I need a reboot and an upgrade to boost my walking cred
Sometimes walking presents real hazards, like this branch that fell across the fitness path after a storm. Which of course happened at night when I wasn't out there. Image courtesy of Del Stone Jr.
Most mornings I try to go for a walk. It gives me the illusion of exercise, and it gets my folds to jiggling. Jiggling folds are happier folds.
But after carefully studying my fellow walkers I’ve decided I’m doing something wrong. It’s my low-tech approach to walking. I feel like I need a reboot and an upgrade. I don’t fit in on the Walking Circuit.
Let’s take the issue of my walking attire. I bought my shorts in 1992. Then, they were thick and sturdy. Today, they’ve been washed so many times they’re held together by molecular tension. I also wear a plain white, V-neck tee that can be found only in the Geriatrics Department at Walmart or your finer dollar stores. I slip on a pair of athletic shoes – the last time these shoes had anything to do with athletics was when I took them out of the shoebox that said “athletic shoes.”
As for peripherals, I take one thing: a house key. Oh, and today I took a golf umbrella, which I promptly used as a cane.
My fellow walkers, however, are resplendent in both their attire and their technology.
For instance, they wear the very latest moisture-wicking, heat-redistributing, debit card-draining, skin-tight tops and bottoms in all the colors of every margarita ever invented. The bicyclists are even more intimidating: They wear brightly colored, pointy helmets – picture H.R. Giger’s Alien had it been rendered by Walt Disney Studios. The overall effect is that of a bad acid trip, not that I’ve ever done acid. But I’ve seen enough Jefferson Airplane and Todd Rundgren album covers to get the picture.
Their technology is even more impressive. These people have not only made a commitment to walk; they’ve made an investment. They can’t walk without first jacking into the Matrix. Let’s go down the checklist:
– iPod or some other MP3 device with cable snaking to their right ear: CHECK.
– Bluetooth device embedded in their left ear: CHECK.
– Mobile phone for receipt of those important calls at 6 o’clock in the morning, or texts and/or e-mails that read: “Hay! Wut R U doin? I’m takin a dump! Lol!” CHECK.
– Wrist pedometer that measures their steps, heartbeat, respiration, perspiration, and even lets them program their DVRs: CHECK.
– Phase-plasma rifle in the 40-watt range: CHECK.
When I go for a walk I like to listen to the sounds of birds, or the wind rustling through the trees. Did you know wind makes a different sound through pine trees than live oaks? My fellow walkers would rather listen to Snoop Dog or Rush Limbaugh’s latest ravings. At the very least I want to hear the garbage truck that’s about to mow me down, or the basso growling of a pitbull named Muffy that “would never hurt a flea” according to its owner (as it’s separating your right leg from your torso).
The dog walkers belong to a special breed. Back in the day before people believed the South Pole was discovered by Captain Kirk, a leash was a sturdy metal chain with a leather strap, about 5 feet long, that kept the dog within a comfortable radius of your ability to prevent it from disemboweling passersby. I’m afraid such leashes are now only available in the S&M department of your local adult toy store. Today’s leashes telescope out to 25 or 30 feet, which to my age-befuddled mind renders moot the concept of “restraint.”
I’ve also noticed a kind of age-related schism in the behavior of my fellow walkers. The older walkers – “older” meaning people my age and farther down the scroll bar – will nod and greet me with a cheery, “Good morning!” The younger walkers – “younger” meaning people who wish I’d hurry up and retire so they can have my job – look at me suspiciously and veer wide of my track, as if my jiggling folds might slurp them up in a science fiction horror of digestion.
The bottom line is this: My simple morning excursion has become a source of existential angst. I will never be one with these people until I buy a $3,000 bicycle and rescue a shar pei that speaks Mandarin from a kill shelter.
Whoever said walking isn’t exercise has got it all wrong. It’s HUGE exercise, both physically and intellectually. The jiggling folds of my waistline – and my brain – are here to tell you that’s a fact.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image courtesy of 20th Century Studios.
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“Prometheus” Starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Logan Marshall-Green, Charlize Theron. Directed by Ridley Scott. 124 minutes. Rated R.
Del’s take
Going into “Prometheus” I warned myself against indulging expectations; I had, after all, been savoring this moment since learning “Alien” director Ridley Scott was returning to the creepy, Gigeresque universe he so famously created in 1979.
Coming out of “Prometheus” I again warned myself against expectations: The movie was probably not as disappointing as my gut reaction would have me believe.
After much reflection, I can’t help but feel “Prometheus” is so much less than it could have been. Visually, the film is gorgeous. But the script is a muddle, the score incompatible with the movie’s tone, and some of the casting decisions simply don’t work.
The plot is straightforward. A pair of archeologists (Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth Shaw and Logan Marshall-Green as Charlie Holloway) discover a kind of star map in the glyphs of ancient terrestrial civilizations separated by time and distance. A corporation builds a starship, the Prometheus, to visit the location denoted by the map, so that the company’s founder can discover the secret to life … and perhaps extend his own. Once there they find mankind’s progenitors were not as paternalistic as they expected. All manner of wriggling, predatory horrors put human beings at the bottom of the food chain as they plan a planet-wide buffet.
The film’s exteriors are lush, sweeping and grandiose, but the interiors convey nothing of the shuddery claustrophobia evoked by “Alien.” The technology seems far advanced from “Alien,” which takes place after “Prometheus.” I don’t have a problem with that: The Nostromo was a tired old factory ship with outdated technology; “Prometheus” is a brand-new ship of exploration, likely equipped with the latest gadgets and gewgaws, despite its 30-year handicap.
Michael Fassbender delivers an Oscar-worthy performance as the amoral android David, and Charlize Theron is icily cool as the daughter of the Weyland Corporation’s founder. Less impressive are Sean Harris as the expedition’s geologist, and Rafe Spall as the team’s biologist. Neither display the kind of intellectual curiosity peculiar to scientists. Worse are Noomi Rapace and Logan Marshall-Green, who are completely unconvincing in their roles as the expedition’s ostensible scientific leadership. Ridley Scott has a love of strong female characters, but in “Prometheus” Rapace seems lost and dependent, besotted with a perpetual starry-eyed, doll-baby affect that seems incongruent with that of a true Scott survivor type. And let’s not talk about the film’s science, or the scientific method. “Prometheus” abandons even the most cursory protocols any scientist worth his salt would follow.
