Doctor Who preview: Amy's Choice, episode 5.7

Hear She & Him on NPR

The duo guests on World Cafe.

Tintin fans worry about the future of their favorite character

From the Financial Times:

...long-time admirers of Hergé, many of whom knew him personally, are not happy. Many, in fact, are fretting over the way his legacy is being managed. The rumblings have become a long-running saga in Belgium, a country where bande dessinée comic strips remain a popular art form; the movie project will bring it to a global audience.

Marvel Comics items now on sale in Disneyland

Iron Man visits Disneyland Resort:
The merchandise additions come as “Iron Man 2″ is set to open in theaters Friday (today), marking the first major Marvel movie release since the $4.3 billion acquisition was finalized Dec. 31.

For now, Disney is only selling the Marvel merchandise at D Street, a Downtown Disney store that offers edgier Disney products and other brands, including movie and rock-band T-shirts. The Marvel shirts are from the Junk Food label, which specializes in vintage and pop-culture designs. So, the D Street location is a “great place” to feature these kinds of products, said Betsy Sanchez, a Disneyland Resort spokeswoman.

Jack Kirby video interview

BBC Radio launches Rolling Stones bio-doc

Tune into a six-part series on the band here. Just the first two parts are up currently.

Lost is shaping up to be a big disappointment

With only a few episodes left, I have to admit I'm anticipating a very lackluster, unsatisfying conclusion to "Lost."

To date, this final season has seemed very much random and tossed together and short on revelations.

For five years-plus, the show's producers have been stringing us along with myriad mysteries with the promise of eventual answers. But, at this point, what do we really know?

I have a whole list of unanswered questions (some major, others minor) here. I get the sense many of them will go unanswered, and that just doesn't seem fair.

Even more frustrating, I think many will go unanswered because the show's producers have dropped threads they don't know how to pick up. For example, they briefly brought back the character of Lilly this season. But they didn't address key questions concerning her. For example, she played a role in getting Desmond to sail to the island. Why? And she was in the mental ward with Hurley. Again, why?

Click the link for many more frustratingly unanswered questions.

Early on, the producers promised this series wouldn't flake out ala "Twin Peaks" or "The X-Files." They had the whole story pretty much worked out, including the end. But I'm doubting more and more that that is true.

In the end will "Lost" just be the story of Jacob and Smokey -- two characters we barely know and who were really only dropped into the mix at the end of last season -- with the series' regular characters functioning merely as props?

Is it gonna be some lame story about a cosmic/existential chess game played between these two? Is that the best the producers can possibly come up with at this juncture?

I'm watching until the end, of course, because I've followed the story thus far. But I certainly haven't been excited by any of the episodes this season and I'm somewhat dreading the expected disappointment of the series conclusion.

Is it too late at this juncture for the show to get it together and go out with a bang? I hope not.

Vintage comic book ad: Bombardier cockpit and bombs!