Dave’s Blog – Page 46

Movie Review: The Babadook

April 29, 2015 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

I’d read nothing but good things about The Babadook, so when it became available for Netflix streaming, I couldn’t wait to see it. It had been hyped as a terrifying, low-budget horror story that apparently scared the hell out of William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist, so it had to be awesome.

It wasn’t awesome. But it was really good.

This review will contain spoilers, so if you haven’t seen it yet, go see it before reading.

slasreveR eloR: A great strength of the film is that you weren’t ever sure who the true antagonist was until the end. Samuel started out as the obvious antagonist, and everything Amelia did made her the victim of his mood swings until she wasn’t anymore. Over the course of the film, her anguish made her the actor instead of the acted-upon. It was only at the climax, when the Babadook manifested itself as an external expression of Amelia’s grief, that the antagonist could be defeated.
Samuel: Some of the earlier scares surrounding Samuel were blunted somewhat by his general unlikability. The actor did an extraordinary job of portraying a disturbed child, a performance made even stronger by the film’s ending, when you finally begin to sympathize with him. At the beginning of the film’s final act, when you weren’t sure if there actually was a Babadook or not, Samuel transformed effortlessly into the hero.
Amelia: One of the film’s more effective subtleties was that Amelia didn’t have an obvious mental condition to blame for the Babadook’s presence. She was grieving and at loose ends with a difficult child, but who could blame her? There was no one triggering event that manifested the Babadook; it just sat within her until it was time to come out. Don’t forget, though, that she wrote The Babadook book, and even added pages to it until she cooked it on the grill. Despite everything, she was (and probably still is) mentally ill.
F/X: The Babadook has been labeled a low-budget movie, but it didn’t look that way. There was no CGI and very few actual sightings of the eponymous monster, which worked very well. The filmmakers did a great job with the budget they had, and there was little reason for the audience to walk away from the film unsatisfied.
Whither the Babadook?: Samuel’s gadgets at the end seemed a little reminiscent of Home Alone, but they worked well enough to exorcise the Babadook from Amelia. Allegorically speaking, I think that the film is telling us to try to make peace with our demons, but it’s a bit muddled. If you can’t keep the Babadook down, how long will it stay in the basement, eating worms? Can Amelia write a new ending for it, finally banishing the monster forever?

A bit long, a bit thematically muddled, but definitely worth watching. Four out of five stars.

(I’m also looking forward to the sequels: The Baba Ghanoush, about an Arab family dealing with a childhood monster, The Gabagool, about possessed Italian cold cuts, and Baba Black Sheep Squadron, about WWII U.S. Marine pilots fighting off a clawed black monster.)

Movie Review: Noah

April 20, 2015 by David Dubrow 3 Comments

Noah was an entertaining film that had a nodding acquaintance with the source material, some decent performances, and a lack of narrative focus that turned it into a mess. It’s not boring, but it’s not particularly good, either. The more interesting elements were overshadowed by the thematic chaos: Aronofsky wanted to do a Biblical picture, but he wanted to give it a modern sensibility. The result was an attractive, disappointing failure.

