A party at this home on Crystal Brook Hollow Road in Port Jefferson attracted underage drinking and about 400 guests, according to SCPD. Image from Google Maps
A party at a Port Jefferson Village home caused a commotion Saturday night, requiring Suffolk County Police to respond to break up a gathering of approximately 400 people, including some allegedly younger than the legal drinking age, according to police.
Sixth Precinct Patrol officers were called to a house on Crystal Brook Hollow Road June 17 by the Port Jeff village constables, according to the Port Jeff Code Chief Wally Tomaszewski. When police arrived, there were approximately 400 people at the residence at 12:45 a.m., and underage drinking was observed.
Police arrested and charged the host, Michael Malguarnera, 30, with violating the social host law. He was transported to the 6th Precinct, where he was released on bail. Malguarnera is scheduled to be arraigned at First District Court in Central Islip Aug 18.
According to Tomaszewski, a similar party was thrown at the residence the weekend prior. He said Malguarnera threw the party and charged admission at the door, and even offered valet parking for visitors. Members from the village’s “Whiskey Team,” a task force of two Suffolk County Police Department officers assigned to Port Jeff village for the summer months to assist the constables, responded to the call, according to the code chief. This was the first weekend the Whiskey Team was available as a resource for the constables, and they will remain through the summer, Tomaszewski said.
The issue was addressed in a post on the village’s official Facebook page.
“Although I am sorry this happened in Port Jefferson — I’m also grateful to our code bureau and to SCP for arriving and doing their jobs!,” the post said. “Let this be a lesson — this will not be tolerated in any neighborhood!”
Attorney information for Malguarnera was not immediately available.
A scene of the car crash in East Northport Friday afternoon. Photo from East Northport Fire Department.
The East Northport Fire Department responded to a motor vehicle accident involving a car that crashed into the gas pumps at the Metro Mart Gas Station on Route 25A east of Laurel Road Friday, June 16, at about 4:05 p.m.
The driver was able to remove himself from the overturned car and was transported to Huntington Hospital with minor injuries. An ambulance, two heavy rescue engines and a paramedic responder were dispatched with approximately 25 fire and EMS personnel, under the command of Assistant Chief Dan Flanagan. The Town of Huntington Fire Marshal and Suffolk Police were also on the scene.
While this year’s Poquott Village election for two trustees may not be as contentious as years past, plenty of important community issues remain at the forefront for residents. Plans to build a community dock and communication between the board and villagers are at the top of the list.
During the June 20 election, residents will choose from five candidates to fill two available seats, including two incumbents — Harold Berry and Jeff Koppelson — and three newcomers — Angela Parlatore, Debbie Stevens and John Richardson.
John Richardson
The newcomers
Richardson, a New York City firefighter, and Stevens, owner of Smoothe Laser Center and Medi Spa in East Setauket, both said there is a lack of communication between the current village trustees and residents. The two are running under the Peace Party ticket and have signs around the village that read “Your Village, Your Decisions.”
“I think there has been a lack of transparency, and there has been a lack of public input,” Richardson said in a phone interview.
Stevens said when she attends village hall meetings, residents are given the opportunity to state their question or comment, but discussions rarely follow.
“In all the 26 years I’ve lived here, I have never felt such an air of such divisiveness,” Stevens said in a phone interview. “And I just want the opportunity to be the voice of the residents, and to bring back peace, and be on a board of trustees who will really listen to the residents’ concerns.”
Richardson, who has lived in Poquott for 16 years, said the village has felt polarized in recent years. He said residents haven’t been included in votes for plans that significantly affect their lives and homes. He said while meetings may be published in the paper, the trustees do not use their email system to notify residents as often as they should.
Debbie Stevens
To get approval to build a community dock, according to Richardson, residents were asked to fill out and return mailed surveys, rather than participate in a vote.
He said those that did not have a resident’s name on it were thrown out.
When it comes to the construction of a community dock, both feel there needs to be more input from residents.
“It doesn’t matter what I think, it matters what the Poquott residents think,” Stevens said.
Richardson said his background would be an asset to the village, and he wants to work with the mayor as “a conduit for the village and the residents.”
Stevens said her experiences as a business owner and her work with charities, which includes fundraising for Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, are assets because she has the listening and communication skills to bring everyone together.
