But I have made it this far already, and nobody seems to have noticed or cared. And that is no small success on my part.
For doing what I am about to do, I am sorry.
You are still too young to care about what I'm telling you. You're a child reading a story written by someone who may be dead and forgotten by now. I can't even be sure that you're the “Mary” that I have seen just a few dozen times in my life ... or that you will ever grow into that lovely young woman....
But I am going to tell you Merv's real name, as a warning.
In my own little bid to change the future for the better.
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Department: Films: Things That Go Clank In The Night by Lucius Shepard
Not since the last Marvel comic book movie has there been a film such as Iron Man. Not since, what, the summer of 2007? Not since the resoundingly awful Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, or was it that bloated piñata stuffed with plot devices, Spider-Man 3? No matter. Despite a budget big enough to choke Galactus (a reported $225 million), Iron Man is just another-one-of-those, a picture described as “electrifying” and “a thunderrific thrill fest,” that will be remembered by the ADD generation for weeks, perhaps even for months, until Hulk 2 checks into the Cineplex and brings down the house with an earth-shattering roar above which we may hear a snatch from the movie that the dread Directoricus is making of our world, the cosmic cackling of Stan Lee (played by Hal Holbrook), latest in a long line of Marvel-type villains, once virtuous corporate heads and scientists gone over to the dark side due to financial pressures or some inner turmoil; and perhaps we'll even catch a glimpse of Stan, his withered body encased in science fictional armor of suitably demonic aspect, a high-tech Satan clanking along the avenues of Middle America with a coterie of Hugo Boss-wearing imps, rendering folks so brain-dead from blasts of his Mento-Rays that come the Apocalypse we'll all die happily, waiting for Superman to save us in the sequel.
Iron Man's first hour or so is made diverting by the presence of Robert Downey, Jr. playing off his image as America's Favorite Substance Abuser. (When he gets blown up, he wears an expression similar to that he displayed in criminal court after being sentenced to the slammer—it might have been cool, an in-joke of the sort inclined to pass for wit in such films, if Iron Man's armor had been modeled after those orange prison jumpsuits.) But thereafter the movie lapses into a by-the-numbers Biff Bam Boom affair with stale special effects.
You know, I'm tired of throwing darts at these balloons, so I'm going to bring in Darryl Schoonover to dialog about the movie. Darryl's a twenty-something über-nerd who hangs out down at the local comics store when he isn't zapping whiteheads in his bathroom mirror. He lives with his mom, thinks of himself as a comics intellectual, and hasn't had a date in two, three years, unless you consider it a date to have a high school bimbo hustle you into paying her way into Spiderman 2 and a half-hour later you've managed to sneak your arm over the back of her seat and let your hand dangle so it just grazes her breast, whereupon she brushes your hand away, but stays put because she wants to see how that dreamy Tobey Maguire makes out against Doc Ock.
But first, the plot.
Tony Stark is every adolescent male's wet dream: a billionaire genius gearhead who makes cool weapons, drives cars with names that end in I, and gets babe after ungettable babe, so many of them he can't remember them a week later. Then one day after blowing up half a mountain range while demonstrating a powerful new missile in Afghanistan, he sees U.S. soldiers shot to pieces by Stark Industries weapons and is captured by forces led by the menacing Raza (Faran Tahir, soon to be seen in Star Trek), who directs Stark to build missiles for him in the terrorists’ underground hideout. Stark pretends to comply, but with the aid of a fellow captive he builds instead a prototype of the Iron Man armor and crashes out, returning to the States where he's reunited with his Lamborghinis, his aide, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), and his partner in crime, Obadiah Stane (a bald, bearded, and slightly porcine Jeff Bridges). This sequence, culminating with Stark donning a sexier version of the Iron Man armor and returning to Afghanistan to wreak vengeance on Raza and put on display his newly developed conscience regarding the scummy nature of his business, is admittedly entertaining—you're carried along by a mix of snappy one-liners and action, and given no time to think. But once Stark becomes a force for good and the real villain of the piece is “revealed,” the momentum of the picture begins to dissipate.
