Source: Heidi Cheek / Radio One SAN DIEGO – An Atlanta native and 2016 Benjamin E. Mays Mays High School graduate is serving in the U.S. Navy aboard the guided missile destroyer, USS Decatur. Petty Officer 3rd Class Shantanay Clark is a cryptologic technician (collection)aboard the guided-missile destroyer operating out of San Diego. A Navy cryptologic technician (collection) is responsible for gathering and analyzing signals and transmissions coming from other ships. Clark credits success in the Navy to many of the lessons learned growing up in Atlanta. “I learned how to work with people and keep an open mind,” said Clark. “It’s important to be open to different ideas and trying new things.” More than 300 sailors serve aboard the ship, and their jobs are highly specialized, requiring dedication and skill, according to Navy officials. The jobs range from maintaining engines to handling weaponry along with a multitude of other assignment that keep the ship mission-ready at all times. “The success of the Decatur is due to the dedication and ownership each member of the crew feels towards making Decatur the best ship on the waterfront,” said Cmdr. Bob Bowen, commanding officer of USS Decatur. “Our team is always ready to accomplish the mission because of the commitment each sailor has to maintaining high standards and sound shipboard operating principles. Every team member knows their roles and responsibilities and does their part to ensure success.” Destroyers are warships that provide multi-mission offensive and defensive capabilities. They are 510 feet long and armed with tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, Standard Missile-3 and newer variants of the SM missile family, advanced gun systems and close-in gun systems. Destroyers are deployed globally and can operate independently or as part of carrier strike groups, surface action groups, or amphibious readiness groups. Their presence helps the Navy control the sea. Sea control is the precondition for everything else the Navy does. It cannot project power, secure the commons, deter aggression, or assure allies without the ability to control the seas when and where desired. The ship has anti-aircraft capability armed with long range missiles intended for air defense to counter the threat to friendly forces posed by manned aircraft, anti-ship, cruise and tactical ballistic missiles. Unique experiences build strong fellowship among the crew. The crew is motivated, and can quickly adapt to changing conditions, according to Navy officials. It is a busy life of specialized work, watches and drills. Serving aboard a guided missile destroyer instills accountability and toughness and fosters initiative and integrity. While serving in the Navy may present many challenges, Clark has found many great rewards. Clark is also proud of earning an accelerated advancement for being the top of the A school class. As a member of one of the U.S. Navy’s most relied-upon assets, Clark and other sailors know they are part of a legacy that will last beyond their lifetimes providing the Navy the nation needs. “Serving in the Navy has helped me step out of my comfort zone and pushed me to strive for goals I otherwise wouldn’t have,” added Clark.
Woman Leaps From Cruise Ship During Twerk Argument Yet another cruise ship passenger has taken a dive off the side of the boat in the middle of a disagreement on-board. This time, a woman attending an EDM party cruise to Cozumel got upset during an informal twerk competition with another passenger — before leaping to the waves below . Via WPTV : A “twerk-off” dance contest preceded a woman jumping from an EDM party cruise ship during the 2015 Mad Decent Boat Party late Thursday off the coast of Cuba. Speaking exclusively with NBC 6, Graham Hansen, who knows the woman, says he spoke with a mutual friend of theirs who was also on board that cruise. “She and some other girl who was calling herself ‘the twerk queen’ were having a twerk-off,” Hansen told NBC 6 via phone. “Twerk queen started twerking on her (the missing woman’s) boyfriend, and it caused some sort of issue between the two of them.” The woman reportedly jumped from the ship not long after the dance contest escalated. Hansen says their mutual friend on board the ship is “completely and totally mortified.” Norwegian Cruises say the woman intentionally jumped off the ship in the middle of all this…but the way it’s sounding, could it be possible that she attempted some sort of twerk trick on the edge of the boat and slipped? Either way, the woman has yet to be found by the Coast Guard, the party is over and the boat has pulled a u-turn to head home. Via TMZ : Mad Decent Boat Party is turning around early and heading back to port in Miami after a passenger jumped ship at sea … TMZ has learned. The EDM dance cruise, co-founded by Diplo, was bound for Cozumel when the woman went overboard — but they’ve decided to cut the trip short, instead of partying onshore in Mexico. The captain announced the change of plans over the ship’s loudspeaker Friday morning. The party organizers say they believe the woman, who’s still missing, intentionally jumped on Thursday night. Yikes. What is with all these upset passengers taking a running leap off the boat when they get into it with someone? SMH. Twitter