“I would really love to restore the communication between the Poquott residents and the board of trustees and the mayor,” she said.
Parlatore, a full-time patient care specialist and a resident of Poquott for 18 years, said she is the most neutral of all the candidates, as she is not aligned with anyone. However, like Richardson and Stevens she said communication is suffering in the village. She said when it comes to the dock no one is sure what the majority of the residents want. She said the survey prevented many from expressing their true opinions because it wasn’t anonymous, like a vote would have been.
Parlatore said she feels fortunate to live in Poquott and would like for it to continue to be a wonderful village to live in.
“I feel that I’m good at communicating with people and trying to find common ground between a group of people who are trying to aim in one direction,” she said.
The incumbents
Berry, a 33-year resident of Poquott, and Koppelson, a 45-year resident, are running under the Continuity ticket, and said they should be reelected because they get things done in the village.
Seeking his second term, Koppelson said he hopes the two can continue their progress with the other trustees as well as Mayor Dee Parrish. Berry, the village’s deputy mayor who is currently completing his second term as trustee, said the two plan to work on the community dock, continue improving village roads and cleaning up Poquott beaches among other projects.
Harold Berry
Koppelson said the trustees have been making a number of improvements around the village while staying within the budget. According to the former psychiatric treatment program director, Poquott has had a budget surplus for the third year in a row.
When it comes to village roads, there have been many improvements as well as plans to resurface more roads in the near future, something Berry said was neglected before Parrish was mayor.
“For 12 years before Dee got in, roads and repairs were basically non-existent, they just weren’t done,” Berry said. “So the roads deteriorated greatly.”
Both candidates said they would be in favor of a community dock, which is still in the planning stages. The project would cost $150,000. Koppelson said while he understands some residents may not want their taxes to increase, he said the trustees can find other ways to pay for it. He said due to the surplus, village taxes will not increase significantly.
“The bottom line is we’ll be able to pay back the principle over the five years just out of the surplus we’re running and saving money by doing a lot of the work ourselves,” Koppelson said.
He also said community members organized an event and donated $16,000 towards paying for the dock, which will pay for the interest cost of the bond for the first two years.
Jeff Koppelson
Berry said the dock willallow boaters and fisherman to easily pull up to it to load and unload their boats, unlike now when they must use a dinghy or kayak to get to their boat.
“The boaters and the fisherman are getting older,” Berry said. “It’s just a matter of ease of getting to your boat and safety.”
Koppelson said there are additional benefits to constructing a dock.
“It will be well used but also it will definitely increase real estate prices,” Koppelson said. “I really do think people will benefit from it in the long run.”
The two pushed back on the challengers’ claims village hall doesn’t properly communicate issues and upcoming votes to residents. In addition to sending out emails, Koppelson said the meetings are open and any hearings on a proposed law are published in The Village Times Herald for two consecutive weeks. Videos of the meetings are also posted on the village’s website the following day and minutes are voted on at the next meeting.
The Village of Poquott elections will be held at Poquott’s Village Hall, 45 Birchwood Avenue, June 20 from noon to 9 p.m.
While going through items in his mother’s house Three Village historian Beverly Tyler discovers more about his family’s history, which included ownership of Tyler General Store circa 1890. Photo from Beverly Tyler
Beverly Tyler
Growing up in Setauket, first in my grandmother’s house and post office and then in the family home that dates to about 1740, I was aware that my ancestors had lived there for four generations. However, I was not conscious of the details of those families, nor did I realize that the material collection of those four generations was still in the house, packed, in most cases, carefully away in trunks, chests, barrels, boxes, tins and other assorted containers.
My mom died in August of last year, and my family members and I began the process of preparing for an estate sale of the contents of the house. We didn’t have to concern ourselves with the house itself as Mom made a wonderful deal with the Three Village Community Trust, which will eventually take ownership of the house and three acres.
While going through items in his mother’s house, above circa 1900, Three Village historian Beverly Tyler discovers more about his family’s history. Photo from Beverly Tyler
As we began opening trunks, boxes and closets, we discovered clothing, china, glassware, photographs and many other objects dating from the 19th century and even a few items dating to the 18th century. One of the discoveries was music composed and written by my great-grandfather, George Washington Hale Griffin, who worked at various times with both Christy’s and Hooley’s Minstrels in New York City and Chicago. I even discovered at least one piece of church music he wrote.
