Giacchino Invited to Academy

Lost musical composer Michael Giacchino has been invited to join The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization that gives out the Academy Awards, more commonly known as the "Oscars". In addition to Lost, Giacchino is known for his work in feature films such as Mission: Impossible III and Ratatouille, the latter for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Giacchino is among 105 other entertainment industry workers who have been invited this year, including Judd Apatow, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Marion Cotillard. Those who accept the invitation to become members will be inducted at a ceremony in Beverly Hills in September. (press release)

Actors may still strike

The prospects have become increasingly poor for an easy resolution of the contract negotiations between the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the producers group (AMPTP), which have reached their 35th day, and with current developments now look to last until at least mid-July. If the dispute is not resolved by late summer, the timely resumption of filming for Lost's Season 5 will be jeopardized.

Part of the problem is that SAG's sister union AFTRA has reached a tentative deal with the producers, a deal which now goes to vote with its general membership. The results won't be announced until July 8, more than a week after the June 30 expiration of the actors' contract. That also means SAG probably won't cut a deal before that announcement. More than 44000 actors hold cards in both unions, and SAG is lobbying heavily to have "their" actors vote no on the AFTRA deal: if the deal does not get a green light among its members, AFTRA may be forced to reluctantly rejoin SAG for joint bargaining for a better deal from the producers. It also means SAG is unlikely to go on strike before July 8. In fact, SAG has not yet made the significant leap of actually putting a strike authorization to vote among its members.

The producers are not staying still either. They have taken the extraordinary step to announce they will soon make the actors a "final offer", and offer which is likely to be made before June 30, and also likely to be ignored by SAG, at least until July 8 when they can evaluate their leverage after AFTRA's vote. However since the offer almost certainly will make no compromises on the various points SAG really wants, it looks like there will be a larger battle mid summer.

The next thing to watch for in the news is if SAG begins a strike authorization vote among its general membership, and whether or not it passes.

Read more at Variety.

(If you're just learning about this news, you can catch up with our summary here.)

July 2, 2008 Update: The contract has expired at the end of June 30 as expected. The actors have not struck, and the producers have not locked out the actors. Also as expected, the producers gave their "final offer" as promised, less than a day before the contract expired, an offer that reportedly made no movement on the main platforms of the actors. The rhetoric between SAG and AFTRA has been heating up regarding AFTRA's contract vote among its general membership, with big names such as Tom Hanks, Jack Nicholson, George Clooney recently offering their various opinions. About half of AFTRA members also are in SAG, and SAG has been campaigning for these dual card holders to vote down the contract. The entire industry is still awaiting these results, which should be known early next week on July 8. The vote may be used by SAG to help guess if its own members have the will to pass a strike authorization. If the AFTRA contract vote passes, SAG will find itself without enough support among actors for its views, and may be forced to compromise with the producers. If the AFTRA vote fails however, SAG will have more leverage with the producers with a now-realistic option to strike in its bargaining arsenal. Stay tuned for July 8.

July 9, 2008 update: It was announced yesterday that AFTRA members ratified the contract. SAG is perceived to have less leverage now, although they are spinning the story to point out that the ratification percentage was unusually low (62.4% rather than >90%), and the vote included members of AFTRA who are not actors. No one knows how the news will play out, but now the ball is in SAG's court to comment on the AMPTP's "final offer", which we may hear in two days on Thursday, when talks resume. Read more at Variety here, and also read their commentary here explaining how the timing of the Writer's strike affected SAG, back when the industry was wondering if the writers would wait until now to strike simultaneously with the actors.

OGR at Comic Con Confirmation

Octagon Global Recruiting have sent out emails to all those who signed up on their website. If you're out the loop, an advert for OGR played during the final ad break when the Season 4 finale aired in the US. The company is apparently connected to the DHARMA Initiative, and talks about recruiting a number of people for unpaid work helping in their research projects.

Anyway, the dates they mentioned about recruiting July 24-27th in San Diego led to many of us rightly guessing that this would be happening at Comic Con. Today's email confirms this, and adds other interesting stuff. Scroll past the text for some analysis Lostpedians have come up with!

From: info@octagonglobalrecruiting.com
CC: Hans Van Eeghen (hansvaneeghen@octagonglobalrecruiting.com)
Subject: Recruitment Information

Octagon Global Recruiting, on behalf of the Dharma Initiative, would like to thank you for registering your expression of interest in our latest volunteer recruitment drive.

We will be launching in San Diego on July 24th at Comic-Con International offering select registrants the opportunity to take an exciting aptitude test that will give applicants the chance to demonstrate their unique talents.

The Dharma Initiative hopes you will be able to join us to find out more about their ground-breaking new research project. We will contact you closer to the date with more information.

For those not able to join us in San Diego, Dharma's full recruitment program will be made available online to registered recruits after July 27th.

In the meantime, the Dharma Initiative urges you to spread the word. Invite your colleagues to join the team at www.octagonglobalrecruiting.com and take part in this once in a lifetime opportunity.

