Awe and congrats to James Erwin, who went from writing software manuals to landing screenplay contracts, based on his participation in a Reddit thread: “Could a US Marine Battalion Destroy the Entire Roman Army?”
Write like the wind, James, because we gotta see your movie. We lack a time machine, thus a definitive answer for that question. We’ve got the next best things: CGI and imagination.
Slated for a March, 2013 release is an updated (that is, set in the present day) version of the 1976 classic Carrie, which was adapted from Stephen King’s first novel.
Chloë Grace Moretz (Dark Shadows, Kick Ass) reprises Sissy Spacek’s Oscar-nominated role as the tortured teen who makes prom so memorable. Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) will direct.
Film adaptations of King’s work have always been hit-or-miss (see: Maximum Overdrive. Or rather, don’t). Carrie, however, remains a classic. One frets over just how bad a remake might be.
On the other hand, a modern retelling is an intriguing proposition. How much worse will Carrie’s peer-generated torment be in the age of Facebook and cyber-bullying? How does Carrie’s horrible mom (Julieanne Moore) manage to keep a millenial child sheltered, ignorant and repressed? Thirty-six years on, and the passage of time between the original Carrie and the remake is a potential fascinating subplot in of itself.
I guess we’ll see next year. As a die-hard Stephen King fan I am hoping for the best and prepared for the worst. With the adaption of his Dark Tower series perennially delayed, this is the one upon which we pin all our hopes, at least through 2013. But since King’s productivity shows no sign of slowing, neither probably will the adaptations thereof. So more, as they say, is undoubtedly to come.
Now available through Booklocker.com: Voracious by yours truly (distribution will be picked up within mere days by Amazon, Barnes&Noble and all your favorite book-hawkers; ebook version dropping within a week).
“Patrick Worden delivers a unique story, horrifying monsters, characters with depth, and a dark prose style that will have you checking for monsters before the lights go out. Dripping with tension and loaded with chills, Voracious will both satisfy you and leave you hungering for more” — Carl Hose, author of Blood Legacy
Be sure to check out TheyAreVoracious.com for teasers, excerpts and news. Drop back by often, as new content is added frequently.
And stay tuned for your chance to win an autographed copy (first edition) of Voracious plus more bonus swag!
We’ve lost one of the founding members of the Beastie Boys; MCA is dead, reportedly of cancer, at the tragically young age of 47. He leaves behind a wife, a daughter and a musical legacy that bridges styles and cultures.
I was in high school when the Beastie Boys first gained fame. And although my pursuits and interests at the time weren’t all that different from theirs (i.e., I was engaged in a daily fight for my right to party), I didn’t much care for the Beasties. I didn’t much care for rap, and wasn’t much interested in what they were rapping about.
But then a funny thing happened: me and the Beasties grew up. We matured together. They became socially active right about the same time I did, championing causes that were (and are) important to me. My respect for them grew by bounds as they demonstrated courage and commitment for the sake of social change.
And then there was the music. It changed too; matured, broadened, got deeper. Got better. The Beastie Boys went from being, in my mind at least, a novelty (read: white) rap act, to an enormously talented trio of songwriters, musicians and performers. In 2012 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Very much deservedly so, in my humble opinion.
Here, for what they’re worth, are our heartfelt condolences to Adam Yauch’s family, and to his lifelong best friends: Mike D. and Ad-Rock. Thanks for sharing him with us.
Veering uncomfortably close to the realm of self-promotion, I present to you the Spring, 2012 edition of The Red Penny Papers. RPP is the place to go for amazing speculative fiction, presented for your convenience in HTML and e-book formats.
True, I’m a little invested. The cover story, “The Black Hole,” is mine. You’ll enjoy it if you like sepia-hued, steampunk-flavored adventure, wherein the finest minds of Victoria’s empire must fight to stop a magic spell from devouring the world. And all my thanks (and awe) to artist S.A. van Muijden for translating my scribbles into the breathtaking cover art seen above.
