Video didn’t kill the radio star
Photo courtesy of Feddacheenee via Creative Commons
Photo courtesy of Feddacheenee via Creative Commons.
—
You are … a radio star. …
You are … a radio star. …
Video killed the radio star.
– The Buggles, “Video Killed the Radio Star,” 1979
Stealing a quick glance at the AM dial on my car radio and then returning my eyes to the road in front of me. Traffic is light this night, with only a handful of taillights slipping past me on Beal Parkway. My tiny Pontiac, 2 years old but new to me, is riding roughly on worn-out tires. In the days ahead comes a visit to the discount tire place down on 98 next to the Dairy Queen.
My whole life lies in front of me.
Years later I will hear Billy Corgan sing “1979” and know he is singing about this night, because it is October 1979 and I have owned this car only two days after landing my first full-time job four months ago and suddenly everything is changing, in every way. I have transportation, a way to escape the claustrophobia of my former life. I have money – money enough to beef up my savings, to buy a movie ticket and pay for a car. I am young and strong and the world is singing to me about everything, not just dead radio stars. I have love to look forward to. I have the astonishment of discovery, the new world that seems to be shaping itself before my eyes, represented by this amazing music I am hearing on the radio – The Knack, Blondie, New England on the FM dial – and I can’t put it all to words but I know something wonderful is happening to me.
I am changing. I can see farther now. My heart is swelling with excitement.
The future. Infinite possibilities.
Cool air rushes into the car. Fall is here and winter is coming. But who cares – I have a car! I can go places. I can do things. The world is limned with possibilities.
The music – thank God for the music. After the long, hot summer of the ’70s, when the stuff coming out of the radio became awful with hard rock, folk, and the horrible disco that lasted only a few years (thank God), a transformation had begun. “My Sharona” and “Heart of Glass” coincided with my emancipation from childhood. They had become my anthems.
So I drive on Beal with only a few other cars and I dream and I know where I am going because I have wanted to go there and now I can – the place where everything I care about is focused. Everything ahead of me, so grand and inexplicable that the fact it cannot be described makes it all the more wonderful. I made it, sort of, and now it is OK, and I think about that, too, when I hear “Video Killed the Radio Star.”
The song reminds me so much of that time, and those are happy memories for me – the glorious, delirious freedom when I didn’t own a damn thing but a crappy Pontiac Astre and the clothes I had just bought from Gayfer’s. I had money but I was always broke. My friends were always broke, and it was a glorious day when Steve’s parents gave him an American Express card and we were able to buy pitchers of beer and a couple of dozen raw oysters at that tired old beach bar next to the Ramada on Okaloosa Island on a gray winter’s afternoon, when the only thing keeping us warm was the candle in the glass holder wrapped in fake fishnet.
Video killed the radio star. When I saw the computer at work, the one with all the wire stories, the news of the entire world, I told myself that if people had one of these things in their homes they’d never buy another newspaper.
And guess what?
Here I am, now, today. Close to the age when Medicare and Social Security become real things to plan on for me, not something I might have heard about on a talk show or read in a magazine story. The music has faded, which suits me because I hate what passes for music these days. I have lots more money than I did in those days but I am still always broke. My car is much nicer than my Pontiac, which I called Blue Thunder. In fact, I have not even bothered to name this latest thing, which could mean I have gotten lazy in my old age or maybe I have just lost the wonder.
Not sure about that. Not sure at all. I still hear echoes of the magic from all those lifetimes ago. I still feel a slight quickening of the heart when certain dreams float to the surface of my thoughts.
It never occurred to me that I am the radio star.
The Buggles were wrong. Video didn’t kill the radio star. He’s still there, waiting for the right time to put on that sparkly jacket and stand in front of the microphone. Or maybe he will appear on a thoughtful night drive on some lonely road.
So tonight, as I came across “Video Killed the Radio Star” and my life flashed before me, I felt inspired to write this about a night long ago, in a beat up old car, when anything seemed possible and the world was filled with wonder.
And you know what?
I’m still the radio star.
—
Author’s note: Contact me at [email protected]. To read more of my opinion and humor pieces, visit delstonejr.com . I also write fiction – horror, science fiction and contemporary fantasy. If you’re a fan of such genres please check out my Amazon author’s page. Print and e-books are both available, and remember: You don’t need a Kindle device to read a Kindle e-book. Simply download the free Kindle app for your smart phone or tablet.
Video
Image courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment.
“Crawl” starring Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper, Morfydd Clark. Directed by Alexandre Aja. 127 minutes. R rated.
Mladen’ take
The film “Crawl” is a model of efficiency and efficacy. In the first, oh, 10 minutes, the audience is introduced to the fact that our heroine Haley is a good swimmer who wants to be gooder; that there’s tension in her family; that a powerful hurricane changed course unexpectedly and is heading for South-ish Florida; that first responders will be unable to help if you’re stranded; that Dad isn’t answering calls or texts; and that the family’s dog faces peril. Hell, even the film’s title is efficient because much of the action takes place in a “Crawl” space beneath a home “Crawl”ing with particularly vicious alligators.
