David Dubrow

Author

Cover Reveal: The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel

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The third book in my Armageddon trilogy, The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel, finally has a release date! I can’t say exactly when it will be, but think about jack-o-lanterns and fright masks and you’ll be in the ballpark.

This is it: the conclusion of an epic tale of angels, demons, faith, and the occult at the end of the world. Whatever you think is going to happen won’t, I can guarantee you that.

With that in mind, I’m giving you a sneak peek at the new cover.

 

Having all three books: The Blessed Man and the Witch, The Nephilim and the False Prophet, and The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel would look great on any virtual bookshelf!

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The Shape of Water: A Discussion

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After watching Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, I’m not at all surprised that it won a Best Picture Oscar.

It was terrible.

Big-budget films can have an awfulness all their own, quite different from their low-budget counterparts; regular readers of this site know that I’ve seen more than my share of horrible low-to-no-budget movies, so I know the difference. In this case, with The Shape of Water, the movie’s biggest flaw, outside of its dreariness, was how completely cliched the story was. If you’re looking for a cinematic exercise in virtue-signaling where we, as a woke nation, can look back at a fictional 1960’s America and shudder in horror, you’ll love this film. Every tired, hackneyed trope Hollywood has ever shat out shines bright and proud in The Shape of Water, which tells you everything you need to know about the kinds of people who nominate and vote for the Academy Awards.

To talk about it I need to spoil it. Which isn’t a problem because this movie’s as rancid as week-old fish.

The story’s familiar enough: woman meets fish in secret scientific facility, woman steals fish to live in her bathtub, woman fucks fish, woman and fish live happily ever after and as it turns out woman is part fish herself so it’s all good and not at all disgusting.

As this is a character-driven movie, let’s take a look at the main characters.

Elisa: the protagonist. She can’t speak, but she can masturbate in the bathtub. A lot. She’s the typical Hollywood handicapped character: a saintly figure that can do nothing but good. As such, she goes through no development or maturation during the film. She doesn’t need to. You can’t improve on perfection.

Strickland: the antagonist. The polar opposite of Elisa in that he’s irredeemably evil and incapable of development because when you’re as malevolent as he is, there’s no saving you. He’s also racist and sexist. And, of course, he’s a Bible-thumper, because Hollywood knows that Christians are Bad People.

Giles: the gay friend. As Elisa’s bestest, gayest buddy in the whole wide world, he exists only to show the audience how homophobic Americans were in the 1960’s. Fired from his job as an artist for an advertising firm (Mad Men!) for reasons unclear but probably having to do with his homosexuality, he develops an attraction for the owner of the local diner. The diner owner, about thirty years younger than Giles and not gay, is of course evil for refusing Giles’s advances, and turns out to be racist to boot because he won’t let a black couple sit at the lunch counter.

Zelda: the black friend. Normally, mature black women act as the moral center of these kinds of movies, but in The Shape of Water, we don’t need a moral center: Elisa the protagonist is the moral center. Instead, Zelda exists to show the audience how racist Americans were in the 1960’s, particularly Bible-thumping Americans. Oh, and she occasionally translates Elisa’s sign language for other characters. All of the good people know sign language. All of the evil people don’t.

The Asset: the fish/amphibian creature/love interest. Looks almost exactly like Abe Sapien. Eats eggs like Abe Sapien. Is not Abe Sapien, according to del Toro. Has magical powers. And a hidden penis.

All the male characters who aren’t fish are homosexuals, Russian spies, stupid, cowardly, or evil. Go figure.

The visuals were dreary, the special effects amazing. That’s where the budget went.

I understand that it’s supposed to be a fairy tale. A dark fantasy. But if it is, why include the bizarre scene of Strickland fucking his creepy wife? Or the Russian spy subplot? The theme/tone was uneven at best.

For comparison, let’s take a look at some previous Best Picture Oscar winners: Casablanca in 1943, The Bridge on the River Kwai in 1957, A Man for All Seasons in 1966, The Godfather in 1972, Amadeus in 1984, Schindler’s List in 1993, Million Dollar Baby in 2004, and The King’s Speech in 2010.

This is the kind of film that wins the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2017: a paean to moral preening and the evils of religious white men. It sucked.