Green Day: It’s obvious that Aronofsky’s intent all along was to shoehorn environmentalism into a setting that had no place for it: the antediluvian Earth. The Biblical version of Noah explicitly states that the whole of humanity was bent toward sin: “God saw that the people on earth were very wicked, that all the imaginings of their hearts were always of evil only. (Genesis 6:5)” That won’t do in Hollywood. Making judgments about other people’s behavior or mores is Simply Not Done unless those mores conflict with standard Hollywood groupthink. So Aronofsky had to come up with a real sin: pollution. Strip-mining. Deforestation. That’s what would make God mad enough to drown the world. It’s ludicrous.
He’s a Beauty: Ray Winstone did a great job as Tubal-cain, the main human antagonist. Brutal, thoughtful, manipulative, and entirely useless to the story. There was no reason to have him in the film. He did nothing to advance the plot, change the circumstances, or affect the outcome. He had the best lines, but there wasn’t any need for them or him. The silliest part was him stowing away on the Ark and sitting in the hold, hidden by Noah’s son Ham, for months without anyone knowing. At least we know what happened to the unicorns and gryphons and dinosaurs: Tubal-cain ate ’em on the long voyage.
Somebody’s Watchin’ Me: The Watcher angels were extremely cool, but too reminiscent of stony Ents. According to the Bible, the Watchers were the angels who descended to Earth to sleep with human women. The offspring of these unions were the Nephilim, half-angel, half-human hybrids who were said to be giants: “There were giants on the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men who were of old, men of renown. (Genesis 6:4)” Because Aronofsky had to change the reason for God’s anger at humanity from sin to environmental disaster, the Watchers couldn’t be human-like enough to father Nephilim: they had to be monsters. Interestingly, Aronofsky did mine the Book of Enoch for the narrative that the Watchers taught men metalworking and other skills, which added depth.
Noah’s Crazy Train: Aronofsky undercuts his own environmental schtick by having Noah turn into a cross between Paul Ehrlich and Charles Manson in the second half of the film. His extremism, self-loathing and hatred for humanity weren’t hinted at in the early stages to make his later insanity anything but jarring and out of place. It’s unbelievable to me that his family would, over the course of several months, accept his insistence that if Shem’s wife bore a girl, he’d kill the baby right there and then. They should have thrown him overboard as soon as they could, because he was clearly insane.
H.A.M.: While I understand that to build tension in a story that everyone knows the outcome of, you have to create other conflicts, having Ham’s lack of female companionship be such a sticking point seemed clumsy, even absurd. Once again, Aronofsky had to go outside of the source material to create tension, which was unnecessary: there was already some weirdness going on in the Ark. “And they made their father drink wine that night, and the firstborn went in and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. (Genesis 19:33)” Why not look at that for conflict? It certainly was…strange. Did they just have cabin fever?
Methusaleh as Gandalf: There are magic rocks in the antediluvian world called Zohar, according to Aronofsky, which produce pyrotechnic effects not unlike the light crystals in Land of the Lost. This was also silly and unnecessary. What made things worse was the presence of Methusaleh, who had undefined sorcerous abilities that made him seem more like Gandalf than a servant of the Creator. He didn’t need to be there, or if he did, he should have had a stronger role. As it was, Anthony Hopkins did the best he could with him, but the character just wasn’t written well.

I entirely understand those who take offense to Aronofsky’s altering of Scripture to advance a secular agenda in this film, but for me, the true offense was that the movie wasn’t that good. It looked good. The people in it acted well. But for the most part, it was a silly, overproduced mess. I’m not sure if it’s worth watching just to see how much Aronofsky hosed the Biblical story of Noah, but if you want a fantasy film about people and water and animals, then it wasn’t half-bad. Three out of five stars.

Hold On Is Live!

April 16, 2015 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

I’m pleased to announce that my short story Hold On has been published by Liberty Island.

It’s a bit of a departure, as it doesn’t involve the bizarre, horrific, or supernatural: Hold On is a human story about marriage, parenting, and loss in the not-too-distant future, when America’s illegal immigration issues come to a head.

I teased Hold On a little here. Go give it a read and tell me what you think.

Loss and Grief and Writing About It

April 15, 2015 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

This is a terrible story. The Andrade family has my deepest condolences.

On the loss of his son Julian, San Antonio police officer Jose Andrade said, “It’s very difficult; it’s the hardest thing I think anyone can go through. I think it’s the hardest thing in life. I don’t think there’s anything harder.”

Before I became a parent, I could understand this in a detached, almost academic fashion. After all, I’ve been familiar with grief. We’ve all lost somebody.

Now that I’m a dad, I don’t think I could ever understand the breadth of the Andrade family’s loss, and I pray that I never have to.

I’ve talked publicly about adoption before, here and elsewhere. In those pieces, I’ve touched briefly on our failed adoption, where we took the baby home, cared for him for a night and a day, and got a call from the agency that the birth mother changed her mind and decided to parent instead. The details of that experience are too personal to put in writing. It was extremely difficult, even life-changing, and not entirely in a good way.

But it wasn’t the same as the death of one’s child. I suspect it’s not even close.