“Crawl” has been graded by IMDB viewers as a mediocre horror movie. They’re wrong. This film is an A-, though it misfires here and there. For example, the first couple of gators to attack Dad and Haley hiss, which is OK, and grumble‑moan like they have larynxes. During courtship, bull gators do generate low-frequency sonic vibrations through the water to show-off their manliness to breed and designate territory. But, in “Crawl”, the gator sonics happen in a largely dry, for the moment, “Crawl” space when, I imagine, the gators were thinking about something other than mating. Don’t misunderstand. The gator grumble‑moans were nothing like the shark in “JAWS IV” (or was that “V”?), breaching and then roaring. Still, making the gators make intimidating noise to add menace to the movie was a tad contrived. Also, the film’s depicted family strife is unneeded and the occasional pep talk from Dad for his daughter Haley’s benefit when her tenacity, spirit, resourcefulness, guts, or hope flag amid heavy rainfall, a flooding house, and death‑by‑gator of a childhood friend languorous. And, yes, there’s the questionable decision to leave the house after Haley and Dad finally escape from the reptile‑infested “Crawl” space to reach a boat by wading a couple of hundred feet through murky, hip-high water.
The boat, by the way, was parked at an inundated gas station and convenience store. It was to be used as the escape vehicle by three people who wanted to steal the store’s ATM. Can you guess what happens to the robbers? The fate of the trio is an example of the many times that “Crawl” excels as creature feature horror.
Del will complain about the jump-out-of-your-seat moments in this movie, but I loved the hell out of them. The gator busting through a staircase. The lightning bolt that illuminates a big‑ass meat eater, jaw agape, behind Haley. And, there’s suspense. Lots and lots of suspense. Reaching from a somewhat safe perch across flood water strewn with floating debris that obstructs your view to get your dead friend’s Glock – he was a sheriff’s deputy – for protection. The dog swimming through a long, darkened hallway to reach Dad. All delightful.
“Crawl” also provides a solid dose of gore. Water turning red as gators bite and thrash their human prey. A death roll. A gator gripping Dad near the elbow, snapping his arm in half and then tearing it off. Floating corpses. Wait to you see how Haley dispatches a gator that has taken hold of her. Dad, too, before losing his arm later in the movie, whacks a gator after trapping it in a clever way.
Sit back, if you can, and enjoy “Crawl”. It’s a masterful little film with likeable characters facing cold‑blooded, almost plausible, threats.
Del’s take
“Crawl” is a two-hour and seven-minute wet T-shirt contest, which explains why Mladen likes it so much.
Me? I can take it or leave it. I have nothing against standard-issue potboilers, even if they’re shameless cash grabs, in this case by the studio and a slumming Barry Pepper, who usually chooses more artistically meritorious projects. But schlock is like Hooters chicken wings – to enjoy them one must be in the mood for them, assuming one can focus on the wings and not the breasts. Maybe I wasn’t in the mood for a serving of grease delivered by a perky coed.
As Mladen explained, the protagonist, Haley, travels two hours south of Gainesville to look for her dad as a cat five hurricane approaches. Dad isn’t answering his phone and Haley’s sister up north fears the worst. Haley and Dad are especially close; she’s a college swimmer and he was her coach throughout her youth. But now she’s having doubts after losing a relay, and somehow that means Dad is a monster, or something like that. You know … something conflicty.
As she treks to the AWOL Dad’s seaside abode she passes a flooded alligator farm. These are the Special Super Intelligent Mind-Reading Alligators from Mars or something based on what happens later in the movie. She finds Dad in the crawl space beneath his house, clawed to damn near bloody ruin by … well, OK. I should let you watch the movie to find out, but, Psssttt! It crawls.
What follows is a string of predictable pitfalls, emotional ups and downs and cliché after soggy, growly cliché. I will give “Crawl” credit – in most of these movies the protagonist is a crack shot who always dodges the falling asteroid and ambles into the sunset with the girl – or boy – slung over his or her shoulder. In “Crawl,” no such immunity is granted, and since it’s a father and daughter there will be no ambling into the sunset. Well, maybe an AARP lecture or two.
No, Mladen, I didn’t object to the jump scares. What I did object to was the stupidity – like helicopters flying in a cat five hurricane. Like people strolling the flooded streets in a cat five hurricane. Like a one-armed guy able to bludgeon his way through a roof with his bare hand.
If you go into “Crawl” with sufficiently low expectations you’ll enjoy it, because it’s a decently entertaining movie with not bad special effects. But that’s all we’re talking here – entertainment. Not art.
I give it between a B- and a C+. Make it a B- because the hurricane actually looked somewhat realistic (although heads up, moviemakers: We just had a cat five here in the Panhandle and there’s tons of footage on YouTube if you’d care to educate yourself about what a storm like that looks like).
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Florida Memory.
This is the Fourth of July I remember.
It is the sepia-toned America of my youth – large cars with tailfins, puffy thunderstorms over Crestview and foil peeled off a Salisbury steak TV dinner. Television stations start their morning broadcast with a noisy rendition of the national anthem.
It is sidewalks and bicycles with fenders and clown-like horns with big, rubbery bulbs. Mom throws us out of the house in the morning and tells us to go play, so we wander the neighborhood, looking for our friends, drinking out of outdoor spigots when we get thirsty and working on our sunburns that will be sponged with vinegar that night.
It’s riding our bicycles into the billowing white cloud behind the mosquito sprayer and peeking through the front window at a green TV screen, because the next-door neighbor is the only person on our street with a color TV and we think it’s amazing.
Or standing on the weedy shores of Cinco Bayou at the foot of Cinco Bridge as water skiers jump over ramps and carry beautiful girls on their shoulders, and if you wait until dusk some guys of questionable sobriety will show up in a boat and launch fireworks they brought back from Alabama.
It’s beauty contests on the beach and cooking burgers on the nasty grills at Wayside Park on the island and marveling over the giant shark hanging tail-first from the fishing pier with its guts spilling out while people pose for photos.