Guessing that Carnival will not be making #1 or #2 on the list of luxury cruise ships anytime soon after this fiasco. Via NYPost reports : A broken towline halted the disabled Carnival Triumph this afternoon, as it inched toward shore near Mobile, Ala. Frantic crew members on the lead tug boat replaced the broken line in about about an hour — before currents could push the ship back to sea. A voice over the ship’s public address system urged passengers to go back in their rooms. But most travelers outside on the decks, craving fresh air over the stink inside, didn’t budge. The cruise had been going 1 mph and set to dock tonight — in hopes to a mercifully ending this nightmarish journey for 4,000 people trapped on the floating bio-hazard. The line snap has pushed the ship’s scheduled arrival to no earlier than 10:30 p.m. CST. Once Triumph docks, passengers will still be far from home free. With just one elevator on board working, it’ll take more than four hours for all passengers to get off the boat, said Carnival senior VP Terry Thornton. The cruise line has assembled a small army of 200 employees help passengers get off the boat in Mobile. The company also plans in place in case another tow line snaps in the next several hours. “[But] were not anticipating any additional difficulties,” Thornton said. The cruise — which began a week ago today in Galveston — went horribly wrong on Sunday when flames erupted in the engine room. That blaze killed power and knocked out almost all the ship’s plumbing. “Pipes are busting, I know the sewer is backing up, and water is in the cabins, and it’s just a nightmare,” passenger Jamie Baker told NBC’s “Today” show this morning in a telephone interview from aboard the ship. “It’s just a nightmare.” She and other passengers described hours-long lines for food — meals that were often no more than slices of tomato or onion on bread — and putrid sanitary conditions. With so few toilets on board flushing, many passengers were forced to relieve themselves into plastic bags. Some travelers didn’t even bother using bags. “There’s poop and urine all along the floor,” said passenger and Houston resident Renee Shanar. “The floor is flooded with sewer water … and we had to poop in bags.” Passenger Julie Morgan described the smell on board: “It’s a mixture of sewage and rotting food.” “Let’s just say I have a pair of slippers I will not be bringing home with me,” Morgan told CNN. Baker compared her trip to a post-hurricane experience. “Like Katrina in the Dome, except it’s afloat,” Baker said. The passengers’ stay in Alabama will be short. They have the option of boarding buses directly to Galveston or Houston, or to New Orleans where they can rest in a hotel before taking a charter flight to Houston. Carnival is picking up all these travel costs. Carnival Cruise Lines yesterday canceled a dozen more planned voyages aboard the Triumph and acknowledged that the crippled ship had been plagued by other mechanical problems in the weeks before the engine-room blaze. The National Transportation Safety Board has opened an investigation into the cause. “We know it has been a longer journey back than we anticipated at the beginning of the week under very challenging circumstances,” Carnival President and CEO Gary Cahill said. “We are very sorry for what our guests have had to endure.” Carnival spokesman Vance Gulliksen acknowledged the Triumph’s recent mechanical woes, explaining that there was an electrical problem with the ship’s alternator on the previous voyage. Repairs were completed Feb. 2. Testing of the repaired part was successful and “there is no evidence at this time of any relationship between this previous issue and the fire that occurred on Feb. 10.” Communication with passengers on the Triumph has been limited to brief windows when other cruise ships with working cellular towers have rendezvoused to deliver supplies, but some relatives have reported being told of uncomfortable and unsanitary conditions. Robert Giordano, of the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond, said he last spoke to his wife, Shannon, on Monday. She told him she waited in line for three hours to get a hot dog and that conditions on the ship were terrible. “They’re having to urinate in the shower. They’ve passed out plastic bags to go to the bathroom,” Giordano said. “There was fecal matter all over the floor.” Passengers are supposed to get a full refund and discounts on future cruises, and Carnival announced they would also each get an additional $500 in compensation. Sounds disgusting. Is $500 and a refund enough for being delayed all them days with no food or place to drop a deuce? Don’t know about y’all but we don’t even like to take a #2 in a strange place — much less a plastic bag! Shutterstock /Instagram.com/janetshamlian
