I have only one comment here: if there were a Wikipedia entry for Awesomeness, it would certainly contain nothing but a direct link to this trailer. For a version far superior to the pixelated YouTube trash above, go here.

[HT: Ain't It Cool News]

Now this is good news. As a follow-up to their successful mini-series Band of Brothers, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks are re-teaming to do a new WWII mini-series based in the Pacific theater. The renewed interest in all things WWII-related over the past few years has been fantastic for WWII buffs like me, but it seems like most of the movies, TV shows, and games have been heavily weighted toward depicting the European theater. There have been a few movies based in the Pacific theater, but none of the quality of Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers. Windtalkers was nothing more than an overblown, melodramatic action movie. The Thin Red Line is one of the great films of all time by one of my favorite directors but, as a friend of mine said, "that movie ain't about war." Clint Eastwood's two movies about Iwo Jima are supposed to be good, but I haven't had a chance to see them.

The new Spielberg-Hanks collaboration is apparently being based on two well-known memoirs of the Pacific campaign, one of which, With the Old Breed, is a classic of the genre. I don't have HBO, so I won't be watching these until a few years from now when they come out on DVD, but I'm hoping Hanks and Spielberg can match the quality of Band of Brothers.

[ChristianThinker's note: See my previous posts on my favorite TV show in the TV section.]

SPOILER WARNING: The following post contains significant spoilers for the ABC show Lost and a colossal spoiler for Stephen King's Dark Tower series of books.

After the six episode mini-season of Lost that aired in the fall, my wife and I were eagerly awaiting last week's new episode. And while the mini-season and "Not in Portland" were great, it was this week's episode that really took the show into another stratosphere. "Flashes Before Your Eyes" was about the enigmatic Desmond, and for my fellow Lost viewers out there I'd like to raise a few questions about the nature of the island. These questions lead to possibilities for answers to some of the island's mysteries and these possibilities, in turn, hint at a grand unified theory about the island that all the fans really want. If you watch Lost, keep reading, but if you don't you'll have no idea what I'm talking about. Also, I want to reiterate that I am essentially going to be spoiling the big mystery that lies at the heart of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, so if you ever plan on reading those books or watching the eventual movies then please go away now.

Still here? Good. That means you are (1) a reader of my blog, (2) probably a big Lost fan, and (3) apathetic about the fact that I will be spoiling King's Dark Tower series. I realize that there may be no one on the entire planet besides my wife who will meet all three of these criteria, but that's OK. So honey, this may be just for you.

I've been waiting until the first six episodes of Lost were finished before giving an analysis of the third season of my favorite show. I'm still formulating my thoughts on the events that transpired in the fall "mini-season" as ABC dubbed it, but in the meantime I thought I'd post a few links to a few of my favorite sites that keep up with the strange happenings on the island. For those of you who don't know, the show is a cult hit, with thousands of sites popping up to endlessly investigate the minutiae of the island's mythology. These are just a few. Some are serious and some are just plain goofy:

• Jackface. Hilarious. If you watch Lost and enjoy Matthew Fox's character, you're already familiar with the Jackface.
• Lostpedia. The ultimate Lost resource. Documents theories, connections, mythology, and everything else. A great resource for the Lost geek like me.
• The Misfit is Here. Insanity.
• The Tail Section. Good Lost news source.
• Dark UFO. Better Lost news source.
• 4815162342. Great Lost message boards.
• Lost Media. Extensive collection of images and clips.

I could go on. The physicists these days are looking for the grand unified theory to describe all of material reality, while peons like me are simply browsing websites looking for the grand unified theory that will explain all the mysteries of our favorite TV show. Pathetic.

