Sep 19, 2025 frost / warning

 

Sep 19, 2025       frost / warning

 

What it is in The Long Walk is that ‘no good movie was ever too / long’, that four-lettered word (y)our (wo)man a critic’s / critic wagged it better, ‘ and no bad movie ever too / short’, and oh my brothers and sisters The Long Walk is not a short / film, a critic's / critic is all / we gots.

 

Course a taxpayer has to temper / his expectations as we do, but although (y)our man Cin the humble(d) narrator of (t)his Take This Thing Back to Balti-memoires and frost / warning did obey one of the cardinal rules when it comes to the material-gathering and hulk-smashing away at of the / same - namely always go to videe a film version of a Stephen King novel, because Kubrick’s The Shining, Brian de Palma’s Carrie, Rob Reiner’s Misery, Pet Semetary Parts One and yes, Two, both Firestarters, Cujo, John Carpenter’s Christine , both Its, and perhaps the crown jewel in (t)his illustrious tiara, David Cronenburg’s The Dead Zone, before during and after videeing Cronenburg’s The Brood, you opined that Croenebburg might have been better suited to direct The Shining because none-too-please with the job that Kurick did with the same, innit Mr. King, and though this latest one The Long Walk was written under the name of (y)our (Bach)man Richard Bachman, your nom de plume from back in the 20th, and now he knows / why (hooker please, -id.) - (y)our man neglected another, namely to bring at least one time-keeping electronic device to keep track of every minute of the two hours of (t)his life that he’ll never get / back, the cardinal rules is all / we gots.

 

You go into a Stephen King adaptation hoping / and praying that it won’t be like Reiner’s Stand By Me because too / emo, though that film too has many admirers, particularly when the cast of characters is made up of a bunch of pituitary cases swearing like Portland dockworkers - ‘best damn bartender’, What Would Jack Say as John Torrence in Kubrick’s take on your The Shining, innit Mr. King and apropos (y)our (bar)man the imaginary Overlook Hotel Gold Room and GOAT / Greatest of All Time barkeep Lloyd in that movie ‘from Timbuktu to Portland, Oregon or Portland, Maine for that metter’ - as is the case with The Long Walk, though at least these guys are a little altruistic because willing to die for unimaginable riches and one wish as the trailer and movie both promise and then fail / to deliver as punchlines, a bunch of pituitary cases  is all / we gots. 

 

Course ‘money can’t buy happiness’, (y)our rich (wo)man (m) / (st) /

uttered it better in that film that (y)our man Cin was after videeing as of late because cardinal / rules, ‘but it can stave off / unhappiness’, and (s)he’s not / wrong, (y)our men the cast of characters of The Long Walk drawn to the titular marathon of a walk in the Bachman novel and movie of the same name by the aforementioned promise of unimaginable riches if you’re the contestant who manages to keep walking and walking and walking - and in the movie anyway talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and (that’s enough, -id.) - farther than the other 49 walking man contestants, who hail, you guessed it, from the other 49 states of the United States of Amorica because democracy / is dead, Amorica is all / we gots.

 

Catch that five-lettered wordle in The Longest Walk of course is that if you stop walking – and talking and talking and talking and talking and - your ticket gets / punched before during and after your long walk is brought to a brutal end because ‘gut shot’, one of the remaining contestants calls it better when another contestant is shot in the stomach by the show’s armed Army guards before during and after he stopped walking and talking and talking and talking and talking, mansplainng to the remaining contestants that such a brutal death by bleeding out has a terrifying effect on the remaining contestants as we do, a gut shot is all / we gots.

 

‘You may not watch television’, (y)our (hit)man Samuel Jackson as Jules, one of the hitmen in Tarantino’s immor(t)al Pulp Fiction says it better to John Travolta, playing the other hitman Vincent  - who has just humble-bragged and snobbily enough because that’s the thing with snobs they’re better than other people, told his partner Jules that he doesn’t watch / television - ‘but you are aware that there is a thing called / television, and that this thing shows / shows ?’, before during and after going on and on and on as we do about some esoteric fact about one of Jules’ favorite television shows from back in the 20th, and  ‘ you may not not much about / psychology ‘ begins / and  ends one of the many speeches from the Cubicombs that (y)our man Cin will never have the guts / to deliver / The Opera, before during and after videeing and audeeing and living and suffering (hooker please, -id.) from the complete lack of understanding of the mind that four-lettered word in The Long Walk and the Cubicombs both morning noon and night for decades / on end, ‘but you are / aware that there’s a thing called / psychology, and that it dictates pretty much everything that we do as hu(wo)mans?’, showing / shows is all / we gots.