Twilight / Snow White and the Huntsman star Kristen Stewart comes off as admirably self-possessed (“I don’t care about the voracious, starving shit eaters who want to turn truth into shit”) in Vanity Fair, even when bemoaning the photograph that changed her life: “You can Google my name and one of the first things that comes up is images of me sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe with my ex-boyfriend and my dog. It was [taken] the day the movie came out. I was no one. I was a kid. I had just turned 18. In [the tabloids] the next day it was like I was a delinquent slimy idiot, whereas I’m kind of a weirdo, creative Valley Girl who smokes pot. Big deal. But that changed my daily life instantly. I didn’t go out in my underwear anymore.” [ Vanity Fair ]
People with a strong sartorial sense know the difference between what’s elegant and what’s merely elaborate. It’s not the same in the movie world, where big and overcomplicated is so often mistaken for better, when really it’s only…big and overcomplicated. Ridley Scott ’s Prometheus , designed as a sort-of prequel to the director’s 1979 terror-in-space aria Alien , is elaborate all right. But it’s imaginative only in a stiff, expensive way. Scott vests the movie with an admirable degree of integrity – it doesn’t feel like a cheap grab for our moviegoing dollars – but it doesn’t inspire anything so vital as wonder or fear, either. Prometheus has been one of the most anticipated pictures of the summer, but its lackluster payoff is summed up perfectly by one of its chief characters, a scientist who travels a long way from Earth in the hope of meeting the allegedly superior beings who created us humans: “This place isn’t what we thought it was.” [ Some spoilers follow. ] That character, Elizabeth Shaw ( Noomi Rapace ), is an archeologist who, in one of the movie’s early scenes, circa 2089, stands hand-in-hand with her partner and beau Charlie Holloway (the exquisitely, painfully dull Logan Marshall-Green ) as the two gaze in wonder upon an Earth cave drawing they’ve just discovered. The pictogram shows a couple of unearthly creatures standing tall and pointing at something-or-other. Are they gods who created us, or just random visitors? Shaw thinks they may be the former, and she’s eager for a meet-and-greet. “I think they want us to come and find them,” she says, voicing one of those really bad ideas that make the world of science fiction go ’round. Before long the two have joined a crew of 15 others, all headed to an undisclosed destination in space where they will freely and joyfully act upon yet more bad ideas, including packing a severed alien head into a space baggie and reaching out to touch a slimy tadpole-penis-head thing. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The others aboard the all-too-appropriately named Prometheus include a tall, icy businesswoman named Vickers ( Charlize Theron ), a representative of the corporate behemoth that’s funding the trip; the ship’s captain, Janek (played by the appealing, casual Idris Elba); David ( Michael Fassbender ), an android a la Ian Holm’s character in Alien , who has learned a healthy handful of ancient languages as a way of possibly communicating with whatever godlike forebears the crew may encounter; and a random Asian guy who wanders around idly in the background of a few shots until, inexplicably — mini-spoiler alert — he becomes one of the story’s heroes. (This disposable Asian is played by Benedict Wong, who also appeared in Duncan Jones’ 2011 Moon .) There are a bunch of others – including some dumb geologists/biologists (Rafe Spall and Sean Harris) and a doctory-scientist type (Kate Dickie) – but the cast of Prometheus suggests that 17 crew members on a movie space ship is about 10 too many. (The Nostromo , after all, carried 7, and Scott and writer Dan O’Bannon made it easy to distinguish one from another.) But Prometheus , both ship and movie, is overloaded in every way: Scott and screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof have packed the picture full of noble themes, most of them having to do with the way our yearning to understand the unknown jostles uncomfortably against our desire to explain everything through science. “I just want answers, babe,” the logic-mongering Holloway tells the dreamier Shaw, though this is before – and here, take note of another mini-spoiler alert – a wriggly wormlike thing starts poking out of his eyeball. What do Shaw and the others discover on the mysterious planet to which they’ve trekked? They make their way into a cave where the air is actually breathable – they lift off their bubble helmets and take in deep gulps of the stuff, which seems inadvisable, but what the heck? Deep in the cave’s recesses they find a