But that’s partially the fault of the script, which at times tries to take “Prometheus” into the realm of “2001,” while mostly devolving to “Starship Troopers” or even “Lost.” Blame that on co-writer Damon Lindelof, an alum of “Lost,” who seems stricken by the idea coy logic flaws represent depth. A true brain tease provokes curiosity, not irritation. Gone is the stark, narrowly focused conflicts of “Alien,” “Blade Runner” or “Thelma and Louise.” In its place is a taco-pizza-cheeseburger of a story that satisfies nobody.
“Prometheus” may have strands of “Alien” in its DNA, as Scott hinted during the movie’s production, but it’s a recessive gene. You see little of the “Alien” genius and lots of what I would call “current” storytelling, which seems less satisfied with delivering a credible tale than setting up a sequel.
In space, nobody can hear you scream. But in movie theaters they can hear you crying foul, and that’s what I heard.
Mladen’s take
When I need Del to be merciless, he delivers a review that searched for a bright side to a dim movie. Del, can you hear me screaming in Fort Walton Beach, though we’re a couple of miles apart?
It was good “Prometheus” didn’t come with a money-back guarantee for the audience because the production companies that financed this unfathomable film would go broke. My review is short because I stopped paying attention to the movie about halfway through it’s all too long runtime.
“Prometheus” was billed as the prequel to “Alien,” one of the finest movies of all time, and that was a severe error. Though directed by the same man, Ridley Scott, “Prometheus” and “Alien” are worlds apart.
“Alien” is a sci-fi horror movie, pure and simple and completely engrossing. “Prometheus” is just gross, while suffering from an identity crisis. Is it sci-fi horror like “Alien” or sci-fi action like “Aliens”? In fact, it’s more like “Hostel” meets “Event Horizon” meets “The Human Centipede.”
Almost from the beginning, the movie starts to meander toward the unexplained.
There are 17 people aboard spaceship Prometheus, which is about 10 too many. Only a handful of the 17 characters are developed and all of them are, at best, mildly interesting or, at worst, unlikable.
There are metallic vases oozing black liquid, an aggressive slug breaking an arm and then swimming down the victim’s throat, and an absolutely foul scene were one of the protagonists endures a vividly portrayed Cesarean section inside a healing chamber and then fights the creature just pulled from her abdomen.
None of the scientists behaved like scientists, including the decision to reanimate in the open the head of a hominid-like being because it looked like something abnormal was growing from it when its owner died.
In “Prometheus,” events just happened that seemed unconnected or arbitrary. The story lacked cohesion. It failed to explain the reason our creators were so unflinchingly hostile to us, their children, so to speak.
“Prometheus” could have explored the questions it awkwardly raised. Is there God? Can science and religion co-exist? Is mankind a controlled experiment with Earth the incubator? Instead, we get a mish-mash of themes and banal dialogue.
There are no Oscar contenders in this movie. Not for script. Not for acting. Not for score. Hell, not even for visual effects. The movie was disappointing.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Paramount.
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“Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol” Starring Tom Cruise, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner. Directed by Brad Bird. 133 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Plot summary: An American black operations team is framed for blowing up part of the Kremlin. The true culprit, a rogue physicist, also uses the incident to increase tension between Russia and America as part of his plan to trigger an Earth-cleansing nuclear war between the superpowers. The black ops team seeks to clear its name and stop the physicist from fooling the governments of the superpowers into an exchange of nuclear bombs.
Mladen’s take
The recently released film “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” (MI4) should be re-titled “Mission: Implausible – Stretching Logic.”
It’s not that I’m looking for realism in a spy thriller. I’m just hoping for a plot where massive doses of lucky timing and superhuman agility and brains are less than essential to keeping a movie cohesive.
MI4 offers clever dialogue and spiffy action, even some moments of true daring, without an action movie’s critical ingredient, suspense. In the end, I didn’t much care if the nuclear warhead catapulted into space by a Russian submarine-launched ballistic missile detonated above San Francisco.
Tom Cruise reprises his role as super-agent Ethan Hunt in MI4. Cruise, now older and more handsome than cute, makes a convincing spy. His team of disavowed and pursued agents was entertaining and likable.
But, no character in the movie provoked loathing or respect, and, as a result, MI4 lacks emotional punch.
Particularly disappointing was the film’s unwillingness to develop the role played by Michael Nyqvist. He portrays out-of-control physicist Hendricks, a man with an IQ of 190 who dreams of destroying civilization.
As I understood it, Hendricks wanted to initiate a worldwide experiment in natural selection. To give evolution a shove, the physicist figured he had to clear the slate by incinerating everything on Earth with thermonuclear weapons. Cool idea, but what made the genius insane? What’s his life like during moments of respite from plotting global holocaust or running from agents possessing breathtaking spy accessories?
One more gripe. The soundtrack for MI4 was uninspired. The film didn’t offer proper homage to the irrepressible, distinctive theme from the “Mission: Impossible” TV series. The theme’s thumping beginning and portentous melody was swallowed by its conversion in MI4 to electronic technopop.
MI4 isn’t a bad movie, but it wasn’t worth the $9.75 plus tax I paid to see it. See MI4 on the big screen at a theater with high-resolution projectors, but make it a matinee.
Del’s take
Tom Cruise is crazy – not for jumping up and down on couches but for jumping out of one of the world’s tallest buildings, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. I confess to not having watched that scene – as a lifelong acrophobic I had my hands in front of my eyes. But it’s the only lasting impression I have of “Ghost Protocol.”
Directors, producers, book editors – virtually everyone in the contemporary entertainment industry – have the impression consumers want nothing but action. On behalf of moviegoers and readers everywhere may I set the record straight? Yes, we want action. But we also want substance. We want accuracy. We want characters we care about. Finally, we want a story – however implausible – that makes sense within its context.