While I was growing up, I learned, through her letters home, about my great aunt, Mary Swift Jones, who voyaged to China and Japan from 1858 to 1861, in a 150-foot bark built in East Setauket Harbor by her Uncle William Bacon, whose father left England in 1796 to come to Long Island to work in the Blue Point Iron Works. His journal entries were among family papers I researched, even traveling to his hometown in Derbyshire, England, to discover where he came from and why he left. Many of these archival papers and artifacts, dating to the last three centuries, have been given to various Long Island museums and historical societies, while others are to be included in the estate sale.
What I didn’t realize was that the first two generations to live in the house were direct ancestors of my wife Barbara and that the original part of the house had just three bedrooms, which was home to families that each had five children.
When the house and farm were sold to my ancestors in the first decade of the 19th century, it became home to two generations of nine children, still in a home with three bedrooms. It was not until 1879 that an addition was added with two additional bedrooms upstairs, well after my grandfather and six of his eight siblings had married and moved on.
“When the house and farm were sold to my ancestors in the first decade of the 19th century, it became home to two generations of nine children, still in a home with three bedrooms.”
I knew from an early age that my great-grandfather, Charles B. Tyler, and my two unmarried great aunts, Annie and Corinne, had remained in the house their entire lives. My family ran a general store for about 100 years in front of our house on the corner of Main Street and Old Field Road. After Charles died in 1899, Annie ran the post office, except for two terms of the President Cleveland administration when the postmaster position was given to party loyalists, and Corinne ran the general store. In the 1930s they closed the store and donated the building to the local American Legion post. The legion moved the building up Main Street where it sits today near the Setauket Methodist Church.
I treasure the knowledge that my ancestors left so many records of their existence. However, many of the individual photographs and photo albums, especially those dating to the 19th century, are of people I do not recognize and are, for the most part, unidentified. Only their clothing, hair styles and poses give hints to their time period and possibly their identity. Everyone I meet who has come face to face with family material from the past says the same thing, “I wish I had asked more questions when I had the opportunity.”
There are many avenues to explore to discover more about the people we love and the ancestors we know so little about. Take the time to learn more about your heritage and the history of the community where you live and label your photographs. The Three Village Historical Society and the Emma S. Clark Memorial Library are both good places to start, with helpful people who have the time, the talent and the desire to help you discover the links to your family and community history.
Beverly Tyler is the Three Village Historical Society historian and author of books available from the society located at 93 North Country Road, Setauket. For more information, call 631-751-3730 or visit www.tvhs.org.
Beaucoup Blue, from left, David and Adrian Mowry. Photo from Charles Backfish
Coinciding with the Midnight Rum: Long Island and Prohibition exhibition on view at The Long Island Museum, the Sunday Street Series, joined by the Long Island Blues Society, will welcome Beaucoup Blue in concert on Sunday, July 9 at 7 p.m. Join them for a very special evening of great blues as well as some great brews for your enjoyment provided by The Port Jeff Brewing Company. Wine will also be available.
Beaucoup Blue is the father and son Philadelphia-based duo of David and Adrian Mowry. Although blues is a staple of their repertoire, they also cite musical influences from folk, soul, R&B, jazz, country and bluegrass. A handsome range of instruments, including 6- and 12-string guitars, slide guitar, and dobro and their two soulful voices blend together like only family members can. You’ll hear their original compositions but also blues classics. They have recently released their fourth CD, “Elixer.”
Bob Westcott will open the show. An accomplished finger-style guitarist, Westcott promises to share some songs from the Prohibition Era with the audience including Clayton McMichen’s 1930 classic, “The Prohibition Blues.”
Advance sale tickets are $20 at www.sundaystreet.org through Friday, July 7, with tickets at the door for $25 (cash only). For more information, call 631-751-0066.
From left, Councilwoman Valerie Cartright (D-Port Jefferson Station), Councilman Kevin LaValle (R-Selden), Councilwoman Jane Bonner (C-Rocky Point), Supervisor Ed Romaine (R), Town Clerk Donna Lent (R), New York State DEC Supervising Forester John D. Wernet, Councilman Dan Panico (R-Manorville), Councilman Michael Loguercio (R-Ridge) and Councilman Neil Foley (R-Blue Point) . Photo from Town of Brookhaven
At the May 11 Town of Brookhaven board meeting, Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) and the town board were presented with a flag from the Arbor Day Foundation that designates Brookhaven as a Tree City USA. This is the second consecutive year that the town has received that award as a result of the supervisor’s Greening Brookhaven initiative to plant 10,000 trees by 2020, a goal that has already been accomplished, according to Romaine.
