Up

Being human, I have nothing but love and enthusiasm for most of Pixar's output- not just some of the best animation films, but maybe perhaps films in general. Personaly coming late to the party once again Up is no exception, a mix of humour, spectacle, fun and surrealism, with a tear-inducing story of love at it's very centre. As with the rest of the Pixar's catalogue, it's a film that works on many levels and will satisfy different age groups, but besides the Toy Story series it is certainly the funniest feature the studio have produced yet. This is good.

The Prestige

With a mixed cast of Bale, Jackman, Caine and Johansson, The Prestige is a back and fore tale all coming down simply to two magicians and their deadly game of one-upmanship- a desire to humiliate and destroy. To mention and expand on this battle is to ruin some of the twists of the film, a story told non-chronologically and full of surprises, particularly the deus ex machina residing near the end, so deliciously absurd that only I wouldn't question. With no truly-defined protagonist and antagonist roles, the story keeps you on your toes with characters that are never good or evil, but always at conflict with each other. This is fantastic.

LOST : The Final Season

With the sixth season proving once again that the stakes don't stop there, they just keep getting higher, the episodes thus far of LOST this year are all about one thing- destiny. With the characters themselves slowly (and finally) beginning to question the reason and purpose of exactly why they're on the island, character development is the order of the day. Sideflashes show the lives of these characters had the fated plane never crashed, while new supporting acts and settings help ensure the show stays fresh. The history of the smoke monster, the creation of the statue and why Jack is still an awful character are mysteries that still remain, but with the episode count running down, these are hopefully things that will be addressed sooner rather than later. This is promising.

Heavy Rain

Pitched early on in it's development as an interactive movie and to this day still continuing to be described as such, well, lets not fight it, that's exactly what Heavy Rain is. Playing as four characters the game pits you with solving the case of the Origami Killer, a serial murderer on the loose. Over the course of the story personal choices and paths can be chosen and defined by the player, with fates and the ending never clear until the very end, and given entirely in regards to the choices you and your characters have made through the game. There's no denying that gameplay-wise things are a little thin-the piece instead preferring to be a movie, a modern-day choose your own adventure with both consequence and, yay, conclusion. This is the best game that I never played.

For the first time since the show started, this year I decided to legitimately watch as much as possible of The X Factor. Yeah, i'm insane, I get it, but hear me out.

In years past it's been something that's really gripped the entire populace of the UK in a way similar to that of the early years of Big Brother, with talk of the contestants, the songs, and et al generally being something discussed wherever you went. With the familial December get togethers of 2008, the show was often something discussed at length, and inevitably watched, but beyond the auditions i'd never actually watched the show or knew the names of any of the contestants. That changed this year, and for reasons that were never actually clear, I stuck with the show pretty much all season.

Instead of talking about things that genuinely interested me, I was now able to talk about the X Factor. As it stands now, neither the show or it's participants did anything for me personally, but I guess on some level, the mock-arguments and discussions that it created and allowed for were maybe a little exciting.

More recently the discussion has been targeted towards "the battle for Christmas Number One" between the show's winner and Rage Against The Machine. I've been a RATM fan for years -and thus, cooler than everyone else- so having this band mentioned and endorsed by so many recently came as a little surprise. Launched to the xmas number one by a huge people-fed internet campaign, again, it's not so much the event and scenario that was exciting or interesting as the discussion and talking that backed it up and reinforced it all. That they got to the position and sold the amount of records they did, obviously is good, and the fallout even better, but the most captivating and engrossing side to all of this has surely been the public consumption and opinion-splitting of it all. Case in point, who knew I would ever have a legitimate discussion about Rage Against The Machine with my parents?

That the campaign worked and Rage got the Christmas number 1 is a non-issue I think- both the success of it and the record of the show winner says a lot about the impact that conversation and buzz can have on the success of something. Lets be honest- if Joe McElderry hadn't won the competition or ever been on the TV would he have ever racked up the sales that he did? He's a product of TV rather than genuine talent, helped along merely by that buzz. In that same light, the same can also be said for Rage Against The Machine and the "Killing In The Name" single. It's great, and I love it, and i'm happy that it's out there, but these sales wouldn't be anywhere near as impressive without the people behind it. The the song was also kind of counter-active- here was a song that was being used to promote to stand against being told what to buy and yet, half a million of us bought it- is another issue, and something worth considering, but maybe another day.

Both singles and acts were driven and manipulated entirely by this "battle", but that the internet is now recognised as capable of doing something this large and doing it successfully, is certainly the most important thing to take away from this feud. Rage Against The Machine's "Killing In The Name" Christmas number one, close to two decades on from it's original release: who saw that one coming?

The LOST Underground Art Show

A number of LOST paintings, sculptures and pieces of art to celebrate the upcoming final season of the island epic. LOST Showdowns by Scott Campbell is probably my favourite, showing a brief history of the show through simple and abstract encounters, but there's loads of great stuff on there. S1-S5 Spoilers, obviously lie within.

As Season 6 and thus, the final eighteen hours of the LOST draw ever nearer it's time once again to go back and rewatch the series thus far. In brief? Locke's metaphor about a light side and a dark side was more than just a metaphor, Hurley's joke in Season 2 regarding "when they were" was a very appropriate question to ask, and Charlie certainly wasn't kidding in the first season when he said he couldn't swim. Season 3 shows this, RIP Charlie.

