• The new season of Lost is alive and kicking, and gearing up for its big series finale this spring. In honor of the end to this six-year cultural phenomenon, take a look at these four videos. (Warning: one of the videos is mildly spoilerish.)

• Captain America is probably the superhero movie that I’m the least excited about (I’m an X-men guy myself), but this article has pretty much all the information you could ask for right now. And, okay, I’ll admit it … I am kind of salivating over the way Marvel is going to weave all these movies together into the upcoming Avengers film.

• Speaking of superhero movies, Tim Robbins has just been cast in The Green Lantern as the father to Peter Sarsgaard’s villainous Hector Hammond.

• Can good directors save bad movies? Cinematical takes a look at a few tepid franchises that are about to get a makeover from reputable directors.

• It may or may not be “the next Harry Potter,” but The Lighting Thief looks like it has the potential to be a pretty awesome film. At the helm is Chris Columbus (who also directed the first two Potter films), and he talks about the new film here.

• There’s been talk about Ghostbusters 3 for ages, and while I’m sure it will be made, I’m starting to doubt if it will be any good. At any rate, there’s a decent amount of information about the story here, but who’s to say if this will change before cameras start rolling.

• Chris Nolan made history when he rebooted the dead-in-the-water Batman franchise, and now he may do it again … for Superman?

• Whoa! Real-life Avatar.

• Did you know that in the upcoming The Wolfman, Benicio del Toro is actually reprising a role he played years earlier?

• Those of you out there as nerdy as I am will be excited by the new comic series Kill Shakespeare, called an “epic adventure that pits Shakespeare’s greatest heroes against his most frightening villains.”

• After Terminator: Salvation (which I actually thought was a good movie), many thought the franchise was dead in the water. However, that didn’t stop a bunch of people from bidding on the rights, with a hedge fund leaving victorious. Wait, what?

• Finally, here’s a pretty cool video compilation of one of the most over-used horror cliches in movies: the mirror scare. (Cliche, sure, but I’m still scared to open and close the mirror cabinet when I’m alone in my apartment.)

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One of the most important, if overlooked, stock characters in fiction — in particular, fantasy fiction — is “the fool.”

Shakespeare created perhaps the most well-known fool of all time in Falstaff, a character who appears in King Henry IV, Part One and Two, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Falstaff is a bumbling, fat, immoral, boastful ass.

Falstaff is ridiculous — even his name is a joke, a pun about sexual impotence. But his presence reinforces an uncomfortable truth: much of life is ridiculous.

Falstaff may be the most famous fool in literature, but he is far from alone.

For contemporary fantasy fans, perhaps the most well-known fool is Xena: Warrior Princess’s hapless Joxer.

Like Falstaff, Joxer has an incredibly high opinion of himself, seeing himself as a fierce and powerful warrior, when in reality he is klutzy and inept. He even famously sings his own theme song, “Joxer, the Mighty,” since no one else is singing it for him.

When we first meet him, he is trying to serve the evil Callisto, but quickly realizes he isn’t meant for evil, and thus afterward vows to only fight for good at Xena’s side, provided she allow him to do so.

Joxer is a fool, to be sure, but as an audience, we love him for all his endearing ineptitude, and sympathize with him for being a normal person at the side of extraordinary heroes, which is a feeling we all have in our lives at one point or another.

But like Shakespeare’s Falstaff, Joxer is very much more than just a clown: he is a fully fleshed-out character with feelings, and ultimately exhibits true heroism (at least on some occasions!).

Furthermore, for much of the series, he is in love with Gabrielle, Xena’s companion, and as often is the case in these tales, this love is unrequited. Instead of being yet another barb to use against him, the storyline is handled sensitively, and we as an audience feel that sting of unreturned affection.

In other words, when the jokes finally stop, Joxer performs one of the fool’s most important, and most classic, functions: to speak the truth — for, after all, it is Joxer who sees long before anyone else the most fundamental theme of the series, the depth of the love Xena and Gabrielle share.

Often it is only the fool who can speak the truth — for he is the only character unencumbered by social mores and has no status to lose. Furthermore, when words of true wisdom come from a character that the audience has previously dismissed, they have that much more of an impact.

No matter how many times we’ve seen the character of the fool, and no matter how many times we’ve previously dismissed him only to be surprised by his sudden truth-telling, we’re almost always surprised when it happens again.

Now that is a powerful archetype!

Another contemporary fool is Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who for seven seasons was one of the few characters not to obtain superhuman powers, instead providing mostly mortal-strength punches during fights, and the always well-timed wise-crack before and after — often very wise wise-cracks.

In the seventh season, the evil priest Caleb notes that it is Xander who is “the one that sees everything,” who sees the strengths and weaknesses of all his friends, simply because no one is looking at him. When Dawn hears this, she even suggests this might be his long-searched-for superpower.

And when the character’s storyline darkened to the point where he could no longer be plausibly considered a fool, the series served up another clear-cut fool in the character of Andrew.