You can buy an alligator at a tourist trap for a dollar, a real alligator, and Tower Beach serves the best burgers on the planet – buns heated on the cooktop and smeared with grease, exactly the way they should be – and the PA system thunders “I can’t get no satisfaction” while girls with lacquered hair and guys with slicked-back Vitalis curls gyrate to unfathomable rhythms.
And then at night it’s standing in the driveway with a Tasco reflector and gazing at the moon or a wobbly image of Mars or pale Saturn with its strange rings. You have to smear Off cream on your arms and legs because despite the fogger that left the neighborhood smelling like a chemical factory, the mosquitoes are tougher than a little DDT and they’ll eat you alive.
This is the July Fourth I remember.
The best July Fourth ever.
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 Gravitas Ventures.
“Assimilate” Starring Joel Courtney, Calum Worthy and Andi Matichak. Directed by John Murlowski. 1 hour, 33 minutes. Not rated.
Del’s take
It was a tweet that led me to the Refinery 29 list of 130 best new movies on Netflix, and from that I made my own list because I don’t see myself watching sappy holidays flicks where the man and woman fall in love despite their political differences (The very idea bludgeons my suspension of disbelief).
That’s how I tumbled onto “Assimilate,” which shares a common trait with “Spiderman.” How?
The two are part of an endless cycle of recycling.
How many versions of “Spiderman” will Hollywood make before they finally leave it alone? Same goes for “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” the 1956 classic about the Red Scare. “Assimilate” is, what, the fourth of fifth iteration of that movie? I’ve lost count.
Far be it from me to criticize – I watched the whole damn thing. But honestly: Hollywood, do you need a new scary sci-fi horror movie idea? I’ve got several available if you can lay off the sequels and re-imaginings and revisions.
“Assimilate” takes place in a small town called Multon, Missouri, which looks pretty nice to me – neat and clean, with lots of well kept homes, sparse traffic and a lack of crime that allows you to leave your doors unlocked at night. And it’s those qualities that make Multon a living hell for Zach (Joel Courtney), Randy (Calum Worthy) and Zach’s crush, Kayla (Andi Matichak).
Zach can’t leave because his father lost the use of his legs in … well, I don’t remember the movie explaining that detail. But Zach must stay to help his mother take care of his dad. Randy can’t leave because he’s a loser. Kayla IS leaving and the threat of her absence might prompt Zach into revealing his decade-long crush on her … but the monsters upend that timetable.
Zach and Randy are passing the summer making a vlog about how boring their town is, which they somehow expect people to watch. The video from their cameras provides footage throughout the movie but we’re not talking found-footage; “Assimilate” is mostly live action, thank God.
Strange things begin to happen in Multon as (a) weird little bugs appear and (b) even stranger, floating spore-like organisms take to the Missouri skies, except only WE can see them. That struck me as odd – why two possible catalysts for the invasion we know is already taking place?
People begin taking on the flat affect of a telemarketer (unless it’s Candi, who calls me at least once a month to discuss how I could improve my credit score) and soon Zach and Randy are asking themselves who can be trusted, especially after Mrs. Henderson evolves from horny sex addict to prudish schoolmarm in a single evening. Kayla joins their ranks after her own father becomes robotic and unearthly.
What follows is the usual “Body Snatchers” process whereby the protagonist(s) try to make others aware of the danger and when that doesn’t work, escape themselves.
I mean, what can I say? It wasn’t awful and I don’t have many gripes – the dual-threat thing, yes. That was unnecessary. Oh, and they kept saying they would rescue Kayla’s little brother from the pod people but leaving him with the pod people. The ending departed from most, but not all of the earlier versions, if that’s a virtue.
Other than that, “Assimilate” was nothing more than a 2019 refresh of a 50-something-year-old classic featuring young actors who might be recognizable to the current generation (Courtney starred in the JJ Abrams movie “Super 8” and Worthy was the goofy sidekick in Disney’s “Austin & Alley”). It broke no new ground, but neither did it salt the earth of its predecessors.
I watched it on Netflix and didn’t hate it, hence a C+ grade.
Stone is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Lionsgate Home Entertainment.
“John Wick Chapter 3 – Parabellum” Starring Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, and Asia Kate Dillion. Directed by Chad Stahelski. 130 minutes. Rated R.
Mladen’s take
John Wick and I are a lot alike, if the essence of freshly released film, “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum,” is the yardstick. John’s life and work in “Wick 3” are hampered by all sorts of rules, procedures, constraints and layers of management. I face those same obstacles daily.
Of course, there’s a difference between being a celebrity assassin in a wildly popular movie franchise and my often frustrating effort to keep health insurance for my family, a roof over our heads, and our cars running. I am leashed to others. Wick is not, unless he chooses to be. What the director chose for John in “Wick 3” was to leash him to the memory of his dead wife, which, thankfully, leads from one glorious scene of hyperviolence to another. But, that choice also produced a couple of chinks in the armor of the formidably entertaining Wick saga.
“Wick 3” is merely a good movie and the weakest in the franchise because of two problems, one with the story and the other with an important character.
“Wick 3” should’ve been more like its two predecessors, an intimate tale of personal redemption or, at least, a movie with a good excuse for all those heads getting blown apart and dogs attacking men’s groins. In Wick 1 we see John addressing very personal slights – a dead puppy and a stolen muscle car. I can sympathize with both. In Wick 2 he’s a hesitant, duty-bound killer honoring a marker. In those movies, John wanted out of the assassin racket. In “Wick 3,” he wants back in to stay alive to remember his wife, but changes his mind later. That wishy washiness is unbecoming of the planet’s most accomplished hitman. In Wicks 1 and 2 we see that it’s the world’s fault for keeping John a servant of the High Table, the gang of 12 thugs running Earth’s underworld. Bad people don’t leave John alone, so he has to defend himself, his property and his memories to impose order. Because of his do-rightness he, himself, is rendered ex communicado persona non grata for whacking a mob boss inside a hotel. In Wick 3, the HOTEL is punished by being “deconsecrated.”