But as I say to the mirror each morning, It’s Not All About Me. This issue, like every RPP, is chock full of damned good reading; you’ll do yourself a solid by reading it all. Also, read anything/everything you can get your hands on by the incomparable K.V. Taylor, RPP editor and chief manuscript massuese.
Thanks again to K.V., S.A. (omg!) and all RPP writers, wranglers and staff. And thank you, dear reader, for not only putting up with my gushing but also for clicking all those links so you can see exactly what I’m gushing about.
One thing about the craft of writing that has undeniably changed down through its history, is its actual methodology. It’s become way, way easier.
And it would be way way easy to belabor that point with a thousand and one ready and valid examples. Instead, just this: Shakespeare and Cicero and the pictogram-cavepainter all had far different tasks, compared to today’s scribe, in how they researched and delivered their content. They probably quite literally had skin in the game.
Skipping ahead to my personal perspective. I’ve completed a few manuscripts in a way not terribly removed from Shakespeare’s: longhand with an inkpen. After that, dozens and dozens more manuscripts banged out on a no-doubt Shakespeare’s-mind-blowing gizmo, a portable manual typewriter.
A sleek electric came next, with unbelievable bells and whistles, even a correction function that could white-out typos before your astonished eyes. That one, which Shakespeare couldn’t conceivably imagine, was a gift from good longtime pal Mark Smith.
That was my penultimate leap toward writing-Phase Next. The ultimate was and is digital word processing.
I like to think I could talk writing with Shakespeare and Cicero, maybe even Ugg. I like to think could find some kind of common ground. But try as I might, I don’t think I’d ever manage to make graspable to them any inkling of the concept, much less the impact and benefits, of digital word processing.
And in a non-unrelated development, hearty congrats to the aforementioned M.H. Smith on the publication of his first novel, Remember The Time.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution roiled mainland China from 1966 to 1976. Inspired, perhaps even triggered, by Chairman Mao, it was a violent reaction to perceived capitalist, counter-revolutionary forces infiltrating governmental and cultural institutions.
Its costs were incalculable. Millions of people were tortured, imprisoned and killed. Untold treasures, most from the Imperial age, were looted or destroyed. Economic expansion, even agricultural self-sufficiency, was all but halted for a generation. It can be argued that it was the normalization of relations with the West (leading to contemporary China’s status as an economic superpower), that finally began to heal the Cultural Revolution’s wounds.
This history is instructive, perhaps cautionary, because China stands today on the brink of another reactionary convulsion. Only time will tell if it’s as momentous and ruinous as Mao’s great class struggle.
Its impetus is playing out, even now, in Western media as well as Chinese state television. It’s the ongoing downfall of Bo Xilai, former mayor of Chongqing and, at one time, a rising star of the communist party.
The scandal reads like cheap fiction in its tawdriness and improbability. It began to unravel on February 6, when Bo’s deputy mayor and chief of police, Wang Lijun, sought asylum at Chongqing’s U.S. consulate. As hundreds of Chinese troops began surrounding the consulate, Wang spun a tale for the incredulous Americans: breathtaking corruption, hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes, and the murder of a British citizen, Neil Heywood.
Within 24 hours the consular officials rejected Wang’s petition, citing the impossibility of spiriting him out of the country. He was turned over to the Chinese and promptly disappeared into a prison system controlled by Bo.
The damage was done, however, and the story was out. Within weeks Bo Xilai was suspended from all party and governmental positions. Shortly thereafter his wife, Gu Kailai, was arrested and formally charged with poisoning Heywood.
Chinese authorities promise full accountability, and the story thus far is attracting extraordinary coverage in the state-controlled news media. It’s this uncharacteristic openness, compounded by a widespread revulsion at the illicit wealth accumulated by Bo and his family, that might yet lead to something like a second Cultural Revolution.
