Film Strip

A few weekends ago, my wife and I did something that took me back to when I was a kid. We rented a movie at Blockbuster.

I may be young by many people’s standards, but I’m old enough to remember when there were no Blockbuster Video’s. It used to be that most video rental stores were independently run, and there were “good” ones and “bad” ones depending on what they had in stock. Also, my family had a little different twist, since we had a Beta VCR and not a VHS VCR. Back then, my dad was on the cutting edge of technology, or at least he tried to be, since we had a Beta VCR and a Macintosh computer in the 80′s. Unfortunately, as history shows us, Beta lost the format war to VHS, and Apple lost to PC’s back then.

For a time, there were two video stores that had Beta movies to choose from. Then two stores turned to one store, and then one store turned to a couple of aisles, down to a shelf, down to nothing.

Dad had to break down and buy a VHS VCR.

About the same time, a new chain of video rental stores called Blockbuster Video came down from Dallas into Houston and into the rest of the country. This place was awesome. Blockbuster was clean and appeared reputable. They had more than one or two copies of a movie unlike at the other places where things were always rented out. In fact, Blockbuster usually had tons of copies of new releases and, for a time, they would guarantee new releases be in stock.

Now, as a movie fan, I’m well aware of movie-snobbery. At times, I’m guilty of such a thing. I know there’s an ambiance to the independent video store culture. And I know guys like Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson became great filmmakers from working at dingy video stores.

But they worked there! They could watch movies whenever they wanted. Heck, they were probably the reason that the movies you wanted were never in stock.

Without debating local versus chain stores, as a regular dude from a regular family who just wanted to rent a movie on a Friday night and expect that it be available. Blockbuster had that.

Now things have changed again. There’s Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, On-Demand, Redbox and any number of movie rental and watching options that I don’t even know about. Blockbuster is still there, and they’ve got Blockbuster Online, but as they once changed the game from local shop to national chain, it’s now shifting from national chain to on-demand and digital download.

We’ll see if Blockbuster can keep up, but in the meantime, it was good to stop by the old Blockbuster and browse the aisles of a clean store (well, somewhat clean these days) with bright lights, decent prices, and a large selection.

It makes me long for the days when you could order a pizza from Dominos and get it in 30 minutes or less or it was free. Those were the days.

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Hello loyal Film Strippers! (Ha! I kinda like that.) I am back from Japan and hoping to be better than ever. Though not just yet due to the fact that I’m trying to get on a better sleep schedule. Going to the other side of the world will do that to you.

Before getting into a little recap of my trip, I wanted to send out a big thanks to my wife’s friends, and now my friends, Chris and Gizelle who hosted us for our entire 10-day trip. I don’t know how we would’ve gotten along without some American locals showing us all the ropes. I also want to thank the people of Japan for being such a nice culture to help me feel welcome in a foreign land. I’d recommend anyone and everyone take a trip to Japan just to experience the generosity and overall friendliness of this great land. And finally I want to thank my wife for not only putting up with me, but for being such a great traveling companion. Yes, I think this marriage is going to work out quite nicely.

Now on to the trip!

We flew Continental on a direct flight to Tokyo. I was fully prepared for a 13 hour flight with 3 books, my sketchbook, 6 or 7 magazines, a copy of Usagi Yojimbo #123, and a how to draw book. Additionally, I had loaded up the iPhone with music and movies. Then comes the flight.

For those of you who haven’t taken a international Continental flight to Tokyo before, like me, each seat has it’s own individual TV in the back of the headrest in front of you. I’ve experienced this before on Jet Blue, but this wasn’t just a dozen or so On-Demand movies and maybe 30 TV shows, this was a full on entertainment Smörgåsbord.

We had our choice of around 150 movies including about 25 new releases. I took full advantage of these. There were also a number of TV show options, music selections, and even video games with a controller. I had never experienced this many options on a flight. Needless to say, I didn’t utilize any of the entertainment that I brought.

On the flight over, I watched 5 movies. Up in the Air, Sherlock Holmes, Shutter Island, The Book of Eli, and Lost in Translation. The first four I hadn’t seen before, and then I had to catch up on Lost in Translation before arriving in Japan. Plus, with the price of these plane tickets, I was going to be sure I got my money’s worth, if possible, and not sleep the whole trip.

I’m realizing that this trip recap is going to get pretty long, so I’ll try to hit the high points.

We arrived in Tokyo and immediately went to Tokyo Disney for two days. Me being a movie buff, a huge Disney and Pixar fan, and a cartoonist, this was a must for me. We actually spent our time at the Disney Sea theme park which was aimed at an older audience with rides like Indiana Jones and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, and alcohol sales at the restaurants. This was a really fun experience, and I learned that 1) the lines are incredibly long, and I’m glad I had my iPhone so we could watch Up while we waited, and 2) Japanese people love Disney, and they love trinkets and accessories. EVERYONE had some sort of dangly trinket on their cell phones, and you couldn’t find a souvenir t-shirt anywhere. It was all accessories, trinkets, and candy.