On top of blacklisting a hotel, “Wick 3” offers other tidbits of bureaucratic and legalistic nonsense such as the notion of “fealty” to the High Table and the High Table’s dispatch of an “adjudicator” to settle its score with John and anyone who has helped him. “Wick 3” begins to meander, including a dip into mysticism, as a result. Of all the characters flowing through “Wick 3,” the adjudicator is the most frustrating. She is supposed to be a prim and proper bad ass representing the High Table’s interest, which is to keep everyone in line to make sure crime and profit go uninterrupted by rule breakers such as John. Instead, the adjudicator is a meek, stiff, uncharismatic, unintentionally droll and unconvincing enabler of the High Table’s will. Yes, the adjudicator’s flimsiness is somewhat offset by the strong female character, Sofia, in “Wick 3,” but damage to the story had already occurred by the time she’s introduced. The High Table and the adjudicator, instead of seeming to be all powerful, just seemed to be on their way toward stepping into John’s line of fire which, I suspect, will be the plot of “Wick 4.”
“Parabellum” is a dead language’s phrase for “prepare for war.” When you go see “Wick 3,” prepare to be disappointed. “Wick 3” lacks the emotional grit and gristle of Wicks 1 and 2. “Wick 3’s” bad girl is particularly unsatisfying and the film’s High Table assassin, campy. The weak motivation for “Wick 3’s” hyperviolence renders it something approaching gratuitous. I hope “Wick 4” corrects that weakness or Wick world-building will go the way of Star Wars. “Wick 3” gets a B from me. See it in a theater with vibrant projection and good sound.
Del’s take
Once upon a time there was a little movie about an undercover cop who infiltrated a car theft ring to bust the ringleader. That little movie, “The Fast and the Furious,” made the late Paul Walker a star and provided Vin Diesel with a hit on his resume.
So they made a sequel.
Then another.
Then another, where they rebooted the series.
Then another.
And another, ad finitum.
Each of those sequels required more action, bigger plots and higher stakes than its predecessor, until now Lamborghinis are being chased by nuclear submarines and Ferraris tossed from cargo planes as the “Fast and Furious” crew saves the world from (name your favorite apocalyptic nemesis).
In other words, silly.
Unfortunately that’s the trajectory being followed by the John Wick saga. What started as a personal and, dare I say, charming story of revenge by a man whose puppy got shot and his car stolen, is slowly evolving into something I no longer recognize – a bastard child of James Bond and “The Matrix.”
I don’t like it. I want the old John Wick.
That’s not to say “Parabellum” is a bad movie. It’s just not what I expected, and as Mladen pointed out, it deviated in ways I don’t think will work.
(FYI: Mladen is nothing like John Wick. I’ve never seen him chop off a person’s head with a samurai sword and he doesn’t even like dogs.)
The plot careens along as Mladen described it. I’ll further explain it picks up where the second movie left off, with Wick and his pit bull running for their lives after the ruling elite of the assassins’ guild, something called the High Table, excommunicates him and puts a price on his head. Every other phone on the street is ringing with the news that Wick’s bounty stands at a cool $14 million, which makes you wonder how all those killers manage to operate without putting each other in the unemployment line. There are THAT many. Think about it next time you’re in a crowded grocery store.
The methods of death are inventive and graphic. If I had to choose a favorite it would be Wick slapping a horse on the ass and the horse kicking an assassin into a wall, dispatching him to that great Died of a Horse Kicking paddock in the sky.
Mladen described the action as hyperviolent and he’s not exaggerating. Apart from a few slogs through muddy pacing in the second act, the movie is almost nonstop violence with people getting shot, chopped, sliced, diced, kicked, burned, or having their genitalia ripped out by vicious German Shepherds.
It was cool to see Keanu Reeves on the screen once again with Laurence Fishburne, and it was disappointing that Halle Berry’s role was so small. For Christ’s sake, she’s an Oscar winner. Put her to work.
Maybe she could have done a better job than Asia Kate Dillion as the Adjudicator, who came across as Mladen described: devoid of menace. And Keanu? Well, what can I say? Keanu was Keanu. He’s never had a lot of dialogue in these movies and “Wick 3” is no exception.
My big gripe is with the direction the movie took, with its emphasis on the worldwide mystery cult of assassins and all their rules, talismans and functionaries. It was like watching a tiger team of GS-12s stumble upon a cache of Uzis. It carries the Wick saga farther afield from its humble origins, from a man with a grudge who has payback on his mind into some kind of mystical figure fate has anointed with special powers. Maybe they should change his name to Neo Wick.
The action is exquisitely choreographed and the special effects spot on, but beware: “Wick 3” is a bloodbath, and it’s probably not what you were expecting after having watched the previous iterations.
There’s a sequel coming and I’ll likely see it. But it may be the last time I bump into John Wick in a movie theater. I like my action movies smart, not silly.
I give it a B.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Lionsgate.
“Fast Color” Starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Christopher Denham, Lorraine Toussaint and Sanniya Sidney. Directed by Julia Hart. 100 minutes. Rated PG-13. Hulu.
Del’s take
“Fast Color” is pitched as a superhero movie but it is unlike any superhero movie you’ve ever seen, and I would venture to say it is not a superhero movie at all but a story about three women battling forces, both seen and not, that isolate them from the world but bind them as a family.