I’d heard “Ghost Protocol” was the best of the “Mission Impossible” canon. I came away from the movie strangely disengaged. For the most part it was entertaining and probably worth my $6.50 ticket (much to Mladen’s dismay I was given the senior citizen discount – sometimes it’s good to be a geezer!). But I wouldn’t call MI4 the best of the bunch. I didn’t care what happened because I knew no matter what, everybody would live, the day would be saved, and a sequel was probably in the works. When you find yourself nitpicking over such issues you know a movie has failed to capture your forgiveness.
Forget about thinly sketched characters, a forgettable soundtrack and a hackneyed plot. Let’s talk about technical errors. In one scene Jeremy Renner is levitated by a suit that responds to a magnetic field generated by a small RPV. I’m actually offended the scriptwriters think I’d fall for such an impossibility. A magnetic field that strong would suck up more electricity than any battery in existence could provide, nevermind the Energizer Bunnies in the RPV.
Spoiler alert: In the climactic scene a nuclear warhead attached to a rocket that is still firing hurtles toward San Francisco and clips a skyscraper. Even my vague understanding of ICBM technology tells me that once the boost phase of an ICBM is complete, multiple warheads separate from the rocket and fall toward their targets, detonating thousands of feet above. If director Bird wanted the afore-mentioned visuals he should have chosen a cruise missile.
I know – those are mere quibbles when the more important issue is: How does the movie work as a whole?
That depends on how high you set the bar. “Ghost Protocol” provides two hours of entertainment … but that’s about it. Let’s hope the next outing gives us more sympathetic characters, credible technology and a mission worthy of our time, like “Mission Impossible: Balance the Federal Budget.”
On second thought that’s waaaay too out there.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Relativity Media.
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“Immortals” Starring Henry Cavill, Mickey Rourke, Stephen Dorff, Freida Pinto, Luke Evans, John Hurt. Directed by Tarsem Singh. 110 minutes. Rated R.
Del’s take
OK, Mom and Dad. Do not – I repeat, do NOT – take the kiddies to see “Immortals.” If you do, I suggest when you get home you immediately hide the family sledgehammer. Yes, in “Immortals,” somebody does something very bad with a sledgehammer. We’re talking back-alley vasectomy. We wouldn’t want the kiddies getting any ideas.
You might also want to hide the kitchen knives, any random chains you’ve got hanging around, pikes, swords – heck, just hide everything. Or better, do NOT take the kiddies to see “Immortals.”
Because it’s a bloodbath – an empty, silly, thoroughly predictable yet exquisitely choreographed bloodbath. Take strawberries, tomatoes, cherry Jell-O, berry-flavored Kool-Aid, and dump them into a blender. Leave the top off and hit the “on” button. That’ll give you a visceral preview of “Immortals.” Oh, and you get to clean up the mess.
In “Immortals,” the gods have won their war against the Titans, imprisoning them within a mountain. But a power-mad human king, Hyperion (played with vicious gusto by Mickey Rourke) decides he must have a WMD, something called the Epirus Bow, with which he may free the Titans and rain destruction on all of Greece. The gods are bound by law not to interfere in the matters of men (probably a part of Obama’s health care plan), but Zeus (Luke Evans/John Hurt) has been secretly preparing a human peasant, Theseus (Henry Cavill), to lead the Greeks to triumph over Hyperion. When Hyperion’s men slay Theseus’ mother, and Theseus encounters a virgin vision-seer (Freida Pinto, who doesn’t remain a virgin very long – oops, spoiler alert!) who sees his role in the upcoming battle, Theseus embarks on a bloody quest to avenge his mother’s death and make the world safe for Democrats. OK, maybe that’s stretching it.
If you go into “Immortals” expecting any kind of high-concept art, you’ll be disappointed. It is not “Being There” or “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Heck, it’s not even “Star Wars.”
Or maybe it is. What separates “Immortals” from movies like, say, “Transformers,” is that it does have a plot, albeit a predictable plot sans any pleasant surprises along the way. Director Tarsem has constructed a visual machine that performs its work with the ritual synchronicity of an assembly line at a Ford plant.
It also has lots and lots of flesh – pretty boys with perfectly sculpted abs and luscious women whose attributes, be they God-given or enhanced by prosthetics, suggest that life in the B.C. days had definite virtues.
But it’s the fight scenes in “Immortals” that make the movie worth seeing. If you thought Jet Lee, the Wachowski brothers and Quentin Tarrantino had mined that vein for all it’s worth, think again. “Immortals” carries the movie fight scene to an unprecedented and bloody apex, giving the viewer a slow-mo entrée to a feast of exploding heads, cartwheeling body parts and severed torsos, all of it presented in breathtaking operatic melodrama.
I recommend seeing it in 2D. The 3D version contributes practically nothing to the viewing experience.
“Immortals” is not for the squeamish. It’s not for the thoughtful moviegoer.
But if you’re looking for nearly two hours of escapist fun – and you’re not warping your children’s minds – you’ll enjoy “Immortals.”
Out of 10 stars I give it seven.
Mladen’s take
The film “Immortals” starts with a vision by a soon-to-be defrocked virgin oracle and ends with her glimpse of the future coming true. Between, the movie is filled with slick scenes of slaughter that only an R rating permits.
Immortals is loosely based on Greek mythology.
Gods, led by father Zeus and fearful of another internecine war with Titans, hope that a mortal becomes their savior. Theseus, portrayed by Henry Cavill, is nudged by fate and faith to fight against Hyperion, played by Mickey Rourke. Hyperion, a commander of vast legions, wants to free Titans to avenge cruelties that he and his family endured because Gods refused to intervene on their behalf. But, before Hyperion can achieve his desire, he has to fight Hellenes, and Theseus, defending the mountain where Titans are imprisoned.
As the heroes – Theseus and Gods – and antiheroes – Hyperion and Titans – edge closer to battle, Immortals tries to teach us lessons.
Theseus and his mother are peasants and abused by prominent members of the cliffside village where they live, so there’s a subtheme of class warfare.
Theseus, an unbeliever at the beginning of the movie, transforms into a man of faith. Hyperion, once a believer in Gods, scorns them. Guess which one survives the epic hand-to-hand combat at Immortal’s end? So, we are taught that those who bow to the will of Gods prevail and those who fail to genuflect, die. What crap.