After Disney, we went to Atsugi to meet up with our friends at the US Naval base and to experience the local flair. It was fun to go to a mall, a real Ramen restaurant (sidenote, I have still never had cheap ramen that we have in America), an authentic Sushi bar, and it was awesome to get a tour of the USS George Washington aircraft carrier.

We then went to Tokyo for two days and experienced as much as we could. We ate at the restaurant that inspired the set of the Crazy 88 fight in Kill Bill, we went to the electronics and video game district, saw the Godzilla statue, and ate at the Hotel where Lost in Translation was filmed.

From Tokyo, we went on a bullet train to Kyoto where we got to experience old-world Japan visiting Shrines, the Shogun’s Castle, the Golden Pavilion, and the Imperial Palace.

After that, it was back to Atsugi, and then to Tokyo, and back to America, where I watched a few more movies on the plane, including finally finishing The Godfather: Part II.

Overall, it was a great experience. People keep asking me what my favorite part was. I understand that this is a standard question to ask someone back from vacation, but it has kind of bothered me because I didn’t have a favorite part. It was all really fun and a great experience.

Growing up in America, we really don’t get exposed to what Japan is like, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Japan is not full of Samurai showdowns or anime super fights. It’s not all crazy game shows and weird cuisine. Heck, it’s not even what is presented in Lost in Translation because you need to have a ton of money to stay in that hotel and do Tokyo like they did Tokyo.

It’s just a wonderful place that’s hard to describe unless you’ve been there, and I’m glad I went.

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I know this comic and blog are usually reserved for movies, but last night was the Series Finale of Lost. I confess that I have not been watching Lost faithfully over the past six seasons like some of you. In fact, for a long time, I have been a Lost naysayer. My journey with Lost has been quite an odd ride that culminated with yesterday’s four and a half hours of Lost festivities. Let me explain.

I have probably watched seven or eight complete episodes of Lost to date plus some occasional scenes when I was at friends and relatives houses here and there. Those episodes include two episodes from Season Three, the season premier of Season Six, and then the last four or five episodes of Season Six. So what happened?

Back when Lost premiered in September of 2004, I was in my last year of college. Like most college students, I rarely watched network TV and college football season was in full force. My roommates and I never really gravitated around shows, so we normally watched ESPN, Comedy Central, MTV, or other come-and-go programs that didn’t require big time commitments. Though we did watch The Ultimate Fighter on Spike together, and we all started 24 on Fox together, but 24 died down when we all missed two weeks in a row and had no idea what was going on. Additionally, we didn’t have DVR in our apartment in 2004

As Season Two started, I had graduated and was living with my parents as I started my first job out of college. They also didn’t have DVR, nor did they watch Lost. Therefore, I didn’t pick it up despite my brother proclaiming that it was really good. (That should’ve been a sign since my middle brother is the one who got my into comics, sci-fi, and fantasy.) I also hadn’t seen the first season, so I figured I’d be clueless when trying to catch up with this Sci-Fi Gilligan’s Island.

Then came Season Three and my first time to have DVR. I was living on my own, and the Fall 2006 TV schedule was mine for the taking. I recorded almost every show and tried to watch everything before weeding things out. By this time I’d heard people say they loved Lost, but I was reluctant. It stared the guy from Party of Five and a Hobbit, when people explained it to me, it sounded like lame Sci-Fi, and when I tried to watch two episodes, I was completely lost. (On a side note: all you people you tried to tell me Lost was good by saying, “but they give you all the character’s back-stories, and that’s what makes it good,” you give horrible explanations of TV shows.) Thus began my Lost-bashing.

Around the same time, Heroes started on NBC, and me being a hug comic fan, I loved Heroes. I would tell people that Heroes was great. Way better than Lost and 24. Where Lost never answered the questions it posed and 24 gave you too many questions and answers, Heroes posed questions and gave you answers within two or three episodes to always give you that sense of build-up and satisfaction. Lost gave people no satisfaction, only build-up. I even spent time reading Lost episode recaps online trying to figure things out and get myself up to speed, but it was too much, I couldn’t fit it all in.

Then, over the last three years, Heroes crumbled into a horrible show, Lost built its momentum, and I met and married a Lost-Fan.

Did my wife convert me? No, not in the beginning. It wasn’t until this, the sixth and final season of Lost that my wife actually got me to sit down and watch an episode.