It is also one of those quiet, semi-science fiction dramas that slip into and out of the stream of pop entertainment garbage so noiselessly that it will not be noticed unless somebody draws attention to it.
As I watched “Fast Color” I thought of Zenna Henderson’s series of books about The People, immigrant aliens who arrive at Earth after their own world is destroyed. I also thought of the Tim Robbins movie “Code 46,” which also came and went without much fanfare but was a fine, overlooked gem of a film.
In “Fast Color,” Ruth (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is a mother on the run, pursued by Bill (Christopher Denham), a government scientist eager to exploit Ruth’s psychokinetic abilities to cause earthquakes during the seizures that wrack her body. Ruth flees to her mother Bo’s (Lorraine Toussaint) home where Ruth’s daughter Lila (Sanniya Sidney) lives. Bo is raising Lila because Ruth is broken, a poetic way of saying she’s been struggling with substance addiction and other issues. Bo and Lila also have powers – they can take things apart and put them back together. But something that’s broken? It can’t be fixed – not by their telekinetic powers, at any rate.
That theme of brokenness operates throughout “Fast Color” – in Ruth by her moral flaws, Bo by her inability to fix Ruth and even Lila for her life of concealment, something every gay man and woman on the face of the Earth already understands. The government is broken, usually the case in movies where it is made the antagonist, and even the Earth is broken with climate change rendering water a commodity so precious America’s standard of living has descended to something that resembles the Third World.
The movie also tells us that while magic cannot fix things already broken, love may find a way. As the story winds toward its resolution we see Ruth, Bo and Lila seeking their own paths to redemption, with nary a caped crusader, death ray or dollop of the-fate-of-the-universe-lies-in-their-hands bullshit thrown in for dramatic tension.
The movie unfolds at a languid pace, which I felt was sometimes too slow, and reveals its secrets along the way requiring a patient audience. Its scope is limited and simultaneously expansive as it, like “Nomadland,” is set in the parched Southwest with its infinite horizons and empty landscapes.
The best performance of the film – and many of them are good – was by Toussaint as the suffering mother/grandmother Bo. She brought a regal dignity to the role and succeeded in avoiding the clichés and tropes of the put-upon matriarch who would suffer to spare her children.
I did not like the way Hart chose to end the film as it tended to confirm some of those clichés repudiated by everything that led up to the climax – in fact, the climax seemed more of an anticlimax and could have been reworked to provide more subtextual pop.
Still, “Fast Color” will entertain for its 100 minutes and it’s a good antidote to a lot of the nonsense that passes for science fiction in cinema these days.
I would grade it at a B+.
Mladen’s take
I enjoyed “Fast Color,” though it is incorrectly billed, as Del correctly noted.
That the streaming service, producers, studio, whoever or whatever, tried to sucker me with the claim the film is a science fiction adventure doesn’t bother me too much. “Fast Color” is a good, girl relationships movie with occasional doses of a superpower on exhibit. The superpower, by the way, comes in two flavors: controllable by its practitioner or beyond control.
The three women in the film have brains with the capability to deconstruct and reconstruct objects. When our heroines explode objects into millions of sand grain pieces and return those grains to their original uniform form, the process comes with bright, streaking stripes of color.
Best as I can tell, our heroines use the word “color” in their conversations as code for their power. “She sees colors.” “I can’t see colors.” “Does anyone else beside us three see colors?”
Bo, Ruth, and Lila have to talk carefully because they recognize that there are a whole bunch of people on the rain-starved Earth of the future who would try to weaponize their telekinesis, rather than do good with it.
Also, best as I can tell, our heroines are mortal. So, they could be snubbed by the Government if deemed a threat or some Trump-loving nationalistic fascist racist patriot citing God as his source of inspiration and authorization to cancel from the world the un-godly as he defines them.
Personally, though, had I fast color, I wouldn’t be cowering from the billions of stupid people on this planet. I’d discern ways to let those reds, greens, and blues rip to achieve world peace while I worked toward enabling the power to allow me to live forever so that I could travel to edge of the universe.
I can’t recall the soundtrack for “Fast Color,” which is good and bad. Bad in the sense that the score, at least to me, failed to add to the film. Good in that the music didn’t distract the plot. I did enjoy the song about a new day coming about halfway through the film.
“Fast Color” has a pleasantly subdued dystopian feel. The world is dry as in “Mad Max: Fury Road,” but there’s no hyperviolence among warring tribes. In fact, there’s very little violence in “Fast Color.” The director conveys desperation and dearth by showing poor pickins’ on store shelves. More effective is the unceasing reminder that the water well is going dry. Water is ladled into and out of plastic containers marked with red for maximum volume, usually about half of the actual capacity of a jug. There must be no spillage. Check into a motel and you pay for the room and the water. Faucets are useless, bathing wasteful.
However, the reason I give “Fast Color” a B+ like Del is this: Though essentially a girl movie, there’s almost no romance. The lack of romance allows me to forgive the studio for lying about the film’s true genre.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
All day long the weather radar showed angry swaths of red marching toward us, an evil horde of lightning, thunder and terror bent on reducing us to protoplasmic mulch.
I tried to ignore the shrieked warnings – “He’s coming to get you, Barbara” – but eventually it became impossible to resist and even I looked.
Tornadoes. Thunderstorms. Hurricane-force winds.
So I told Mom I’d be over that night in case her power went out. At that point I was really, really, really wishing she’d bought that Generac but what to do? In due time I suppose.
