J.J. Abrams, co-creator and executive producer of ABC's Lost, told SCI FI Wire that the show will continue to reveal the backgrounds of the characters in season three, including the origins of the mysterious Others. "It's all about who these people are," Abrams said in a conference call to journalists on Oct. 3. "And you'll discover in season three a whole group of people that will add to the mix. And I think in a pretty thrilling way."

In the Oct. 4 season premiere, which Abrams co-wrote with co-creator and executive producer Damon Lindelof, viewers got a glimpse of the suburbia-like neighborhood where the Others live on the island, while Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway) got an idea of what they're up against as prisoners of the Others. The episode also introduced a new character, Juliet, played by series regular Elizabeth Mitchell. Abrams said that subsequent episodes in the third season will have a few more surprises in store.

"The beautiful thing about Lost is that there's very little that Lost isn't," he said. "Meaning you tune in every week, and you don't know who you're going to be focusing upon. You certainly don't know where you're going to be in the world and what the situation is going to be in that world. And that's part of the beauty of it. I think that what you could say Lost isn't, obviously, is that it's not a puzzle before it's a character piece. It's not a science fiction series before it's a character drama. ... To some degree, it's almost an anthology, in that every week you don't know where you're going to be and who you're going to see and what's going to happen in those flashbacks."

Abrams speculated that the demise of last year's crop of science-fiction-themed series was due to a lack of focus on character. "I feel like the reason why shows like Threshold or Surface [or] Invasion and those shows, all of which I'm sure had great promise, but they all kind of happened in response to something that I feel like wasn't really about the genre at all," he said. "The genre sort of is secondary. [Lost] is all about what really makes Locke tick. And what has Jin gone through that we don't quite understand in terms of making sense of his behavior, and things like that. The flashbacks are not serving shock value. They're serving character and their history. So to me, the fun of the whole show is that it's all about who the people are."

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Three Online Shows With Buzz

USA Today has an article about three different web-based shows: Broken Saints, Soup of the Day and Floaters. Of the three Broken Saints, an animated comic epic, is not currently offering online content. Instead, it has leaped from the Internet to DVD. Broken Saints received 5 million visitors during its 24 show series.

Broken Saints, considered the granddaddy of Internet serials, launched in 2001. "I realized we had something shortly after the site launched and the first two chapters were up," writer/director Brooke Burgess says.

"We were featured in a major Web publication, and the next day, my technical director said our bandwidth was going crazy."

The other two shows can be viewed online. Soup of the Day is a comedy show on ZabberBox about a guy who has three serious girlfriends. Three short webisodes run each week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. ZabberBox also offers several other online shows and content on its website.

Floaters is an sitcom about three women in New York who work as temps at an ad agency. USA Today compares it to Sex and the City. Floaters is produced by Phoebeworks Productions of New York. Floaters offers archives so you can start watching the series from the first episode.

Posted on October 4, 2006
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A Sea of Animated Movies, and Nothing to Watch

If you're starting to think that you've never seen so many animated kids movies in your life, you'd be correct The New York Times examines the current glut of computer-generated animated movies. Now that computer animation is common, there are too many of the movies being made. And audiences are starting to get bored with all the talking animal movies, that all have essentially the same plot.

With more than a dozen computer-animated movies being readied for release by next summer, Hollywood is facing viewer fatigue worthy of Sleeping Beauty. Analysts and industry executives have long warned of a coming glut of computer-animated movies. That time has come. Now, with so many movies for audiences to choose from, some are failing to meet expectations or are flopping outright.

This summer's "The Wild," from the Walt Disney Company, proved anything but for moviegoers, bringing in only $37 million at the domestic box office. The bigger disappointment was "The Ant Bully," produced by the actor Tom Hanks and distributed by Warner Brothers Entertainment. That movie’s powerful ant wizard could muster only enough magic to garner $27 million. By contrast, the debut of "Open Season," the tale of a defiant grizzly bear and feisty mule deer who battle hunters, brought in $23 million over the weekend for Sony Pictures Entertainment, putting it in first place. But only the coming weeks will tell whether it will be widely embraced by moviegoers.

Over the last five years, almost every major film studio has sought to make or acquire the type of movies pioneered by Pixar, which was recently acquired by Disney. At the same time, independently financed animators have ratcheted up production. But while animation continues to be popular with families, audiences complain it is suffering from too much sameness, with movie plots and characters looking increasingly alike. Computer animation is not the novelty it was when introduced a decade ago. Now even actors are animation-savvy. Aside from Mr. Hanks, the popular actor Will Smith has plans to produce an animated film in India. With all the choices, moviegoers are being forced to sift through an increasingly crowded marketplace where quality and brand-name recognition will ultimately reign supreme.

"I think audiences are saying, 'I've seen a lot of computer animation and it's not so special anymore,'" said Julia Pistor, an executive producer of the recent "Barnyard," which was a modest performer, bringing in $69 million domestically. "In that case it's a lot harder for a movie to break through."

The article says that movie execs are churning these things out because tired grandparents need something to do with their grandkids when their ritalin wears out. That makes as much sense as anything: but we'd like to see some more originality in the animated films. Because the last few have been big bores.

Posted on October 3, 2006
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It Was Open Season on The Guardian

Sony's new animated comedy, Open Season easily won the box office this past weekend, with an estimated take of $23,000,000. The Kevin Costner comeback hope The Guardian came in second with an estimated take of $17,667,000, which was most likely attributable to Ashton Kutcher fans. After all, Costner's rep took a big hit when he was alleged to have sexually harassed a masseuse at an upscale golf resort. Still, it was a respectable first weekend showing and the action film about Coast Guard water rescue teams has decent reviews.

Hanging on like a chihuahua biting on your leg is the absolutely inane Jackass: Number Two which made another $14,010,000. In fourth place was School for Scoundrels which made an estimated $9,109,000.

Posted on October 2, 2006
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