We watched the Season Premier together, and it was pretty good, but I kept asking her questions and she kept having to explain everything to me. I was probably bothering her, and after that, I figured she’d be better off enjoying Lost as one of “her shows,” while I had House as one of “my shows.”

Then came the Lost countdown to the finale. It started with my wife watching episodes while I worked on this comic strip, but it turned into me simply watching it and not doing the comic. (Make sense why the comic has been late recently?) I didn’t quite know who all the characters were, but these were good TV shows.

WARNING: There are probably spoilers below if you haven’t seen Season Six or the Lost Finale.

My wife told me there were two quasi-parallel time-lines, and with my background in Sci-Fi and Comics, that was enough for me to follow along. She would explain who a character was here and there, but I think that was more for her to remind herself since these characters had not appeared on the show for many episodes.

I absolutely loved the episode with the origin of Jacob and The Man in Black. I read reviews online where some chumps were complaining that it was too slow or didn’t fit, but those people are dumb. The one time the writers start giving you answers, and you complain because it’s not a follow-up to the action and deaths of Sayid, Jin, and Sun from the prior episode? Give me a break.

The best thing for me was the two-hour recap special that aired before the Finale. It gave me everything I needed to know to get me up to speed. Then we watched the final episode.

Two and a half hours!? I love these Lost guys. Instead of dumbing it down for time constraints like so many movies do, they gave us everything they could, time-slot be damned.

This final episode gave me so much. I haven’t even been along for the ride for six years, and I felt like it answered so many questions and gave me a sense of satisfaction and completion.

Some of the early reaction I’ve read has been somewhat positive, but there are still people who didn’t understand or didn’t like how it ended.

To the people who didn’t understand, if you invested six years into this show and you didn’t get it in the end, then I’m sorry but this show was not meant for you. I’m not necessarily questioning people’s intelligence, but it takes a certain way of thinking, a suspension of disbelief, and a solid imagination to play with a show like Lost. If you didn’t go into it wanting to play with it and be part of it, then you weren’t going to get anything out of it.

No, they did not all die in the original plane crash, and this wasn’t purgatory. They lived on this sci-fi island for three years and actually had all these experiences together. Christian Shepherd outright told Jack that “The most important part of your life was the time that you spent with these people.” They didn’t really know each other before they got on the plane, so they had to have the island experience. Also, Hurley told Ben that he was “a good number two,” to which Ben replied, “you were a great number one,” indicating that the two of them ran the island for some time after Jack’s death. Then, the final scene was all of them in the afterlife reunited, after their individual deaths at different times.

There is a lot more to it than that, but again, if you didn’t get it, I’m sorry you wasted your time. I also loved that in the pre-finale recap, the writers said outright that they didn’t want to dumb it down for anyone.

To the people who didn’t like it, what did you want or expect? The island is a sci-fi island with supernatural powers. They showed you that its power came from the light with the plug in it. They told you that someone has to protect it and keep the plug in it. Jacob’s adopted mom did it before Jacob, and Jack, and then Hurley, protected it after Jacob. Jacob brought all these “Lost Souls” to the island to find a candidate to replace him. He found said candidate(s), they defeated his nemesis, The Man in Black, and these Lost Souls found each other. It seems pretty cut and dry to me.

That’s how the story goes, and if you didn’t like it, then like the people who didn’t understand it, I’m sorry that you wasted six years.

I few weeks back I explained how Star Wars was great because of its vast story and possibility for an expanded universe, for which they’ve been creating books, comics, and other media for the last twenty years. I feel like Lost has that same sense of an expanded universe. Much of it was explored on the show with flashbacks, flashforwards, and flash-sideways, but there are still things that could be explored either in your imagination or in later expanded universe books such as earlier island inhabitants or, more curious to me, island inhabitants while Hurley ran the island. These things aren’t part of this six-season story, but the simple fact that a world was created with so much potential shows that Lost is pretty awesome.

In the end, it’s Monday morning, and I can’t stop thinking about Lost. I’ll probably be thinking about it most of the week and debating buying the seasons to own. That tells me that this show was really good. Lost was and is something special. I was not on the bandwagon from the beginning, but now I see that this show will be remembered as one of the greats.

Will I go back and watch all the seasons? Maybe. I made a tentative deal with my wife (that she hasn’t yet agreed to) that if she reads all the Harry Potter books, which I love dearly, then I will watch every episode of Lost, which she loves dearly. Now I’m hoping that she agrees.

All in all, I was wrong originally about Lost, and I admit that. I’m sorry that didn’t listen to you guys who told me it was good, even if your description of why it was good didn’t sound appealing. You guys were right. I’m also sorry that I didn’t have DVR until 2006.

Thanks Lost, I am now a fan.

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