Australian import The Babadook, from Jennifer Kent, is one of the most original horror movies in years, and one of best films of 2014. Out this weekend in select theatres, actress-turned-writer Kent dug deep into her psyche for this film to tell the story of a child’s fear of monsters under the bed with the horrifying concept of a mother driven to hurt her own child. Played by the fabulous Essie Davis (deserving of awards talk for her emotional take on the classic scream queen) and child star Noah Wiseman, Kent has crafted a funny, emotional, and terrifying tale of terror that feels simultaneously fresh and old-fashioned. Kent spoke by phone from her home in Australia with The Mary Sue contributor Lesley Coffin about creating this brilliant piece of work.
The following interview contains only very mild spoilers for The Babadook. Look for our review of the film tomorrow morning.
Lesley Coffin (TMS): One of the first questions I wanted to ask you about is the little boy Noah [Wiseman] (Samuel), whom I understand you discovered. How did you find him?
Jennifer Kent: He really is extraordinary, because he was playing someone very different from himself; which, for a six yearold, is an incredible accomplishment. He was found by our casting agent who looked all across Australia to find a little boy, and she has a lot of experience casting children. But it is never easy and there were probably 400 to 600 little boys she saw, and I saw about 100 of those on tape, and then we started to go in and improvise with some of them. And that was when it became very apparent that Noah would be the boy, because he has a mix of sensitivity and being emotionally robust, which is perfect for the character of Samuel.
TMS: Noah and Essie [Davis] (Amelia) have a great chemistry on screen as a mother and son. How hard is it develop that family relationship on screen between two strangers, especially a little boy who has never acted before?
Kent: I am an actor, so I knew we couldn’t just bring them together on set, particularly when one is an adult and one is a child. It was very important to develop that relationship in a way that would benefit Noah, and ultimately benefit Essie as well. I mean, Essie could walk on stage and have chemistry with anyone, she’s that experienced. But not so with Noah. So I took Noah aside for two weeks before we started shooting and got Noah comfortable enough to trust me. And I told him the kid-friendly, less scary story of The Babadook. And he came to know who Sam was and he knew his role in the story. And it gave him a lot of responsibility and he felt very important to the film, which he is, which is so important when working with kids. And so, once we had a week together, I brought Essie in. And we didn’t work on the script, because that needs to be as fresh as possible, but we just played games and had Essie play his mum. And I had to give Noah permission to be naughty and be disobedient. Because kids always want to please adults, especially adults that aren’t their parents. And so it was a process for him to learn to be naughty, and understand why he could be naughty.
TMS: I always find myself worried for little kids in horror films because of how scared I get. What did you do to make sure Noah wasn’t scared on set?
Kent: He was never scared by the story and we always made sure that he wasn’t scared or traumatized. His mother is a child psychologist, and so we worked really hard to protect him. And she felt this was a really important film for women which needed to be told, and she was very supportive. And Essie and I protected Noah on set as well, and he had an adult stand in, so whenever Essie needed to let it rip in some of those really terrible scenes opposite Samuel, it was an adult actor she was working with.
TMS: The movie and monster elements are creepy, but the most disturbing idea in the film, and reason it haunts audiences after seeing it, is the idea of a mother being driven mad and unable to stop herself from wanting to hurt her child. How difficult was it for you to get into the frame of mind that you could even write a movie like this?
Kent: I really had to go there in my mind and try to have compassion for a person like that. Often when you hear stories like that about parents killing their kids or murder-suicides, immediately we think they are monsters. And yes, it is an awful abomination to do that, it is terrible, but I was trying to understand how someone could get to that state. And trying to elicit compassion. And with the character of Amelia, it wouldn’t have worked for the story if she started out as just some kind of crazy woman from start to finish. I really wanted audiences to feel for her, go on the journey with her, and not make judgments.
TMS: It’s especially hard to watch Essie, because she spends so much time being scared of becoming that woman, like a person who is trying desperately to stop the car before the crash.