Last night my wife and I watched the season finale of Lost. I've blogged before on why I really like this show (see here, here, and here), not only because of how it handles Christianity but also because it's simply darn good cinematic storytelling. Lost is literally the only thing on television I watch. On the whole I think Season Two has been weaker than the debut season, but it's still better than 99% of the dreck that's currently on television. Here are a few reflections on the season finale:

• Desmond David Hume? The enigmatic Desmond returns, and we learn that he too (like fellow characters Locke and Rousseau) is named after a prominent Enlightenment philosopher. But the similarities end there. His belief in miracles played a prominent role in the season opener, and that is certainly not very Humean. But if he did follow Hume, what would his role in the finale have been? I'm sure it would have been this: whatever apparent causative effect pushing the button had, he would have denied that we could ever actually know that it actually caused anything, and certainly not something like a super-electromagnetic meltdown.
• I know that every question the writers told us would be answered actually was answered, but I still felt this episode to be somewhat insubstantial. For every three questions they answered, they posed five more. What's with the four-toed statue? Why was Charlie being so evasive about what happened at the hatch? Is (fake) Henry the leader of the Others, or just upper-level management? Are Locke and Eko dead? Where does Sawyer come up with all these witty nicknames? Alas, I have to wait until October for the answers to these questions.
• The big surprise was that Penny, Desmond's ex-girlfriend, has been apparently looking for him by having some Portuguese scientists at the South (or North) Pole looking for an electromagnetic disturbance, which they apparently found when Desmond destroyed the hatch. This is important not because we now know that the Widmore family has some knowledge of the Dharma Initiative (we Lost viewers are used to these types of connections by now), but because this little piece of info debunks all the Purgatory and Matrix style theories about what's really going on. The island is definitely a real place in our own world.
• But wait just a minute. There's one more thing that throws a wrench in those works. Desmond said he sailed west from the island for two weeks, only to end up right back at the island, as if in a "snowglobe," his words. This does not bode well for the "island is a real place in the real world" theory. I have no idea what it means. Mysteries within mysteries. The questions can be frustrating, but just like in life, the journey just wouldn't be fun without them.

SPOILER WARNING: If you don't want to know a major detail of what happened on last night's episode of Lost, don't read this post!

I thought last night's episode of Lost was one of the stronger ones recently. So what were those weird symbols that popped up on the hatch timer when Locke almost failed to input the code in time? Apparently they were Egyptian heiroglyphs. Thanks to a poster at the Lost Forum, here's an image from the episode, and here is another image explaining what word the heiroglyphs were making: some sort of causative verb meaning "to die."

See my earlier posts on the religious aspects of Lost here and here.

SPOILER WARNING: If you don't want to know what happened on last night's episode of Lost, don't read the following!

Last night's episode of Lost continued the show's tradition of dealing with Christian themes that I talked about two weeks ago. This week the show continued to treat religious issues with respect, even if it blundered on a major question of Christian theology.

Charlie, the recovering drug addict, begins having visions of the island's resident newborn being in danger. Locke thinks he's using again (since he still has access to heroin on the island), but Eko the priest tells him that he may be having these dreams for a reason.

The former altar boy Charlie becomes obsessively convinced that the only way to save the baby from danger is if he is baptized. Charlie's visions eventually tempt him to go off the deep end in his quest to "protect" the baby, but his ramblings convince the baby's mother Claire that maybe she should have the infant baptized. But then she questions Eko on whether that meant if they both died then she would be separated from her child. Eko basically agrees. Both mother and baby are then baptized by sprinkling. This was amazing to me, as we have a major network show essentially portraying Christian salvation (albeit an image of salvation that I think is incorrect in numerous ways) in a positive light. But Eko punts when he tries to explain what baptism is all about. He says that John the Baptist baptized Jesus to cleanse him from his sin. But the last time I checked, official Catholic doctrine held to the sinlessness of Christ.

But I'll forgive that major theological faux pas as something to be expected from Hollywood writers. I don't suppose they really know any better, and at least they're trying to present Roman Catholic beliefs in a somewhat positive light.

SPOILER WARNING: If you haven't seen last night's episode of Lost and don't want to know what happened, don't read this.

I think one reason I'm such a fan of ABC's Lost is because it is a fundamentally religious show. By that I mean it actually treats religious questions with respect, and it makes them central to the plot. All the characters have deeply human flaws, and many of them are able to work through those issues by experiences they have with the island. I say with the island and not on the island, because the great mystery of Lost is actually what the island is and how it reacts with and changes the characters.

One character, John Locke (named after the Enlightenment philosopher), has apparently formed his own theology, if you will, of the island. He believes it has brought all the characters there, that it is benevolent, beautiful and mysterious, and that it requires certain actions of its inhabitants.