Morals aren’t the strength of Immortals, but, I suppose, something had to be devised to bundle the movie’s virtue: gorgeous, stylized carnage.
Theseus sweeps through squads of Hyperion’s men with ballet-like precision, puncturing abdomens and heads with spears, slicing necks with swords, and, once, blasting them with electromagnetic arrows of the Epirus bow.
Though the peasant warrior’s magic with all objects sharp and pointy was impressive, nothing compared to the vivid gore that enveloped the screen when Gods or Titans warred. I’ll stop here to keep from spoiling the scenes, but wait until you see god Aries dispatch a half-dozen of Hyperion’s men in slow motion about halfway through the movie. The battle between Gods, who dress like sissies, and Titans, who look like corpuscular ash, is absolutely luscious.
Del and I saw Immortals in 3-D, though it isn’t necessary to enjoy the movie. The cinematography is bright enough, I suspect, to make Immortals very watchable in just plain 2-D, as long as the theater packs a good sound system.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.
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“The Thing” Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton and Ulrich Thomsen. Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. 103 minutes. Rated R.
Mladen’s take
Let’s call Director John Carpenter’s 1982 film “The Thing, A.” Let’s call Director Matthijs Van Heijningen’s released-on-Friday movie “The Thing, B.” I do that for two reasons. Those are the grades each movie deserves – actually it’s A+ and B+, respectively. And, it’ll be easier to keep track of which movie I’m referring to because comparisons are inevitable. “The Thing, B” is the prequel to “The Thing, A.”
The “Thing, A” in one of the two finest sci-fi horror movies made. The other is “Alien.”
The formula for success is retained in “The Thing, B.” An isolated group of humans, in this case a multinational research team in the Antarctic. A creature that mercilessly and vividly parasitizes bodies. And, suspense.
My pal Del will probably disagree with the last attribute. Always grumpy and a quibbler, he’d exchange “suspense” for “cheap-shot fear” because there are at least three jump-out-of-your seat moments in “The Thing, B.”
To a degree, I agree with Del.
In the superb “The Thing, A,” the body-snatching, body-cloning alien is portrayed as an amorphous, almost cautious being. It’d prefer to nail you when you’re handy and lashes out only when pursued. That makes the creature scarier because it’s clearly thinking.
In the “The Thing, B,” the alien has a shape of its own. In its original state, the technologically sophisticated arthropod looks like an overgrown wood louse. And, rather than being an ambush predator, like say a praying mantis, it’s an aggressive stalker of anything that moves, like say former U.S. vice president Dick Cheney. That makes the creature more of a monstrosity.
There are implausible moments in the “The Thing, B.” The lead Norwegian scientist ignores American paleontologist Kate Lloyd, portrayed very effectively by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, when she urges that carefully controlled laboratory techniques, including isolation, be used to un-entomb the alien from the ice in which it’s frozen.
Also, the soundtrack used to frame “The Thing, B” is very weak. A day after seeing the film, I’m unable to recall its rhythm or tempo. This is in stark contrast to Ennio Morricone’s foreboding, subtly pulsing, and ingenious score in “The Thing, A.” Sometimes, simple is better. Much, much better.
But, let’s not quibble.
“The Thing, B” takes advantage of the unique elements at its disposal.
Computer-generated graphics are very good and used to enhance the plot, not substitute for it.
Van Heijningen imagines very nicely what would likely happen to a small group of humans confronted by a terrifying fact: If it walks like a human, if it talks like a human, if it behaves like a human, it might not be a human. The scientists act rationally and irrationally as each tries to avoid becoming food for the alien’s DNA. Most notably, as the situation at the Antarctic research outpost deteriorates, the Norwegians and Americans periodically rely on nationality as a source of trust to form us-against-them alliances, though the Thing is uninterested in which flag would hang above its next human victim’s grave. Assuming, of course, there’s anything of the victim’s own remains to recover.
There’s another reason to see “The Thing, B” while it’s in theaters.
Van Heijningen pays tribute, maybe it’s more like deference, to Carpenter’s “The Thing.”
To appreciate the gesture, make sure you’ve seen Carpenter’s film before seeing Heijningen’s and stick around for the credits. Many in the audience started to leave, only to stop, while standing, to watch the end of “The Thing, B.”
Del’s take
Despite Mladen’s warning that I “expect to be disappointed,” I sat down to watch “The Thing” with a degree of hope and not a few questions:
Billed as a prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 horror-science fiction classic of the same name, would 2011’s “The Thing” merely replicate its masterful predecessor or bring something new to the story?
Would it scare me intellectually or, like so many “scary” films today, employ a CGI festival of fake gore and monsters jumping out of closets to generate cheap thrills?
How successfully would director Heijningen marry this film to – again – Carpenter’s 1982 horror-science fiction classic? (And I emphasize that Carpenter’s film is a classic despite the scorn of critics and moviegoers of the Reagan era. “The Thing” is a testament to tension done right. Heijningen stands much to lose by treading on such ground, as did the creators of the Keannu Reeves sapfest “The Day the Earth Stood Still”).
First, a word about “The Thing’s” lineage. In 1938 author-editor John W. Campbell wrote a novella for a pulp magazine, Astounding Stories, called “Who Goes There?” about a group of Antarctic explorers who discover a crashed UFO and its pilot frozen into the ice. They accidentally destroy the ship but recover the pilot’s body which, upon thawing, reanimates and begins assimilating the crew, mimicking their appearances and manners. What ensues is the familiar, creepy tale of a small group of human beings struggling for survival against a faceless foe, a story that resonates well with today’s terrorism-infused culture in which the enemy walks among us, unseen.
In 1951 “Who Goes There?” became a movie, “The Thing from Another World,” directed by Christian Nyby (although many consider Howard Hawks the real director). It was loosely based on Campbell’s story but deviated in significant and disappointing ways. In 1982 Carpenter’s iteration more closely followed the plot laid down by Campbell and featured nausea-inducing special effects and a depressing storyline that torpedoed the movie at the box office. Fortunately the movie survived in video, then digital form, to become a cult favorite and, dare I say, a mainstream draw for audiences inured to gory nihilism in moviemaking. Both movies effectively conveyed a building sense of dread that pitted an isolated group of humanity against an invisible enemy – in 1951 it was communism; in 1982 it was ourselves.