The targets will likely be the so-called Red Aristocracy: party apparatchiks who have parlayed position into riches. They have taken to heart former premier Deng Xiaoping‘s era-defining slogan: “To be rich is glorious.” They prove, once and for all, that this is not their fathers’ communist party.
Consider the “princeling” Bo Guagua, son of Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai. His life of excess was legendary even before his parents’ scandal broke. His father, in better times, once attempted to deflect criticism by scornfully relaying some of the charges against him, which he called preposterous: “They say my son goes to Oxford and drives a Ferrari.” Well, no. By that time Bo Guagua had transferred from Oxford to Harvard. And he drives a Porsche.
In a nominally classless society, the privileges of the Red Aristocracy must surely rankle. The question is, how much do they rankle, and what’s to be done about it?
The original Cultural Revolution was implemented, and its worst atrocities committed, by the Red Guard, a Maoist youth movement. Today’s Chinese youth are far different; much more likely to agitate for progressive reform than for communist orthodoxy. They are more educated, more worldly, and much more interested in China’s future on the international stage.
Still, they must be as susceptible as anyone to class jealousy and to the glaring inequalities that pervades their society. And their society’s leaders must surely know this.
The Bo backlash is coming, of that there can be no doubt. Whether it comes as bloodshed or meaningful reform, remains to be seen.
Clearly not a good week for rock-n-roll.
Today we’re bidding farewell to Levon Helm. His band was The Band. Choosing a name like that means you put the music first, and just maybe you expect to claim a place in music history. Both are true here. And Levon’s place in The Band? Drummer and vocalist; not an easy bit of multi-tasking, even if he made it look that way.
But man, that voice. I spoke to a couple people today who said they didn’t recognize the name Levon Helm. I simply played the clip below and watched the light of recognition in their eyes. Before the song was done they were agreeing that no one else sounded quite like Levon Helm, and no one ever will.
Thanks for the music, Levon. The waltz at long last is truly over, but what a waltz it was.
He’s been around so long, and has been so steeped in our media and pop culture (see: rock-and-roll, game shows, restaurants, etc.) that it’s difficult to say what, exactly, Dick Clark’s passing means.
So for now let’s leave it at this: New Year’s Eve will never be the same. We might as well just cancel it altogether.
Thank’s Dick. You were a class act.
Short of a time machine, there’s just no way to authenticate some works of art. The above painting, Salvator Mundi or Savior of the World, is widely believed to have been painted by Leonardo DaVinci in the late 1490s or early 1500s. “Widely believed” is about as close as we’ll ever come to knowing for sure.
Why? It’s not just the lack of signature–signatures are in fact one of the least dependable methods of authentication (the practice of signing art began only about a century before DaVinci; forgers began copying signatures almost immediately). Salvator Mundi was unsigned, heavily overpainted, and sloppily conserved numerous times over the centuries. It languished in several museums and private collections (including that of to-be-beheaded King Charlies I of England) and was lost several times. It was only after a painstaking cleaning in 2009 that the underlying paint was revealed in its entirety. After more than a year of scholarly examination and debate, Salvator Mundi was identified, as definitively as possible, as a DaVinci original.
Another DaVinci painting, now recognized as one of his most iconic, underwent similar rediscovery in the last century. The Lady with an Ermine, a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (mistress of the Duke of Milan), had long been described as a celebrated part of DaVinci’s catalog, and one of only four female portraits he’s known to have completed. It was “lost” sometime before 1877, and was finally rediscovered in 1945 among a Nazi hoard. Subsequent authentication took years – despite Leonardo’s name being etched in the upper-left corner. Lady with an Ermine is now almost universally accepted as DaVinci’s work, although the signature is nearly certain to have been added much later by another hand.
So it goes with art. When it comes to the most culturally significant masters, we’ll always have forged signatures and questionable provenance. But just as Salvator Mundi shows, we’ll also have occasional new additions to collections we’d assumed complete. Even if we can never be one hundred percent sure of authenticity, it’s still enough to keep the art world alive and exciting.