So at 9 I trudged to Mom’s as the Line of Death nudged Pensacola on the radar screen.
Except the Line of Death became potholed with gaps and green areas and within an hour there was no line, just a disconnected string of light rainshowers. No lightning. No thunder. No Cantore fodder at all. I told Mom I was going home, that I wanted to sleep in my bed so I wouldn’t become a zombie at work the next day.
When I got home, I made the mistake of firing up the interwebs before hitting the hay and after half an hour it became obvious the Line of Death was getting its act back together.
I stayed up until 1 a.m. hoping it would all just go away, but it didn’t. Soon the wind was roaring and the rain pummeling. I could hear a constant thumping of objects bashing against the roof. I hoped poor Mom was sleeping through all this. It’s the thunder and lightning she hates, but this would no doubt give her a gray hair or two if she knew it was happening.
I entered a fretful sleep and woke up at 3 to hear the tumult continue. It was hurricane-like. Finally at 5 a.m. it slackened.
This morning the yard is littered with dead limbs and leaves. All my hard yardwork is for naught. Mom did in fact sleep through it, but guess what: I was a total zombie at work. A slab of dead meat sitting in that chair. I bet I sleep tonight.
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 Del Stone Jr.
I visited Santa Rosa Mall the other day. It was sad.
Sears was shuttered. I almost never shopped there unless I needed a belt. Sears always had a large selection of belts for guys with beer guts like yours truly.
When we were kids we looked forward to the arrival of the Sears catalog. I would pore over the toy section, dreaming of the airplanes, slot car racers and train sets that rumbled across those pages.
No, we never used it for toilet paper. But our parents probably did.
Belk has been closed many years. They had cool shirts and those wonderful Polo towels I still use. But I hated their mirrors. I would try on a new pair of pants or shorts, look in the mirror and hate what looked back at me.
The food court is a pale shadow of its former self. A few restaurants cling to existence, but it’s nothing like it used to be.
I miss the bookstore, theater and arcade. I miss the crowds that thronged its concourses. I miss going into the music store and browsing the CDs while Thompson Twins and “Into the Groove” played from overhead speakers.
I grieve for the mall, and I can’t understand what has happened — not just to it but people, too. Why would people rather visit a strip shopping center, or shop online? It’s an absolute pain in the you-know-what to return a pair of shoes you ordered from an online store and they don’t fit.
I have written about what the mall could become — a “mall” of medical facilities and doctors, for instance. But one community in Bristol, Virginia, came up with a novel solution I know would work here.
Two developers are turning their town’s mall into a casino, hotel and convention center.
The casino is to be situated in one of the empty anchor stores while the remainder is occupied by hotel rooms, a children’s area with swimming pools, restaurants and retailers.
They expect this complex to bring in 2,000 jobs at the outset, growing to 5,000 with an average annual income of $46,000.
Think of it: Jobs, income for Mary Esther, more money for the state and a revival of a once thriving center of commerce. The state would have to change its laws, but that’s not an impossible obstacle.
Why not roll the dice on a casino?
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 Paramount Pictures.
“Instant Family” Starring Rose Byrne, Mark Wahlberg, Isabela Merced, Octavia Spencer, Tig Notaro and others. Directed by Sean Anders. 118 minutes. Rated PG-13. Amazon Prime.
Del’s take
I don’t care if it’s a gigantic, snot-nosed, scabby kneed, teen-angsty ball of schmaltz better suited to The Hallmark Channel than Amazon Prime. I loved “Instant Family” and I’d watch again – this time with two boxes of Kleenex at my side, not just one.
There, Mladen, are you satisfied? I admit it – I bawled, like a slobbery baby. Tears of joy, though I didn’t raise three kids and don’t know the other side of the parenting story, the one they never show in comedies about parenting. “Instant Family” is one of those movies that draws together many ribbons of improbability into a sparkly wrapped gift of feel-good, though the bow may be frayed and lopsided.
In “Instant Family,” Pete (Wahlberg) and Ellie (Byrne) are hard-charging Gen. Xers who have ignored the ticking of their biological clocks to flip houses – until a snotty remark by a family member sets them on the path of becoming foster parents. At a fostering meet-and-greet they encounter smart, sassy teenager Lizzy (Merced), part of a package deal with her younger brother and sister. Pete and Ellie are charmed by Lizzy and take the plunge, bringing all three kids into their home with predictable and chaotic results. Mix one part teenage rebellion with another part adolescent oversensitivity and a dollop of pre-adolescent tantrums – plus a dog the size of a brontosaurus – and you’ve got a world class test of patience and persistence for first-time parents Pete and Ellie, who rise to the challenge with something I would not call “charm” but a kind of endearing, fumbling incompetence.
“Instant Family” has several laugh-out-loud moments tinged with humor befitting an R-rated comedy. Pete’s soliloquy about “rescue kids” during the foster parent orientation meeting is off-the-scale politically incorrect … but it’s funny as hell. When Lizzy’s romantic interest sends her a dick pic, Pete and Ellie show up at Lizzy’s high school for an epically hilarious confrontation that lands everybody in jail.
All this is not to say “Instant Family” is without flaws. The humor is uneven, bouncing between old-fashioned slapstick to farce, then subtle irony. It was hard to settle on a comedic tone for the movie. As they’re considering adoption, Pete reminds Ellie that people who foster children are the kind of people who volunteer even when there’s not a holiday, and he and Ellie don’t volunteer when there IS a holiday. That’s a clever line and there are others, but they are swallowed by the incandescence of burning napkin dispensers and baseballs bonking off young foreheads. Also, Whalberg and Byrne at times try too hard for the pathos befitting a youngish couple wanting to complete their lives, so it feels forced and unnatural at times. And the persistent preaching about the fostering and adoption “system” and its woes grew wearisome. Is “Instant Family” a comedy or a recruitment film? Yes, we know lots of troubled kids could use the steadying influence of a Pete and Ellie. But to be lectured about it over and over again tested my commitment to what is supposed to be an entertainment product.
