In less than a month, the sixth and final season of LOST will
begin. As the mind-warping island drama is my favorite TV series, not
only of the moment but probably ever, I knew I would have to snag the LOST
calendar for the third year in a row. I regret missing out on the first
two calendars - only I don’t regret it that much, since the intense
care that is lavished upon the series is not put into the calendars.
Nonetheless, I certainly intend for us to have one of these characters
on our living room wall as we watch the remaining episodes.
As
with past calendars, the 2010 edition’s cover shot showcases the whole
cast, and in this case, it’s rather creatively done. The photo attached
to this listing is actually the cover of the 2009 calendar. The 2010
cover has two photos, side by side, with no border in between. Both
feature the same ominous bluish-gray backdrop. On the left, against a
bleak, industrial-looking cityscape, are Ben Linus, Sayid Jarrah, Kate
Austen, Jack Shepard, Sun Kwon, Hugo “Hurley” Reyes and Desmond Hume.
The middle five are members of the Oceanic Six, who returned to Los
Angeles after three and a half months away to much fanfare. Ben and
Desmond, meanwhile, made quieter entrances, and few in the outside world
have any inkling that they spent time on the same island as the famed
castaways. Perhaps as a reference to how little he appears in the fifth
season, Desmond is cut off by the edge of the photo.
Meanwhile, the photo on the right features John Locke, Charlotte Lewis,
James “Sawyer” Ford, Juliet Burke, Daniel Faraday and Miles Straume
standing on a grassy Island expanse. In season five, these
Left-Behinders face the daunting task of figuring out why the Island is
skipping around in time and how to stop it before they all die of time
traveling sickness. It almost seems John, who eventually makes his way
to the mainland in an effort to bring Jack and the others back, ought to
stand in the middle, with one foot in both photos, but that would
require a bit of shuffling, both to avoid him covering Desmond up
entirely and to make the right side more even with the left. At the very
least, ageless Richard Alpert could have been featured on the right
side; he has a role in more fifth-season episodes than Desmond does. It
also might have been nice to include a representative from Dharma’s
heyday, as that plays a major part in this season; I’d nominate
hippie-ish leader Horace Goodspeed. Oh, and why is Jin completely
missing?
The first page of the calendar, featuring four
miniature calendar pages for September through December of 2009,
includes a more traditional cast photo that nonetheless incorporates
elements from both the city and the Island. All 13 characters pictured
on the front also appear here. Throughout the calendar, the top portion
of the two-page spread includes photographs that spill into the lower
portion, leaving about two-thirds of the lower page for the grid itself.
The background color on each page is a shade of brown that darkens
around the edges, while the squares containing the dates are a very
light shade of khaki. Each calendar grid also features a watermark of a
generic DHARMA patch. As before, I bemoan the lack of LOST-specific
details. I would think it would be very easy to add, in tiny print,
“Season Six Begins” to the square for February 2 or Oceanic 815 Crashes
(2004) on September 22. Additionally, the calendar is entirely devoid of
quotes or trivia of any kind, even in the upper portion with the
photographs.
The general feel of this calendar is similar to
2009’s, though the look is slightly different, as that one had each
month set up like the Dharma monitoring station. The pictures this time
around are a bit bigger, but again, there are just two photos per page,
with the exception of one month, which I’ll get back to. For eleven of
the twelve months, it’s one particular character per month. At least one
of the photos is a publicity shot, while the other is sometimes a still
from one of the episodes.
January is Jack’s month, and I’d
say both of his are posed, with the larger one showing him standing
against a leafy background and the smaller one showing him sitting in
the same set used for the four-month group photo. February features Jin,
with the large photo a leafy publicity shot and the second a photo of
him looking forlorn and somewhat bedraggled against an ocean backdrop,
probably coming from his sojourn with Danielle Rousseau’s science team.
March shows John standing, smiling, against a backdrop that looks like
the Orchid station, making his publicity shot the most interesting of
the bunch. Similarly, his smaller photo has a grungy-looking John
wandering through the jungle, a pack slung over his shoulder.