* * * *
Darryl? Your thoughts?
Okay, Loosh. I see what you're saying. Sure, the second hour is kinda lame compared to the first. The director isn't Tim Burton or Chris Nolan. It's Jon Bleeping Favreau, the guy who gave us Elf. ‘Nuff said. But this is an origin story, and origin stories are freaking hard to film, so you have to give Favreau some credit.
No, I don't. For two hundred and twenty-five million he should have done better.
Seventy-five mil of that was the ad budget.
Excuse me. For a hundred fifty million he should have done better. They could have made a hundred and fifty good little movies ... or fifty good little movies and one bloated idiot's delight.
Hey, this is a comic book movie, dude! It's no Batman Begins, but it's no Daredevil either. Tony Stark isn't as complicated a character as the Dark Knight, and Favreau did....
You're kidding, right? They're the same character. Rich ass-clown grows a conscience and turns to crime-fighting. One has a sado-mascochistic streak and a kink for black leather. The other has a satyr complex.
Favreau did the best he could to lay in some subtext. For instance, did you notice that all Iron Man's fights in Afghanistan take place in broad daylight and all his fights in the U.S.A. take place at night? Huh?
Wow! That is deep. So you're telling me Favreau was being subversive? Equating the oppressed people of Afghanistan with the Good, the Light, and the U.S., at least the current administration, with the Dark?
Duh!
If true, I scarcely think one symbolic allusion qualifies as subtext.
You know what, who cares what you think? All comic book fans care about is that stuff looks right ... and it did. Iron Man's armor rocked!
You mean that haute couture take on Robocop that looked like it was designed by some Project Runway reject? It even made Robocop noises. (I affect a feminine voice.) Darling little precision whirs and clanks, with just a hint of whiney imperfection. And the amplified voice was so butch!
You just don't get it. You should never review another comic book movie.
I've often thought that myself. I say to myself, You must be missing out on some indefinable magic, some rarefied essence. I keep hoping one day I'll discover that I've evolved, that I finally grasp the majesty, the sacred feng shui....
You don't even like comics, man.
Not true. I've read and enjoyed a lot of comics. Not so many, I admit, since I started shaving ... but occasionally I indulge. And I've enjoyed some movies based on superhero comics. The original Superman, Batman Begins, and so forth. I just don't see the need to sink billions of dollars into crap like Ghost Rider and Elektra and like that. Most of them should be rated MC.
MC?
Mentally Challenged.
Your problem is, you don't have any kid in you. You can't sit back and have a good time at the movies.
Not when the movies suck ... no.
* * * *
That's your opinion.
Yeah, that's right. It's my opinion. It's your opinion I'm unclear about ... unless “Iron Man's armor rocked” is the sum of it. Is there anything else you liked about the movie? Apart from the first hour, I mean.
Pepper Potts.
God, all she did was say lines like, “Hello.” “Good-bye.” “Do you want a muffin?"
What do you want? For her to deliver a speech on ethics? It's obvious she has a thing for Stark, but frowns on his warmongering. Because of that and his womanizing, she doesn't trust him. Paltrow did a good job of conveying tha
t nonverbally. And she looked great. Jeff Bridges was a great bad guy!
Careful, Darryl. You're verging on a spoiler. Though it's debatable whether you can spoil something of Iron Man's quality.
Okay. Jeff Bridges was good, too. It was a faithful adaptation. Everything I wanted in a comic book movie.
So you had no quibbles with it.
Sure I did. Like when Stark gets back to the States, the first thing he wants is a cheeseburger, so they stop off at Burger King and grab a sack of Whoppers. When I saw that I went, Burger King? If this guy needs a cheeseburger fix, he's going to hit a Carl's Junior. Get one of those six dollar jobs. Maybe with Portobello mushrooms. But there's people who think Burger King was the way to go—it lends Stark an All-American guy patina and makes his character more palatable. (A pause.) What's the matter?
