PITB Reviews – Pain In The Bud

Of Cats And Books

A look at the strange and wonderful world of rare books where, of course, you’ll also find cats.

I’ve always liked the idea of antiquarian bookshops.

I am almost completely ignorant on the subject, mostly because chasing after extremely rare print volumes is the domain of people with a lot of expendable income. The most valuable books in my possession are an original 1939 first edition print of Will Durant’s The Life of Greece, and two novels signed by their authors. Their value is sentimental, not monetary.

But I like the general romanticized image of the antiquarian bookseller: an older man or woman in tweed ensconced in a cozy shop in Manhattan, with every shelf filled with dusty volumes and every surface covered by globes, astrolabes and other curiosities. There’s one of those tight winding staircases with wrought iron railings leading to a loft for access to the highest shelves, the music is from a vinyl collection of light jazz, and it’s always raining outside.

A doted-on shop cat dozes on a red leather armchair, tail twitching from some nightmare in which it’s slightly less adorable than it thinks it is.

Collectors in damp trenchcoats drop in, asking after 17th-century occult tomes, grimoires, and Voynich-esque manuscripts with engravings of impossible creatures, trees with visual organs and arcane rituals. Bibliophiles ask after leatherbound collections of classics like Don Quixote, and the occasionally curious passerby peeks in, surprised that such shops still exist in the age of the internet.

It turns out that’s not too far from the truth, especially the bits about the internet and, of course, the cats.

Johnny Depp is constantly smoking and drinking red wine while handling priceless old books in 1999’s The Ninth Gate. Notice the winding staircase in the rare book shop in the top screenshot.

The Booksellers is a documentary that screened in festivals in late 2019 before heading straight to video when the pandemic brought the world to a screeching halt.

It’s an inside look at the annual New York Book Fair and the small world of antiquarian and rare booksellers in New York, a shrinking constellation of people mostly descended from, or formerly apprenticed to, the booksellers of old before Barnes and Noble and Jeff Bezos laid waste to that sector of retail.

Before network TV, cable TV, dial-up internet, broadband, Kindles, iPads and smartphones turned us into a media-gorging — yet paradoxically less literate — society, New York was home to more than 500 bookshops, including generalists and specialists who catered to people with particular and peculiar interests. Now it’s home to fewer than 80, according to the documentary.

When the booksellers were asked about the way the internet has impacted their trade, their weary sighs reminded me of my older colleagues from my brief time experiencing the end of the “good old days” of newspapering, before the internet destroyed or compromised every publishing income stream and delivered us to this moment. This dystopian time when entire swaths of the country have become news deserts, Elon Musk in all his wisdom asserts that Twitter accounts run by anonymous trolls in Belarus are just as reliable — even more trustworthy, in fact — than those liars in legacy media, and corporate raiders are stripping the last handful of newspapers down to assets they can auction off.

A rare book shop in Paris. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Not all of it’s bad. One rare book dealer laments the fact that “the thrill of the hunt” is gone, meaning it no longer takes years to track down some obscure volume because you can hop online and find it in a few clicks. I get that, but nostalgia for that sort of thing is the ultimate in looking back through rose-colored glasses. Plenty of us could wax nostalgic about the days when we’d hear a song on the radio and have to hum the damn thing to record store clerks, but we’re forgetting about the considerable frustration involved. Given the choice between “fun” ignorance and access to information, I’ll always choose the latter.

As for the cats, it’s not a surprise when many of the book dealers interviewed for the film identify themselves as cat lovers or idly scratch their feline friends while showing off their vast personal collections. Antiquarian bookshops tend to be warm, quiet, gently-lit spaces, perfect napping spots for cats who guard old books from rodents.

If you’re interested in watching The Booksellers, you can find it on Amazon Prime video, or better yet, just click below:

Header image credit: A. Savin/Wikimedia Commons

Predator: Badlands Is An Epic, Surprisingly Funny Adventure, And Even Has A Breakout Character Named Bud

Badlands is a romp through a vividly realized alien world filled with danger. It’s also a film with heart.

