliot interacts with central characters from the show, including the survivors and the strange Others.

Although next-generation graphics bring each character to life, only six actors from the show provide voices. The voice-alikes are a mixed bag, and those that don't work can hamper your enjoyment.

Elliot's adventure takes players to locales familiar to fans, including the hatch and the survivors' beach camp, but also allow gamers to explore new areas. Mysteries will be solved along the way as the show's creators reveal new things about the first three seasons.

The challenging puzzles drive the narrative. The game features action and exploration elements, including a journey through dark caves and a frantic run from the dreaded black smoke. The look and feel of the series is enhanced by an original score from the show's composer, Michael Giacchino.

This is one game that lives up to fans' expectations.

Read the full story at The Washington Post. (9:35 AM)

Lost was last Thursday's most-watched scripted show, with approximately 12.85 million total viewers and ratings/share of 7.8/12.

Don't Forget the Lyrics benefited from its lead-in, American Idol, and actually beat Lost in total viewers (approx. 14.56 million viewers). However, Lost still had the advantage among viewers in the 18-49 demographic, beating Don't Forget the Lyrics (5.4/13 versus 5.2/13).

For more information, visit PIFeedback, Zap2It, and TV by the Numbers. (4:49 AM)

Thanks to a special Thursday night results show of American Idol (so long Garrett, Colton, Amy, and Joanne), Lost was not the top-rated show of the night. Still, the show's fourth episode won its timeslot, with ratings/share of 7.7/12 and total viewership of approximately 13.53 million.

A special "enhanced" repeat of last week's episode which aired an hour prior to the new episode placed third behind American Idol and Survivor: Micronesia, with approximately 5.47 million viewers.

For more information, check out PIFeedback, Zap2It, and TV by the Numbers. (8:44 PM)

It's Thursday once again, and that means a new episode of Lost! The fourth episode of the fourth season is entitled "Eggtown," and it's written by Elizabeth Sarnoff and Greggory Nations and directed by Stephen Williams. Below is the official description of the episode:

Kate's need to get information out of the hostage may jeopardize her standing with Locke -- as well as with Sawyer. (5:21 PM)

"Wicked" is Rebecca Mader's favorite word.

She uses it to describe Meryl Streep, with whom she shared a scene in The Devil Wears Prada. Also among the "wicked": Kate Walsh, whom she appeared alongside in Private Practice's first episode. And perhaps the most wicked of all: Josh Holloway, one of her new actor pals on ABC's Lost (tonight, 9 p.m. ET/PT).

Wicked is "the British version of awesome," explains the U.K. import who plays archaeologist Charlotte Lewis — one of four new explorers on the increasingly mysterious (and crowded) island.

And what's the name of that sexy polish on Mader's fingers and toes? She blushes. "You're never going to guess what it's called," she says with a giggle. "It's called Wicked!"

Pretty wicked herself, Mader is focusing full time on acting after working as a model in the U.K. since she was 18. The Cambridge native, 28, once worked in a L'Oréal ad campaign as "the redhead" alongside Beyoncé, and she still sees her face on hair-care products back in England....

Read the full story and watch the video interview at Celeb Watch. (10:11 PM)

It's astounding how fast this season of "Lost" has taken off. Remember last year, when we spent episode after episode watching Jack, Sawyer and Kate sit around in cages? Not this year. It's a testament to the incredible amount of information the writers have been able to pack into each of the first three episodes that each one sparks a debate on which revelation was the most important of the episode.

In my house, my girlfriend seemed quite taken with the revelation at the end of Thursday's episode: Post-rescue Sayid (Naveen Andrews) remade as Sayid Bond (with unfortunate Fabio hair), flying around the world and killing people for Ben (Michael Emerson). Who are these people Ben is having him kill? I'd say a big clue was found on the wrist of Elsa, the woman Sayid had to kill in this episode. Her bracelet, no doubt given to her by her mysterious employer, looks to be an exact duplicate of the one worn by Naomi, the freighter rescuer killed by Locke. Naomi's bracelet was inscribed by R.G. So who is R.G.?

