[WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS A MINOR SPOILER FOR THE FILM.] “Tank 432” (2015) is alternately boring and confusing. To be fair, its surreal story aspects are necessary to the plot, but I don’t think that redeems the movie much.
Don’t let the poster’s image of the tank and the soldier fool you — there’s a little bit of action as the film opens, but most of the movie takes place inside the titular abandoned tank, which remains stationary throughout most of the story. (The protagonists are trapped inside it by a jammed door. ) Thereafter, the unease and claustrophobia they feel are soon felt by the audience. Maybe that suggests skilled film-making on a certain level, but it certainly doesn’t make for an entertaining viewing experience.
The film is quite slow. Furthermore, writer-director Nick Gillespie appears to assemble the components of several mysteries as subplots, and then leaves those smaller mysteries with little in the way of an explanation.
I’d rate this movie a 1 out of 10, and that’s only because Rupert Evans is a very good actor.
I’m honored today to share some terrific news — four samples of my writing will be featured via Richard Hansen’s unique “Poems-For-All” project in California. As the video below shows, Mr. Hansen produces miniature “books” of poetry that are about the size of business cards. They can then be distributed randomly.
Here’s the description on the Facebook page for Poems-For-All: “They’re scattered around town — on buses, trains, cabs, in restrooms, bars, left along with the tip; stuffed into a stranger’s back pocket. Whatever. Wherever. Small poems in small booklets half the size of a business card. To be taken by the handful and scattered like seeds by those who want to see poetry grow in a barren cultural landscape.”
The poems selected were “Consciousness Haiku” and the first stanza of “Confession.” (Mr. Hansen suggested it worked fine as a standalone poem.) “Confession” first appeared at Dead Beats Literary Blog in 2013, and was then featured last year by Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine.
In addition, Mr. Hansen selected my 100-word horror story, “There in the Bags,” as well as my entries for the popular online Six-Word-Sci-Fi Story Challenge. (He also publishes micro-fiction in the “little book” format.)
This is such a cool, unique project, and I’m grateful to be able to participate.
For more information on Poems-For-All, check out the video below. Or you can visit the blog for the project here: https://poems-for-all.com/.
I wrote this two years ago today. It’s truer now than then.
Midnight existential angst. It is always at its apex when, in silence and under cover of darkness, one day supplants another. Sleep recedes, drawing back like the tide of an ever quickening, warm ocean.
Freud wrote that we are driven by two basic needs: the sex urge and the desire to be great. Is it a sign of advancing age that the latter eclipses the former?
When I was young, I chased young women. But at midnight now my mind will chase the racing, red, flame-bright hare of purpose, that year by year gains distance from me with its burning slim legs, as the years ahead themselves grow fewer.