Hollywood pumps out so much disappointing content, especially in the age of streaming, that it’s easy to become disillusioned with movies altogether.

But every once in a while there’s a film that reminds you how much fun movies can be, hitting all the right emotional notes while taking you completely out of this world for two blissful hours.

Predator: Badlands is that kind of movie. Unexpectedly funny and poignant, it also delivers the kind of action audiences have come to expect from the Predator franchise — and then some.

The biggest change here is that, for the first time, a Yautja (the alien species we call the Predators) is the protagonist.

Njohrr is a Yautja clan leader who believes Dek is not strong enough to earn his place in the clan.

Dek isn’t just any Yautja. He’s a youngster who is horribly wronged in the opening minutes of the film and sent to Genna, a place his species calls the “death planet” because virtually every form of life there is monstrous and spectacularly lethal.

His own death is a foregone conclusion on the brutal world until he meets two unlikely allies: Thia, a damaged synthetic (android) built by the notorious Weyland-Yutani corporation, and Bud.

Bud steals the show, but I wouldn’t dream of robbing anyone of the pleasure of experiencing Bud the way writer/director Dan Trachtenberg intended, so I will say no more.

Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi play Thia and Dek, respectively. Fanning adds a human element as she and Dek team up initially for survival, then out of loyalty to each other.

Badlands has a lot of heart and a script that knows just when to slice the tension. In one quiet scene after surviving an encounter with a particularly nasty creature, Thia (an energetic Elle Fanning) raves about the experience and the excitement of accompanying Dek and Bud on a hunt.

“The Dynamic Trio! Remember when we went down the tree? That monster’s mouth? I mean… Uggh. Didn’t smell great, didn’t smell great, but we got him. We got him! Thank you, seriously, for that experience. Truly amazing. Thrilling! Truly thrilling.

“What was your favorite part?” she asks the young Yautja.

“When my sword pierced the creature’s skull and its blood ran down my face,” Dek deadpans.

Dek is not invincible, and he’s without the vast majority of his arsenal, with only his trusty heat sword to defend against the hyper-aggressive fauna of Genna.

This is Trachtenberg’s second Predator film, and Badlands exists because he proved there was life still left in the franchise with 2022’s Prey.

That movie was unfortunately streamed direct to Hulu without a theatrical release, as were several big time films that year, because of a resurgent COVID wave. (Remember the Delta variant?)

But critics and audiences, including your humble Buddesian correspondents, found a lot to like in the story of Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young Comanche woman living on the Great Plains in 1719. After encountering a Yautja, Naru warns her tribe that a mysterious and dangerous creature is stalking their lands, but they laugh at her and accuse her of telling tall tales — until they see the Yautja for themselves, at which point they don’t find it amusing anymore.

Midthunder was fantastic, and Prey balanced its historical setting with stunning action sequences and quiet character moments.

Amber Midthunder as Naru in 2022’s Prey.

In earlier installments, including Prey, the Yautja were always the antagonists. We knew they were a warrior culture, that they followed an honor code and possessed fantastically advanced technology, but for the most part the Yautja remained a blank slate aside from some non-canonical media (mostly novelizations, comics and games) that attempted to expand the universe.

Badlands demystifies the Yautja somewhat out of necessity, which is always a dangerous gamble (just ask the xenomorph of Alien fame, which lost its mystique half a dozen sequels ago), but significantly raises the emotional stakes.

Dek isn’t invincible. Circumstances have robbed him of most of his arsenal, he’s thrown into a perilous and unfamiliar world, and he’s haunted by the fresh memories of the tragedy that sets off the events of the film.

That makes it easy for the audience to identify with and root for Dek, despite the difficulty of conveying emotions with alien facial features. Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi deserves credit not only for imbuing Dek with physicality, but also for getting the most he can out of the Yautja youngster’s brooding body language, howls of frustration and slowly dawning realization that he can choose his own path in life.