Kent: It is a very hard part to play, and a very brave role for Essie to take. Because all actors want to play roles where people think, that is a great, brave noble person. But for both Essie and I, we wanted to show the real human being, a woman drowning in her situation. And I think both of us, me in the writing and her in the performance, it was all about having compassion for that person. And it was something where I thought, I’m going to get a lot of criticism for this character, but I’m prepared for that. But I’ve actually experienced the opposite and met a lot of women who have told me they were relieved to see this woman and told me it’s helped them make sense of their own feelings of inadequacy as a mother and fear of never being good enough. Because most mothers I’ve met, secretly they never feel like they are good enough.
TMS: You definitely addressed the fear of motherhood in a way I haven’t seen before.
Kent: I don’t have children myself, but I’m always amazed by the lack of information available to mothers about how they will feel and how hard it will be. Its taboo to even talk about it. A lot of women don’t cope and find that it isn’t an automatic given that they’ll bond with their child. It wasn’t the main thing I wanted to explore with Babadook; I was more interested in exploring the suppression of darkness and trying to face darkness. But it is certainly became a main thing, and byproduct of it, because women are constantly being told they have to be loving and nurturing and that that is their role. And motherhood is the primary example of that role, but it isn’t always easy or natural.
TMS: The movie also addresses the impact grief can have, as it is still such a heavy burden on Amelia. And I remember rearing that most people take an average of seven years to truly move on from the grief of losing a loved one, and the movie is leading up to the seven year anniversary of Amelia losing her husband.
Kent: That is interesting to hear, and I think that makes sense. It seems most people give individuals about two years to grieve and that seems unrealistic to me. But the number seven has always been important to me. And the age of seven was important to me because that is when a child starts to develop ideas of their own which don’t automatically mirror their parents. They still worship their parents of course, but that is the age when kids start to become their own person, and that was important for the character of Sam.
TMS: The image of the Babadook is so bizarre and weird. How did you even think of the design?
Kent: It was very much the opposite of an intellectual decision for me. If something felt right, I would do it. I don’t mean I was just haphazardly slapping things together, it was a far more emotional process. I don’t know why silent and black and white cinema felt relevant to me, but it did, so that was an influence. And then there was the pop-up element of the book I needed to incorporate. It all had to be childlike, so the Babadook itself had to have a childlike layer of seeming benign and harmless at first and then as the story progressives, it became a far more adult fear.
TMS: Even the name has a childlike element, because when you first say “Babadook,” you kind of laugh.
Kent: What you said there is exactly what I was hoping for. I’m not scared when people say, “what is the Babadook, sounds like a stupid name to me.” I’m like, yeah it is a stupid name. It is the name of a child’s monster and it is only through the playing out of the film that it becomes something very adult.
TMS: There are a lot of movie clips in the movie when Amelia is watching television at night and they all seem to play into the story. How did you decide what to use?
Kent: Well, we were driven by budget of course. There were a few I really wanted to include but just couldn’t afford. And I actually played for The Barber clip out of pocket because I didn’t want anything else in there, and it was not cheap. But besides all the budgetary stuff, the TV clips were about what Amelia was going through and it really needed to closely link to what was happening in the story. And it was a huge job finding the right clips. But it was very important to me that we selected clips which didn’t just work in the film, but reflected her state of mind as the film progressed. Because for me, that TV is like another character. And I loved the idea that this used to be her outlet to escape, because that is why we all watch TV.
If you need a good happy-cry, take a few minutes to watch Playground, the sweetly animated short film by Ryosuke Oshiro. A boy who has always considered himself a "lone wolf" gets into a competition of imagination with a classmate who, like him, dreams of superpowers, magical forests, and grand cities.
"I'm on national TV and a bunch of kids are watching so SEX FINGERS TIME WOOOO SEX FINGERS DO YOU GET IT IT'S LIKE SEX"
Nothing brings families together like the Thanksgiving Day parade, so this guy decided to bust this out during the Thanksgiving Day parade:
I mean, it's possible this wasn't lewd -- maybe he was doing that magic trick, where he made his finger disappear? Maybe he was pretending his finger was a little tiny slide whistle? But, uh, the way he waited for the camera to be on him, slowly slid his glove off, and started giving a national TV audience a sex ed lesson. This person definitely agrees with me:
The sailor on the same float as nick during Nicks performance on Macy's parade was doing this " "
Well. That's nice.
Earlier this week, Gizzy Fowler, a trans woman of color, was found dead in a Nashville suburb. She’s the 10th trans woman of color — and the 11th trans woman in total — known to have been killed in the United States this year, according to the New York City Anti-Violence Project.
