Lost Rewatch: Pilot

I've felt like rewatching Lost for some time now and I watched both parts of the pilot today. I wrote a bit about what I thought. I don't know if I'll keep doing this, but I found it kind of fun. I guess I should mention three things.

1. I'm not the best at remembering details of something I've watched, so I might make some mistakes in regards to what's to come.
2. This is written with the assumption that whoever's reading it has seen the show, and there might be spoilers for the entire series.

Pilot Part 1

The year 2004... popular band Drive Shaft are having a comeback...

The sound in this show is awesome.

We're alone in a bamboo forest with Jack, the only things audible his breathing, the swaying of the trees, a bird above, and this wonderfully eerie musical score. After Vincent passes through, Jack runs through the bamboo. He bursts out into the open, and then, as the camera slowly pans left towards the crash site, silence becomes chaos and we're thrust into the show.

The music is something special. We hear pounding drums and watch as Jack helps pull a man with an injured leg out of the wreckage and begins tending his wounds. He suddenly hears a very pregnant woman screaming for help. As Jack looks at her, frozen with indecision for just a moment, the drums drop out. He makes up his mind, shouts an order, and the drums come back in, twice as aggressive. This really sets Jack's character up, I think, and gives us a strong character to follow.

It's interesting to see the first appearances of all the main characters. Shannon standing around screaming, Jin looking for Sun. I'd just like to point out that the very first word out of Micheal's mouth is "WAAAAAAAAAAALT!!" You get what you paid for with this guy. I found naive Boone, with his cell phone and his pens, quite touching. Bringing back a handful of pens, long after they'd be needed: "Which of these work best?" An exhausted Jack, smiling: "They're all good." Naive Shannon, on the other hand, is already annoying with her thinking the rescue is coming any time. I like that we don't see Sawyer in the initial confusion. Rather than save everyone ala Jack or look for loved ones ala everyone else, he seems to have found the nearest pack of smokes and distanced himself from the crowd.


Jack ends up meeting Kate a ways off in the jungle while he's examining his injuries. Jack's story about the spinal surgery never fails to make me cringe. Hey, look! Jack's got some tattoos... rather than think "they must not have bothered to cover up that actor's tattoos", I'm extremely curious about them! In fact, there is no mystery thus far introduced in this show that I am MORE curious about than Jack's tattoos. If the creators of the show don't explain this, I'm going to be ticked.

The sequence with the plane in the tree, where they have to climb up the seats to the front, is some straight up Jurassic Park shit. Seriously, at this point, who knows? It could be a T-Rex stompin' around out there.

I really like the guy who plays the pilot. I can't help it. I liked him on Heroes and I like him here. In fact, I wouldn't have minded if he had survived and been a cast member for awhile. I think him telling the gang that they're 1000 miles off course and the rescue teams are looking in the wrong place is the best reveal of Part 1. It's not as flashy as the monster, but it's that kind of slower, scarier realization that I like in a mystery.

Notes
- Nice bit of irony in Jack and Kate's first conversation. "You're not running now", says Jack.
- Rose says that the monster's noises sound "familiar". What's up with that? (I'm probably forgetting something here.)

Pilot Part 2


I feel sad for Michael, watching this again. He's just trying to take care of his son, even if he doesn't always know the best way to go about it (when he tells Walt that he can have a new dog when they get home, "I don't want a new dog" doesn't even need to be said).

Right off the bat, Jack is very protective of Kate, wary when she wants to go on the hike into the jungle. Their relationships seems to have progressed quickly, but it feels real. I think this is mostly due to their talk when she was stitching Jack up back in part 1. I think she must have been touched by his "fear" speech, as she counted to 5 later herself.

John Locke's friendship with Walt is wonderful. The only people who are interested in sitting down and playing a game (or reading a comic) are a kid and an old man. When Walt asks if Backgammon is like checkers, I love the way Locke almost sneers "It's a better game than... checkers".

I forgot unlikeable Sawyer could be here at the beginning, alternating between relentless insults and some very Han Solo-ish bravado: "I'm a complex guy, sweetheart."