Along comes Heijningen’s prequel, which takes up a few days before Carpenter’s movie began. Kate Lloyd is an American anthropologist brought to Antarctica by Dr. Sander Halvorson (Thomsen) to examine a mysterious structure and “specimen” the Norwegians have discovered under the ice. When the specimen is recovered and an ill-advised tissue sample taken, shape-shifting hell breaks loose as the thing goes after the camp crew with the ultimate goal of reaching the larger world, where it can infect everybody.
I have a number of gripes with this “Thing,” some small, some not. The small stuff first:
Score: Marco Beltrami’s score is at best forgettable, at worst an opportunity lost. It conveys little of the tension so effectively embodied by Ennio Morricone’s score for the Carpenter film.
Continuity: As a period piece “The Thing” looks pretty much like a 1982 movie. Computer monitors are correctly hulking and snippets of popular music, from bands like Men at Work, reflect the flavor of the times. But then you have lines of dialogue from, let’s say, a character who’s been told to go and get something and answers, “I’m on it.” That expression wasn’t used in 1982 and I know this because I was around in 1982.
Who’s in charge? In Carpenter’s “The Thing” we knew from the first scene that Kurt Russell was in charge. Even when he wasn’t in charge, he was in charge. In this version Winstead oscillates between leadership and submission. You might think that’s an understandable consequence of a woman being immersed in a 1982-era all-male community, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Authority springs from viewpoint, and authority is not effectively conveyed through Winstead’s character. Sigourney Weaver has proved what an effective female lead can do within an all-male community.
My larger gripes include this iteration’s duplication of the Carpenter movie. At times I thought it was the Carpenter movie. Several scenes seem lifted directly from the earlier film, and the overall structure of “The Thing” copies what Carpenter did in 1982 – with some unfortunate exceptions:
While Carpenter filled his movie with quirky, quixotic characters – almost all of whom were dysfunctionally sympathetic – Heijningen’s prequel features only one person I actually cared about, a lethal deficiency for a horror movie. None of the characters stands out as an individual with a unique personality; they’re all just cardboard cut-outs filling roles as they scream their way down the alien’s gullet.
Worse, this version of “The Thing” does not emulate the brooding, palpable dread Carpenter built into his 1982 film. We are quickly thrown into the fray and forgettable people start dying, stalked by a malevolent force, yet another deviation from Carpenter’s classic. In that film you could almost feel a whiff of sympathy for the creature – it was, after all, a hapless castaway thrust into a hostile environment and was trying to survive the only way it knew how. But now we have a stalking predator that, if it wants to escape to the larger world and propagate, thwarts its own intentions time and again.
On a positive note Heijningen brings his movie to a perfect conclusion, matching it directly to Carpenter’s film. This takes place as the end credits roll so be sure not to leave the theater. It’s actually very cool.
Still, the 2011 “The Thing” has assimilated its earlier classic and produced an inferior copy. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would rate it a 5.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Raw Pixel by way of a Creative Commons license.
OK FB haters, I’m going to do something I vowed not to do because, frankly, I was hoping the people who haven’t figured it out would never figure it out as they tend to be the loudest complainers.
Let’s say your favorite website (or the Website You Love to Hate) switches its commenting system to FB. It’s a well-known fact that if you start a FB account you are damned to the Lake of Fire for all eternity as the Cloven-Hoofed One has admin access to FB’s user database. Yet you yearn (that’s a lot of Y’s) to post your profane epistles (that’s a lot of P’s) on the Website You Love to Hate.
What to do?
Make a FB account strictly for commenting at the Website You Love to Hate.
To start an account you must provide FB with (a) a first name, (b) a last name, and (c) a working e-mail address. From there the Cloven-Hoofed One does the rest, somehow (through dark majick no doubt) ascertaining your credit card number, the surface address of your firstborn’s firstborn, and that little folder in your My Documents folder with all those, ahem, * pictures. *
How do you thwart the intrusions of His Horned Self?
You go to a place like Mail.com and sign up for an e-mail address. Let’s call it [email protected]. Let me reassure all you AOL users on dailup, it’s FREE! You’ll have lots of money left over for the 2 o’clock buffet at Golden Corral.
Then your return to the hated halls of FB, type in “Crabby” as your first name (or “CrabbyT” if you think you might record your complaints as a rap album), “Crabopolis” as your last name, and “CrabbyTCrabopolis” as your e-mail address. You may also need to type in a Captcha but don’t worry, it ain’t captchaing your soul, and BAM! You’ve got a FB commenting account.
Let’s say at a later date you’re on the Website You Love to Hate and want to leave a comment. You type in your thoughts (and I’m using the term loosely), you hit ENTER, and a prompt asks you to sign in to your FB account. You type in your e-mail addy, your password, and BAM (Emeril, are you listening?), your insights (loosely) appear for everybody to savor.
Your credit card information is safe. You have not surrendered your firstborn’s firstborn’s surface address. And nobody but you and your teenage son will see that hidden folder of pictures.
And here’s an important distinction. I’ll use all caps because I want to make sure you hear me: YOU NEED NEVER VISIT THE HATED HALLS OF FB.You remain on the Website You Love to Hate without having to “friend” anybody or “tweet” (somebody actually said that).
So please. Enough of the sturm und drang. The Earth will still (that’s a lot of L’s) spin on its axis. The stars will remain in the heavens. Lady Gaga will wear a dress made of Skittles.
Life will go on.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, Ello and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image courtesy of Warner Brothers.
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“Contagion.” Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, John Hawkes, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Ehle, Elliot Gould. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. 105 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Mladen’s take
Remember the best scene in the second-best movie made, “Jaws”?
Brody is ladling putrid chum into the Atlantic from the stern of charter boat Orca, when the massive white shark suddenly raises its head out of the water to look at him and then disappears as quickly and completely as it appeared.