It may take a planet teeming with horrors to make an underdog of a Yautja, but Badlands succeeds on that count.

Predator: Badlands set a record for the franchise with a $40 million opening weekend, and pulled in $184 million total at the box office. It was made available for streaming this week. With the financial success, and the positive reviews from critics and fans alike, it’s possible we’ll see Dek, Thia and Bud continue their adventures in a sequel.

The Elephant Queen Is A Love Letter To Some Of The Most Extraordinary Creatures On Earth

The filmmakers spent four years with matriarch Athena and her herd.

Athena learned the seasonal migratory path from sanctuary to sanctuary from her mother, who in turn learned from her mother, in an unbroken chain that goes back as long as elephants have walked the savanna we call the Maasai Mara.

Every bend, every life-sustaining water hole, every spot where the most nutritious plants grow — and especially the final resting places of her relatives, those who didn’t survive the long journeys to water and shade during drought seasons.

The 50-year-old matriarch, one of the Earth’s last “super tuskers,” has seen her family through so many difficult times that the members of the herd don’t question her even when her decisions could mean life and death for them.

She is their matriarch, and their trust in her is absolute.

During times of drought, all animals converge on the same watering holes. Credit: Apple TV

Athena is also the herd’s protector, which means being wary of humans is her default. It has to be, since humans have poached her kind to the brink of extinction to feed the insatiable Chinese ivory trade.

Filmmakers Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble spent four years with Athena and her herd while filming The Elephant Queen, and earning Athena’s trust was a laborious process.

At first, the wise matriarch wouldn’t let the documentary team anywhere near her family. That slowly began to change as they showed her they meant her no harm.

“But we could see that with her herd, with her family, she was a really calm, beautiful, temperate matriarch,” Deeble explained after a film festival screening of the documentary “And we would just spend time with her.”

Still, the filmmakers had to pass a test before Athena extended her trust:

‘Over the course of several weeks, Athena had allowed the small crew closer and closer, until they were about 40 meters from her. One day, Athena walked away to let her calf stand between her and the crew. That’s a rare occurrence for a mother.

“At that stage two things can happen,” Deeble said. “Either she can realize that it was a mistake, and if we’re in the middle of them we’re going to get trampled, or, and what I like to think happened, she was just testing us. Because after a while, she made a very low rumble and the calf looked up, and she wandered very calmly around the front of the calf. And from that day on, she allowed us amazing access.”’

The Elephant Queen first finds Athena’s herd during a time of plenty, when water and food are abundant, and the herd’s babies — curious Wewe, a boy, and little Mimi, a female and the youngest member of the herd — get to splash around and explore their new world.

Satao, a male “super-tusker,” arrives at the watering hole for hydration and to find a mate. Credit: Apple TV

But every year there comes a time when the water hole starts to dry out and the herd must begin a long march spanning more than 100 miles to reach a more reliable source of water.

The year Stone and Deeble began following the herd, the drought was so severe that Athena made the difficult decision to march for a far-off sanctuary, the closest known permanent water hole fed by an underground spring.

It’s a long, exhausting journey, and newborns can’t make it, so Athena is forced to delay their departure for as long as she can to give Mimi and Wewe enough time to feed and grow stronger.

Elephant calves are dependant on their mothers’ milk for two years. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The gestation period for African elephants is about two years, and the entire herd is protective of the babies. The adults cooperate to shield them from predators and the sun, using their bodies to do both. They’re also extremely cautious around hazards like rapidly drying mud holes, which can trap young elephants.

The Elephant Queen’s stars are its titular species, but the documentary does an outstanding job not only showing us the other animals who inhabit the elephant kingdom, but also making clear the many ways those animals depend on elephants for their survival.

From geese, frogs and terrapins who rely on elephants to dig water holes, to dung beetles for whom elephant waste is a bounty, to kilifish whose eggs hitch a ride on the massive animals toward the next water source, the entire ecosystem is balanced on the broad backs of the gentle giants.