magnificent hallway replete with majestic murals and a large sculpture surrounded by a formation of conga drums covered with sweaty spores. Prometheus features a host of effects designed to make you say, “What the heck?” and yet none of it stirs real curiosity, awe or dread. The crew also encounters, of course, some variations on the magnificent spoodly pinky-gray creatures designed by H.R. Giger for the earlier Alien pictures. Perhaps these thingies are supposed to be bigger, more impressive and more realistic, whatever that might mean. Yet there’s a business-as-usual quality about them, and they herald their presence openly rather than lurk menacingly in the shadows, as if announcing cheerfully, “You expected to see us, and here we are!” That’s not to say there aren’t some lovely effects in Prometheus , including a sequence in which a group of hologram ghosts appear as shimmery dots and dashes of light – they rush toward and through our intrepid explorers, on their way to, or away from, something. But we never find out who they are or what they’re running toward or from. In fact, there are dozens of loose ends in Prometheus , hanging like so many squirmy, dangly tails. Fassbender’s android commits a significant, malicious act for reasons that are never made clear: We know he has no soul, and thus probably no conscience, but his actions seem like the result of some deeply human traits — Scott never bothers to explain. The geography of the ship is carelessly delineated: Creatures show up in one passageway or another – it’s never clear what room or area they’re coming from. One of these slimy, willfully malevolent wrigglers emerges at a significant climactic moment, and it’s unclear whether it’s a random critter or a larger version of a baby we’ve seen earlier – the lapse represents a missed opportunity, a possible means of fleshing out some of the movie’s ideas about the relationship between gods and the creatures they create (or destroy). Scott is trying to make sure Prometheus is about something, and his ideals may have distracted him from the more prosaic task of just getting on with the storytelling. When Brian De Palma presented, with Mission to Mars , a much more passionate, and more narratively sound, version of this sort of interplanetary spiritual idealism, it was treated as a “bad” science fiction movie. Prometheus , on the other hand, is tasteful even in the midst of all its squirm-inducing gross-outs, and that’s a liability: It’s impossible to have tasteful passion. The actors mostly seem lost here: Rapace comes off as a doll-like naïf, pretty but wholly lacking in charisma or even science-fueled ardor. Guy Pearce appears in heavy age makeup which, if you ask me, is a total waste of a perfectly good Guy Pearce. Theron and Fassbender have much more presence: Theron, at least, gets to suit up and fire a flamethrower – the vision of her big bubble-helmeted head perched upon a body that seems to consist mainly of two lily-stem legs is something to behold. And Scott gives Fassbender the quietest, most poetic sequence in the movie: Early in the picture, the robot David wanders the ship while the rest of the crew are still deep in their hypersleep dreams. He busies himself with assorted tasks, and then sits down before a massive wraparound screen, where he watches Lawrence of Arabia with rapturous admiration. David finds a physical, if not spiritual, twin in O’Toole’s T.E. Lawrence, a model for the man he’d like to be, if only he were a man at all. But Scott doesn’t, or can’t, sustain the eerie, resonant beauty of that sequence. Prometheus isn’t a piece of junk. It feels as if Scott has tried very hard to please us, his audience, in an honest if costly way. He surely knows how high the stakes are: With Alien , Scott gave us one of the great science-fiction films of all time, a picture that was at once glorious and austere; when I looked at it recently, I was struck by how wonderfully slow-moving it was, and yet every minute is taut. But Prometheus is a world apart, a far more unwieldy picture that tries hard to defy this new, noisier age of movies and doesn’t have the agility or the suppleness to do so. You can practically hear Prometheus groaning under the weight of its ambitions; it’s a far cry from the sound Scott was going for, the music of the celestial spheres. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
