David Dubrow's Blog, page 28

Review: Goliath

At The Loftus Party, I reviewed the Amazon series Goliath:

The Amazon series Goliath is a riveting show, particularly if you like legal dramas. I don’t. For me, the legal genre ranks just above romantic comedies and right below wisecracking buddy films (Midnight Run excepted, of course). But my wife put it on while I was in the room, so what was I going to do, leave? I had great fun mimicking an English accent and saying, “Just so,” “Cheerio, chaps,” and, “As you say, Mrs. Codswallop,” all throughout her viewing of multiple seasons of Downton Abbey, so I couldn’t deprive her of my disruptive asides.

Is the entire program as riveting as the rest of the review? Click to find out!

The Slaughtered Bird Movie Review: The Shelter

I reviewed indie thriller The Shelter at The Slaughtered Bird:

To 80’s film fans, [Michael] Paré needs no introduction: Eddie and the Cruisers, Streets of Fire, The Philadelphia Experiment. In the role of Thomas, a homeless alcoholic, he brings his characteristic deep-throated mumble, but also shows a broad, affecting range of self-loathing and opportunism. As pretty much the only character in the movie, he lifts the rather weak story to heights it wouldn’t have reached with any other actor.

Does Michael Paré save this film, or does it sink under its own portentous weight? Click to find out!

 

Family Film Reviews

Football won’t last the whole weekend, so with the family gathered ’round, you might watch a film. Here are two short reviews of family-themed movies that you may want to consider.

The first is a Netflix movie: Tallulah. It’s not a family movie, but it does center around family. If you get my drift. The premise is that a homeless woman kidnaps a baby from a drunken housewife to raise on her own, and adventures ensue. Aside from a few genuinely affecting moments, Tallulah was mostly a failure from beginning to end. The actors did a great job of portraying unlikable characters who you can’t help but want to never see again for the rest of your life. Certain story elements required bizarre character decisions to move the plot forward, like the eponymous Tallulah character deciding, after kidnapping the baby, to re-visit her ex-boyfriend’s hostile mother for help. Nobody asked the right questions regarding the sudden appearance of the baby, and the resolution of the story was too pat. Tammy Blanchard was the stand-out as the horrible drunken mom who you love to hate. Frederic Lehne and John Benjamin Hickey played the same characters they always play on the screen. Allison Janney was a looming, stork-like presence. You probably have better things to do with your time than watch it. Two stars out of five.

The second film is called Little Boy. A piece of magical realism, it revolves around themes of family, grief, alienation, and friendship. In it, an eight-year-old boy named Pepper tries to make a deal, of sorts, with God to end World War II so his dad could come back home. It has all the elements of magical realism: unexpected (and bizarre humor), strange coincidences, and weird characters, wrapped around the solid core of faith. Some of the themes worked better than others, but it comes together in a powerful story. It’s dreadfully manipulative, yes, with plenty of tears for the audience, but this isn’t a subtle film, nor is it meant to be. Jakob Salvati, the actor who plays Pepper, turned in a terrific performance. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa was great, as usual, as were Michael Rapaport and Tom Wilkinson. Just go see it and let me know what you think. Four stars out of five.

Have a great Thanksgiving.

Why You Lost Is Because “I Won.”

Everybody’s trying to explain what happened on the morning of November 9, and how someone like Donald J Trump, a noted racist, misogynist, and bigot, could become the President-Elect of the United States.

How this came to be is pretty easy to understand, but you have to step outside of yourself to do it.

It all started on January 23, 2009. Newly-elected President Barack Obama, who campaigned on post-partisanship and unity, who said that he would consider all good ideas no matter who proposed them, held a meeting with congressional leaders of both parties about the budget. When Republican congressman Eric Cantor expressed concerns about spending, President Obama said to him, “Elections have consequences. I won.”

He had made it clear that there would be no compromise. No unity. He proved it by instituting ObamaCare, a deeply unpopular government takeover of 1/5 of the American economy that has proven disastrous to working families across the country.

Obama-supporting independents, so-called moderates, and progressives took their cue from that. They modeled the president’s “I won” attitude for the next several years, despite consistent electoral defeats in mid-term elections. Obama’s re-election cemented the attitude further, and why shouldn’t it? They had the news media, entertainment media, and all of academia bolstering the “I won” attitude.

With the “I won” attitude came a constant drumbeat of name-calling. Any resistance to Obama’s policies was met with claims of racism. Insufficient support for the president’s agenda was dismissed as bigotry. And homophobia. And sexism. Progressives were the winners, and winners are superior. Because they won. Winners don’t have to defend their ideas.