As narrator Chiwetel Ejiofor (Doctor Strange, The Martian, 12 Years A Slave) notes, elephants are tactile creatures, and when they nudge a terrapin or knock a frog off a tree branch, it’s curiosity, not malice, that motivates them. They’re herbivores, despite their enormous size, and gain nothing from harming other creatures.

It’s impossible to watch a documentary like this without looking into the eyes of elephants like Athena and wondering about the intellect behind them, the thoughts and emotions that motivate their actions.

In one scene, as Athena leads her herd through a parched landscape with nothing but dust and dead trees in every direction, she stops. There’s no water or food. There’s only an elephant skull, the remains of a family member who died on one of the treacherous journeys toward refuge during drought season.

The elephants crowd around the skull, gently running their trunks along its tusks the way they do every day to greet one another. Even with the body long since decomposed, with nothing but a skull remaining, they recognize one of their own.

Some will dismiss the idea that the elephants are mourning, claiming that ascribing emotions to animals is anthropomorphizing them. But if they’re not mourning, what are they doing? If they’re not remembering an individual they loved, why would they stop when it’s crucial to find water and food?

Indeed, the only other time Athena calls a halt is when one of her pregnant sisters goes into labor.

Documentaries like The Elephant Queen don’t exist solely for entertainment value. Despite intense efforts to protect elephants, poachers still kill an estimated 20,000 each year.

Just 100 years ago, 10 million elephants inhabited almost every corner of Africa. A 2016 study put their number at 415,000, and while there have been successes in conservation efforts, it’s difficult to ascertain whether they balance out the relentless poaching and habitat loss.

The Elephant Queen acknowledges threats to the continued existence of elephants, but doesn’t dwell on them. There’s good and bad to that: in some ways it’s a missed opportunity to galvanize viewers, but it also ensures the film is family friendly, without gore or violence. The film doesn’t sugar coat the fact that nature is unforgiving, but you’re not going to see a poacher raid on a herd.

The Elephant Queen is an Apple TV documentary and premiered on the streaming service after a limited theatrical run. I stumbled upon it as a subscriber after it appeared prominently in the app.

And while it was released in 2019, its message is still as relevant today. Whether you’re fascinated by elephants or appreciate wildlife in general, The Elephant Queen is a great example of how powerful documentaries can be, especially in transporting us to real places that exist in our world, but remain out of reach for the majority of us.

The Best Movies About Cats

A comedy, a remarkable documentary, a classic and a surprise hit make the list for the best cat-centric movies.

Keanu (2016): Jordan Peele stars as Rell, a man who is despondent after he’s dumped by his girlfriend. When a kitten shows up on his front step, Rell takes the little guy in and his life is suddenly transformed. He’s enamored with the kitten, whom he names Keanu, can’t stop talking about him, and even begins photographing him in dioramas based on famous films.

But tragedy strikes when drug dealers ransack Rell’s home, mistaking it for the small-time drug dealer’s home next door, and take Keanu. Rell and his cousin, Clarence (Keegan Michael-Key) embark on a quest to get Keanu back no matter what it takes, even if it means posing as a pair of contract killers to infiltrate the criminal world where Keanu’s been taken. It’s every bit as absurd as you’d imagine — but it’s also very, very funny. “Actually, we’re in the market right now for a gangsta pet,” is not a line I’d expect to hear in a movie, but in Keanu it works.

Flow is the surprise hit of the awards season.

Flow (2024): Even the hype of Golden Globe awards and Oscar nominations can’t take away from the powerful impression Flow makes. By now most of us are probably familiar with it through clips or trailers, but they don’t do justice to the beauty of director Gints Zilbalodis’ world, nor how naturally expressive his protagonist, Cat, is.

The animators put in an extraordinary amount of effort into understanding and perfectly replicating every feline behavioral quirk, every hackled coat and curiously bent tail. They accomplish the same with Cat’s companions, including a Labrador, a secretarybird, a lemur and a capybara. And while we’re dazzled by the visuals and energetic narrative, Zilbalodis poses a thematic question as the flood waters take the animals through the ruins of human civilization: without people, the world will go on. What would a world without humans look like? Cat and his companions tell us one story while the environment tells us another, and the result is greater than the sum of its parts.