I was thinking about all the people who're going to watch this thing two or three times and buy the DVD and stare longingly at the cover image while fondling their genitals. It's really disturbing. You know what else is disturbing? Hollywood green-lighted a whole fresh batch of comic book movies after Iron Man's massive opening weekend. Now we're going to get films like Antman and Thor. I bet they'll be good, huh? It's never going to end.
There's a reason for that. People love these movies because they illuminate the myths of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Oh, please! They aren't myths. They're wish-fulfillment fantasies for fourteen-year-olds ... and primitively mounted ones at that. Then again, maybe you're right. It's a desperate age we live in, with a devalued intellectual currency. Maybe these are all the myths we've got ... or the only myth, because they all tell the same basic story and have the same underlying purpose, to make the real world go away.
There's another reason why people go to these movies. They go for the same reason they go to Fry's (a chain of immense electronics stores in the NW), to check out state-of-the-art gear.
You mean it's a consumerist fetish?
Yeah ... sorta. If you want to put a negative spin on it. Back in the Middle Ages they had the Sistine Chapel and stuff. Now we have these two-hundred million dollar movies that....
Gee, look at the time. I gotta run, Darryl. I need to decompress after all this heady talk.
A-hole!
Cretin!
Hey, Loosh! You going to The Hulk?
I hope not, but probably. I'm interested in seeing how far Tim Roth is willing to debase himself.
Can you get me into the screening?
I'll pick you up.
REMAKE CORNER
Due this fall is a film entitled Quarantine, the remake of a Spanish movie called [Rec], yet another picture shot with a hand-held camera, directed by Jaume Balagueró. It's an intense, exceptionally frightening movie that few will see. Both an American release and the Spanish DVD have been suppressed in order that attention be focused on the inferior (judging by the trailer) remake.
The premise is this: A young TV reporter, Ángela (Manuela Velasco), is spending a night at a fire station, when a call comes in. She and her cameraman talk the firefighters into taking them along. When they arrive at the building from which the call was phoned in, they enter and soon find themselves (along with the entire building) sealed off from the outside world by sheets of thick plastic and a police guard who have been given orders to shoot anyone who tries to escape.
I'm not going to tell you a lot about this picture for fear of giving too much away, but I will say that thanks a good script, to Velasco's excellent performance as a reporter who does fluff pieces and is in over her head, and to deft direction, this is a must-see for all horror fans. It features the most realistic and least disorienting use of the hand-held technique, a fact that becomes evident when the cameraman sets his camera down to assist a person who's been injured and, apparently inadvertently, captures another intriguing moment. [Rec] can be watched via torrent and, though it's not as effective on a computer as on a regulation movie screen, it's nonetheless capable of generating an atmosphere of terror.
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Short Story: GoingBack [in] Time by Laurel Winter
Laurel Winter says she lives a magical life in Asheville, North Carolina, where she is happily involved with creative projects involving art & words & design & energy. Recent highlights include one son embarking on a racing career in California and the other son graduating from Oberlin with a triple major and highest honors. We're pleased to see her back in our pages after too long an absence.
1.
After Richard told her the whole quantum physics thing at the cocktail party, Ellie said, “I get it! We can go back in time."
"Go back in time,” he repeated slowly, enjoying the attention, the perky camera-ready face tilted up at him. “Only one of those words has meaning."
2.
Richard had been studying quantum theory and metaphysics for twenty-three years so he was understandably jealous—even irked—when the weather girl in the little black dress went into an excited state after his five-cent pop tour of the quantum cosmos and echoed herself around the room, kissing him, slapping his face, grabbing a bottle of champagne and shaking it and spraying it ecstatically around the room.
"Spooky action,” she whispered in both of his ears at once, “at no great distance. This rocks!"
3.
"Since all wheres are here,” Ellie said, pulling his cute little reading glasses from his inside suit pocket and perching them on her cute little nose, “that eliminates go as a meaningful word."