With winners come losers, and the losers are, by definition, inferior.

The rest of us, the inferior untermenschen, noticed this, but we didn’t say much about it because it’s stupid to say, “I’m not a racist.” We didn’t like being called racists for opposing ObamaCare. We didn’t like being called bigots because we think that only women should use women’s private areas for private functions. We didn’t like being called sexists because we think that a human life starts at conception, and that it’s murder to abort that life. We didn’t like being called backward because we believe in the God of the Bible.

But you progressives kept doing it. Your stranglehold on the news and entertainment media made you believe that you reflected our common culture, when the truth is that your clumsy hands molded it into something that many of us have begun to reject. You began to believe your own press: that through the simple act of name-calling, you had achieved an innate superiority over the racist, bigoted, sexist, backward inferiors who held different beliefs.

Somehow, you got it into your heads that having an opinion automatically conferred moral authority. You decided that your intentions mattered more than the results, and that your transitory feelings trumped individual rights. It didn’t matter what you did: it mattered what you felt.

We inferiors took notice of this, and we voted with our feet. Another four years of virtue-signaling, unearned moral superiority, and constant name-calling were three bridges too far. So in this election we voted for the guy who didn’t hold us in contempt the way you and your preferred candidate did.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: we know that this election isn’t going to change your attitude. We know that despite all evidence to the contrary, you still think you’re superior. Your policy prescriptions are harmful both domestically and abroad, your leaders are utterly without principles, and over the last six years you’ve lost hundreds and hundreds of government seats from state legislatures to the presidency, but you still believe you’re better than we are.

We see what you say on social media, because you never shut up about how you feel. You’re disappointed in us. You can’t believe how racist, bigoted, and misogynist we are. You’re disgusted. And while disappointment that your candidate lost an election is natural, insulting half the country isn’t.

Me, I’m not doing business with anyone who holds me in contempt and calls my wife a racist because we pulled a different lever in the voting booth. I’m not buying your products, I’m not working with you, and I’m not spending any more time in your presence. It’s fine to call Trump an idiot, a dickhead, a shitheel. People do that to presidents all the time. But when you imply that we hate women or blacks or gays or anyone else because we voted for him, you go too far.

You’re not superior because of who you voted for. You’re not superior because you think or feel a certain way. You’re not superior at all. It’s long past time you recognized that.

The Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Initiative

The Loftus Party published my piece on The Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Initiative:

If recent election returns have taught us anything, it’s that the American Progressive Left is absolutely terrified of anyone who doesn’t think like them. Between impotent protests/riots against democratically-held elections to hysterical name-calling in the news media, the far left reeks of pants-wetting terror. And while this fear may be sweet to those of us who have grown tired of the unrelenting smugness and unearned superiority from these same shrieking ninnies over the last eight years, schadenfreude eventually loses its luster. What are we supposed to do now?

The endless think-pieces about how the left needs to break out of its bubble and see how other people live aren’t worth the pixels they’re digitally imposed upon. We’re at this pass now because of years of talk without action, bleated by people who live as spectators, not doers. So rather than just put further pixels into the ether, it’s time for us to act. It’s time to bring our lives to the American left, not wait for them to come to us.

Includes a recipe, conversation strategies, and everything you need for a nice, successful dinner with an agitated leftist guest. Click to read the whole thing!

The 2016 Election Season Is Over: The Road Ahead

You’re no doubt tired of politics at the moment, but I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss the recent election results. Whether you’re celebrating or mourning, I have a few thoughts I’d like to get on the record.

Despite how polarized our common culture has become, we, as individuals, are far greater than our politics. I’ve discussed this before.  Reducing a person to his opinions is not only intellectually lazy, but morally wrong. It’s a thought process angry people use to justify their resentment at a world that refuses to acknowledge their innate, unrecognized greatness. The only exception to this rule of not reducing a person to his politics are political activists: they’ve made a career out of demonization, and are fair game. Once you cross that line into activism , once you step onto that battlefield, you’re a combatant.
A casual perusal of social media shows a huge number of people all bleating the same tune: I’m ashamed to be an American. How can Ohio/Pennsylvania/Florida/East Japip be so stupid? Looks like the bigots are in charge now. What these angry, contempt-filled people don’t seem to realize is that it’s this very attitude that contributed to the rise of a person like Donald Trump. They are doing what they’ve done since the primary season: attempting to shame other people for their voting choices. That many of those same people weren’t so horrible when Obama was elected in 2012 doesn’t seem to register; one assumes that they somehow became stupid and evil overnight. The belief, absent any evidence to support it, of your superiority because of who you pulled a lever for is not just ludicrous, but pathetic.
The American news media is no longer worthy of the special protections afforded the press in the First Amendment. They’re political activists, all, and must be treated as such. Future pieces will provide instructions on just how to do that. Just because their favored candidate lost, it didn’t mean they didn’t cheat. They did. And still lost.
Don’t keep people around you who make you unhappy, particularly in social media. Do you really want to spend any attention on someone who calls you (or, in today’s passive-aggressive, can’t-get-my-hands-dirty-with-actual-confrontation culture, implies that you are) a bigot/racist/sexist/homophobe because of who you pulled a lever for? Let’s take it a bit further: do you want to spend your money and attention on entertainers who tell you that they’re ashamed of you? Who hold you in contempt?

