Let it not be said that I am unwilling to eat humble pie. Last week I wrote a post about writing what you want, especially if something seems problematic or simply not very good to you. I wasn’t saying to stop writing because it’s hard, as we all from time to time must deal with hard things, but that sometimes the problems we face are symptoms of a larger issue at the heart of the work, and in order to gain distance to find that problem we must set the work aside.
So back to fantasy aimed primarily at young adults. The stipulations of the opening door are that both the adult imprint and the young adult one are looking for epic fantasy. I had one of those moments where everything in my head screeches to a halt and I examine what I’ve been doing with the written word. It was one of those things, trying to determine if it is in fact aimed at young men or not, that I simply had to set aside. It was between me and what I need to do.
Having ironed out some of the bumps in the new beginning born of the rewrite, I now find myself staring down the next two months. But I’m okay with this. It’s a hard deadline. I work more easily with those. With everything else that crops up in the day-to-day routine of your average starving artist who excised the ‘starving’ bit by submitting to a dayjob or starting a family, it can be difficult to convince myself that carving out even a couple hours from what little leisure time I have to bang my head against a cinder block wall while wearing a cast iron pot is a good thing.
But that’s really a pile of petulant whining. I’ve wanted to be a writer for years. Why should I let relatively little things like inconveniences in scheduling and employment get in the way of that?
I can see endless green and amber fields, feel the grain between my fingers. I hear the distant ringing of the bell bringing us in for dinner. My mother insists on being as old-fashioned as possible, while not skimping on things like transportation and communication. She just keeps the Cyberlink rig in an old writing desk. I love her dearly, all the moreso for her quirks.
I can tell it’s a dream. Everything looks like I’m wearing a big piece of gauze on my head. The sounds are all a bit muffled and the sights are hazy. But it’s a good dream, so why not enjoy it? I can smell Mom’s pot roast, and there’s Jenny, dear sweet Jenny, smiling her bright smile when she sees me coming in the door. She’s helping Mom around the kitchen, learning the trade so to speak, so when we get married she knows how to cook for me.
I’m sitting down when the klaxon goes off.
It’s specifically designed to put a virtual spike in my ear to get me out of whatever dream I’m having, asleep or awake. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. One moment I’m feeling the wood of Mom’s antique dinner table under my hands, the next I’m in my bunk and red lights are flashing. I roll out and am in my uniform pants after about half a second. My boots come on next. I’m pulling on my jacket as I run into the corridor. The brass of my captain’s pins looks angry in the alert lighting. Enlisted folk are scurrying from place to place, heading for battle stations.
I don’t think there was a drill scheduled for tonight. It’s not like Commander Weston to pull one at this hour of the rotation. Something isn’t right.
I get to the command center in the heart of the ship. It’s a vaguely circular room with a couple raised diases around what we call the pool table, where Commander Weston and his XO are studying a tactical display. The helm’s in the pit on the far side of the room. I step down into the cold steel ditch and relieve the chief petty officer at the helm. The second I bring up the navigational array I see the problem.
The Argo is making her way through an asteroid field. I remember telling Weston we’d have to drop out of neg-space to get through it without damaging the ship. This far out, we all know even a stray rock the size of my fist can damage us catastrophically. That isn’t what surprises me. It’s the heat signature on the far side of the field. In space, the slightest bit of ambient energy can be as much a beacon as a flare held up in a darkened room.
Whatever it is, it’s turning towards us on an intercept course.
Weapons crews are reporting in. Point-defense laser batteries, ready. Missile tubes, ready. Main cannon loading crew, ready. I give Commander Weston a nod. I have a part to play in all of this, as well.
The Argo, moving with as much velocity as she does, isn’t really apt to stop on a dime. I need to fire maneuvering and retro thrusters very quickly if hard light and rockets start flying around.
“Line them up, Mr. Frimantle.”
Weston doesn’t have to tell me twice. I get the Argo on a course to clear the asteroids and turn her to face to oncoming heat bloom. Her main gun is a mass driver the length of the ship, and all of the aiming happens at my helm console. I think of my dream, the farm at home, my dad taking me out to show me how to line up a rifle’s sights.
I’m telling Weston we’re ready to fire when the transmission comes in.
It’s a loud, screeching thing, high-pitched chattering and scratching. Nobody can make heads or tails of it as it is. But Natasha’s on it. We brought a linguist along just in case something like this happened. Everybody back home scoffs at the idea of intelligent life out here. The eggheads know better. They’ve given us all sorts of contingencies for just about everything, from encountering alien artifacts to running low on food.