The possibilities are endless, though I doubt the writers have given us enough information yet to be able to come up with a credible theory. But with all due respect to my lovely girlfriend, I don't think the Ben-Sayid partnership -- or alliance, as it's called on "Survivor" -- was the most startling revelation in the episode. Much more exciting to the series' overall arc was the mini-experiment Daniel Faraday ( Jeremy Davies) engaged in with Regina back on the boat. . . .

A rocket, fired from the freighter, did not arrive at its intended target on the island until a full 31 minutes later. (I thought the unsynchronized watches were a nice homage to Doc Brown from "Back to the Future.") It's important not to downplay the implications of that delay and its connection to the island's true nature. More than any other character, I think, Faraday and his box of scientific doohickeys will do more to quiet that faction of the audience that seems convinced the writers don't really know what the island is.

It's worth pointing out "Lost's" similarities to a Stephen King novella, "The Langoliers." It's a safe bet that the show runners, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, are familiar with the story -- they're both avowed King freaks, but with all the other books visually referenced on the show, it's strange that this one hasn't come up yet. Perhaps because to signal a connection to this story would have been too big a giveaway to a major secret of the series. But go ahead and read the summary on Wikipedia (or better yet, read the book for yourself) and consider again Faraday's comment in Episode 2 about the quality of light on the island being off somehow.

And what about his instructions to Frank to fly off the island and stay on the coordinates he was given? Are they trying to fly through a time rip?

Finally, what are we to make of the revelation that Ben has been traveling off the island for some time under assumed identities? Did he cross paths with any of the crash survivors at some point in the past? I have no doubt we haven't seen the last of the survivor flashbacks.

By the way, the name Ben used in the passport Sayid looked at was Dean Moriarty, one of the key characters in Jack Kerouac's novel "On the Road." Of course, Moriarty was also Sherlock Holmes' genius archnemesis. It seems as though Ben is a combination of both of these characters -- the evil genius with wanderlust. Now we just need to figure out who wants him dead.

Read the full story at Los Angeles Times. (2:55 AM)

Once again, many thanks to Billie Doux for giving us episode reviews for the site. Her latest review for the latest episode of the show, "The Economist," is now up, and here's an excerpt for your enjoyment:

I gasped out loud three times during this episode. So I guess you could say it was a multiple shocker.

Sayid is our third confirmed member of the Oceanic Six. (That was gasp number one.) (We still don't know for certain about Kate, or I'd say Sayid was fourth.) I liked Sayid in flash forwards a lot more than in his previous flashbacks; he was much more interesting as a suave but reluctant assassin than as a tortured torturer. Plus, Sayid in gorgeous clothes and doing love scenes? Super yum. Not that I don't like him in Island grunge.

Ben, who is an even bigger villain than I thought, has some sort of stranglehold on future Sayid. Like what? Did the amorphous, unknown bad guys that included Mr. Abilene and "the economist" who wasn't do something to Nadia, perhaps? Was that why Sayid was crying? And what has Ben been doing with the money, fancy clothes, and multiple passports?

Locke continued his search for the Magical Moving Cabin and its mysterious and possibly dead residents. He also managed to subvert Hurley. That really surprised me, because I thought Locke wasn't doing all that well in the leadership skills department. Plus it was very unlike Hurley to betray a friend.

Read the full review here. (9:53 AM)

"I have been very careful with the choices that I make," said Matthew Fox, the good-looking and well-built star of the television hit and Golden Globe and Emmy-winning Best Drama Series, "Lost.”"

When we interviewed him in a hotel on Santa Monica beach for the action-packed thriller "Vantage Point," Fox was not clad in an unbuttoned shirt, as he usually appears in the TV series where he portrays the heroic and conflicted doctor, Jack Shephard. He was fully clothed in a blue long-sleeved shirt and black jacket.

In "Vantage Point," he and Dennis Quaid play Secret Service agents assigned to protect the US president. When the president is shot, the assassination is told from different viewpoints, in the fashion of the Japanese film classic "Rashomon."

"I consider this business as a marathon instead of a sprint," said Fox, a Golden Globe nominee this year for Best Actor in a TV Drama Series. "I believe that those who do a sprint in this business are doing it for the wrong reasons. They are in it more for just the fame, not to buckle down to work. Secondly, I always believe that the faster you rise, the faster you fall....

Read the full story at Philippine Daily Inquirer. (9:43 AM)

Elizabeth Mitchell plays the maybe-not-evil Juliet on "Lost." She was at home on Bainbridge Island, Wash., with the kiddo.