Overall, however, the charms of “Instant Family” exceed its flaws and you’ll be unable to feel anything but happy when an exhausted Pete and Ellie finally come to understand what it is they’ve been looking for.
If you’re a fan of blended-family comedies like “Parenthood,” “Yours, Mine and Ours” or even “The Brady Bunch,” I think you’ll like the harder-edged “Instant Family.”
I score the movie a solid B, edging toward B+.
I predict Mladen will remind you that I am not a parent, and he is, and because of that his interpretation is more valid than mine, to which I would reply that in a way I really am a “parent” and one of these days I will raise Mladen to at least understand the errors of his movie-watching ways.
Mladen’s take
No, Del, I am not satisfied.
And, yes, I have raised three kids, though they are my own, and in the same combination as the instant family, two girls, one boy.
And, no self-respecting paleontologist uses “brontosaurus” anymore. It’s diplodocus, though I’ll grant you apatosaurus, if you get pissy.
“Instant Family” is no better than a C+ for the simple reason that a movie that treats a family as its subject and object tends to be weak. It’s far more interesting when family foibles come to light as part of a larger story such as happened, if I recall correctly, in the 1995 “Brady Bunch” movie or the “Brady Bunch” sitcom. Recall that the BB sitcom dismissed the merged family in its title song and then the show moved on to tell a story about life, though it generally doesn’t include a maid.
The first quarter of “Instant Family” struck me as glib. That’s the other reason I give it its mediocre grade. Pete and Ellie, a childless and what the ’80s would label a yuppie couple, realize that material well-being ain’t all that satisfying or that they should share some of their fortunate condition with others or whatever. Also, I assume, Ellie’s biologic clock is ticking.
Typical of yuppies, or what Del calls Gen-Xers, the couple pursues the least cumbersome process and most physically painless way to family-hood – fostering. They wanted to test-drive children before committing to raising them or having a brood of their own. Any good Marxist would label that exploitative and any good capitalist influenced by Milton Freidman, efficient and rational because children cost money. In either case, the children are reduced to commodities.
I don’t get it. Why do people want to watch movies about families? We’ve all lived in one, whatever its form. We all know people who’ve lived in one, regardless of its form. We’ve all talked about our families and listened to others talk about theirs. Families are boring. The real-life family adventures that come along are spread across a lifetime, rather than 118 minutes of a film. When I watch a movie, I want to experience the terror of being targeted as food by a 25-foot-long, 6,000-pound white shark or the mind-bending notion that I’m getting raised by machines that tap my body as a source of heat and electricity. I want films that offer something other than a banal interpretation of living with, and in, a family, which I, and you, have done and are doing. Shit, watching a film about families makes me feel almost like a voyeur.
Also, as Del accidentally and indirectly touched on when he asked if “Instant Family” was a comedy or recruitment film for foster parenting, you have to be careful about mixing Hollywood with staggering problems such as the tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of children enduring inadequate parents and faltering childhoods. Look, does anyone, all four or five of you reading this review, NOT know that there are a whole lot of children out there who need bona fide parents? So, watch “Instant Family” with this analogue in mind, “Never give a pet as a Christmas present.” Fostering displaced children is a serious endeavor. The urge shouldn’t be triggered by watching a movie. Nor does highlighting foster parenting in a film do anything to lessen the need, which, paradoxically, might be the effect on some people. People like those who support twice-impeached fascist moron Trump.
Though, as always, I hesitate giving Del credit for any good point that he makes, I agree that there are a few comedic moments in the film that approach sparkling, but only one bit of the movie was genuinely heart-rending. Rose and Wahlberg are very good in the movie. I suspect they contributed exactly what the scriptwriters and director wanted to make the movie feel real-ish. The three semi-orphans portrayed by Merced, Spencer, and Notaro are very good, too. But, “Instant Family” contributed nothing fresh to the ever-popular moviemaking shtick of treating families as wonderful and sucky at the same time. If you’ve seen one family movie, you’ve seen them all.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Dust.
“Prospect” Starring Sophie Thatcher, Jay Duplass, Pedro Pascal and others. Directed by Christopher Caldwell and Zeek Earl. 100 minutes. Rated R. Netflix.
Del’s take
I’m always a little nervous when Mladen chooses the movie to be reviewed. There’s no telling what he’ll come up with – some giant thing crawling out of the muck to wreak havoc on mankind, most likely. But this time Mladen resisted his misanthropic tendencies to recommend a fine little science fiction movie called “Prospect,” and it’s one I think some of you will enjoy.
The plot is simple: A down on his luck prospector and his teenage daughter travel to an alien moon where a cache of valuable gemstone-like objects awaits. Recover those objects and they’ll be able to pay off their debts and lift themselves from the wretchedness of their current existence. But along the way they encounter a couple of rogues who want to jump their claim. And there’s a ticking clock – the freighter they arrived on will depart in a few days and this will be its final trip to the alien moon with its poisonous forests.
The viewpoint character is Cee (Sophie Thatcher), who loves her father but has grown weary of his ne’er-do-well ways and yearns for the life of a normal teenager. Her father Damon (Jay Duplass) is one quick get-rich scheme away from having to chase every other quick get-rich scheme that comes along. On the moon’s surface they encounter Ezra (Pedro Pascal), who in my opinion steals the show as the murderous but ultimately human claim-jumper, he of a dubious but malleable moral code.