Tiger: A Spy In The Jungle (2008): What makes this documentary so special is that it was filmed over three years in an Indian tiger preserve, and the filmmakers not only disguised cameras as rocks and tree stumps, they trained elephants how to carry “trunk cams,” achieving shots which no human cameraman could ever hope to get without spooking the subjects of the film.

Tigers don’t hunt elephants because they’re simply too big. Unlike lions, they’re not feeding a whole pride, and they don’t hunt cooperatively. It’s just not worth the effort required to take down the giant, majestic beasts. As a result, tigers and elephants not only tolerate each other, they mostly ignore each other’s presence.

One of the cubs stares curiously at a camera disguised as a rock in Tiger: Spy In The Jungle

That allowed the team to get unprecedented shots of an iron-willed tigress raising a litter of four cubs by herself. We see their dens, we watch the cubs play, and we witness the incredible prowess of the mother, who according to narrator David Attenborough has a remarkable 80 percent success rate while hunting. That’s pretty much unheard of.

With four young mouths to feed in addition to herself, the tigress is determined, and also supremely skilled. The whole jungle erupts in a cacophony of shrieks and alarm calls the instant a single animal gets a whiff of the tigress’ presence, but that still doesn’t stop her from achieving her goal.

Still, the odds are against all four cubs making it, with dangers like adult leopards, sickness and hunger. Through Spy In The Jungle, we get to see the entire journey, from the newborn cubs to the confident juveniles on the cusp of adulthood. There’s no better tiger documentary anywhere.

Shere Khan, right, makes an intimidating villain in The Jungle Book (2016)

The Jungle Book (2016): With so many Disney cash-grabs in the form of live-action remakes of classics that did not need to be remade, it’s easy to dismiss The Jungle Book. The thing is, this movie has heart. Neel Sethi is an earnest Mowgli, Idris Elba voices the infamous tiger Shere Khan, and to balance out the felid villainy with some heroism, Sir Ben Kingsley voices Bagheera, the noble leopard who discovers baby Mowgli in the jungle and protects him as his wolf friends raise the boy. Lupita Nyong’o as the wolf matriarch Raksha, Bill Murray as the honey-obsessed bear Baloo and Christopher Walken as orangutan King Louie round out a great cast.

‘Nightbitch’: Animal Murder And Child Abuse In The Name Of Modern Feminism

In Nightbitch, Amy Adams stars as a woman who feels cheated by motherhood, so she reclaims her feminine energy by taking her rage out on her toddler and her cat, among other innocents. How brat is that?

In 2020, just after the height of the George Floyd protests, comedian Bill Burr hosted Saturday Night Live, and he was not kind to people who used the moment to complain about their minor misfortunes.

“Somehow, white women swung their Gucci-booted feet over the fence of oppression and stuck themselves at the front of the line,” Burr said. “‘My life is so hard. My SUV and my heated seats! You have no idea what it’s like to be me.'”

That’s Nightbitch in a nutshell, with some added animal and child abuse thrown in for good measure. And when I say “some,” I mean horrifically graphic, uncomfortably-long scenes depicting the murder and torture of animals and the total dehumanization of a baby.

Nightbitch was released as a book in 2021 to critical acclaim despite its risible plot, which says just as many unfortunate things about the publishing industry and media as it does about the book. (The US publishing industry was almost 80 percent white women in 2016, a survey found, resulting in a worrying lack of perspectives. The figures have remained similarly lopsided in the years since, and the industry’s output reflects that. Male readers are essentially ignored, as are women who aren’t of a certain socio-economic class.)

Nightbitch has now been adapted as a major motion picture, slated for a Dec. 6 wide release starring Amy Adams.