I did reference that experience in my novel The Blessed Man and the Witch. To illustrate one of the symptoms of a strained marriage, I had my protagonist Hector deal with something similar. It became a triggering event in his past, and the implications of it have stretched into the novel’s sequel (which I’m still writing). This is not to say that it is the defining moment for him; after all, he’s as complicated a figure as any person, and as such is subject to many significant experiences. But it did mark him and push him in a certain direction.

On Thursday, April 16, my short story Hold On will be published on Liberty Island. Unlike my other material, it doesn’t deal with the bizarre, horrific, or supernatural in any way, though it is set in the near future. The story addresses themes of marriage, parenting, and loss within the context of America’s current illegal immigration crisis. As always, the intent is to tell a good story, not proselytize, and I believe I’ve done that with Hold On.

Sometimes, losing someone doesn’t make you stronger. The cracks don’t always get repaired. And the universe doesn’t just stop when you’re grieving, even though it should.

Yes, I Watch Cartoons

April 13, 2015 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

My preschooler typically watches about a half hour of TV a day, perhaps an hour or two on weekends. He used to watch more. Obviously, we try to minimize exposure to the television for several reasons, none of which are relevant here, and he’ll likely end up watching more TV as he gets older. But for now, he doesn’t watch much.

Unless he’s sick. Then there’s nothing else to do except watch TV. Ugh. I watch with him, in large part because I want to know what kind of media he’s absorbing and, if necessary, put it in context and answer his questions. What follows is a rundown of some of the shows we watch.

Breadwinners: This is, hands down, my favorite of his TV shows. It has no educational value in either academics or ethics, which is just fine. Full of potty humor, terrible bread puns, and horrible cartoon violence. I love it. It follows the adventures of two ducks named Swaysway and Buhdeuce as they deliver bread to the hungry ducks of their world, called Pondgea. Our favorite character is The Breadmaker, the god of all bread. You don’t know funny until you hear your preschooler boom out, “Oooooh YEAHHH!” in his high little voice, trying to imitate gravelly rumble of The Breadmaker. Every episode is a classic. Five out of five stars.

Sanjay and Craig: This one runs a close second, and if baking bread wasn’t my hobby, I might like this one more than Breadwinners. Extremely gross and quite funny. The friendship between the boy and the snake is actually quite nice, and its ups and downs sometimes veer into didactics (but not intrusively so). All of the characters are brilliant, especially Remington Tufflips, whom I like to imitate when circumstances allow. It’s also not afraid to venture into some very bizarre, even psychedelic territory. The best episode is Flip Flopas for gross-out humor, satire, and weirdness. Five out of five stars.

SpongeBob SquarePants: What can anyone say about SpongeBob that hasn’t already been said a thousand times? The sheer number of episodes available at any time makes this program the Law & Order of cartoons. It’s clear that in the earlier episodes they were going for a Looney Tunes look, which altered over the years (and years) as digital technology improved. There are some very funny parts to it, and despite its age, it rarely falls into repetition. Club SpongeBob is probably my favorite episode, but there are so many good ones that it’s hard to choose. Four out of five stars.

Caillou: Every parent loves to hate Caillou, but my son just loves it. Caillou whines, he complains, he’s a massive pain in the ass, but that’s what I like about the show: it deals with real stuff with a kid who’s a lot like a real kid. Other than the lack of hair. It’s extremely inoffensive and shows children how someone like them deals with typical preschooler situations. My only problem with the show is the mom, who’s the Mary Sue of children’s television: used to be a ballerina, a ringette champion, a singing expert, an astronaut, etc., and is now just Mommy. And they make the dad seem somewhat bumbling and incompetent, but that’s typical of most television. The episode my son likes the best is, likely, Rollie Racers. Three out of five stars (my son would rate it higher).

Team Umizoomi: My son doesn’t like Super Why as much as I wish he would, but he loves Team Umizoomi. Umizoomi is about math, Super Why‘s about literacy. The songs are really quite good and there’s a predictable pattern to the events in the program so that you know what to expect each episode. It’s for really little kids, so there’s nothing in there to be concerned about. The audience participation part is good (like Super Why and Blue’s Clues), so as long as my little boy shouts out the answers at the screen, I figure he’s not too old for it. All the episodes are pretty good with no stand-outs. 4 out of 5 stars.