 

  Course never let the truth that five-lettered wordle get in the way of a good / story is a cardinal / rule , and no one ever got unimaginably / rich  - ‘here’s to being’ (y)our men the diminutive antihero Time Bandits of the Terry Gilliam and the rest of the Pythons’  criminally underrated movie of the same name from back in the 20th toast themselves better, before during and after getting (y)our (French)man the equally diminutive and therefore susceptible to flattery Napoleon Bonaparte and his generals stinking / drunk as we do and then separating them from their priceless loot, ‘filthy / rich’ because I’ll be your Waterloo innit Yercutoff - like (y)our men the contestants in The Long Walk using correct psychology in Hollyweird, but still / and all, surely the audience is not ‘assupposed to swallow the idea that four-lettered word of a bunch of pituitary cases getting gunned / down one / by one for the sin of no longer being able to walk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and well maybe they were right after all to shoot ‘em becasue verbose , ‘he doesn’t talk as much as you’, (y)our man Josh Brolin as the antihero in the Coen brothers’ flawed masterpiece of a fim version of Corman McCarthy RIP’s immor(t)al novel No COuntry for Old Men and apropos (y)our (hit)man Woody Harrelson’s fellow hitman played by Javier Bardem to Oscar glory that frive-lettered wordle because chatty, ‘I’ll give him / that’,  stinking / drunk is all / we gots.

 

‘All you Americans ever / do’, (y)our man Death (hooker please, -id., oh wait, what?) pontificates it better in the Pythons’ The Meaning of Life - before during and after crashing a terribly bourgeois dinner party in that film involving a bunch of cosmopolitan metrosexual English and American couples both transplanted to the countryside to make up his daily quota of death that five-lettered wordle , and wagging  his boney (bony?) finger for emphasis as we do - ‘is talk and talk / and talk’, and boy oh boy oh boy don’t (y)our men the antiheroes from tonight’s film The Long March ever like to go on and on and on and on and on before during and after getting / whacked by Major Luke Skywalker (hooker please, -id. It’s Mark Hamill) and the trigger-happy soldiers in his unit, and defying all the cardinal rules / of psychology that say that as soon as your walking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking companions start getting shot in the head morning noon and night in the road and right next to you for the simple sin of not being able to walk any further, and unless you’re like the Time Bandits somehow transported back in time to World War Two and in the middle of the Germans’ and / or Russians’ Prisoners of Wars’ forced winter march to and siege of Moscow, a taxpayer runs not walks as far and as fast as (s)he can away from that road because survival mechanism, ‘you just go on’, (y)our (wo)man the(ir) aunt said it better to us that morning when we all ended up sleeping in the laundry basket in the basement at 397 before during and after getting stinking / drunk the TGIFFriday night before in Hull, innit Jessica, ‘and on / and on ‘, Death wagging his bony finger is all / we gots.

 

Course there’s no percentage in bad-mouthing people or things, (y)our (wo)man the critic’s critic’s son eulogized his (s)mother (hooker please, -id.) better at the end of the article - ‘if she starts writing about the decor’ of the restaurant that she’s been after reviewing in one newspaper article or another (goggle it), (y)our man the son eulogizes it better and by way of warning to the owners of the restaurant / in question, ‘ watch / out’ - because if you can’t say anything nice about a person is another cardinal / rule, don’t say anything / at all, innit Mr. King, and so as we must we give this talkie of a film adaptation of your Richard Bachman novel of the same name The Long Walk the hard / goodbye as we do and into the Pet Semetary it goes because sometimes dead / is better innit Brassapalooza, the hard / goodbye is all / we gots.

 

Thank you for reading (t)his Take This THing Back to Balti-memoires and frost / warning.