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How to Save Hollywood

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Hollywood is in a creative slump. Not only that, but nobody goes to see Oscar-worthy films anymore, so the Academy has decided to create a brand-new category for the Academy Awards: Outstanding Popular Film. If that isn’t an acknowledgment that Hollywood is completely alienated from normal people, I don’t know what is. The film industry isn’t what it used to be. But the big studios can save it. There’s a way to bring everyone back together.

His name is Idris Elba.

First he played Roland the Gunslinger, even though he looked nothing like how the character was written. And now he’s being teased as potentially maybe possibly the next James Bond, even though he looks nothing like how the character was written. What this means is that Idris Elba, with his suave good looks and keen acting skills, can play anybody.

So while it may be a lot of work for Mr. Elba, I think Hollywood can survive, even thrive by putting him in every single movie they put out until he either collapses from exhaustion or we all stop going to the movies. Let’s see how this is going to look for this season’s upcoming films.

[Read more…]

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Book Review: Night of the Furies

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In Night of the Furies, David Angsten weaves history, mythology, and thrills into a novel that’s as difficult to put down as the first book in his Night-Sea Trilogy, Dark Gold, with an even harder edge. Night of the Furies takes us to Greece, where Jack Duran is once again lured by his semi-crazy brother Dan into a secret world of mysticism and peril: this time, they attempt to plumb the disturbing depths of the Eleusinian Mysteries, literary ground I haven’t traveled since reading Mary Renault’s The King Must Die decades ago.

As it turns out, there’s as much danger inherent in the Bacchanal today as there was in the time of Theseus. And the Furies are real. Trust me.

While brothers Jack and Dan are as thick as thieves, one thing does come between them: the beautiful Phoebe, a Dutch foreign exchange student as alluring as she is untouchable. Her presence disturbs as much as the terrible truths Jack and Dan unearth.

In the last quarter of the novel everything crashes together into a shattering climax that will have you on the edge of your seat, gripping your e-reader with damp fingers. It’s that good. From heart-pumping chases across ancient rooftops to sensuous orgies to the horrific secrets behind the Eleusinian Mysteries, there’s something for everyone in Night of the Furies.

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Bits and Pieces 7/27/2018

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I’ve described some of my experiences in the hospital here, but there are a couple things that I didn’t mention at the time for brevity’s sake.

When you’re wearing a FALL RISK bracelet, the hospital staff is naturally concerned that you’re likely to fall down and injure yourself (more) if you try to walk. So they put an alarm on your bed that will go off if you get out of bed without a nurse or PCT there to help you. While standing and walking was agony, and using the trucker bomb was somewhat dehumanizing, having the bell put on my collar (so to speak) made the entire experience of micturation even worse. When they put the alarm on my bed and left I tested it to see what would happen. What happened was that four staff members rushed in as I stood there gritting my teeth in pain while the alarm on my bed blared loud enough to wake the Australian dead. So every time I had to piss, I’d call for a PCT who would come in to turn off the alarm. Then he or she would watch me hobble to the commode under the sink, drop my shorts under the hospital gown, and sit down. The PCT would then leave to give me a modicum of privacy. I had to piss a lot: the constant IVs guaranteed it. Pleasantly, they turned off the alarm during the final couple days of my stay so I had the freedom to urinate without permission, something I’d taken for granted since graduating secondary school. Don’t be a FALL RISK if you can avoid it.

The potassium tablets they made me take were awful. Everyone jokes about having to swallow horse pills, but the potassium tablets were something you’d give an elephant. I had to take two every day or so. Huge and uncoated, you had to break them in half to swallow them piece by piece. They went down like chunks of sandstone. I’d choke and gag every time, spraying water on myself. Once, after the PCT left, I choked so hard trying to swallow one that I accidentally spit it up into the little cup of water. It dissolved into sludge in seconds, so I threw back the sandy, grainy stuff like a man doing a shot of tequila. You need your potassium, you know. I imagine it could’ve been worse: I could’ve choked on a potassium tablet, stood up in my struggle to breathe, set off the FALL RISK alarm, vomited up potassium chunks, pissed all over myself, and collapsed for the nurses to find me in a puddle of my own urine on the floor. So I’m thankful that didn’t happen.

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I recently watched Fire Walk with Me again in preparation for seeing Twin Peaks: The Return. I’d seen the film in the theater when it came out and wasn’t impressed. This second viewing has me surprised at its depth. (Younger me missed the nuances, I imagine.) Sheryl Lee’s portrayal of Laura Palmer is as wrenching a performance of a profoundly abused young woman as you’ll ever see. Overall, the movie’s horribly disturbing, and Lynch put a lot more care into it than you might think. It goes off the rails in some places, but even then you can’t help but be riveted. I never want to see it again. Too disquieting.