The Tree City USA program was established in 1976 as a nationwide movement that provides the framework necessary for communities to manage and expand their public trees. Tree City USA status is achieved by meeting four core standards of sound urban forestry management: maintaining a tree board or department, having a community tree ordinance, spending at least $2 per capita on urban forestry and celebrating Arbor Day.
Priya Sridevi with her golden doodle Henry. Photo by Ullas Pedmale
By Daniel Dunaief
Priya Sridevi started out working with plants but has since branched out to study human cancer. Indeed, the research investigator in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cancer Center Director David Tuveson’s lab recently became the project manager for an ambitious effort coordinating cancer research among labs in three countries.
The National Cancer Institute is funding the creation of a Cancer Model Development Center, which supports the establishment of cancer models for pancreatic, breast, colorectal, lung, liver and other upper-gastrointestinal cancers. The models will be available to other interested researchers. Tuveson is leading the collaboration and CSHL Research Director David Spector is a co-principal investigator.
The team plans to create a biobank of organoids, which are three-dimensional models derived from human cancers and which mirror the genetic and cellular characteristics of tumors. Over the next 18 months, labs in Italy, the Netherlands and the United States, at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, expect to produce up to 150 organoid models.
The project officially started in January and the labs have been setting up the process through June. Sridevi is working with Hans Clevers of the Hubrecht Institute, who pioneered the development of organoids, and with Vincenzo Corbo and Aldo Scarpa at the University and Hospital Trust of Verona.
Sridevi’s former doctoral advisor Stephen Alexander, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Missouri, said Sridevi has had responsibilities beyond her own research. She was in charge of day-to-day operations in his lab, like ordering and regulatory reporting on radioactive material storage and usage, while he and his wife Hannah Alexander, who was Sridevi’s co-advisor, were on sabbatical. “She is hard working and determined,” said Alexander. “She knows how to get things done.”
In total, the project will likely include 25 people in the three centers. CSHL will hire an additional two or three scientists, including a postdoctoral researcher and a technician, while the Italian and Netherlands groups will also likely add another few scientists to each of their groups.
Each lab will be responsible for specific organoids. Tuveson’s lab, which has done considerable work in creating pancreatic cancer organoids, will create colorectal tumors and a few pancreatic cancer models, while Spector’s lab will create breast cancer organoids.
Clevers’ lab, meanwhile, will be responsible for creating breast and colorectal organoids, and the Italian team will create pancreatic cancer organoids. In addition, each of the teams will try to create organoids for other model systems, in areas like lung, cholangiocarcinomas, stomach cancer, neuroendocrine tumors and other cancers of the gastrointestinal tract.
For those additional cancers, there are no standard operating procedures, so technicians will need to develop new procedures to generate these models, Sridevi said. “We’ll be learning so much more” through those processes, Sridevi added. They might also learn about the dependencies of these cancers during the process of culturing them.
Sridevi was particularly grateful to the patients who donated their cells to these efforts. These patients are making significant contributions to medical research even though they, themselves, likely won’t benefit from these efforts, she said. In the United States, the patient samples will come from Northwell Health and the Tissue Donation Program of Northwell’s Feinstein Institute of Medical Research. “It’s remarkable that so many people are willing to do this,” Sridevi said. “Without them, there is no cancer model.”
Sridevi also appreciates the support of the philanthropists and foundations that provide funds to back these projects. Sridevi came to Tuveson’s lab last year, when she was seeking opportunities to contribute to translational efforts to help patients. She was involved in making drought and salinity resistant rice and transgenic tomato plants in her native India before earning her doctorate at the University of Missouri in Columbia.
Alexander recalled how Sridevi, who was recruited to join another department at the University of Missouri, showed up in his office unannounced and said she wanted to work in his lab. He said his lab was full and that she would have to be a teaching assistant to earn a stipend. He also suggested this wasn’t the optimal way to conduct research for a doctorate in molecular biology, which is a labor-intensive effort. “She was intelligent and determined,” Alexander marveled, adding that she was a teaching assistant seven times and obtained a wealth of knowledge about cell biology.