My guy didn’t make it through the primary process. I’m not happy about that, but it is what it is. What I do is count my blessings: I’m healthy, my wife and son are healthy, and I get to write and be a husband and dad. Anything else that happens is gravy.

The Slaughtered Bird Book Review: Rare Breeds

I reviewed Erik Hofstatter’s book Rare Breeds at The Slaughtered Bird:

Erik Hofstatter’s Rare Breeds is a short read at 74 pages, filled with the sorts of things a reader can come to expect from a Hofstatter story: graphic sex, violence, and vivid descriptions. It relies on a Shyamalan-style twist to tie the story together, but is tripped up by a series of character decisions that spoil the credibility of the narrative.

Click to find out if it’s worth a read!

The Slaughtered Bird Movie Review: Killbillies

Some films just tell you what they’re all about from the title:

Killbillies is touted as the first horror film to come out of Slovenia, which makes it historical, after a fashion. I didn’t know where Slovenia was before I looked it up (I mean, I knew it was in Europe somewhere). To save you a Google search, just imagine a small, irregular splotch just to the right of the top of Italy’s boot, and there you are: Slovenia. Judging from the movie’s cinematography, Slovenia is a beautiful, wooded place with mountains and valleys and a nightmarishly dark urban center where you’re as likely to be served distilled cerebrospinal fluid in the dive bars as you are a refreshing Slovenian beer. (I don’t know if the latter exists, but I imagine it does.)

Yes, but is it any good? Click to find out!

Halloween 2016

The Dreadedin Chronicles: The Nameless City giveaway was a success! I set up a Freebooksy advertisement for the first day of the giveaway and harnessed the awesome power of social media to coast to a grand total of 1,043 copies given away. Broken down, here are the figures:

Friday, October 28: 869 (Day of Freebooksy advertisement)

Saturday, October 29: 95

Sunday, October 30: 42

Monday, October 31: 37

Here’s a screenshot of the Amazon sales ranking (keeping in mind that I didn’t actually sell any, but gave them away):

Overall, that’s not so bad. I attribute it to the new cover, the help from my awesome buddies in the world of social media, and the fact that people will download all kinds of books only because they’re free.

In other, related news, I have received all rights to my book The Ultimate Guide to Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse. The publisher has taken the product off of Amazon and will sell its remaining stock. What this means is that I can republish the book under my own imprint. I have new content for it and have already contracted with an artist for more illustrations to go with the new content. Next steps include laying out the book in a new print format and getting it ready to be sold again. So I have three options:

Lay out the book myself with a tool that will do the job properly. This will require money, time, and effort.
Pay someone to lay the book out. This will require a great deal of money.
Give up on it. This requires no money, no time, and no effort.

Obviously, 3 is not ideal. Nor are 1 or 2. So we’ll see.

Also, here’s a picture of my little boy and I ready for Halloween. He went as the blue Power Ranger. I was the dorky guy in an ill-fitting mask.

 

Halloween Giveaway!

Starting today, October 28, and going all the way through October 31, my horror novella , will be free on Amazon! This new edition features a brand-new cover and shoots out mini chocolate bars from your e-reader whenever you click on it!*

It’s a Halloween tale of Lovecraftian horrors, cannibal zombies, ancient evils, and a sleeping sickness that takes over the town of Dunedin, Florida. The supporting characters were taken from local teen volunteers who filled out a questionnaire provided by the Dunedin Public Library, and I can safely say that not one of them has located me to lodge a single complaint about the blood and horror to which they’ve been (fictionally) subjected.

Don’t wait for Halloween to download your free e-copy: !

*The latter part, the one about the chocolate bars, it’s not true. I’m sorry about that. I kind of got carried away.