Apparently Bainbridge is also home to Russell Johnson, better known as the Professor from "Gilligan's Island."

Yes! I hear this too! Who didn't watch "Gilligan's Island"? I can still sing the song.

An important predecessor to "Lost."

Yes. I really love "Lost," though. I am kind of itching -- I know I say this a million times -- but I'm a big reader, and you know how you wait for installments of books when you're a kid? . . . I'm looking forward to a script! I'm looking forward to seeing something.

Two years ago, everyone was raising the cautionary "Twin Peaks" flag. . . . But for now we've gotten through that.

Yeah, I think so! I talk to a lot of people, and . . . they have their times they're in love with us, with "Lost," and the times they're angry with "Lost." And now they're just getting on the ride: "I know I'm gonna get mad again, and I know I'll be happy again." I think that's it: They know at least they're going somewhere, so they might as well sit back and see where it takes you.

Don't you go a little nutty out there in nature, with 20,000 or whatever people on an island?

You'd think! But it's a pretty good group of people. I'm still intrigued by them. You don't go hog-wild bored, because you have a 2-year-old and you're so tired. Any time you might be bored, your eyes close and you go to sleep. Boredom is for people who don't have toddlers....

Read the full story at Los Angeles Times. (9:40 AM)

Smoke monsters? Ghosts? Pirates? Renegade researchers experimenting with wormholes and polar bears?

All minor headaches compared to the thorniest threat Matthew Fox and his fellow Lost castaways have faced: Namely, fickle fair-weather fans.

"Those were all bandwagon jumpers. Those were the people who would not have been Lost fans to begin with," says Fox of the millions of viewers who bailed during the stormy sophomore season and had many observers wondering if the phenomenally-popular series would ever regain its momentum.

"We won the Emmy. We won the Golden Globe -- and then we had a whole bunch of people jump on just because they couldn't stand being left out and they weren't really Lost fans to begin with.

"And they all went away."

And frankly Fox doesn't sound terribly interested in wooing them back. Fact is, after a third year in which the show re-constituted much of its creative credibility, ratings are strong (16 million-plus in its new Thursday timeslot). So is the buzz. Now in its fourth -- albeit abbreviated -- season, the survivors of Oceanic flight 815 have seemingly reverse-jumped the shark. How'd they do it? First, by ingeniously tweaking the show's non-linear narrative. After three seasons spent flashing back in time, last May's season finale sprung forward to a post-island Jack who is a bearded, alcoholic shell of his former self. The sudden flash-forward format re-kindled the interest of devotees and casual fans alike -- i.e.: What horrible events transpired during the rescue of the castaways? Fox says he knows, but, of course, is not telling....

Read the full story at Winnipeg Sun. (9:37 AM)

Fans tend to be in obsessive awe of Brian K. Vaughan, the 31-year-old co-producer of the ABC show "Lost" and the writer of the popular comic book "Y: The Last Man," created with the artist Pia Guerra.

So what happened the other night when around 100 collaborators, friends and comic junkies came to Meltdown Comics, a shop on West Sunset Boulevard, to toast the recently published 60th and final issue of "Y"? A lot of hero-worship for a reluctant hero.

"It's Brian's night, and I'm geeking out," said Joss Whedon, 43, the creator of the television series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."”

Even though the comic-book series is over, "I'll still be stalking Brian," said Nick Igoe, 23, a fan who had traveled from Minneapolis and wore a "Y" sweatshirt embroidered by his grandmother.

Also on hand was Jeff Garlin, 45, the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star, looking relatively trim in a sweatshirt and jeans, and holding a bagful of just-purchased comics. "I have a mad crush on 'Y: The Last Man,' " he said.

Baby-faced, bald and clad in a black suit, a black shirt, black dress shoes and red socks, Mr. Vaughan was cowed by the attention. "I'm totally mortified," he said. " 'Y' is just the product of five years alone in a room."

"Y: The Last Man" is the saga of Yorick Brown, a commitment-phobic escape artist who is the lone survivor of a plague that wipes out the male population of Earth; he and a Capuchin monkey named Ampersand travel a world inhabited entirely by women.