—

There are a number of issues surrounding James Gunn’s ouster from Disney that haven’t been addressed in the popular press, so I’ll outline them here.

  • Disney is in the business of entertaining children. It would be an extremely troubling business decision to employ a man given to making jokes about raping children, so they wisely canned him.
  • James Gunn didn’t just make a few little jokes about raping children. He made a lot of jokes about raping children. So many jokes that a normal person would conclude that this was an issue that took up a great deal of Gunn’s mental space. Whether he was a perpetrator, a victim, someone with pedophilic fantasies, or just a man with a horribly sick sense of humor wasn’t something that Disney, as his employer, needed to get to the bottom of. Best to let him work that out on his dime, not theirs.
  • Through frequent public pronouncements, Gunn made himself a political activist, railing against the current presidential administration. When you’re a political activist, you become a target for political activists on the other side of the aisle. It’s possible his collection of disgusting jokes would have remained under the radar if he hadn’t decided that about half his viewing audience were racists, bigots, or idiots because of who they voted for POTUS. But he did decide that, and he’s reaping the consequences of that decision.
  • James Gunn celebrated the firing of Roseanne Barr for making an unacceptable joke on Twitter. He made himself part of the outrage mob when it would have been easier to just keep his mouth shut. Does he really deserve pity after that? Now that he knows how it feels, he’s not likely to join another outrage mob again.
  • The American left has weaponized social media against anyone it disagrees with since the first Facebook profile was uploaded. That normal people are now doing this to the left should come as a surprise to no one. It’s ugly and divisive, but the alternative is to allow an unhinged, amoral mob to continue to use a tactic that works. It’s a delight to see the left, embodied in an intellectual lightweight like James Gunn, eat it the way normal people have had to for years. Like it or not, normal people are now looking for Hollywood scalps. These new rules sure do suck, don’t they? This isn’t going to end, either. The progressives should’ve considered that.
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Movie Review: The Last Jedi

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Despite my abhorrence of gigantic show business franchises, I watched The Last Jedi on Netflix. I’d seen all the other Star Wars films, not counting the side-story movies, so I was interested to find out what happened.

This was a mistake.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is awful. Objectively awful. It’s so awful that ten minutes into the film you realize that writer-director Rian Johnson made such an awful film because he wanted to make an awful film to alienate fans of the first trilogy. Johnson’s intent was to destroy the Star Wars universe as previously conceived because he hates it, and he succeeded beyond anyone’s most fevered nightmares. Not only does Johnson hate Star Wars, but he also hates masculinity, heroism, and traditional storytelling. The proof is in the movie.

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Part One: Rian Johnson Hates Masculinity

Every one of the male characters in the movie was evil, stupid, foolish, or a combination of the three. Every one of the female characters was brave, strong, wise, and properly scornful of the worthless men infesting the galaxy. It’s a male feminist’s perspective of male-female qualities, and as we all know, there’s little on this Earth more deserving of contempt than a male feminist. Male feminists loathe the masculine virtues and eschew the responsibilities of being men. Here’s a brief rundown of Rian Johnson’s characters. Star Wars is his now, not yours. The characters don’t belong to you. Love them or adopt the mantle of misogynist.

  • Luke Skywalker: Homicidal RE: Ben Solo (hence evil) and retreats to a distant planet to eliminate the Jedi order, arguably the last objective force for good in the galaxy (also evil).
  • Kylo Ren: Childish, evil, destructive, stupid.
  • Finn: As useful as a chocolate teapot, foolish.
  • Poe: Foolish, impetuous, mutinous.
  • DJ: Evil.
  • Leia: Brave, strong, wise, slaps Poe because she can. Always has her jaw clenched, presumably because she has to deal with stupid men all the time.
  • Holdo: Brave, strong, wise, condescending, brilliant.
  • Rose Tico: Brave, strong, wise.
  • Rey: We’ll get to her later.

None of these characters were the least bit likable. No effort was made for us to care about them or what they did.

