"Lost" and "The Nine" (no spoilers)

Just as the second season of "Lost" opened with a sequence that radically widened the story, Season Three gives us a pre-title scene that's more interesting than the rest of the episode. We're also apparently going to see the Lost world through the eyes of a new supporting character, just as we did last year. Season Two is the Tale of Desmond told in jumbled chronological order. It starts with him, it ends with his flashback and our first contemporary off-island scene. This season starts with the opening eye of Juliet, a new Other, and her connections to Henry Gale are obviously noncordial off the bat. But what's really fascinating is how Henry immediately reacts to the arrival of the Lost ensemble. Once again, I'm left armchair quarterbacking the show, hoping it goes in directions I cook up.

"The Nine" is a, well, I'm not sure what it wants to be. It's definitely going for a chummy ensemble feel with stirrings of intrigue and conflict, but it's not what I expected. Bank robbers hold hostages for 52 hours, and the majority of the episode deals with their release and subsequent lives. I expected it to be more like "24," unfolding close to real time as the siege progresses through the season. But we already know who survives, who became close, who acted in remarkable ways, and what happens with the robbers. I didn't like the look of the show; it relies too much on that wet-street, blue-light design of the top CBS crime dramas. Your Sister liked it. Me, I'm not sold.

TicketMaster just alerted me that Duran Duran are coming to Greenville. I may have to go. I didn't care for them at first, but realized a few years later that 1) girls liked them a lot; 2) I bought an entire cassette to get one song ("The Reflex"); and 3) they dominated radio. Duran Duran was inescapable.

Moving Picture of the Day


The official trailer for 300, the story of the Battle of Thermopylae, is out. This is based on Frank Miller's comic and made much the same way as the adaptation of his Sin City.