What fascinates me about “Prospect” is the world Caldwell and Earl created to frame their story. Gone is the usual sleek, antiseptic science fictiony setting with its focus on technology, gleaming metal and blinking telltales. The world of “Prospect” is littered with garbage, tchotchkes, an alien alphabet and people who are as trashy and disposable as everything around them – in other words, a world very much like the one we live in.
The plot itself is thin, but it works. More money and bigger talent might have cluttered the story with unnecessary and distracting plot subordinates and crappy special effects, but “Prospect” plods along with relative efficiency, focusing on a single imperative: getting off this infernal moon. I say “plod” because at times the action does seem to wallow in needless internal conflict and naval-gazing. It isn’t a plot suitable for an action movie anyway, but the directors could have slain at least a few of their little darlings and moved things along more briskly, with no harm to the pacing and tone.
Another anachronistic artifact – Ezra’s peculiar diction, a strangely stilted form of speech, almost as if he were quoting from 19th century literature – struck me as distracting and superfluous. It reminded me of the dialogue in “Bone Tomahawk” and I still can’t figure out what purpose it served in supporting the character or story. In “Bone Tomahawk” it lent a weird, offbeat humor to the proceedings, but I doubt that was the intent here. Perhaps it was intended to boost the gain of the vaguely western theme? I dunno.
I loved the look and feel of “Prospect.” It was unique and different, and I have not encountered unique and different in a long, long time. The directors eschewed many of the special effects you might expect of a sci-fi flick and that works to the movie’s advantage, enhancing its grungy look and amplifying the dirt-track poverty of its three primary characters.
I think sci-fi fans will appreciate “Prospect’s” virtues but I’m not sure a general audience will feel the same. It enjoyed a brief theatrical release but from there went to video-on-demand.
I’m giving it a B+. Caldwell and Earl did a lot of things right in making this movie and I look forward to their future efforts.
But Mladen gets only a C+ for choosing it. He should have been choosing movies like this all along and not clinkers like “Ice Spiders.”
Mladen’s take
Del, though praising “Prospect,” has failed to adore this terrific piece of sci-fi sufficiently. B+ my ass. The sleeper film is an A top to bottom, left to right, and diagonally. “Prospect” is intimate sci-fi such as “Sputnik,” “Arrival,” or “Children of Men,” albeit less provocative intellectually.
There are nothing but exemplary performances in “Prospect.” Where Del chooses Pascal portraying Ezra as the show stealer, I give Thatcher’s Cee equal billing and praise.
Ezra is cunning, but abides the thief’s code of right and wrong as a “fringeling” prospecting and “digging” for gems created by living organisms. I wonder if the beasties, which eat limbs if improperly neutralized because accessing their “aurelac” requires sticking arms into their mouths, were modeled on oysters. Like oysters produce pearls from grains of ingested sand that irritate them, the whatevers on Green seem to create fist-sized aurelac the same way. Neat idea.
Ezra is a well-spoken rogue with boundaries. He has a chance to shoot Cee during a tumultuous encounter, but doesn’t. The way he demonstrates aversion to killing a child is wonderful. Nor did he sell her to god-fearing, convoluted-thinking, brazenly hypocritical religionists for a case full of neatly packed aurelac.
Cee’s reaction, measured in facial expression, when the religionists offer Ezra gems for the “girl” is compelling and authentic. It’s as though the youngster was able to imagine herself actually getting sold like property. Thatcher as Cee demonstrates uncanny acting again and again. From getting high chewing laced gum to a subtle hint of calculation and greed when Ezra offers her the prospect of collecting a fortune in aurelac to the way she urges him to keep moving with the wave of the rail gun in her hand, Thatcher is perfectly comfortable with her role as a resourceful teenager with still girlish interests. Why hasn’t she appeared in more movies? Give me more Pascal, while we’re at it. Caldwell and Earl get your asses in gear and make another movie as excellent as “Prospect.” Feel free to use Thatcher and Pascal again. They were a charismatic de facto father and daughter in “Prospect.” I imagine they could be, say, an effective mercenary duo on Earth or beyond fighting for Mankind’s survival. Maybe giving Thatcher the role of a queen reclaiming her kingdom from an alien race known as the Grist. Pascal could be a cyborg playing both sides until he witnesses the horror of Grist assimilating people.
Directors Caldwell and Earl understand that the guts of a movie is the story as captured by a good script. Visual effects can augment, never replace, solid writing and acting. In “Prospect,” the VFX are spot-on. A worn-down hi-tech world is assumed. The sound effects – the thunk of lander latches releasing, the rumble of thrusters, materials vibrating during re-entry, the clanking of “thrower” projectiles sent into hypervelocity motion – are very good, too. A soon-to-be-discontinued commuter line runs to the aurelac moon. Why discontinued? Probably because it’s no longer profitable now that the gem rush has come and gone. Who gives a shit about flora and fauna on Green, or studying it, when there ain’t no more money to be made? As the major points out in the less good, though still worth watching “Ad Astra,” humans are world eaters. Always will be.
“Prospect” is the whole works wrapped into a precise and efficient plot. The whole works includes the score. I paid attention to the soundtrack watching the movie and I listened to the soundtrack as its own medium. It’s very, very good. Have to hand it to composer Daniel L.K. Caldwell. He chose the correct orchestra and boys choir to immerse me in the moodiness of the story.
Yup, this film will be added to my Blu-ray collection. It’s that good.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.