Sridevi, who lives on campus at CSHL with her husband Ullas Pedmale, an assistant professor at CSHL who studies the mechanisms involved in the response of plants to the environment, said the transition to Long Island was initially difficult after living for six years in San Diego.
“The weather spoiled us,” she said, although they and their goldendoodle Henry have become accustomed to life on Long Island. She appreciates the “wonderful colleagues” she works with who have made the couple feel welcome.
Sridevi believes the efforts she is involved with will play a role in understanding the biology of cancer and therapeutic opportunities researchers can pursue, which is one of the reasons she shifted her attention from plants. In Tuveson’s lab, she said she “feels more closely connected to patients” and is more “directly impacting their therapy.” She said the lab members don’t get to know the patients, but they hope to be involved in designing personalized therapy for them. In the Cancer Model Development Center, the scientists won a subcontract from Leidos Biomedical Research. If the study progresses as the scientists believe it should, it can be extended for another 18 months.
As for her work, Sridevi doesn’t look back on her decision to shift from plants to people. While she enjoyed her initial studies, she said she is “glad she made this transition” to modeling and understanding cancer.
The ‘Stella d’Oro’ daylily blooms all summer and into the fall. Photo by Ellen Barcel
By Ellen Barcel
This is the final article in a three-part series.
In the past two weeks, we’ve taken a look at plants with the word “lily” in their name that aren’t true lilies and then true lilies. Now, what about daylilies?
The daylily is in the genus Hemerocallis. The flowers of some daylilies are edible and are used in Asian cooking. Hemerocallis are perennials and are grown for their gorgeous flowers, which resemble true lilies. Since, for the most part, the flower opens at sunrise and only lasts until sunset, to be replaced by another the next day, they are commonly called daylilies. In fact, the term Hemerocallis translates as “beauty for a day” from the Greek.
Daylily blooms generally last just a day. You can see the spent flowers above, along with today’s blooms and buds waiting to open.
Daylilies come in a wide variety of colors. There are bi-colors (like ‘Moussaka’ with its white and maroon flowers) and ruffled flowers (like ‘Bestseller’ with its lavender and yellow-green, frilled petals). ‘French Lingerie’ has lavender-pink petals edged in gold.
The American Hemerocallis Society was formed for the perpetuation and study of daylilies. According to the society, Hemerocallis are extremely popular because of their wide variety of shapes, sizes and colors, their drought tolerance and pest and disease resistance. There are varieties that bloom from late spring until autumn and are suited to a wide range of climates.
They are natives of Asia and, as with Easter lilies, were brought to the west around the 1930s. Since then hybridizers have worked to improve them, resulting in the large variety of colors, petal shapes and sizes. Hardiness varies depending on variety with some being extremely hardy and others quite tender. Always check the tag that comes with your plant.
There are literally thousands of daylily cultivars. I’ve read over 80,000 but can’t confirm this number. Daylilies, as their name implies, produce flowers that just last a day but will continue producing flowers for a number of weeks. Since there are so many cultivars, it would be impossible in this column to go into detail about even a few of them, but several come to mind since they are so popular.
Tiger lilies
• Tiger lily (Hemerocallis fulvas) one of several lilies known collectively as tiger lilies. It is native to North America. Tiger lilies can be found growing along the roadside, hence the nickname “Ditch Lily,” as well as in cultivated gardens. They do well in moist soil, which explains why they grow well in ditches where water tends to collect. They are hardy from zones 3 through 9. Like Easter lilies, keep tiger lilies away from cats since it can cause a variety of symptoms including kidney failure.
• ‘Stella d’Oro’ is a compact rebloomer, comes in shades of yellow-gold and forms dense clumps, so dense that it can be used as a ground cover. They bloom practically all summer and into the fall.
• H. ‘Purple d’Oro’ is a dwarf reblooming daylily that looks great planted in clusters as ‘Stella d’Oro.’ It blooms in late spring to late summer and does well in sun and part shade. It comes in shades of dark purple and yellow.
Remember, the easiest way to tell lilies from daylilies is to look at the leaves. True lilies have leaves and flowers on the same stems and the flowers last for many days. Daylilies have flowers on a separate stem and last just a single day. Daylilies, unlike true lilies, have long, slender, fibrous roots and no true bulb. Since daylilies last just for a day, they are usually not used in floral arrangements.