If you can't view the images in this email please click here

THIS IS AN OFFICIAL COMMUNICATION OF THE DHARMA INITIATIVE:
This message and its attachments are confidential and may contain information which is protected by copyright. It is intended solely for the named addressee. If you are not the authorised recipient (or responsible for delivery of the message to the authorised recipient), you must not use, disclose, print, copy or deliver this message or its attachments to anyone. If you receive this email in error, please contact the sender immediately and permanently delete this message and its attachments from your system. Any content of this message and its attachments that does not relate to the official business of the Dharma Initiative or its subsidiaries must be taken not to have been sent or endorsed by any of them. No representation is made that this email or its attachments are without defect or that the contents express views other than those of the sender.

Okay, back to black. So yeah, interesting stuff, hope that disclaimer doesn't mean I'm about to get sued by DHARMA for sharing this info with the masses... But anyway, first off, did you notice the carbon copy, to Hans Van Eeghen. A new mysterious character joins this developing ARG, who is he? A worker? The big cheese? And what kind of a name is Hans Van Eeghen... a possible anagram? Let us know your theories!

Furthermore, try emailing Hans using the email CC address. We've had a few reports that you get the response "Thank you for your email. I am currently on assignment in the field. I will contact you as soon as I am back in the office. Sincerely, Hans" Supports the employee theory.

Finally, check out the linked website version of the email... and then go on the source code. Notice something fishy? There's something there that says "March has 32 days". Thanks to some clever work, its been established that this is a reference to the title of the last story from Mystery Tales No. 40, a comic book which appeared in the episode Cabin Fever (it was one of the items Richard Alpert presented to a young John Locke).

Looks like answers will be given at Comic Con, over a month away. Until then, let's hope for a few more clues!

Lostpedia Interview with Rebecca Mader

Lostpedia has arranged an interview with Rebecca Mader, the actress who portrays Charlotte Staples Lewis.
Please see this thread for more information and to submit your questions, or submit your questions on the talk page.

Update: Questions are no longer being accepted.

Lostpedia Interview with Michael Emerson

Lostpedia has arranged an interview with Michael Emerson, the actor who portrays Benjamin Linus.
Please see this thread for more information and to submit your questions.

Edit 6/17:
Question submission is now CLOSED.

Review: Special Lostpedia Debate Event with DocArzt

This week Lostpedia hosted a very special debate event featuring Jon "DocArzt" Lachonis from www.docarzt.com. The motion was "Spoilers do not diminish the LOST viewing experience." Arguing in favor of spoilers was team A consisting of danhm (super Op at the #lostpedia IRC channel) and IkklGenius (winner of event 1), and arguing against the motion was team B consisting of TheAma1 (super Op at the #lostpedia IRC channel) and manicmonoliths (winner of event 1.)

The transcript of the entire debate can be found here. For more details on previous events and for voting for your favorite team, click here.

In an effort to keep the debate structured and focussed on the key issues, a "compartmentalized" format was used for this week's debate. A total of 6 spoiler-related issues were put forth, and were titled such that they could be equally classified into "pro" and "anti"-spoilers.

The following six sub-topics were discussed:

1. Supply and Demand
The third most visited page (after the main and episodes pages) on Lostpedia is the spoiler page for Season 4 (over 1.1 million views.)

There is a demand for spoilers in the fan community, hence there is a supply.

2. Writers' Right
Releasing spoilers is distributing information about a story without the author's consent.

Both Damon and Carlton have openly voiced their frustrations regarding the leakage of season 3 finale spoilers.

3. Tidbits of information about upcoming episodes add to the excitement and anticipation.
There is a lot more to Lost than simple plot details -- character development, acting, cinematography, etc.


4. Spoilers hurt the online community.

Websites and forums go into lockdown mode, chat rooms prevent anonymous users from participating in LOST discussions. Many fans simply avoid the online community till the episode airs.

5. Release of spoilers cannot be avoided.
Hundreds upon hundreds of people are involved in the making of LOST. It is inevitable that spoilers will be leaked. Deal with it.

6. Once released on fan websites, spoilers are uncontrollable.
Though most spoiler sites are careful not to spoil unsuspecting viewers, the measure of control is limited, and trolls cannot be stopped from vandalizing other websites.

This was followed by a brief Q&A and closing statements by the team leaders. DocArzt's presence elevated the quality of the debate to a whole new level, and we hope to have him participate in more events in the future.

Lostpedia debates are held every alternate week in the #lostpedia IRC channel on the GameSurge server at 2 PM EST.

Special Lostpedia Debate Event With DocArzt

This week, the Lostpedia debate league features a special guest appearance by Jon Lachonis aka DocArzt. The topic for the event is "Spoilers: good or bad for the enjoyment of Lost?" This special event will be brought to you live from the #lostpedia IRC channel on GameSurge on Sunday, June 8, 2008, at 2 PM EST.

For more information please visit the main debate thread or the Special LP Debate Event With DocArzt thread

Whoever the Case May Be

Hope everyone enjoyed the Season finale. Was skimming YouTube just a moment ago and found a cool video. It's probably old news, and heck, I haven't even tried checking out where it came from, but for those as uninformed as I, check out these alternate Season 4 end scenes which were apparently shot to minimise spoilerifics.



Interesting stuff, which gives weight to the whole argument about how people still managed to spoil this year's closely guided ending, etc. But at any rate, I leave such discussion to you guys.

Deleted scene video from The Economist

We told you back in February when DocArzt published a single screencap and text transcript of a deleted scene from 4x03 "The Economist". It's a scene with Miles, when he's walking with Kate and Sayid.

Now the entire video of the deleted scene has now been posted by the good doctor, so go take a look here.