Adams plays a feminist and artist whose “art” involves butchering small animals on stage for audiences of over-educated NPCs stuffing themselves with fondue and artisanal fudge. (Think the modern art world isn’t quite so outrageous? Think again.)

Her art brings her adulation, but she wants more. She resents her husband for working too much, she resents her toddler for requiring too much of her time, and she resents her cat for seeking affection. None of the primary characters have names, because someone in the author’s MFA program said names are so out this season, so we get “son”/”the boy,” “woman”/”mother” and so on.

Nightbitch — “Who ruined mommy’s life by existing? You did, didn’t you?”

Most people would be grateful they get to stay home and raise their kid in his formative years, especially in an age of almost mandatory two-income families when so many people struggle to put food on the table. Most people are enchanted by the love of a cat, and the indescribable feeling of cuddling up on the couch with a soft, furry animal who literally buzzes with affection.

But if you’re a graduate of Vassar and you think torturing animals is feminist art, that’s not the life you envisioned for yourself. The main character was told she could have it all, and she’s indignant that the world didn’t give her what she believes she deserves.

So while jogging through her neighborhood at night, she starts to transform into a feminist dog/werewolf thing.

She sprouts fangs, grows the beginnings of a tail, and notices tufts of canine fur on her back. She develops a taste for raw meat, and becomes a de facto pack leader as neighborhood dogs join her on her after-dark runs. Most of all, she unleashes her “nightbitch” energy, reaching deep within herself to find all the power she knew she had.

Yaaasss queen, slay!

What’s “nightbitch”? It’s never explained. How does the protagonist transform into a werewolf? We’re never told.

nightbitch film — An actual scene from Nightbitch.

When we review movies with animal-related subject matter here on PITB, the first thing readers want to know is: does anything horrible happen to the animals? If I don’t address that in the review, I’m guaranteed to get emails and comments about it.

Nightbitch doesn’t just have elements of animal abuse. It glorifies and revels in it. It dedicates long, explicit passages to the butchering of innocent, helpless creatures. It makes the case that murdering animals is some sort of step on the way to feminist empowerment.

And yes, we can confirm the upcoming film adaptation’s cat murder scene, among other twisted elements, remains intact.

Nightbitch, which “explores the strange transformation of Adams’ character as she may be turning into a dog, generated laughter but also audible reactions during graphic scenes of tail-cutting, menstruating in the shower and the murder of a house cat,” Variety reports, noting the movie isn’t going over well with early audiences on the film festival circuit.

In this twisted world view, a cat and a baby aren’t pure innocents who deserve to be cherished and protected. They’re objects of resentment, the things holding Nightbitch back from the fabulous life of cocktail parties, jet-setting and art world acclaim that she believes is her birthright.

In this perverse universe, it’s “empowering” to put a dog collar on your toddler, exchange his crib for a kennel, feed him raw meat and have him drink from a bowl. He’s probably going to grow up to perpetuate the patriarchy, so what do we say to dehumanizing him? Yaaass, queen!

The film’s defenders, like their book counterparts, will doubtless argue that Nightbitch is part black comedy, so anyone who is disturbed by its subject matter is being a bore.

The problem is, the only laughs here are unintentional.

I’ll be surprised if the people involved in this film don’t suffer the ire of animal welfare groups even if no real animals were harmed in the filming. We already have enough problems with cruelty to animals in this country without movies and books promoting it as some sort of cathartic way to reclaim gender-based power.

Hardly a day goes by without news stories about pet cats who are killed or paralyzed for life by people shooting them with BBs, arrows or rounds from a real firearm. Cats are often victimized by men and women in domestic situations who try to hurt their spouses or partners by harming their beloved pets. People kill cats on a whim, for fun, for target practice. We’re talking about intelligent, loving, sentient, innocent creatures.

As for the child abuse content, it’s equally as depressing and horrific, but sadly I’m less certain it’ll result in condemnation. That’s the world we live in.

Nightbitch stars Amy Adams and Scoot McNairy, and is set to hit theaters on Dec. 6. It’s rated R for mature themes and graphic violence.