I’m not taking any chances, though. I flip up the red cover from the firing switch for the main cannon. We’re lined up. The unknown heat signature’s barreling down on us. I look over my shoulder at Natasha. She’s attractive, sure, but her dark hair always reminds me of Jenny. I wonder, for a moment, what she and my parents are doing now, then wrench myself back to the situation in front of me. I’ve been in combat before, but this is new. I know what to expect from Terran ships and their operators, not so much something no human’s ever seen before.
The visual sensors blink to life in the monitors above the pool table. The thing is spherical, unlike the Argo’s construction of rotating rings around the propulsion & weapons pillar. Spires and odd antennae sprout from all angles. It’s engines seem to be situated in grooves that divide the ship into quarters. Occasionally I see a flare of light and I wonder if it’s a weapon or an engine firing. But nothing’s blown up yet. No damage or casualty reports. The tension in the CIC’s thicker than summer haze in the fields at noon.
Natasha looks up from her console. Her big blue eyes are wide. She takes a deep breath.
{No audio this week on account of my own lycanthropic rampage.}
There was a time when movie studios didn’t mind being associated with the unusual and the macabre. For years, Universal Studios seemed rather proud of its men becoming monsters. Bela Legosi inhabited the castle and cloak of Count Dracula, Boris Karloff took a couple bolts to the neck to bring audiences the creature of Doctor Frankenstein, and Lon Cheney inspired generations of furries to come by sprouting hair in odd places as The Wolfman. Oscar-winner and character actor staple Benicio Del Toro is a huge fan of Cheney (the actor, not the Dick) and helped bring a new version of this creature feature to movie theatres in 2010. If the production behind the scenes had kept its act together, it might have gone over better.
It’s 1890, and our hero is Lawrence Talbot, an actor who spends half his time on stage and the other half looking for the hidden treasure at the bottom of a bottle of scotch. He gets word that his brother was savagely murdered near his ancestral home outside the sleepy English country hamlet called Blackmoor. Given his emotional connection to his brother and the heartfelt pleas of his would-be sister-in-law, he sets out to uncover what happened, even if that means putting up with his eccentric and possibly violently sociopathic father. During his investigation he gets jumped and bitten by a brutal and enigmatic creature. While the wound mysteriously heals, the process takes the better part of a month, and before you know it, the moon is full again againd Lawrence is growing hair in some very odd places, to say nothing of different bone configurations, more dense muscles and claws that can tear a man’s head clean from his body.
When we see the transformation take hold of our hero, it’s a decent blend of prosthetics, CGI and del Toro giving the role his all. Good sound design makes the cracking of knuckles and sprouting of teeth wince-inducing, playing into the overarching themes of horror and monstrosity. In a similar vein, while you may go into a movie about a wolfman expecting some blood, be aware that this one is full of gore, from gruesome dismemberments to the titular Wolfman chowing down on a hapless victim without the benefit of an after-dinner mint. The movie isn’t all that interested in taking prisoners or pandering to the squeamish, which is a point in its favor.
They have some good chemistry.
The other thing The Wolfman has going for it is some pretty fine casting. Del Toro is a force to be reckoned with on his own, but Sir Anthony Hopkins very nearly steals the show as Talbot’s father. Instead of going full-on Hannibal Lecter from the start, his growth into the affable madness for which he’s become famous is a slow one, the climax all the more satisfying for the build-up. Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving, as the love interest and the driven Scotland Yard inspector respectively, also slowly become more interesting as the film proceeds after somewhat placid introductions. Ms Blunt’s character in particular seems to defy the ‘damsel in distress’ thing many monster movies like to invoke, and I enjoyed seeing a woman act in a brave and determined manner without it feeling forced or contrived. It made sense, which is unfortunately more than I can say for the narrative structure of the film.
Unfortunately for the actors and special effects crew, the plot and script of the movie are kind of all over the place. It never really comes entirely off the rails in a bad way, but some story points happen too soon, some elements are a little out of place or awkwardly spliced into the flow of the story or some characters are too incidental to justify their screen time. The overall effect leaves one feeling the movie was cobbled together, but as the story isn’t incoherent, it’s more disconcerting than disappointing. I never quite felt like The Wolfman let me down, but I also felt it never truly lived up to its potential. Granted, when breathing new life into a classic you don’t necessarily want to reinvent the silver bullet. But being a troubled production with changes in directors and musicians and whatnot, it certainly could have turned out a lot worse, and when it’s firing on all cylinders it works very well indeed.