For further information on daylilies, go to The American Hemerocallis Society at www.daylilies.org or lidaylily.org.
Ellen Barcel is a freelance writer and master gardener. To reach Cornell Cooperative Extension and its Master Gardener program, call 631-727-7850.
Science is a way of interpreting the universe in the era in which we live. One of the realities of our lives is that we do not know how much of the world we think we know is really incomplete.
Think of it this way — If you grew up when the American Revolutionary War was being fought, you would not know a lot. You would not know your body is composed of cells. You would not know that heredity is transmitted by genes located on chromosomes present in nuclei of cells because no one knew there were nuclei, chromosomes or genes.
You would also not know there are biochemical pathways that carry out your metabolism in cell organelles because no one then knew there was such a thing as metabolism, biochemical pathways or cell organelles. And you would not know that infectious diseases are associated with bacterial and viral infections nor would you know that your body is regulated by hormones. If you created a time line of scientific findings in the life sciences, the cell theory was introduced in 1838. Cells were named in 1665, but Robert Hooke thought they accounted for the buoyancy of cork bark. He drew them as empty boxes.
When Schleiden and Schwann described cells, they were filled with fluid; and Schwann thought nuclei were crystallizing baby cells being formed in a cell. The cell doctrine (all cells arise from pre-existing cells) did not come until Remak and Virchow presented evidence for it. Mitosis, or cell division, was not worked out until the late 1870s; and meiosis of reproductive cells (sperm and eggs) was not worked out until the 1990s.
Fertilization involving one sperm and one egg was first seen in 1876, while most cell organelles were worked out for their functions and structure after the invention of the electron microscope in the 1930s. There was no organic chemistry before Wöhler synthesized molecules like urea in 1823, and biochemical pathways were not worked out until the 1940s.
DNA was not known to be the chemical composition of genes until 1944, the structure of DNA was worked out in 1953, molecular biology was not named until 1938 and the germ theory was worked out in the 1870s and 1880s by Pasteur and by Koch, who both demonstrated bacteria specific for infectious diseases. Embryology was worked out in 1759 by Wolff, while hormones were first named and found in 1903 by Bayliss and Starling.
What the history of the life sciences reveals is how dependent science is on new tools to investigate life. Microscopes up to 30 power came from Hooke’s efforts in 1665. A better microscope by Leeuwenhoek distinguished living organisms (“animalcules”) at up to 500 power.
It was not until the 1830s that microscopes were able to overcome optical aberrations and not until the 1860s that a stain technology developed to see the contents of cells. This boosted observation to 2000 power. For the mid-20th century, cell fractionation made use of centrifuges and chromatography to separate organelles from their cells and work out their functions.
Experimental biology began in England with Harvey’s study in 1628 of the pumping action of the heart. Harvey was educated in Padua, Italy, where experimental science had been stressed by Galileo and his students who began applying it to the motion of the body relating bones and muscles to their functions. No one alive in 1750 (or earlier) could have predicted DNA, oxidative phosphorylation, the production of oxygen by plants, Mendel’s laws of heredity or the role of insulin in diabetes.
But what about the present? How complete is our knowledge of life processes? Are there major findings in the centuries to come that will make our present understanding look as quaint as reading the scientific literature in the 1700s?
We can describe what we would like to know based on our knowledge of the present and likely to be achievable. We cannot predict what may turn out to be new functions or structures in cells. At best (using what we do know) we can hope to create a synthetic cell that will be indistinguishable from the living cell from which it was chemically constructed. But that assumes the 300 or so genes in a synthetic cell will account for all the activities of the vague cytoplasm in which metabolism takes place.
For the level of viruses there are no such barriers and the polio virus has been synthesized artificially in cell-free test tubes in 2002 (an accomplishment of Eckard Wimmer at Stony Brook University).
Within a few years ongoing studies of bacteria and of yeast cells with artificial chromosomes, may resolve that question for the genome of a eukaryotic cell. I hope that an artificial cytoplasm will be worked out in that effort. That might be more of a challenge than presently assumed.