A stand-in for Ampersand, named Zuni, was posing for photographs beside a beverage cooler in the shape of R2-D2.

"I jokingly told the store I would do this event if they had a live monkey," said Mr. Vaughan, who slipped Zuni's trainer a $5 tip.

Ms. Guerra, 36, was particularly enchanted by the animal. "I've never seen a live monkey before," she said. "I cheated and based Ampersand on my cat."

Damon Lindelof, 34, a creator and the executive producer of "Lost," explained why he offered Mr. Vaughan a job on "Lost."

"Brian spends at least 93 percent of his life apologizing," Mr. Lindelof said. "He has an idea brain. And he hates himself like we do."

During a question-and-answer session, Mr. Vaughan apologized to the crowd for making everybody come out on a Friday night. He explained that the writers' strike had put the movie adaptation of "Y" in "sort of a Han Solo cryogenic freeze."

When Mr. Whedon told the audience that he had wiped away tears as he read the last issue of "Y," Mr. Vaughan's face turned the color of his socks. "He's the whole reason I became a writer," Mr. Vaughan said later.

After the Meltdown party, Mr. Vaughan and company headed to Ye Coach and Horses, a nearby British-theme bar. Mr. Vaughan said the end of the series was finally hitting him.

"It's been like the five stages of dealing with death," he said. "Tonight was really the acceptance, and I'm at peace with that. It's actually a nice feeling. And now, I need a drink."

Read the full story at The New York Times. (9:32 AM)

The executive producers of ABC's "Lost," Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, will deliver a keynote address at the NAB Show April 15 in Las Vegas.

Mr. Cuse and Mr. Lindelof will discuss creating compelling original TV content as well as digital distribution, including their vision of delivering content to mobile devices.

"Lost" premiered in September 2006 and has remained a ratings leader for ABC.

Mr. Cuse began his career in feature films as a creative executive before creating television series "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.," "Nash Bridges" and "Martial Law."

Prior to his work on "Lost," Mr. Lindelof was a writer on shows including "Undressed," "Wasteland" and "Crossing Jordan."

The NAB Show, organized by National Association of Broadcasters, runs April 11-17. Other speakers slated to appear include "CSI" creator Anthony Zuiker, "Pushing Daisies" director and executive producer Barry Sonnenfeld, Six Flags President-CEO Mark Shapiro, and best-selling author Alvin Toffler ("Revolutionary Wealth," "Future Shock").

Read the full story at TVWeek. (9:29 AM)

After a painful eight-month hiatus that sent rabid fans into withdrawal, season four of the cryptic, elaborate ABC series Lost returned with signs of maturity in its foray into the lives of the remaining survivors of a plane crash.

With 90 days elapsed since the plane first crashed in 2004's first season -- stranding 40 people on a remote island -- the show's priorities are changing and viewers are left to fill in the blanks of the patchy chronology. Meanwhile, the focus has diverted into characters' petty fights and innocuous love triangle filler.

Last season's finale, in which the show's writers began fleshing out the storyline by flash-forwarding to the future lives of six fortunate survivors who escaped the island, was a brilliant and advantageous shift in storytelling. Previously, the show had used flashbacks to frame the storylines on the island with the characters' past experiences, a tactic that had grown tiresome and increasingly felt like a tool for the writers to slow the pace and buy more time.

By looking forward, instead of backward, the writers unlocked the potential for a narrative with a wider scope, affording themselves even more liberties in how they can divulge information. This season, the flash-forwards are used to serve the plot and quell an impatient audience that has been confused for far too long....

Read the full story at The Daily Collegian Online. (9:21 AM)

Lost was still the most watched show last night, but not by much. The show got ratings/share of 8.1/13 and total viewership of approximately 13.62 million viewers. This was just slightly ahead of Survivor: Micronesia, which had ratings/share of 7.6/12 and total viewership of approximately 13.12 million viewers. Whether or not the fact that last night was Valentine's Day had any effect on ratings remains to be seen.

A repeat of "Confirmed Dead" 8pm Eastern/7pm Central got ratings of 4.4 and total viewership of approximately 6.21 million viewers, putting it third in its timeslot.

Read more about Lost's ratings at Zap2It, PIFeedback, TV by the Numbers, The Hollywood Reporter, and Broadcasting and Cable. (10:37 PM)