By no means are Locke's views representative of the show's orthodoxy, however. The great mystery of Lost is the peculiar nature of the island itself. Locke's view is only one. The primary competing view to Locke's is that of Jack, the doctor. Jack has trouble understanding all the strange happenings on the island, and is thoroughly committed to a belief in science. In his view there must be a rational (i.e. non-supernatural) explanation to all of these weird things. When confronted with the sheer impossibility of some of the island's stranger events, he often shrugs them off or tries to explain them away. But since the first episode of this season, Man of Science, Man of Faith, Jack has been moving toward Locke's view, hence his willingness to continue to push the button after some initial resistance.

But it's only recently that the show has incorporated any traditional religious views. Last night's episode, The 23rd Psalm, focused on Mr. Eko, a mysterious character introduced early in season two. It was revealed early on that Eko was a very religious character. He took on a forty day "fast" from speaking, for example, apparently doing penance for killing two intruders who attacked the camp. He's also been scrawling Bible references on the end of the club he carries around for protection.

Last night's episode fleshed out Eko's story a little more, and revealed that he's actually a Roman Catholic priest. A major theme of Lost is the value placed on faith, but only last night was that faith a specifically Christian faith. The chilling scene where Eko faces down the infamous smoke monster with his stick in hand for protection might actually be Eko's own version of walking through the "valley of the shadow of death" protected by a "rod and staff." Curiously, however, when Eko and Charlie quote Psalm 23 in unison, they change the wording to "the shadow of the valley of death." Yet another Lost mystery.

But Eko's experience with the island monster is only another example of the strange manner in which the island deals with its inhabitants. It seems to have a desire to heal the inhabitants (at least the ones it doesn't kill) of physical or psychological trauma, usually through impossibly coincidental events pertaining to the character's past. But the smoke monster seems to be the island's arm of judgment. It always attacks, sometimes kills. But when Eko encounters the monster, he stands his ground, making for a powerful moment as he stares the monster in the face. The camera actually moves throught the smoke monster's head, where images of Eko's troubled past are flashing by, as if the creature is reading his mind. All this occurs in the middle of a journey that Eko is taking with Charlie to uncover one of those coincidental connections between his past and the island. When the connection is made, Eko finds some peace over an internal conflict he was having and reassumes his role as a minister of the Christian God.

This is weird stuff, but it's also very fun. Lost is one of the only shows I know of that consistently maintains a high level of human drama and religious mystery, all while treating questions of faith, even Christian faith, with great respect.

While we're on the subject of the war on terror, I thought I'd post a link to the much ballyhooed appearance of Bill O'Reilly on The Late Show this week. Letterman is clearly outmatched as a thinker (and pretty much admits it), and yet the audience applauds him much more than O'Reilly. But O'Reilly's positions - even if you disagree with him - are much more well thought out than Letterman could ever dream of. Peculiar. [HT: Relevant Magazine].

Evangelical groups are protesting a new NBC sitcom called "The Book of Daniel," which portrays a dysfunctional Christian family. They claim that the series is a deliberate misrepresentation of Christians. The criticism has caused a few local affiliates to drop the show. After hearing this story the other day I came across an interesting parallel. I was reading through Plato's Apology, the story of Socrates' defense of himself during his trial for supposedly corrupting the youth of Athens. At one point he says this, with relevant text in bold:

I will begin at the beginning, and ask what the accusation is which has given rise to this slander of me, and which has encouraged Meletus to proceed against me. What do the slanderers say? They shall be my prosecutors, and I will sum up their words in an affidavit. "Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into things under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause; and he teaches the aforesaid doctrines to others." That is the nature of the accusation, and that is what you have seen yourselves in the comedy of Aristophanes; who has introduced a man whom he calls Socrates, going about and saying that he can walk in the air, and talking a deal of nonsense concerning matters of which I do not pretend to know either much or little - not that I mean to say anything disparaging of anyone who is a student of natural philosophy. I should be very sorry if Meletus could lay that to my charge. But the simple truth is, O Athenians, that I have nothing to do with these studies.

It seems that the use of drama to caricature one's ideological enemies is nothing new. Apparently it's been around for at least 2,400 years or so.