The sheriff reflexively straightens, stiff with disbelief and fear, and says to the others aboard, “We need a bigger boat.”
Well, a similarly portentous scene unfolds between two pathologists early in the newly released film, “Contagion.”
The pathologists, one senior and the other his junior, open the skull of the dead character portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow. As the junior pathologist pulls back the brain of the deceased, the senior medical examiner, stunned by what he sees, urges his cohort to step away from the table.
The more experienced pathologist tells the younger one that other health care professionals must be informed immediately about what they had uncovered.
“Who do I call?” asks the junior pathologist.
“Everybody,” responds the senior medical examiner. “Call everybody.”
“Contagion,” a story about a global pandemic that eventually wipes out 25 percent of humanity, is methodical. Grumpy Del would say plodding.
“Contagion” is about the way acts of selfishness or selflessness, profitmongering or altruism, panic or poise by individuals converge to create a collective reaction to a deadly virus. Del would say, “That’s boring. I want looting, gunfire, cannibalism, and other forms of grand-scale depravity.”
Alas, Del. What has become of you?
“Contagion” tackled the big questions. It just ignored some of the details.
And, the movie’s message is clear: We’re mostly on our own when a natural disaster strikes. The goal is to stay alive long enough for laws and social constraints to regain their hold.
As “Contagion” unfolds, we see a bitter blogger played by Jude Law use the Internet to market a snake oil that promises to cure those afflicted by MEV-1, a genetically simple, rapidly mutating monovalent virus. The blogger’s sales pitch includes government and corporation conspiracy theories with just enough facts to make them plausible.
A father, though he and his daughter are naturally immune to MEV-1, protects her with tenacity, but never uses violence. When a mobile Meals-Ready-To-Eat distribution center runs out of meals, others waiting in line break the cordon to storm the trucks. He protects a lady who’s attacked by another person because she had a box of MREs.
“Contagion” also notes failures in leadership. The American president flees to a hidey-hole for protection against the pandemic. By leading from the rear, his act of taxpayer-subsidized privilege contributes to the panic contorting the lives regular people.
Meanwhile, epidemiologists are working feverishly to develop a vaccine. One goes as far as using herself to test a vaccine that kept a MEV-1-infected monkey alive.
“Contagion” is filled with an all-star cast, but there’s no lead actor or actress. Though the movie shows the effect of the pandemic on well more than a dozen lives, its story is coherent.
“Contagion” is a good movie, maybe even a very good movie, but it’s not for action or blood-and-gore junkies such as Del.
Be patient, pay attention, recall what “SARS” stands for, and watch. You’ll know that you were affected by the movie if you exit the theater wondering how you’d protect your family from an unbiased – men, women, and children die – unseen organism and the chaos it unleashes.
Del’s take
The problem with a guy who loved “Transformers” scolding a guy who wanted a little more action in his “action-thriller” is that Mladen didn’t actually see “Contagion.” About halfway through he fell asleep and dreamed it was a terrific movie.
Which is not to say “Contagion” is a bad movie. Rather, it isn’t the movie I was expecting. Billed as an action-thriller, “Contagion” comes across as a medical procedural about how to create a flu vaccine, leavened by low-grade attempts to humanize the story by giving us glimpses of ordinary people and how they react to a dangerous virus sweeping across the world.
“Contagion” is told through a series of vignettes involving multiple viewpoints – officials with the Centers for Disease Control (Fishburne, Winslet and Ehle), the World Health Organization (Cotillard), a so-called “journalist” (Law), a janitor (Hawkes), and an ordinary guy (Damon) whose philandering wife has unwittingly brought the disease to America.
Medical officials quickly recognize the disease’s lethal potential and try to act but, as usual, skeptical and blundering politicians slow their progress. Meanwhile, the disease spreads, social order begins to fray and a real breakdown of the processes that sustain our society seems imminent. Only a vaccine will prevent the collapse of civilization.
“Contagion” attacks not only our immune system but the institutions dear to our American hearts. Marriage is stricken with infidelity; the sanctity of our death rituals is sullied by mass graves, body bags and a ghoulish funeral director who refuses to handle disease-ravaged corpses; law and order gives way to looting, robbery and murder. Religion is ignored.
Oh, and there’s the Internet, which receives a well-deserved bashing. Jude Law plays the part of an online conspiracy theorist who believes the disease, MEV-1, is a money- and power-making plot engineered by a cabal of government and corporate entities bent on controlling our lives. He claims a natural remedy, not the government’s possibly autism-inducing vaccine, can defeat the virus. But it’s all a fraud … or is it? At one point Law is told by Dr. Ian Sussman (Gould): “You’re not a journalist. You’re a blogger,” and “Blogging is like graffiti with punctuation.”
Law turns in a powerful performance as irresponsible and disruptive blogger Alan Krumwiede. Also excellent are Fishburne as the CDC’s Dr. Ellis Cheever and Winslet as Dr. Erin Mears. Ehle turns in the best performance as Dr. Ally Hextall, who tests the vaccine on herself. Paltrow is her usual, giggly self, and Damon looks positively vampiric throughout, though he does get one good line. After a doctor tells him his wife has died, Damon’s character, Mitch Emhoff, not quite processing what he’s been told, responds with, “Right. But can I go talk to her?”
“Contagion” is strongest when addressing the medical aspect of the pandemic; it is weakest when dealing with the human component. Soderbergh’s austere direction and his focus on the clinical rather than the emotional render a sterile, dare I say boring treatise on disease, medicine and government. Based on the trailers I was expecting more – no, Mladen, not fires and explosions.
Maybe just a few people I could care about.
On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give “Contagion” a 7. Not a bad movie, but not the action-thriller I hoped to see.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Mom's pesky TV remote looks like the control panel of an ICBM silo. Image courtesy of Del Stone Jr.
Yesterday Mom experienced her first crisis with the new TV. It took me only two hours and three phone calls to get it fixed.
Seems one of the batteries in the remote started leaking, creating that white, powdery film we are all familiar with. It was blocking the current. I got rid of those batteries, cleaned all the corrosion from the posts and put in new batteries. Remote worked just fine after that.
