Mark Lisanti

An Alan Smithee Column

23 Questions About Lost Episode 608, 'Recon,' Answered!

Written by Mark Lisanti | 17 Mar 2010, 12:20 PM | 5 comments

Previously on Lost: Sawyer’s girlfriend falls down a pit with an atomic bomb, but doesn’t die. Then she hits the bomb with a rock. It explodes. She dies! (We think?) The world is split into two timelines. (We think? It could secretly be just one.) Sawyer is sad because his ladyfriend is dead. He buys her an engagement ring, then throws it in the ocean because he’s still sad about her being dead. Sawyer listens to Iggy Pop records. A Smoke Monster who looks a lot like John Locke kills everybody at the Temple. Kate runs from people who are trying to arrest her. Charlie tries to kill himself in an airplane bathroom. Hurley says, “Dude,” meaningfully. And then says it again, with an entirely different, and even more meaningful, inflection. An unnerving horn noise blares before a cut to black.

Climb into our submarine and get ready to surface on the beach of television’s most baffling island, where we’ll disembark, armed with machine guns loaded with Answers, ready to slaughter all the unlucky Questions we come upon in this week’s episode.

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An Alan Smithee Column

Handicapping the American Idol Top 12

Written by Mark Lisanti | 16 Mar 2010, 12:40 PM | 1 comment

Now that American Idol has separated the mellifluous wheat from the pitchy chaff, culling its contestant pool from its initial 3.5 million contestants to a top 12, things are finally, in the parlance of philosopher-judge Randy Jackson, “getting a millionty billionty percent real, dawg.” For the unlucky amongst this ultimate dozen, wild dreams of worldwide superstardom are about to be crushed under the heel of a thousand-dollar Simon Cowell loafer and replaced with more measured aspirations to careers on the cruise-ship circuit, where weeks of national exposure lands one the headlining position on the Pacific Princess’ Lido Deck Idol Revue. So whom amongst the remaining Idols can we expect to see battling deep into May, and whom should be loading up on seasickness pills for an upcoming maritime musical adventure? Here’s how we handicap the Top 12.

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An Alan Smithee Column

23 Questions About Lost Episode 607 'Dr. Linus', Answered!

Written by Mark Lisanti | 10 Mar 2010, 1:10 PM | 7 comments

Previously on Lost: Jack smashes some lighthouse mirrors because he’s angry and confused. Smokey throws a massacre party, and everyone at the Temple is invited. Ben Linus is suddenly impotent in whatever cosmic game Jacob and Smokey are playing. Hurley makes a Star Wars reference, and then an Indiana Jones reference. And somewhere in a makeshift camp deep in the jungle, an abandoned skullbaby mewls for the insane momma who’s left it to join the Crazy Army.

Now sling your rifle over your shoulder, push your filthy, but still jauntily styled, hair our of your face, and plunge onward into the island’s thicket of secrets with us as we again attempt to answer 23 questions about last night’s episode.

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An Alan Smithee Column

5 Lessons We Learned From Last Night's Oscars

Written by Mark Lisanti | 08 Mar 2010, 2:40 PM | 8 comments

Now that our shared Academy Awards hangover is starting to subside, and the champagne-blunted memory of heaving your novelty Oscar statuette through a window after El Secreto de Sus Ojos’ Foreign Language Film win wrecked your pool has come into sharper focus, we can begin to reflect upon last night’s events. Though the list of winners played out almost exactly according to the narrative established during the interminable, brain-smoothing awards season (Geoffrey Fletcher’s huge Precious adapted screenplay upset being the notable exception), there were still many important lessons to be learned from the ceremony if you just clear your mind, open your heart, and try to really hear what Oscar was gently whispering in your ear in the magical, fizzy moment before that tenth flute of Chandon finally did you in.

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An Alan Smithee Column

The Only Oscar Preview Infographic You Need

Written by Mark Lisanti | 05 Mar 2010, 3:50 PM | 2 comments

infographic2.jpgLook: We know that you’re incredibly busy people, with barely enough time to skim, much less absorb, all the pre-Academy Awards coverage competing for your attention on the Oscarnet™. And so in the interest of delivering you only the most essential information in the most efficient way possible, we’ve mustered every ounce of our Photoshop skills to render everything you need to know about this year’s ceremony in a single, easy-to-understand infographic. Don’t waste your time with beautifully designed infographics that squander your precious mental bandwidth by filling your head with useless, but very interesting, trivia!