"There is an undeniable epidemic of fatal violence against transgender and gender non-confirming women, specifically transgender women of color in the United States — these ten lives cut short cannot be ignored" said Osman Ahmed, The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) Research and Education Coordinator at the New York City Anti-Violence Project. “We need immediate action on a national level to address the alarming violence against transgender women in the United States.”
With the Transgender Day of Remembrance (11/20) occurring only days after Gizzy’s murder, it is more urgent than ever that we recognize and demand an end to the epidemic of violence against all trans people, recognizing that trans women of color bear the brunt of the attacks. My heart is with Gizzy’s family and friends during this tragic time.
'These things happen when you’re in a hurry. I’ve definitely done it, but I’m lucky I didn’t have a jillion people looking for any flaw to turn into a conspiracy theory the second an image went live.'
Above: The original and corrected versions of the photograph released yesterday.
———
A quick note on “Photoshopped” vs. “Photoshopped”…
Basically everybody using a high-end camera and taking pro-quality, publicity-type photos is going to Photoshop them. You have to do it to tweak image settings and fix little glitches and even to get the file into the right format to share on the web in the first place.
The internet usually uses “Photoshopped” to mean something similar to “faked.” But there’s levels of Photoshopping. You can do basic adjustments, you can do bigger fixes, or you can glue people’s heads on different bodies and add rainbows and unicorns and whatnot.
So what we had yesterday with the missing shoulder was just moderate-level Photoshopping with a small error.
No big deal. These things happen when you’re in a hurry. I’ve definitely done it, but I’m lucky I didn’t have a jillion people looking for any flaw to turn into a conspiracy theory the second an image went live.
And as someone who has been using Photoshop a long time now, none of this #shouldergate business seems the slightest bit suspicious. If that makes any of you feel better.
'Screeny wasn't possible until iOS 8, when new APIs gave developers the ability to delete photos.'
'the ability to delete photos'
One of the iPhone's cleverest features is its ability to take a screenshot of the device just by holding down two buttons. I take screenshots every day, of all kinds of things: errant tweets that I know are about to be deleted, mobile boarding passes for a flight home, or images from the web that I might want to share in a story or on social media. The problem is that these screenshots are useful for about 24 hours — but I never go back to delete them, because iOS doesn't offer a way to sort through them. Screenshots are the main reason my camera roll looks so cluttered.
Enter Screeny, a new $0.99 app that makes deleting screenshots a breeze. You simply open the app, tap to scan your camera roll, and select the screenshots you want to get rid of. Screeny lets you know how much space you will recover on your phone; tap one more time, and they all disappear. About the only way Screeny could be better (aside from iPad compatibility) is if it offered to delete your screenshots automatically after a certain amount of time.
Screeny wasn't possible until iOS 8, when new APIs gave developers the ability to delete photos. In the grand scheme of things, useless old screenshots are a fairly minor concern. But they are also something that have bugged me every day since I bought an iPhone. So to NFN Labs, which makes the app, we offer our sincere thanks. Sometimes it's the simplest utilities that make us the happiest.
AT&T now says it isn't really going to halt a huge fiber investment because of net neutrality despite its CEO recently claiming the company would do just that.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told investors on November 12 that "We can't go out and invest that kind of money deploying fiber to 100 cities not knowing under what rules those investments will be governed." Stephenson was referring to an April announcement in which AT&T said it would "expand its ultra-fast fiber network to up to 100 candidate cities and municipalities nationwide, including 21 new major metropolitan areas."
Because of uncertainty about net neutrality rules, Stephenson said at the investor event this month that it would be better to "pause" instead of proceeding with the 100-city investment. Construction in all 100 cities was never guaranteed to begin with, as it was contingent on municipal cooperation with AT&T.
DIY your own inductive charging phone case! It’s easy to build a base charger from a recycled hardcover book and never plug in your phone again. We’ll put the charging module in the phone case and the charging transmitter inside the cover of the book. This project does involve some paper cutting with sharp blades, but is very simple. Check out the complete tutorial on the Adafruit Learning System!