Sophia Boutella is ‘The Mummy’ in Universal Pictures latest venture. Photo from Universal Pictures
By Heidi Sutton
Recently Universal Pictures announced that it will produce a new series of classic monster films, titled “Dark Universe,” of which “The Mummy” is the first to be unwrapped. The studio also plans to remake “The Bride of Frankenstein,” “The Invisible Man,” “Dracula,” “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” “Phantom of the Opera,” “Dr. Jekyll” as well as a “Wolfman” reboot. “The ‘Dark Universe’ is a continuation of a love affair the studio has had with its classic monsters. It is a Valentine to the genre that is in our DNA,” says Universal domestic distribution president Nick Carpou.
Let me begin by saying I love scary movies. “The Grudge” and “Shutter” are personal favorites. And I’ve always been fascinated with ancient Egypt and the pyramids ever since my father gave me a book about King Tutankhamun as a child. So when given the opportunity to see the big summer reboot of “The Mummy” I was excited. The 1999 version starring Brendan Fraser, who evoked the Indiana Jones character, and Rachel Weisz became a surprise box office hit and was, at times, bone chilling to say the least.
Tom Cruise and Annabelle Wallis in a scene from ‘The Mummy’ Photo from Universal Pictures
Unfortunately, watching the new monster flick play out on the big screen at the Port Jefferson Cinemas last Sunday afternoon, I felt my excitement turn into disappointment as I realized I had set my expectations too high. Tom Cruise stars as Nick Morton, a less than likable character who lurks around war-torn Iraq with his partner in crime, Chris Vail (Jake Johnson) stealing ancient artifacts and selling them on the black market. During an air strike, a missile uncovers the burial chamber of Egyptian Princess Ahmanet, played to the hilt by Algerian actress Sophia Boutella.
Why is an Egyptian burial chamber in the Persian Gulf? A flashback to 5,000 years ago tells the story of how the princess is next in line to succeed her father, Pharaoh Menehptre. When her father’s second wife gives birth to a son, the enraged princess sells her soul to the Egyptian god of death, Set, who gives her a special dagger to murder her family.
As she attempts to sacrifice her lover so that Set may appear in a physical form, Ahmanet’s plan is thwarted by the priests and mummified alive for her sins (sound familiar?). Her sarcophagus is carried to Mesopetamia and buried in a tomb filled with mercury, “a fate worse than death” and a curse is placed upon it. When Nick finds a way to remove the coffin, he unknowingly awakens the princess from her “prison” and is forever cursed as the chosen one who must be sacrificed.
In the succeeding scenes the mummy chases Nick around London unleashing an evil energy wherever she goes, all the while searching for the special dagger that was stolen by knights fighting in the Crusades in Egypt in 1100 A.D. and taken back to England to bury with their dead. Sounds interesting enough, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it only gets more complicated from then on.
Directed by Alex Kurtzman, and written by David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie and Dylan Kussman, with story by Kurtzman, Jon Spaihts and Jenny Lumete, the film also stars Annabelle Wallis who plays Jenny Halsey, an archeologist and friend of Morton, and Russell Crowe who plays the role of Dr. Jekyll (Yes, Mr. Hyde does make an appearance) intent on capturing the mummy to disect her, an obvious introduction of what is yet to come in the “Dark Universe” series.
While the special effects and stunts are top notch, especially the scene where the transport plane carrying the sarcophagus crashes, and the flashbacks of Egpyt in the New Kingdom are visually stunning, it is not enough to hold the story together as the actors are left to work with a poorly written script that seems to jump all over the place with no focus. When it tries to be funny it is corny; when it tries to frighten, it is funny. It’s also not very scary — creepy, yes — but not scary. And in hindsight, maybe 54-year-old Tom Cruise was not the best choice in the lead — he’s certainly no Brendan Fraser!
“There are worse fates than death,” says the mummy to Tom Cruise’s character. Yes, like having to sit through “The Mummy!” I’ll take Rick and Evie and Jonathan and even Benny anytime!
Now playing in local theaters, “The Mummy” is rated PG-13 for violence, action and scary images and for some suggestive content and partial nudity.
Parlatore, a full-time patient care specialist and a resident of Poquott for 18 years, said she is the most neutral of all the candidates, as she is not aligned with anyone. However, like Richardson and Stevens she said communication is suffering in the village. She said when it comes to the dock no one is sure what the majority of the residents want. She said the survey prevented many from expressing their true opinions because it wasn’t anonymous, like a vote would have been.
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