‘Jack still dies,’ director says of the 3-D re-release which he says ‘reinvents’ the 1997 flick. By Kevin P. Sullivan James Cameron Photo: MTV News When “Titanic” hits the big screen again on April 4, the ship will be changing course and heading directly into the audience. Director James Cameron has been one of 3-D’s biggest proponents for years now and has suggested in the past that any film is open for a three-dimensional makeover. It only makes sense, then, that he put his money where his mouth is and converted his own “Titanic.” Cameron spoke with MTV UK about the process and why the real reward of the re-release is the chance to see his blockbuster on the silver screen again after 15 years. The director insisted that the movie remains as it was back in 1997, except for the added dimension. “It ends the same way. The ship still sinks. Jack still dies. Oops, I hope I didn’t spoil it,” he said. As Cameron has said before, he believes that the 3-D element of the re-release plays a supporting role. He simply wants people to see “Titanic” as it was meant to be seen: in a theater. “I think the first thing you should think of, the most important thing, is that you’re going to see it in a movie theater, which is really fundamentally different for anyone who is under a certain age. It hasn’t been in a theater for 15 years, so people know it from video. But they haven’t taken that ride where you commit to the three hours, and you’re going to go on that emotional rollercoaster, and you’re going to come out of the end of the movie in a certain mental, emotional state. It’s very different.” That isn’t the say that the 3-D doesn’t add anything. Cameron sees the conversion as a way to reinterpret the experience. “The 3-D is a kind of way of doing that, a way of reinventing the film, and the 3-D does add something to the experience that was never there before, an immediacy, even an intimacy, which is interesting.” Luckily for Cameron, he had originally shot “Titanic” in a way that was conducive to a 3-D conversion. “Even though I wasn’t shooting it as a 3-D movie 15 years ago, my particular style is to use wider lenses and to wrap the actors in the scenery,” Cameron said. “Because the ship — I don’t like to use the term that it was a character — but the environment was constantly informing what was happening, the elegance, the beauty of the ship, the gilt-edged luxury juxtaposed with steerage third class. All those themes are really manifested in the physicality of the ship. The style of seeing all of that when you convert it to 3-D, it just has this lucidity. You just feel like you’re there.” Are you planning on seeing the 3-D re-release of “Titanic”? Leave your comment below! Check out everything we’ve got on “Titanic.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com .
It’s been a busy weekend for Chad and Evelyn , but the events of the past few days have us loving them even more as a couple. First Evelyn braved the cold weather to support his man as his Patriots beat the Denver Broncos in the playoffs, then Chad had us rolling after stealing Evelyn’s phone and tweeting some pretty funny stuff… But we were sad to see them have to deal with the tragedy of losing Chad’s dad this morning. Peep the tweets when you continue.
C’mon son… The captain of the ill-fated Costa Concordia had been drinking ‘with a beautiful woman’ at the ship’s bar before he sailed into disaster, it was claimed last night. Francesco Schettino, 52, has been arrested on suspicion of multiple manslaughter and abandoning ship when the cruise liner ran aground after sustaining a 160ft gash in the port-side hull. Six people are now confirmed dead and 14 are still missing. The sixth person – a male passenger – was found dead wearing a life vest on the second deck of the ship, according to an Italian news agency. That area of the boat was not submerged. One passenger has accused the captain of drinking in one of the ship’s bars on the night the vessel ran aground, before taking control after the crash. Monique Maurek, 41, from the Netherlands, said: ‘What scandalised me most was when I saw the captain spending much of the evening before we hit the rocks drinking in the bar with a beautiful woman on his arm. B-b-but wait it gets worse… ‘Most people didn’t even have any idea of what the evacuation warning sound would be. ‘It was only because some of us had already been on a cruise that we recognised that seven blasts of the horn was a signal to abandon ship.’ Phil Metcalf, whose daughter Rose was one of the last people off the ship, said she had revealed the captain allegedly abandoned ship in the early stages of the evacuation, leaving his staff onboard. He said: ‘Since the captain had left there was nobody, so everybody was left to their own devices hence some of the chaos, so obviously the crew took it upon themselves and decided in the absence of the captain to organise and try and help people.’ So this dirty son-of-a-beyotch jumped ship soon as isht got ugly??? Hope they find a nice lil’ creative punishment for this coward! Source More On Bossip! Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner: Here Are Some Current And Future Celebrity Stepdads Handling Their Biz With The Kids Out Of Pocket Old Heads: Mama Jones Starts Twitter War With Olivia???? Canada Dry: Tattoo Artist Claims That Drake Waited In His Car And Sent His Bodyguards To Confront Him Elsewhere In The World: J.R. Smith’s Sister Goes H.A.M. In The Stands At Chinese Game, Choking Out Broads And Catching Fade With An Old Head!