An anonymous reader writes A malfunction in electronic voting machines in Saline County, Kansas, left over 5,000 votes uncounted. That's roughly one-third of the votes cast. Counting those 5,207 votes didn't change any outcomes in this case however. “That’s a huge difference,” county Chairman Randy Duncan said when notified by the Journal of the error. “That’s scary. That makes me wonder about voting machines. Should we go back to paper ballots?”
While millions of Americans are about to gather around a table topped with turkey, stuffing, and all other sorts of Thanksgiving fare, two in particular are preparing for a much different meal. Almost 300 miles above the Earth's surface, NASA Astronauts Terry Virts and Barry Wilmore are building a "feast" with their four weightless international colleagues aboard the International Space Station. NASA breaks it down on YouTube:
The orbiting astronauts didn't have a special meal delivered to them, rather they've compiled one with some of the core menu foods that the ISS is stocked with: irradiated smoked turkey, thermo-stabilized candied yams, freeze-dried cornbread dressing, and a cranapple desert. Crew members are allowed to fill "bonus containers" with special items, which are often specific to the holidays each crew knows they will be aboard the station for.
None of this may look appetizing, but food and special occasions are crucial parts of keeping ISS crew members (or any other past and future astronauts) happy and focused during their missions. One good thing — which has been noticedoften and was spotted in the video above — is that they do have Sriracha aboard the ISS, so they can always spice up the bland meals. There is, however, one huge missing piece of the traditional Thanksgiving puzzle — no place to store leftovers.
Microsoft may have just accidentally announced that it is acquiring email startup Acompli. A post, authored by Microsoft corporate vice president Rajesh Jha, appeared on the company's official blog today. Titled "blank post please delete," the post's body copy gave no information as to its purpose, but its slug — the text in its web address — read "microsoft-acquires-acompli."
The post's web address read 'Microsoft acquires Acompli'
The post has gone now, after being screenshotted for posterity by TechCrunch, but the fact that an early draft of an announcement was apparently erroneously published could indicate that a deal between the two companies is complete or in its final stages. If true, Microsoft would be acquiring a powerhouse email app that The Verge's Casey Newton called "the Outlook for iPhone that Microsoft hasn't yet built." Acompli also brought its app, and a new "focused inbox feature," to Android last year, shortly after it raised $7.3 million in investment. TechCrunch speculates that the company may have been pitching for another round of funding recently, before receiving an offer from Microsoft.
Acompli did not immediately respond to requests to comment from The Verge. Microsoft, too, has yet to comment on the post or any potential deal between the two companies.
Zothecula writes Security researcher GironSec has pulled Uber's Android app apart and discovered that it's sending a huge amount of personal data back to base – including your call logs, what apps you've got installed, whether your phone is vulnerable to certain malware, whether your phone is rooted, and your SMS and MMS logs, which it explicitly doesn't have permission to do. It's the latest in a series of big-time missteps for a company whose core business model is, frankly, illegal in most of its markets as well.
Screeny is an utility app that helps you save space consumed by screenshots. It screens your camera roll and helps you to filter and delete screenshots that are no longer necessary.
Proto-pasta Stainless Steel PLA & Proto-pasta Magnetic Iron PLA!
Engineered for printability on home 3D printers, these materials print as easily as PLA, but feel and look like metal!
Proto-pasta Stainless Steel PLA can be polished or brushed for a brilliant metallic shine, or left unfinished for a cast metal appearance.
Magnets stick to Proto-pasta Magnetic Iron PLA, making prints far more “attractive” than before. This opens up a new range of practical uses and fun possibilities for 3D printed objects. Prints can also be oxidized for a unique, rusty patina finish.
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! We also offer the LulzBot TAZ – Open source 3D Printer and the Printrbot Simple Metal 3D Printer in our store. If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: This week, NYPD cop Pedro Serrano has been testifying about the unfair targeting of Blacks and Hispanics for New York’s Stop and Frisk. To support his case, Serrano unveiled a video recording of superior ordering him to stop and frisk Black and Latino males between the ages of 14 and 21. This cop is very, very brave.
Good cops don’t turn a blind eye to the corruption and racism being practiced by their fellow officers.
Brave man. I hope to all the gods he isn’t made to pay for it.