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Part Two: Rian Johnson Hates Heroism

Every time a male character was about to engage in some sort of heroic activity, his plan was either quashed or interfered with, because the Star Wars universe isn’t about heroes. It’s about…um…I don’t know what it’s about anymore. I do know that Luke Skywalker, the hero of the Rebellion from the original trilogy, the man who blew up the first Death Star and saved Darth Vader’s soul, did nothing at all heroic in The Last Jedi. He ran away to be a disgusting hermit who drinks green milk from the tits of gigantic space walruses. He seeks to destroy the Jedi order, which used to be a hero factory, and erase his own legacy. Then he kills himself. That’s the Rian Johnson version of a hero.

Poe disarms the First Order’s most frightening ship, the dreadnought, but Leia slaps and demotes him because some people died in the fight. Even though it’s a war and people die in wars. His heroism is unwelcome in the Rebellion, you see.

Finn attempts an act of self-sacrifice that will give the Rebellion precious time to find a path to escape, but the brave, strong, and wise Rose Tico stops him at the last second, because these kinds of heroics are unwelcome in the Rebellion. She even tells him, “I saved you. That’s how we’ll win. Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.” So it’s a war fought by devotees of My Little Pony. That’s the Rebellion.

—

Part Three: Rian Johnson Hates Traditional Storytelling

The terrible plot holes, dialogue, and storytelling could only have been created by someone deliberately attempting to subvert audience expectations regarding the nature of a well-told story.

  • Space Bombers: There’s no gravity in space. Everybody knows that. And yet the Rebellion has spaceships that drop bombs onto other spaceships. In space.
  • Dreadnought: The First Order’s most frightening ship was rendered useless by one X-wing and a space bomber. That drops bombs. In space.
  • Leia’s Spacewalk: Who knew Leia could manipulate the Force so well that she can survive explosive decompression and the deadly environment of outer space? Why hasn’t she done this kind of thing before?
  • Holdo’s Hyperspace Trick: Why hasn’t every Rebel force used this tactic until now to wipe out First Order fleets? Why can’t the hyperspace-capable ships have a remote “turn into fleet-destroying missile” system in place so the captains don’t have to die? How do you not slam into a star, meteor, moon, or other ship if hyperspace is just a way of going very, very fast?
  • The Casino Planet: The Last Jedi was the longest movie in the franchise. It didn’t need to be. Nothing Rose or Finn did throughout the film had any effect on anything else that happened. They went to the casino planet, heaped scorn on all the rich white people, went back, and achieved absolutely nothing except for wasting several minutes of our time. They didn’t have anything else for Finn to do and they needed another box to check with Rose Tico, the charmless, dwarfish space mechanic. Plot padding this obvious has to be deliberate.
  • Finn’s Phasma Fight: An anticlimactic ordeal that lasted about a minute. Phasma is the new Boba Fett: cool outfit, no personality or interest to her character, had a stupid death. Or maybe she’s not dead. Who cares? There wasn’t enough build-up between Finn and Phasma in the previous movie to make this fight anything other than dumb.
  • Rey: She’s the ultimate Mary Sue. She can do anything and everything better than everyone else. Brave, strong, and wise, she spurns Kylo’s offer because there wasn’t anything in it for her: she can rule the galaxy herself, thank you. Her training, such as it was, consists of minimal strain and meager introspection; she’s already stronger in the Force than Luke himself. Especially in lifting rocks. Even her parentage is meaningless: like a god, she just is. No Hero’s Journey for her, no sacrifice, no self-discovery; she transcends all that. Yawn. Why should we care?

—

On top of hating everything else, Rian Johnson really hates the original Star Wars movies, and proves that by having Luke casually toss his old lightsaber away the first minute you see him. That’s Johnson giving the middle finger to you sad, neckbearded fans who wanted to see the old stuff. Luke’s pathetic, fade-away death puts the exclamation point on that. No mourning scene over Han Solo. Admiral Ackbar just dies off-screen. C-3PO and R2-D2 get throwaway lines.

So…so you liked the original Star Wars? Well, that’s done: we’re throwing that crap away and remaking it into our own image, where the Force is female, where wars are fought with love, and where the masculine virtues are squatted over and pissed upon. And if you don’t like that, you’re sexist. And probably racist. That’s what the new Star Wars is about. I hope you dig it, because there’s nothing else coming. Deal, manbabies.

Inevitably after a review like this, someone will say, “Well, I liked it.” Good for you. You were entertained.

I wasn’t. This was an awful movie, and everyone involved in it should be embarrassed to be part of such a piece of SJW trash. And if you liked it, maybe you should be embarrassed, too.

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