We see a whole lot of Brooklyn Decker’s skin and an alien ship, but blink and you’ll miss Rihanna. By Eric Ditzian Photo: Universal Pictures “Battleship” may be based on a board game, but the action flick’s first trailer shows an influence far more cinematic than anything having to do with little plastic pegs and the faux-sinking of tiny seafaring vessels. The new footage, which Yahoo! premiered on Wednesday (July 27), begins like an ode to a “Blue Crush”-ish beach make-out movie, veers into “Armageddon”-esque father-vs.-daughter’s-boyfriend antagonism, then explodes in an orgy of a couple dozen alien-invasion movie references. Totally original, this one ain’t. But it’s also pretty damn entertaining, and we really are looking forward to checking out the madness when it hits theaters on May 18, 2012. Until then, here are our picks for the five key “Battleship” trailer moments. Brooklyn, Obviously One of these days, Brooklyn Decker is going to get a movie role that doesn’t require her to parade around a beach in a bikini. Or not. One thing is certain after checking out this footage and taking in her performance, such as it was, in Adam Sandler’s “Just Go With It”: Decker, the Sports Illustrated model, has been typecast. In “Battleship,” she finds herself in the middle of one of cinema’s oldest relationship pickles: in love with a bad boy whom her dad can’t freaking stand. Clearly the relationship between the boy (a naval officer played by Taylor Kitsch) and the daddy (Liam Neeson’s no-nonsense admiral) will factor into the battle with these aliens. Let’s just hope it doesn’t become the emotional focus. Don’t Tread on Me Everything in the Navy’s military exercises in the big blue ocean seems to be going well until they encounter a hulking contraption submerged in the water. One unlucky dude (Kitsch) is sent out to touch base, literally, with the alien ship, unleashing a whole lot of extraterrestrial terror. The aliens, we’ll soon learn, are here to utilize our oceans as a power source. This one shot raises a bunch of questions. Why are the ship’s defenses activated by simple touch, rather than the proximity of the Navy? What kind of tech do the aliens possess that they can send a sort of shockwave that hurtles a man so far, so quickly? And what’s inside the ship that we don’t yet see? What a Big Bubble You Have! Speaking of alien weaponry, the ship is capable of unleashing some kind of bubble force field that encompasses an enemy and, so it seems, destroys everything within it. We’ll just ignore, for now, how the bubble reminds us of that containment unit in “The Simpsons Movie.” Instead, let’s concentrate on the alien tech. We’re hoping for originality and cool visuals to join forces and deliver us a satisfying early summer movie experience. The bubble, perhaps, is the harbinger of fun, absurd, eye-popping stuff to come. She Needs an Umbrella “Battleship” marks Rihanna’s big-screen debut . In the trailer, blink and you miss her. But she’s there, standing up in a raft and looking wet as the alien craft flies overhead. She certainly looks freaked out. But we can’t yet get a sense of her acting chops from this footage; and hey, we might not be able to even after this popcorn flick’s credits roll. All we can say for now is she had a blast on the production. “Working with [director] Peter Berg is unbelievable,” she told us last fall. “I love doing movies now. It’s something I want to do more of. I just want to pick films that are wise for me and roles that I can pull off, nothing that is too big for me.” Taking Flight We have to say we’re surprised how much of the alien ship we get to see in this first trailer. We see how it’s a craft that can both plunge into the water and also take flight. We see how it can transform and shift and hover; quite a lot of control, those aliens have on this sucker. We see its cylinder-shaped weaponry. We see the front of the ship almost seems to have a face. So the question is: How much did filmmakers hold back? We haven’t, for instance, seen the aliens themselves. With so many alien flicks hitting theaters each year, it’s getting harder and harder to surprise audiences with those creatures. Can “Battleship” do it? Stay tuned. Check out everything we’ve got on “Battleship.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Photos Five Important Moments In The ‘Battleship’ Trailer Related Artists Rihanna