Diego Ibanez, the guy who threw fake blood yesterday on NYC Commissioner Bratton, is facing 225 years for 9 counts of assault on an “officer of the peace”. And Officer Darren Wilson walks free for murdering an unarmed black boy. This is the society we live in and some of y’all wanna stay complacent as fuck. 225 years for throwing red paint. 0 years for taking the life of a boy who was jaywalking.
The older I get, the wronger the establishment is.
The University of Massachusetts-Amherst has cut ties with alumnus Bill Cosby amid allegations by women accusing the comedian of sexual assault.
University spokesman Edward Blaguszewski told the Boston Globe on Wednesday that school officials had asked Cosby to step down as an honorary co-chairman of the university’s $300 million fundraising campaign, and Cosby agreed.
Cosby received a master’s and a doctorate in education from the university. He and his wife, Camille, donated several hundred thousand dollars to the school.
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley sent a letter to the university urging them to cut ties with Cosby.
Coakley said that while Cosby hadn’t been criminally charged, his association sends the wrong message at a time when the state is focused on the prevention of campus sexual assault.
Cosby’s lawyer has called the allegations “unsubstantiated” and “discredited.”
The skull is one of the most clichéd graphic symbols ever devised. It's a physiognomic necessity, yes, but also a routine emblem of authority and dissent, caution, and prohibition. It represents both power and mortality and has been preserved time and again for scientific, artistic, theatrical, and existential purposes. Pirates once pledged allegiance to skulls; these days they are popular as hip fashion accessories.
Recently, I wrote the foreword for Monte Beauchamp's Popular Skullture: The Skull Motif in Pulps, Paperbacks, and Comics(Kitchen Sink/Dark Horse Comics), a collection of skull covers that celebrates the motif’s commercial legacy. This rich collection, which features 160 skulls from the 1930s through the 1950s, is still a small swath considering the countless craniums (and other memento mori and vanitas) that appear in commercial and fine art, as well as religious and pagan iconography. Nonetheless, it is fascinating record of how illustrators and designers have improvised on the silhouette to capture attention and sell products.
Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics
The skull may be ubiquitous, but it’s never struggled to be fearsome. Once the emblem of Hitler’s SS, the totenkopf (death’s head) remains as ferocious and fearsome as ever. Yet, where in the Nazi context it implies torture and murder, the skull’s arresting look has also become the emblem of safety notices. It’s known as a common hazard symbol on warning labels for poison and other lethal substances. Which presents an interesting paradox: One use threatens lives, another saves them. There are two sides to every skull.
Used for good or ill, the core reason why the skull has remained so powerful is that it is a reminder that everyone dies. That was a theme Shakespeare picked up on when he inserted a skull into Hamlet at the moment when his eponymous Danish prince recites a monologue over the reclaimed skull of his friend Yorick.
Alas, poor Yorick! … Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?
By sadly recalling the vivacious human spirit that once inhabited the skull, Shakespeare channels the idea that however cheerful the spirit, ultimately everyone’s just bones. Here the symbol is subtle: It was a natural realization for the downcast Hamlet to come to in the midst of the play’s downward spiral.
In the vibrant 20-year period the book covers, the skull enjoyed a flashier role in paperbacks, pulps, magazines, film posters, and comics. To avoid being inconsequential, artists and designers repurposed the cliché in novel ways, creating visual puns (such as making skulls into coconuts) or dressing them up in human dress, which added levity to and transformed darkness into illuminated kitsch.
Dark Horse ComicsDark Horse Comics
Skullculture reveals that skulls entertain just as well as they depress. Yet as versatile as they are, skulls are less effective in symbolizing happiness then when used to connote mystery, murder, and mayhem. That’s when the good old meaning of the skull can’t be beat.
Dark Horse ComicsDark Horse ComicsDark Horse Comics
Brooks, 52, canceled appearances on NBC's late-night "The Tonight Show" and the morning "Today" show as well as daytime talk show "Live with Kelly and Michael" and National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," the singer's spokeswoman, Nancy Seltzer, said on Wednesday.
"To spend the day promoting our stuff like nothing was wrong seemed distasteful to me," Brooks said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
Ginsburg was expected back at work on Monday, but her hospitalization — just three weeks after elections handed Republicans control of the Senate — raised anew the question whether President Barack Obama would be able to appoint a like-minded replacement.
Super Opinionated.