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An Alan Smithee Column

23 Questions About Lost Episode 606 'Sundown', Answered!

Written by Mark Lisanti | 03 Mar 2010, 2:30 PM | 2 comments

Previously, on Lost: Sayid is shot by Ben Linus’s dad! Then he dies. For two hours. Then he un-dies. Sort of. The bearded Temple Master is angry. Claire looks disheveled. The Thing That Looks Like Locke But Is Not Actually Locke glares at her. Hurley snacks on a Dharma Initiative-supplied, generic Toaster Strudel. People live similar, but significantly different, lives on the flash-sideways timeline. You wish no one would ever use the words “flash-sideways” or “timeline” again. In the Lost writers’ office, a balding man in glasses draws a red line through a whiteboard entry for “Ep. 606: Sundown.” The other writers nod ominously.

Please join us as we once again attempt to answer a fresh batch of questions baked up in last night’s episode, pulled piping hot from the island’s wood-fired mystery-oven. [Oh, yeah: SPOILERS. You know what that means by now.]

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An Alan Smithee Column

The past three post-Jay Leno Show weeks have been an interminable wait for the rudely hiatused host to retake The Tonight Show throne, and usher in a second reign of peace and prosperity as the undisputed ruler of late night. (Luckily, the network made sure America got its Leno fix by spackling every crack in their Winter Olympic schedule with those jaunty “Get Back” promos — The Beatles have never been so mind-buggeringly deployed!) Even though he’s had 17 or so years to prepare himself for this big night, we’re sure he could use some advice to help ease his transition and quiet the angry fluttering of the first-night butterflies, and so we’re offering our suggestions to make sure this latest go-around begins as smoothly as possible.

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An Alan Smithee Column

hurtlockerposter.jpgAs the red-carpeted terminus of the Road to Oscar comes into view, the terrain becomes far more treacherous, the journey more fraught with mortal peril. At this critical time, voters must be on high alert for campaign treachery, lest they be unfairly swayed by the unscrupulous tricks of the desperate; while those friendly seeming, pan-handling Na’Vi warriors loitering in front of the Kodak Theater might draw Academy Members close with the promise of a cheap Polaroid memento, they’ll instead deliver a whispered reminder that the “silly little Iraq movie” made only $12 million domestic, a withering insinuation that the film’s steel-nerved heroes couldn’t defuse a poopy diaper while wearing a full-body blast suit.

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An Alan Smithee Column

23 Questions About Lost Episode 605 'Lighthouse', Answered!

Written by Mark Lisanti | 24 Feb 2010, 12:10 PM | 12 comments

As is their wont — their oft-maddening, fan-torturing wont — Lost temple masters Carlton “The Statue” Cuse and Damon “The Swan” Lindelof have once again spent an hour of their precious final season primetime allotment chumming the waters of our imaginations with new mysteries, exactly when we ache to have giant chunks of answers tossed directly into our primitive, gaping maws. Please join us for our attempt to answer the many, many new questions raised in last night’s episode, “Lighthouse.” [Here there be SPOILERS. Beware! And watch the show live! Or at least very shortly after recording it! We’re shouting because this show makes us so very emotional!]

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An Alan Smithee Column

Casting The Vancouver Olympics: The Movie

Written by Mark Lisanti | 22 Feb 2010, 3:30 PM | 1 comment

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The entire country — nay, the entire world! — has been utterly captivated by the magic of the these Winter Olympics, which serve up all the going-too-fast-down-frozen-chutes, furiously-brushing-the-ice-in-front-of-a-stone and shooting-rifles-while-skiing-for-some-reason action untold millions of TV viewers can handle via the drama-reducing safety of an NBC tape delay. Hollywood, of course, can never afford to pass up an opportunity to monetize a collective obsession as quickly as possible, so plans are undoubtedly already in the works for a fictionalized version of these high-rated, pulse-quickening Games. After the jump, we do our best to help harried producers get a head start on casting the roles of Vancouver’s hottest Olympic stars:

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