"You could say that,” Richard started to say, but then there was another one of her beside her, jumping up and down.
"Time! Time has no meaning!"
"And back,” said yet another, plucking the reading glasses from the first Ellie's nose and folding them neatly and putting them back in his pocket. “As used in that sentence anyway. As a time referent, back is nonsense."
"That leaves in."
"In the moment.” “In synch.” “In love.” “In the flow.” “In and out.” Had one of them just grabbed his crotch?
4.
"Does this mean what I think it means?” she asked.
He had no idea what she meant by that.
5.
"That's for sleeping with Marcy,” she said, when she slapped him.
Who was Marcy? he wondered.
6.
"Yes of course I will,” she told him. “I have loved you since the beginning before the beginning. Since before the Big Bang—all those committee meetings. And remember Egypt. Remember France—well, forget France and Madame Guillotine; I am sorry about that.” She caressed his head. “Remember Peru instead."
He remembered nothing, although he desperately wanted to. “Please,” he said, “tell me what is going on."
Ellie laughed and winked on and off and back on. “It's like play-dough and finger paints and mudpies."
7.
"One particle,” she said. “Two slits.” She rubbed her crotch—god that dress was short. “Want to play?"
8.
Richard was dizzy. All the Ellies—that was her name, right?—spinning and dancing and spraying champagne and talking physics as if it were a first language, as if it were slang, as if it were the babble of an infant.
She kissed him again. “Dear brilliant idiot. Stop thinking so hard."
9.
"I wish you could be here,” she said, sobbing, clutching his lapels. “I wish you could let go. Just for an instant. One bloody here-and-now. That's all it would take. But you are too damned—whatever it is you are."
10.
And then he was alone, one cheek stinging red, doused with champagne and tears, Ellie-pink lipstick everywhere. The party continued around him. “Going back in time,” he said, and wished for that. Just five minutes. A time loop.
11.
A young woman in a little black dress—accent on little—sashayed up to Richard. “I'm bored by lawyers and executives and our hostess tells me you're a hotshot physicis
t. Can you dumb it down to weather girl level? I'm Ellie."
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Short Story: Private Eye by Terry Bisson
Our editors like to think that this issue features stories in a variety of styles or modes. There are several stories that would fit right in with The Twilight Zone magazine if it were still around, one or two that might not be out of place in The New Yorker, some stories that would be appropriate for almost any science fiction magazine you could name, and a couple of yarns that might have been suitable for that groundbreaking fantasy magazine of the ‘40s, Unknown. We present you now a story that strikes us as being in a Playboy mode—a sexy, saucy tale that probably isn't suitable for our most tender readers. If you read F&SF with your kids or grandkids, save this one until after they're asleep.
Mr. Bisson reports that his next two books are Planet of Mystery and Billy's Book, both of which include material that first appeared in our pages.
"Spare one of those?"
"Of course.” I shook a Camel out of my pack, which was sitting on the bar as a reminder of better days. She was wearing a raincoat—Burberry; we notice such things—over jeans. It matched her hair, almost; it wasn't buttoned, only belted at the waist. She was three stools away, but I caught a glimpse of a narrow black strap on a narrow pale shoulder when she leaned down the bar to take the cigarette from my fingers.
We notice such things. Especially in a quiet bar on Eighth Avenue, on a rainy Thursday autumn-in-New York afternoon.
She was careful not to touch my fingers; I was careful not to touch hers. I have a lot of respect for cigarettes, these days.
"Thanks."
Her hair was what they used to call dirty blonde, cut short. Full, red lips and a low, smoky voice with eyes to match: dark, deep Jeanne Moreau eyes, filled with a certain sorrowful something. Regret? Loss? Perhaps. She was coasting, like me, on the high side of forty and her face looked it, which I found appealing, and her body didn't, which we find appealing. So many young girls have empty eyes.
"You're welcome,” I said.
FSF, October-November 2008 Page 17