But every time I tried to key in an HD channel I got nothing but question marks on the screen. Called my brother-in-law, George, who told me about doing a power cycle on the box. I did that but the problem persisted, so he suggested I contact Cox technical assistance.
Unbelievably I got a tech on the phone right away, who had me do another power cycle. She asked me what the box was telling me about resolution and I read her the number, 480i. So she had me go into the settings and remove 480i as an option, leaving only 720 and 1080. I did that but still couldn’t get an HD channel. That’s when she told me the HD channels had been relocated to the 1000s. Soon as I keyed in 1003 I got a nice, sharp picture.
Sheesh. Wish I’d known they’d relocated them!
Then, I couldn’t get the monitor to shut off. When Mom got back from her walk she showed me how you have to hold down on the power button to get the monitor off. Egads, this was too, too complicated.
Today I mowed her front yard. I was a little concerned because me knee has still been bugging me. But I got the job done with virtually no pain. I think this knee is getting better, albeit slowly.
I also fixed part of her back fence, which had been knocked down, presumably by a falling branch.
Then I filled my tank (in case Irene heads our way) and took a badly needed shower.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
The beach down around Cape San Blas is nice-looking but the sand is darker than what we're accustomed to in Fort Walton Beach and Destin. What's really scary is the thin sliver of land extending out into the Gulf of Mexico. You feel like you're aboard a very small boat that could capsize at any moment. Image courtesy of Del Stone Jr.
After Mexico Beach was named (by whom I forget) one of the nation’s coolest beach towns, I became curious about that stretch of the Panhandle. I’ve lived in this region since 1964 and apart from a quick snorkeling adventure to find scallops, and a two-stay at a campground, I’d never explored the Port St. Joe-Apalachicola area. So Thursday I set out for a quick drive to see what was there. I had to be back by a certain time; my friends and I were helping Niceville pay for its fireworks show by eating a steak dinner at the community center at 6:30. So there would be no chatting with locals or digging through bins of shells … just a quick road trip to see what was there and hurriedly snap a few photos.
As you drive east out of Panama City, U.S. 98 narrows to a two-lane road and travels through some seriously forested wetlands. The environmentalist in me loved it. The driver in me wondered what the heck I’d do if the car broke down. Careening down a two-lane road at 60 mph with fully loaded logging trucks barelling at you in the opposite lane conjures images of the big wreck scene in “Final Destination 2.” Luckily it wasn’t a far drive to my first stop, the newly crowned cool beach town Mexico Beach.
Mexico Beach IS a cool town, in an old-Florida, laid-back coastal community way. It reminded me of South Walton 20 years ago before the themed resorts, gated communities and condos took over. It’s populated mostly be single-family residences and locally owned businesses. Beach accesses are plentiful, and one stretch is totally undeveloped, with lots of available parking. Beaches were not crowded as these photos prove. The architectural style of the buildings is much more consistent than the unholy mashup of clashing approaches in South Walton, where Greek Island rennaissance meets Old Mexico terra cotta meets Seaside popsicle brite meets Southern gothic which meets New England revival.
I would rate the beaches a notch below what we have in Okaloosa and Walton counties. The sand was not quite as white, the water not quite as clear. The primary difference was an issue of scope. Because of our unhindered horizon, when you stand on a beach here you get a sense of gazing onto a truly vast body of water, an ocean. From the beach at Mexico Beach you can see the curvature of the coast and what I’m guessing is the northernmost point of Cape San Blas. You don’t get that feeling of grandeur. Instead, it feels like you’re looking from the shore of a bay.
As I drove farther southeast I landed in Port St. Joe. This is a very nicely laid out, clean and pretty little town. It doesn’t have much but the people have made the most of what they’ve got. Streets are wide and sidewalks are decorated with pavers and lighting. The historical district is easy to find, and the city seems to have made some effort to preserve the town’s trees. I would wager Port St. Joe has the only waterfront Piggly Wiggly in the world.
A venture along Gulf County’s version of 30-A took me to Cape San Blas. I stopped at a bayside park with a boardwalk that ventured into the saltwater cordmeadow marsh that fringed the shoreline. The park was dedicated to an 18-year-old young man who wrecked his truck and died on the twisty, narrow two-lane that travels along the narrow isthmus. His mother was a local preservationist.
After past a scary breakwater that looked like it might send boulders tumbling onto my head I reached the cape itself, and this reminded me more of the Emerald Coast than any other location I’d seen. Sands were white and heaped into dunes covered in sea oats. Again, the buildings were mostly single-family residences. There weren’t as many beach accesses but I finally found one and tromped through the sand to gaze upon the infinity of ocean.
I never made it to Apalachicola. Time was drawing short and thunderstorms threatened. My recommendation would be that if you’re looking for a quick vacation within easy driving distance, try renting a house on the shore of Cape San Blas and prepare for a week of splendid isolation. Bring lots of groceries and books. Leave behind your cares.
On the drive back I stumbled across a Church’s fried chicken restaurant. I had always loved Church’s and missed having it here in Fort Walton Beach, so I stopped by for a snack. Hmmm … what’s that old saying? You can never go back? Better to leave some memories as memories? Yup. The restaurant was hot – stiflingly hot. It was filthy, the tables covered in crumbs, wet spots and knocked over condiments. I got the two-piece meal for $2.69 – a thigh, a leg, mashed potatoes and a biscuit. The mashed potatoes were instant, which is fine. I expected that and even like instant mashed potatoes to a degree. The biscuit was OK. But the chicken? A dripping grease bomb that exploded nauseatingly in my mouth. It actually made me physically sick. When I was done a wetted a napkin and cleaned off the table, set up the condiments and tried to make the place look reasonably neat. Never again.
As I drove home I got a sense for just how pretty Destin is. They’ve done a good job of making it look neat and attractive.
Now if they could just do something about the traffic!
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image courtesy of Paramount.
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“Transformers: Dark of the Moon” Starring Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Tyrese Gibson, Josh Duhamel, Patrick Dempsey, Frances McDormand. Directed by Michael Bay. 157 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Mladen’s take
Two questions frequently visited my mind as I watched, in 3D, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” on its opening weekend.