Andrew Wells (who was kind enough to lend his expertise to one of our Deadliest Fantasy Warrior articles) began as one of the more inept villains on Buffy known as the Trio, a group of three nerds determined to bring down Buffy.

But after his defeat as a villain, he joins the ranks of the good guys, even though he mostly serves as comic relief, a whiny wimp who would have been overshadowed in the presence of such heroism had it not been for his silly way of seeing the world.

Andrew is also sort on an inside joke: a dork who was obsessed with sci-fi and fantasy, one who could quote Star Wars or Lord of the Rings flawlessly at the drop of a hat, a devoted superfan of the sort that the show Buffy itself inspires.

But like Falstaff, Joxer, and Xander, Andrew could also possess a surprising degree of wisdom, usually at the most unexpected of times. When Anya dies, Andrew, who annoys people with his ridiculous lies, tells Xander a whopper: that she died saving his life (she didn’t). But in this case, it’s not ridiculous at all. In fact, it’s the perfect thing to say, lending comfort to a devastated lover.

The fool has been a constant of fantasy fiction for centuries, and all signs show that the archetype is not going anywhere. The fool can take many forms: a jester, a clown, a bombastically arrogant old man, or even a young gay super-nerd (and can I just say? A female fool or a “fool of color” would be nice to see for a change.)

So go ahead and laugh at that foolish person on the stage or the television. You’re supposed to. And why not? The fool is ridiculous.

But you just might feel a little foolish yourself when the laughter stops and you realize once again that the character you’d so quickly written off was ultimately the only one willing to tell you the truth.

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For those living in or close to New York City, the wonderful tradition of Shakespeare in the Park — free performances of the Bard’s plays set in the beauty of Central Park — continues this year with Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare’s great comedies (that features a strong female lead to boot!).

While Shakespeare has a bad rap for being alienating and esoteric, the fact is there’s a lot to enjoy from his works for your average fantasy fan. Chances are if you like Tolkien and Lewis, you’ll probably get a kick out of Shakespeare.

Now, not all of his works are astoundingly fun and exciting. He had quite a dark side, as evidenced by some of his tragedies, like Othello and Titus Andronicus. Those looking for action and magic might be bored by his history plays, even though there’s some great drama in them.

But what endeared Shakespeare to me at an early age was his blatant and unapologetic love of fantasy storytelling. His works are littered with magical sub-plots, powerful sorcerers, and mystical potions. He was a student of world mythology, and thus had a respectable knowledge of gods and faeries, which he used freely and liberally, often changing characters or inventing new ones depending on the needs of his story.

One of his most famous and oft-performed comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is a series of one magical plot after another. The play opens in Ancient Greece, when a wedding celebration between Theseus and Hippolyta, the Amazon Queen, is overshadowed by four young lovers who just can’t seem to figure it out. (It’s complicated and non-magical, so to us it’s boring.)

Soon we are treated to a scene featuring a quarrel between Titania, the Queen of the Faeries, and Oberon, her consort and Faerie King, over which one should have custody of a changeling servant. Oberon orders his spritely servant, Puck, to dose her with a magical potion and make her fall in love with some nasty forest creature.

Wackiness, as always, ensues. Puck (a character whose fame has possibly outgrown the play that features him, and is where we get the word puckish) puts a spell on a mortal, giving him the head of an ass, and sets it up for Titania to get hot for him. The love potion — has there ever been a better plot device? — is also used to mess around with the mortal lovers, but of course, this being a comedy, all ends happily.

If you’re intrigued by the story, there’s a pretty decent film version from 1999 starring Rupert Everett, Kevin Kline, and Michelle Pfeiffer (who, as Titania, looks so beautiful she might melt your television screen.) If you like musicals and don’t mind a little guy-on-guy action, there’s also a really interesting film called Were the World Mine that just came out last year, which features a high school kid who discovers the secret to the love potion’s formula while playing Puck in a school production.

A less light-hearted but no less magical work is The Tempest, a play about an exiled magician, Prospero, who comes to rule the spirit-infested island on which he is marooned. He rescues a spirit, Ariel, who is trapped in a tree, and then forces Ariel to do magic on his behalf. (Arthurian scholars might remember the legend in which Merlin is trapped in a tree by the sorceress Morgan le Fay — a story Shakespeare was probably familiar with.)

Prospero takes revenge on those who did him wrong by sending out a great storm and shipwrecking his enemies on the same island, eventually drawing them closer towards an inevitable reunion. Also of note is the character Caliban, who is said to be the son of a mortal woman and a devil, and is sometimes describes as half-fish, but always referred to as a monster. (He also might be the basis for the character Calibos in Clash of the Titans, a creature who has no actual Greek counterpart.)

While Midsummer and Tempest are Shakespeare’s most obviously fantasy-rich plays, bits of magic are speckled in his other works. The presence of a ghost kicks off the action of Hamlet, and a ghost also appears in Julius Caesar. Three witches, commonly called the Weird Sisters, are heavily featured in Macbeth.

It’s clear Shakespeare enjoyed a nice magical romp. Even if you’re not a fan of him per se, at least you can know you and Shakespeare were fans of the same genre.

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