Like many viewers I rushed to different reviews on the net to see what others made of it all. About 100 comments in I became really angry and saddened, I felt that people wanted more, a REAL ending — answers! I have no real say in what viewers are supposed to feel or expect. The reason I wanted to hear what others had to say was really about seeing if others had come to the same conclusion as I’ve had:

WARNING! THE REST OF THIS POST MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS. WARNING!

I realized something on my way home to see the show today. Something about the title, Lost. I had this strange feeling all of a sudden — it might not be that the characters are missing in the sense of the word. Since English is my second language I had to check Dictionary.com for this one. OK, here goes: NOT “no longer to be found” BUT “having gone astray or missed the way”. Yeah, that’s it. They all needed to make things right in the sideward/purgatory afterlife-reality, learn from their past mistakes, forgive and let go. Jack didn’t have a son, just as Locke pointed out near the very end. No he didn’t, but he needed to see what kind of father he would have been if he ever had the chance — a father figure who’s vastly, if flawed, different from his own dad. Jin got to be a better husband, Claire found out she had a real, loving family and so on. You get the idea.

Polar bears, the Dharma Initiative, giant statues with four toes and electromagnetic fields. These things meant nothing. The plane did crash on the island, the survivors survived, strange things happened. In the end some had died, a handful managed to leave the place and some stayed behind on the island living out their lives. In the show — as in reality — everybody dies sooner or later. The characters who had the strongest, most meaningful relation to each other from the stay on the island met up in limbo after they died. This is my own conclusion and I think it’s pretty solid. When the characters meet up in the “limbo-church”, Kate tells Jack “I’ve waited so long”. Jack, Kate and the others (not THE Others) worked a few things out on their own after death in a sort of purgatory (even though J.J. Abrams said it’s not purgatory — but this was back in 2005 when he also said that the viewers of the show came up with better stuff than the writers) and in the end they were all at peace ready to move on into a glorious cliché of white light. What that light is no one knows. By the look of the stained glass windows in the church, they were in a supermultireligious, anything-goes happy place beyond the imagination of the living.

To be honest, THIS is the last frame of the final episode. It showed up for a few seconds during the credits. Different angles (moving images) of the wreck on the beach. I wonder why they (Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse) chose to include these shots. The plane is obviously there, there are footprints in the sand but the place is empty, completely void of people. I better stop, I’m afraid I’m going to start speculating again – I’VE GOT THIS ONE FIGURED OUT! I really do, I think.

UPDATE:

Turns out that last shot of the wreck on the beach was added by ABC as “visual aid to allow the viewer to decompress before heading into the news”. What a crappy move ABC, I’m guessing Lindelof and Cuse feel the same way.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ve seen a bunch of behind the scenes stuff from movie productions and TV sets but the thing is — I had no clue the use of green screen was this prolific. It seems like every damn scene, no mater how bland or insignificant, is shot with the help of computers with 3D software. When I first saw the video I was kind of upset, I felt stupid for not realizing that what I’m watching isn’t… real. Amazing stuff none the less.

Stargate Studios, the company behind this modern day witchcraft is based in Pasadena CA. Some of the TV-shows they’ve been involved in includes; Eli Stone, Mad men, Grey’s Anatomy, Lipstick Jungle, Monk and The Office. The list goes on and on forever but the thing is — these are shows without special effects, right? You know what I mean, don’t you? Sure, there are tonnes of effects in Heroes and Stargate Studios is behind that too — but that’s a thing I can understand.

I just realized that Stargate Studios is also a Visual Effects company. Maybe that’s why my brain refused to accept the fact that these effects are everywhere. They are not special, they are visual, you don’t notice them and I guess that means they did a pretty good job. Haha!

Then this Torrent showed up on my beloved Torrent site TorrentLeech.org. Just look at the quality of those screens straight from VLC. I could not resist. I used my people skillz and a guy down the street whom I’ve never met before downloaded the movie on his computer and I saw it at his place. I can’t remember where he lived because I left in a hurry just as the movie ended and his house burst into flames and exploded.

What about the movie then? I didn’t like it. CGI people, CGI feelings and CGI dialogue. Too bad — it could’ve been one of my all time faves but no. I have no faith in hyped up stuff. Never had, never will. Great quality on that copy the guy downloaded though…

Click here to view the embedded video.

I wanted the boom and the bang and that’s what I got. Come to think of it, I’ve just seen the movie and I can’t remember the story, the cast was good — no complaints there. Back to the story; something about the sun and stuff in the earths core acting like microwaves heating up our precious planet at an alarming speed.

People with enough money could buy a ticket and go on huge arcs filled with people and animals. 1.000.000.000 per ticket not in Dollars but in Euros. Every one got soft and allowed more people to come aboard the ships and they went to Africa because most of it was untouched by disaster. I initially thought that the ships would be space ships since they looked like space ships in the trailer. No, they were just beefed up cruise liners for the obscenely rich and all those who got a trip for free. The world didn’t end and in the end even the sun came out. The hero got back with his wife after the undramatic death of her new husband. The world got a bit flooded, was it the ultimate disaster movie? No. I think it’ll do quite well anyway. The over all score on Metacritic is 51 out of a hundred, I’ll add about 15 to the score — 66 out of a hundred.

Links:
Metacritic – Reviews
2012 – Official Site
YouTube – Trailer

Click here to view the embedded video.

Links:
iTunes Movie Trailers
YouTube Trailer (iPhone Friendly).

Click here to view the embedded video.

The style used in the video have been around since the mid 1960s when Nikon introduced a lens providing shift movements for their 35 mm SLR cameras. It’s possible to fake the Tilt-Shift effect in Photoshop and you get the best result with pictures taken from a height. I decided to give it a go sometime around christmas last year. I took a photo from my balcony one dark and gloomy afternoon and followed a tutorial i found online – the result;

After a while my faking skills improved and I really wanted to post a better pic but this is the only one I could find – I guess they are on the HDD still inside the retired PC tucked away in a dark corner. The effect keeps popping up all over the place these days and can be seen in TV shows such as Firefly, Dollhouse and ITV’s Whiteshapel.

Links:
Wikipedia -Tilt-Shift Photography
tiltshiftmaker.com – Fake it yourself
Smashing Magazine – 50 Beautiful Examples Of Tilt-Shift Photography

To be honest I gave up 15 minutes from the end, I just lost interest after almost two hours. Still, there was one thing that I really liked about Brazil – the ring tone from Sam Lowry’s phone. I cut it out, edited it a bit and converted it to .mp3 and .ogg – here’s a preview:
Brazil.mp3 by fredwifi

If you download them, lemme now everything is alright – will ya?! Cheers.

Downloads: .mp3 and .ogg. The files are really small, the .mp3 is about 100 kB.

Alternative download location in case box.net is down or acting up:
OpenDrive: .mp3 and .ogg