The first was: Where can I find the clearcoat that the Autobots use to protect their paint? The finish on every Autobot, when it was configured as a vehicle, shined brilliantly and the luster was undefeatable. Autobots would roll through a desert, but no dust clung to their paint. Autobots zigzagged through toppling, burning Chicago, but no soot attached to their exteriors. Amazing, I want protection like that for my non-GM car.
The second question was: When will this movie end?
Transformers 3 was “Battle: LA” multiplied by 2. Peril was interminable.
Every instance of Sam Witwicky, portrayed again by Shia LaBeouf, surviving a maelstrom of exploding light pulses and short-recoil hypervelocity projectiles was more absurd than the one that preceded it.
But, part of sitting down for a long time to watch this PG-13 blockbuster is suspending, completely, disbelief. That was made easier by the screenwriter’s effort to make Transformers 3 somewhat serious.
The film is coherent.
There are at least two betrayals in the toy-based movie. What Sentinel Prime, voiced by Leonard Nimoy, does to Optimus Prime would make former Vice President Dick Cheney flush with pride.
Humans, hit by photons, disappeared in puffs of gray ash, mimicking scenes in the 2005 remake of “War of the Worlds.”
The realism endures, though the director, I assume inadvertently, tried to wreck it.
Sam’s love interest is unconvincing.
Witwicky’s parents could have been deleted from the movie without it suffering one bit.
And, the film’s panoramic 3D shots looked childish. Cybertron at war was a tangle of metallic structures with fighting robots in stark relief against the background. They looked like plastic models set in motion. Air Force special operations airmen gliding through the Chicago skyline looked more like flying squirrels than hotshots trying to save Earth.
Product placement – I want to go buy a Lenovo computer now – is exceptionally annoying in 3D.
Another of the film’s strengths is decent acting.
America’s national director of intelligence is the woman who won the best actress Oscar for her portrayal of a cop in “Fargo.” One of the human bad guys, I was told by a friend, is the man who plays “Dr. McDreamy” in the TV show “Gray’s Anatomy.” John Torturro does an OK job reprising his quirky spy character.
“Transformers: Dark of the Moon” is the best movie of the franchise. Presumably, because the leader of the Decepticons, Megatron, is beheaded and his second-in-command, Starscream, blasted apart, there’ll be no others. There’s risk, of course, that the director and production company will opt for a prequel. Stay tuned, as I’m sure you will.
Transformers 3 is worth seeing in the theater, but the movie and all its mostly entertaining excess can be enjoyed without the extra several dollars you’d have to drop for 3D.
Del’s take
I don’t think Megatron is the only entity beheaded by this awful example of Hollywood bad-storytelling. Mladen must have been conked on the skull by a piece of Chicago’s falling skyline.
“Transformers: Dark of the Moon” is a disaster from top to bottom, the absolute worst of the three movies and the one that will convince me to never again waste my money on another Transformers movie.
Where do I begin? The bizarre score? The lousy acting and cheesy script? The absolute lack of internal logic? Or maybe the subtle discrimination. Everywhere I look in this movie I see: train wreck.
Let’s start with the score. It’s peppered with trendy clips from bands like Linkin Park, Stained, Skillet and My Chemical Romance, songs that have no business being in a rock ‘em sock ‘em action movie. It’s as if the movie’s makers wanted to endow their creation with a sound of currency, and introduce a note of empathy on the personal level. It didn’t work for me. Music is every bit a plot device as characterization, pacing and visuals. Movies like “A Clockwork Orange” and “Silence of the Lambs” used the score to, if you’ll pardon the pun, underscore the emotional amplitude of certain scenes. Here the music seems merely added on, as if cake icing were used to dress up a taco-cheeseburger-pizza.
There’s no fun in this script. There’s no fun in the actors’ performances. “Dark of the Moon” is 157 minutes of Shia LaBeouf screaming, “ GOTTA GO! LET’S GO! GO, GO, GO!” and “CARLY!” John Malkovich is a power player who looms large in LaBeouf’s employment future but becomes a simpering lap dog once the Autobots hit the fan, and the great Frances McDormand must surrender her role as national intelligence director who doesn’t care what LaBeouf did in the past to an irrelevant footnote once the Decepticons occupy Chicago and begin eradicating the populace. Critical scorn has been heaped upon Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who plays LaBeouf’s love interest, but I found her performance to be one of the most consistent of the movie.
“Dark of the Moon’s” fatal flaw is the rampant contradictions of its own logic. I could compile a list as long as your arm but for brevity’s sake I’ll mention only two. Early in the movie the Autobots are told about a crash site on the moon that may contain the body of their leader, Sentinel Prime. They fly their own spaceship to the moon to recover his body. Yet when the Autobots are banished from Earth they must ride into space aboard a modified NASA shuttle. Um, what happened to the Transformer spaceship, guys? Second, when the Decepticons take over Chicago they seal off air access and shoot down anything trying to fly in, including speedy F-18 Hornets. Yet a flight of subsonic cruise missiles is able to penetrate their defenses, a formation of Ospreys manages to make it into the city, and soldiers hoofing it on the ground enter unmolested. It’s as if the rules of “Transformers” only apply for a few seconds.
Worse is the subtle discrimination the movie presents. Not to be a standard-bearer for all things politically correct but I was alarmed by the dialogue applied to LeBouf’s two “pet” robots, who tended to speak in black dialect and behave like clods. George Lucas took a hit for the same lapse with Jar-Jar Binks in “The Phantom Menace.” Also, an extended scene where a distraught Ken Jeong, in a men’s room stall, presents LaBeouf with evidence that the moon landings were a cover-up for something more insidious, struck me as an attempt to say, “People think we’re gay. Aren’t you embarrassed?” Would the audience have laughed if the joke had been at the expense of a Native American, a woman, or a disabled person?
“Dark Side of the Moon” has made a kabillion dollars at the box office, but I don’t care. It’s a lousy movie replete with contradictions, cheap stereotypes, a bad script and crappy acting. I’m tired of Sam Witwicky and his unbelievable foibles.
If this is what people consider quality entertainment I am clearly out of place with the times.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.