Ben, for April, is the first character whose unposed photo is the larger
of the two. Ben, too, is wandering through the jungle with a pack over
his shoulder. We only see him from the shoulders up, so the gun sticking
out of his pack is clearly visible, as is the chest hair I never
noticed before. Ben’s publicity shot, like John’s, looks similar to the
cast photo, but it looks like he is in a cozy house, perhaps his home in
Otherville. Sayid, in May, has a big publicity photo of him amongst the
trees and a smaller one of him looking startled amidst the weeds,
probably from his first on-Island season five episode. Juliet’s
jungle-backdrop publicity shot is the larger of the June photos, while
the smaller features her in the jungle, staring ahead with a disdainful
expression.
Sun, wearing a cut-off t-shirt that shows how much
her character has changed since her conservative early-season-one days,
is set against a blurry brown backdrop in July; it seems like the
jungle, but I don’t detect any green. Her smaller shot is similar to
Ben’s, perhaps a hint of the importance of Ben’s old house to their
season-five development. In August, Hurley stands, hands in pockets,
against airplane wreckage with the ocean visible in the background.
Again, this is one of the more interesting publicity shots. He also has
perhaps the best screenshot - of him in the midst of his welcome to the
Dharma Initiative. An indistinct character is fuzzily visible in the
background, but it’s cropped in close around Hurley’s head and
shoulders, just low enough to show us his Dharma chef patch, along with
the lei and seashell necklace recently bestowed upon him. Upon his face
is a soulfully wistful expression.
September is the one month
that deviates from the pattern by presenting mid-sized publicity shots
of Miles, Charlotte and Daniel (who, ironically enough, are the only
featured characters who weren‘t on the Island in September of 2004). To
emphasize the connection between the two characters, Dan and Charlotte
each stand against a beige wall near a window as vines creep around
them. Miles’ photo has him standing alone by the shore, next to a
curtain and a very bright light bulb, which I’m guessing is in some way
representative of his odd Ghost Whisperer ability.
But maybe
not, since Kate gets the same backdrop in her larger photo for October.
The smaller photo shows her with her more sedate post-Island look, most
likely engaged in conversation with Cassidy, Sawyer’s old flame.
November’s big photo is Desmond against the ocean, a publicity shot that
I’m pretty sure has turned up in a previous LOST calendar, while
the smaller is yet another publicity shot showing him in the beige,
vine-laden room. Finally, the most seasonally-inappropriate of the bunch
is Sawyer for December. I think the larger photo, set against a blurry
green jungle background, is a publicity shot, but it’s possible this was
a screencap; it has less of a posed look to it than the others do. I
imagine there are a lot of people wishing the smaller photo, showing
Sawyer bewildered and shirtless in the season premiere, were the main
photo of the month, in spite of how summery the picture looks.
These are nice photographs, and most LOST
fans should be moderately pleased. Nonetheless, I can’t help thinking
it seems just a little skimpy. For one thing, I find publicity photos
rather boring in comparison with in-the-moment shots. I would have
preferred more of the latter. And considering how important side
characters are to the overall series, it would be nice if, instead of
featuring two photos of each person solo, there were a photo showing
that character with a more minor but still-significant character.
Frankly, I wish both photos would be that way, so we could have, for
instance, Sawyer presenting Juliet with a flower and conversing with the
grossly underused Rose and Bernard; Hurley pelting Ben with a Pizza
Pocket and reluctantly explaining to Miles his intention to send George
Lucas his tweaked reconstruction of the script of The Empire Strikes Back;
Desmond sailing blissfully with Penny and little Charlie and raging
against Daniel’s mother. This is a celebration of season five, and I
could have used a little more specificity. A few quotes would have been a
very nice touch as well. Perhaps whoever put together this calendar
wanted to avoid spoilers, but it seems to me that at this point, anyone
who’s a big enough fan to want a calendar would be caught up by now.
Despite my mild disappointment with the generic nature of some of these
photos and the lack of quotes and trivia, I’m happy to have my LOST
calendar for the year. I just bought it a couple days ago, and I expect
most people will be able to find one if they go out looking in the next
week or two, and for a reduced rate at that. So if you expect your year
to include a lot of LOST, why not use this calendar to help you mark the months?
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