“Hello, Lawrence.”
I was immediately reminded of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola movie that did for classic vampires what this one does for classic werewolves. There as well as here, we have lurid romantic drama juxtaposed with gruesome violence and shameless bloodletting, and while The Wolfman didn’t have Dracula‘s pervasive sexuality, it also wasn’t saddled with a wooden Keanu Reeves. And come to think of it, Anthony Hopkins starred in both pictures, and a venerable character actor brought the eponymous creature to life. So if you enjoyed Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Wolfman is right up your alley. They’re both a little over the top, and both suffer from some flaws in terms of production, pacing and overall presentation, but they are both a bloody good time.
Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.
Ever wake up on the wrong side of the bed? It’s terrible. You’re bleary-eyed, groggy, sore from where your spouse has been elbowing you in the ribs all night to stop your snoring… and you’re starving. It’s that stomach-gnawing hunger you just can’t shake until you’ve devoured half the pantry. If that sounds familiar, you’ll immediately relate to the protagonist of Chuck Wendig’s debut novel Double Dead. Excepting of course that Coburn’s a bloodsucking fiend.
That’s not hyperbole. When we meet Coburn, there’s no question that he’s a monster. Vampirism has not turned him into an upper-class snob or a glittery mewling fangless stalker; Coburn the vampire’s an asshole. He knows it. He revels in it. It was what made his nights so much fun until he woke up in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. He hooks up with an RV full of humans heading to the West Coast and, being no fool, volunteers to protect them in exchange for the occasional nibble. Better than getting torn limb from limb and your brains eaten, right?
On the surface, Double Dead is deceptively simple. It’s the sort of premise fans of the horror genre and zombie fiction will find immediately appealing. Diving into it, though, we quickly find these dark waters run very deep. Sure, there are a couple characters who get picked off here and there because it’s the end of the world and everything, but many of them have enough dimension and living, breathing presence that its clear there’s more going on than a simple monster mash-up.
I can’t say it’s for everybody, though. The squeamish will want to avoid it, and be forewarned that Chuck is his usual (and in my opinion, delightfully) profane self. But chances are, being a novel about zombies with a vampire as its driving force, you know already if Double Dead is interesting to you or not. I challenge you, though, to find another zombie apocalypse yarn with a Wal*Mart cult of cannibals, wilderness fortifications manned by juggalos and the scariest thing in a pink bathrobe you’ll ever encounter.
You are not, nor will you ever be, Don Draper. Stop it.
Guys, listen. It’s time we talked.
Before there’s any misunderstandings, I must confess: I love my fedora. I’m on my second one since discovering I can look half-decent in one. My first traveled to all sorts of places on my head, across oceans and up mountains. The second part of my confession is that I’ve also worn it in entirely the wrong way.
It’s a dark hat, and I’ve worn it with light colors. I’ve put it on my head without wearing a collared shirt. Hell, I’ve even had the idiotic temerity to wear it with shorts.
I’ve done my best to curb these atrocities against good taste, and I encourage anybody reading this to do the same.
You may think that wearing a fedora makes you classy no matter what you’re wearing. This is a lie. The fedora only makes you look classy if you were in classic wear to begin with. A blazer & slacks, button-down and tie, even a long coat that’s well taken care of contributes to an overall better look provided the rest of you is put together as well. And believe it or not, under most circumstances, it’s rude to keep it on once you’re indoors.
Yeah, guys. I’m saying it. If you want to wear the damn hat, at least try to be a little conscious of what you’re topping off with it. Basic fashion sense is not rocket science.
As I said, I’ve been guilty of this before, and I’m trying to change that. I’m sick of this fine item of classic gentleman’s wear getting besmirched by ignorant douches who think slapping a fedora on top of their product-filled Cullen-wannabe hairdo while wearing cargo shorts, sandals and a t-shirt with the words “The Man” and an arrow pointing up with “The Legend” with a downward arrow underneath is cool.
It’s not cool, bro. You look like a tool.
Go with a baseball cap for your favorite sports team or other affiliated mascot. It’ll be cheaper, you’ll be easier to identify and the poor fedora will be spared one more sneer or look of disgust. Don’t let the hat suffer for your sins. It really isn’t fair. What has the hat ever done to you?
Think about it. Think of the hats. Please stop their suffering and the suffering of others. Before it’s too late.
