{"id":518,"date":"2014-12-03T20:42:30","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T20:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maxkochuncorked.com\/?p=518"},"modified":"2014-12-03T20:43:28","modified_gmt":"2014-12-03T20:43:28","slug":"thanksgiving-the-babadook-and-the-chook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maxkochuncorked.com\/?p=518","title":{"rendered":"Thanksgiving, The Babadook, and the Chook"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did everyone have a\u00a0kickass Thanksgiving? Did you MOW DOWN on a\u00a0crap-ton of deep-fried\u00a0wattle\u00a0and stuffing and gravy and mashed potatoes with garlic and cranberry sauce from a can and pumpkin pies and beer and hopefully some decent WINES??? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Did you watch the Macy’s Parade, the dog show, and the Peanuts Thanksgiving special where Snoopy improvises and slams together\u00a0toast, popcorn, and jelly beans for the kids???<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"charlie<\/a><\/p>\n

Excellent!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Me, I grilled steaks and veggies. Suddenly, my wife decided she wasn’t into turkey anymore (??) and so I had to considerably modify the menu. But it all worked out. I mean, there was still potatoes and gravy and stuffing and cranberries and pumpkin pie with whipped\u00a0cream. But the best aspect of the long 4-day weekend was LAYING the hell LOW.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I really worry I’m becoming more and more of a recluse<\/a>. Which is nuts because I love travel and getting out to wine country and going to the beach and visiting friends in their houses. I even like going to the grocery store or running the occasional errand (well, I run a LOT of those). But I HATE going to Costco and I don’t like crowds and don’t think for a SECOND I’ll be returning to any theme park<\/em>\u00a0anytime soon.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My waning patience for humanity and all it’s doing to destroy itself is just–<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, yeah, I REALLY treasured four days of total solace at home. Unfortunately, I’m still immersed in the Halloween Blu-ray boxed set<\/a> my wife bought me for our 15-year wedding\u00a0<\/strong>anni. See, I’m one of these\u00a0idiots who actually watches<\/em> commentaries. It’s like film school to me. Especially if I can LEARN something.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Now here it is, Thanksgiving weekend, and I’m saturating myself with Halloween<\/em>-brand production anecdotes. Which only confirms what we already figured: Halloween is a YEAR-ROUND deal for ol’ Maxon Brian Koch! (Man, how crazy is “Halloween III: Season of the Witch”<\/a>? I’m kind of\u00a0obsessed with it. The BALLS on that baby. NO Michael Myers! MASS child murder! Robots! Snakes! Bugs! Tom Atkins! And who could forget THIS<\/a> brain-grating, demented gem of a jingle?!)<\/b><\/p>\n

Which brings me to “The Babadook”<\/a>. THE best movie I saw over my break. Kudos to my dear buddy Brett Pearsons<\/a> for texting me about it. It’s a horror film through and through, true (although I might qualify it as “terror”… there is a\u00a0difference<\/a>…), but it’s\u00a0<\/strong>also a very powerful Mother & Son tale. AND it’s Australian.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Babadook\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Without giving too much away, a creative but disturbed little boy (I could relate) and his mommy receive a mysterious pop-up book called “Mister Babadook”. Dreadful, sometimes surreal things slowly proceed to happen and you start to wonder if you’re witnessing an unrelenting (shared) spiral into madness… or a very serious and REAL menace.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"babadook4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I can’t even tell you how moved I was by the lead actress, Essie Davis<\/a>, as the exhausted, hysterical Amelia. This woman deserves an Oscar nom for her work, if not a “Babadook” franchise. Because once you open this pop-up book, you are DESTINED for Doom on all kinds<\/em> of different levels. There were\u00a0times I was so troubled\u00a0by what I was taking in that I even JUMPED once when the wife popped into the room to toss me a\u00a0query. If I’M jumping, you KNOW it’s scary.<\/strong><\/p>\n

WARNING: SLIGHT SPOILER: This film made me miss my mother, who I am always missing, even though she’s still alive, we just live too far apart and don’t talk a whole helluva lot.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Amelia, turns out, is a widow (as was my mom), and the little boy never knew his\u00a0daddy and spends much of his\u00a0time alone living out his fantasy life with magic and costumes and crude-yet-effective contraptions. It punched me in the\u00a0gut WHILE it freaked me the hell out. It’s some accomplishment. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

“The Babadook” was directed by a lady named Jennifer Kent<\/a>.\u00a0She’s like the Jane Campion<\/a> of Terror to me now!<\/strong><\/p>\n

BEWARE THE BABADOOK!!!<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"mister-babadook-photo-5384736519476\"<\/a><\/p>\n

WINE PAIRING: The film is available on iTunes and VOD. I say bust out a bottle of the\u00a0Chook Shiraz-Viognier 2012<\/a>.\u00a0Because Chook\u00a0rhymes with Dook and I’ll see you again soon!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did everyone have a kickass Thanksgiving? Did you MOW DOWN on a crap-ton of deep-fried wattle and stuffing and gravy and mashed potatoes with garlic and cranberry sauce from a can and pumpkin pies and beer and hopefully some decent WINES??? Did you watch the Macy’s Parade, the dog show, and the Peanuts Thanksgiving special where Snoopy improvises and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[123,122,124,121,120],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-essie-davis","tag-halloween-iii-season-of-the-witch","tag-jennifer-kent","tag-thanksgiving","tag-the-babadook"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4VgPA-8m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxkochuncorked.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxkochuncorked.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxkochuncorked.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxkochuncorked.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxkochuncorked.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/maxkochuncorked.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":528,"href":"https:\/\/maxkochuncorked.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions\/528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxkochuncorked.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxkochuncorked.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxkochuncorked.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}