I love that this show, in its pilot episode, got so ambitious so fast.

I like to imagine that I'm watching this for the first time, knowing nothing about it, having tuned in the second the pilot started. The mystery, the sense of something being wrong, is introduced so gradually and perfectly. Some people crash on an island. They discover that something is knocking down trees and killing people. They find out that they're 1000 miles off their charted course. A polar bear attacks. They find a transmission that's been playing there for 16 years.

And then all of this is so perfectly encapsulated by "Guys... where are we?"

The Mad Dog Killer (1977)

 

The Mad Dog Killer (1977)

also known as Beast With a Gun

Really unamusing, pointless exploitation movie about a psycho killer (Helmut Berger) and a hot girl (Marisa Mell) who gets raped a lot. The killer goes around slapping, killing and raping, and that's pretty much it. Nothing really happens in this movie, and the only thing worth seeing is Helmut Berger's eccentric performance as the psycho. If I recall, it got slightly better towards the end, but still pretty dire. I'm surprised this has a 6.2 on IMDB, which actually caused me to expect something more entertaining (as did the fact that it's supposedly featured in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown).

*½/****

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

 

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

A suspenseful, funny and all around entertaining movie. Peter Lorre (in the first role I've seen him in) was excellent as the villain and made me interested to see what else he's done. The ending was ridiculous, ending in a firefight with a massive body count, but ridiculous in a good way. By far the best of the early Hitchcock movies I've watched, and I'm now intrigued to see how he handled the remake he did later on in the 50s.

Unique Aspects: A Chair fight in a church. 

***½/****

The Farmer's Wife (1928)

 

The Farmer's Wife (1928) 

A comedy/romance, though I didn't find it too funny. Most of the humour seems to revolve around the protagonist having his marriage proposals rebuked and then insulting the women until they fly into hysterics. The bumbling servant was a little better. So the main character was kind of a douche, the comedy wasn't all that funny and the romance part was pretty predictable. Watchable, but probably near the bottom of the Hitchcock silents I've seen.

**½/****

The Ring (1928)

 

The Ring (1928)

This Hitchcock silent is actually a boxing story mixed with a love triangle. It was a bit slow to start, but I found it pretty enjoyable as it carried on. As in the previous Hitchcock silents I've seen there are some experimental camera tricks and visual effects here that are usually effective and interesting to watch. The boxing scenes are intense and more brutal than I expected. I can't say the story itself is very original or interesting, but the way it was done made it worthwhile. Unfortunately, this was also the first silent Hitchcock I've seen that's contained some openly racist elements including stereotypical acting and use of the "n word" in a title card.

***/****

Downhill (1927)

 

Downhill (1927)

Alfred Hitchcock's fourth movie. Stars the same guy from the Lodger, though unlike the Lodger, this isn't in the suspense/thriller genre at all. It's about a young man, star of his school's rugby team and on his way to a good scholarship, who is expelled for something he didn't do (getting a girl pregnant) and has his life begin a downward spiral (or go "downhill"). There isn't much story here, seeing as I essentially summed the whole movie up. What makes it worth watching is decent acting by the lead and Hitchcock's atmospheric visuals and directorial flourishes, such as some interesting point of view shots and a cool dream sequence. Other than that, it's a bit dull.

**/****

The Lodger (A Story of the London Fog) (1927)

 

The Lodger (A Story of the London Fog) (1927)

Hitchcock's third feature (the second is lost) and the second of his early British silents that I've seen. An enjoyable and fairly suspenseful story, but my enjoyment was affected pretty seriously by the version I watched having no sound whatsoever. I could have watched an inferior archive print that has a soundtrack, but it would be at the cost of the extra 20 minutes running time that was restored in the better quality but mute print that I viewed. Other than that, a good movie with plenty of atmosphere. Hitchcock had to change the ending so the lead character was innocent (as opposed to being the killer) because having a big star play a villain/killer was against some sort of rule at the time. Has been remade a few times.

***/****