So yeah, a huge panic and desperation to rewatch all the episodes before the show returns on the 2nd of February. Alongside that though, there's the non-compulsory fluffing that comes with being a fan. I'm reading Stephen King's The Stand (as ever, a post for another day), i'm drawing imaginary hypothetical timelines (as always, no, really) and finally, watching videos explaining the properties behind quantum mechanics- something both my high school physics teacher and I would've laughed at.

The below video is from "LOST University", the marketing gimmick behind the upcoming season:

With the fifth season a wormhole of time-travel logistics and hypothetical alternative universes, yeah, it's surprisingly relevant, and maybe even outlines some of the crazy shit to go down next year. Not that it will help explain the roaming mass of black smoke inhabiting the island of course, but then, some things are better left as fantasy and in general mystery. With only eighteen episodes left, we'll see how much of that is true, come series finale time in May.

tl:dr/too confusing/alternative video: If LOST were more like Seinfeld

For the last week and a half i've been without internet. The kind of thing you dread, the whole "I hope this never happens" type of situation came, stayed, and most annoyingly, is still here. The remedy? Keep phoning customer care lines and shouting. The solution? GTFO as soon as possible and change ISPs. I've been kind of compromised for the last few weeks, but if everything goes to plan i'll be back proper on the 22nd. Assuming I don't blow up into a flaming ball of anger within the next few days. We'll see.

• I rely on said internet a little too much- an embarassingly unhealthy reliance.
• Growing your own lettuce isn't half as lame as it sounds (no, really).
• Filling out driving/job application forms is as boring as it sounds.
• Half-Life 2 wasn't just a game ahead of it's time last generation, but this one too.
• The Wire is brilliant and my new favourite show. Thank you BBC2 .
• The world is less scary if you don't have the internet/don't watch the news and have no awareness of what the fuck the rest of humanity is up to.

 Help me.

Going backwards: the beginning of LOST Season Five, the ending of the show (light spoilers).

If the previous fourth season of LOST was, as the opening episode title suggests "The Beginning of the End", this year is very much the calm before the storm; the season where things finally begin to come together and the end gets all the nearer while at the sametime, still feeling so hopelessly far away. The fifth season is a difficult year- as the penultimate season and with six already having 'escaped' the island, the future of the story is so impossible to imagine, it's destiny unknown, and it's conclusion both an upsetting and worrying thought. In the remaining 30+ episodes it feels like anything can happen, and as this has been a way of describing the show for sometime now, it's here that the fans will be divided- those wanting to stay and those scared of the sci-fi surrealism and show's continued direction that will want to bail.

With season four's focus being the rescue, escape and overall fleeing of the island for six very lucky castaways, season four ends and season five ends with them wanting to go back. Naturally, there's problems, not least with the narrative and the fragmentation of characters we're so used to seeing altogether in the same place, oh, and there's problems for the characters too obviously- getting off an invisible hidden island and then wanting to return to said island was never a good idea, but i'm sure they'll get there, or die trying. Whereas the introductions of flash-forwards propelled the show into new and exciting directions, the same cannot be said for the continuation of these stories of the survivors upon leave.

The two episodes that premiered the fifth season understandably featured heavy doses of all the Oceanic 6, those who managed to leave the island behind the previous season; Jack, the hero quickly becoming the very man that he hates, Kate, the felon turned wannabe mum looking after Aaron, Sayid, the hitman for hire, Sun, the newly-widowed Korean out for revenge and Hurley, the umm...well, "dude", who hasn't changed at all in four seasons. Their escapades in getting back to the island then are a drawn out process, full of complications and trivialities, the kind of which you'd only expect Prison Break to go for. Helping things come together a little more quickly are the two characters that also left the island behind, Desmond Hume and Ben Linus, two wonderfully written personas that the producers could cast in any situation and could still be interesting, thanks in part to their actors.

The dynamics at play off-island do feel new however, not so much in setting but rather scenario, and the conversing with each other. As the uber-villain and leader of the Others for so many seasons past, seeing Ben interact with other characters feels so excitingly new, his mixing and pairing with Jack in particular making the latter character feel a hundred times more worthwhile. The same can be said for those still on the island.

Introduced in the previous season, new characters Daniel Faraday, Miles and Charlotte are given the space and opportunity to shine, finally getting the screentime and exposition they need, in particular Faraday, as the opening of Season 5 shows brilliantly- if you're a fan of the season openers this one is brilliant. Equally shortchanged last year, Josh Holloway's Sawyer finally gets the role of leader within the castaways while still retaining the idiosyncracies and one-liners you've come to expect. Juliet is the Robin to his Batman, and if it weren't for the scenes set off-island, this season feels like it's very much an opposite of last year, particularly with the usage of characters.

This year's "big thing" is continued experiments with time-travel; something that's been used in the show's mythology for sometime now, but here completely expanded upon- again, if you don't like the sci-fi this year you're going to be in trouble it seems. While it would be rude to comment exactly on what happens and how in these two opening episodes, yet again the producers and writers have brought into play an interesting new dynamic for the show, and one that seems like it'll be able to answer and explore many of the mysteries connected to the Island's history.

LOST is in an interesting place, a difficult one, stuck in a junction between the four seasons past, the middle of the show and the end. The show is different, as it is every year, and especially from that of the opening year. Answers are coming, fast, and as the grand narrative comes to a close, the epic show finale and theory of how it can all possibly end seems further and further away. But then, ahsn't it always been about the journey, and not the destiny? Time will tell.