Books to help shape your kid into an awesome person

We here at the Emerald City Zen Center are aware that ours are not the only books out there. In fact, there are like thousands of great reads out there and many of them are for children. Now, anytime a kid reads, great, but some books are like fast food for the developing brain - enjoyable but not really sustaining, and others are akin to the fully balanced breakfast they used to always go on about during the commercials between the Saturday morning cartoons. If you have already read A Zen Master In Oz and The Martian Invasion Of Oz to your offspring, here are some more excellent reads to share with them.

Little Kids -
 Farmer Duck (1991) Written by Martin Waddell and Illustrated by Helen Oxenbury

This little books tells the story of a fat human farmer who forces his duck to work as a virtual slave while he grows fat off of the little fowl's labor. Outraged by the farmer's treatment of the duck, the barnyard animals band together for a proletarian revolution. Fantastic stuff to teach your children about collective action, fairness and decency.

The Lorax (1971) Written and Illustrated by Dr. Seuss

The most genius work of the genius Theodore Geisel (AKA Dr. Seuss) lays out the horrors of unchecked capitalism and pollution in a rather grim tale of what happens when people put profit before anything else. While the book seems to end in a quite desolate place, this little subversive tome ends with hope in the hands of a child - demonstrating that our hope for a better tomorrow lies literally in the hands of the next generation. Empowering, silly and a bit revolutionary.

The Paper Bag Princess (1980) Written by Robert Munsch and Illustrated by Michael Martchenko

This gently feminist story turns the princess stereotype on its head. Princess Elizabeth looses everything, including her clothes, when a dragon destroys her kingdom and steals her prince. It is up to Elizabeth, dressed in a paper bag, to rescue the vain and stupid Prince Ronald by using her wits to outsmart the dragon.

Big Kids -

His Dark Materials Written by Phillip Pullman
Vol 1: The Northern Lights (1995)
Vol 2: The Subtle Knife (1997)
Vol 3: The Amber Spyglass (2000)
This series directly challenges the patriarchal, Christian version of the fantasy novel as developed by Tolkien and C.S. Lewis by presenting a story spanning multiple realities in which humanity's freedom is threatened by a God, who is not a creator but a kind of conqueror that uses the Church as the mechanism to control His empire. The fate of sentient beings on countless realities rests on the shoulders of a plucky twelve year old orphan named Lyra. This series does not just challenge the well worn tropes of the fantasy adventure genre, it goes on challenges some of the most damaging heterodoxies of Christianity (such Original Sin) while telling a story filled with witches, proud polar bear kingdoms, intelligent roller skating elephant creatures, angels and so much more. A rather weak big budget film version of the first book was released a few years back. It failed at the box office and may have turned people off to the series. Please, don't let the movie paint what is one of the finest series for any age group ever written.



 

We're back from our spring retreat on Europa and ready to get our blog on!

All of that space travel and meditation has our minds filled with sci-fi thoughts. While The Martian Invasion of Oz has a sci-fi inspired plot, its real inspiration was the work of L. Frank Baum and the wonderful fantasy worlds he created. It is kind of a fantasy adventure with some science fiction frills attached. The sci-fi films that we have been most grooving on since touching down at the ol' Emerald City Zen Center have been ones that we think of as "Sneaky Sci-Fi" - movies that are actually science fiction but are disguised as other genres.

Here are our recommendations for some high quality "Sneaky Sci-Fi".



1. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) Director Colin Trevorrow
What appears to be a comedy about a sarcastic, burn out reporter (Jake Johnson) dragging along two college interns (Aubrey Plaza and Karan Soni) to write a magazine piece on a small town eccentric (Mark Duplass) who placed a personal ad seeking someone to accompany him on a time travel adventure, becomes a funny, poignant reflection on loss, regret and why being able to correct the mistakes of our past via time travel is such a tantalizing concept. It's a movie about why we are attracted to the time travel genre that has nothing to do with hover boards and Deloreans and everything to do with the burden of guilt and regret.



2. Daybreakers (2009) Director Michael & Peter Spierig
At first glance this movie looks like it's going to basically be a Resident Evil movie with the zombies swapped out for vampires, but this dystopian look at a future where humanity has been transformed into vampires by a viral outbreak is about a whole lot more than cheap fang-filled thrills. The protagonists of the film (Ethan Hawke) is a vampire scientist racing against time to create a blood substitute before the world's supply of viable human blood is used up. What he discovers along the way is a human resistance movement, a cure for vampirism (in the form of Willem Dafoe) and a plot by his corporate scumbag boss (Sam Neill) to use the blood shortage to his benefit. It's a film about human mismanagement of natural resources and socio-economic inequalities in our health and justice systems. Good stuff.


3. The Prestige (2006) Director Christopher Nolan
In between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale got together to make this movie that initially appears to be a mystery designed to pay homage to the great Victorian stage magicians. Instead, this story of rival magicians (Bale and Hugh Jackman) being destroyed by their shared obsession for their art has a secret sci-fi heart beating the form of David Bowie as legendary inventor/scientist Nikola Tesla. The film ruminates on obsession, love, sacrifice, art and duality in a package that is a thousand times more satisfying than anything with a guy dressed up like a bat punching a clown can ever be.


4. Robot and Frank  (2012) Director Jake Schreier
Set in the not too distant future this film films finds former, dashing cat burglar Frank (Frank Langella) struggling with the onset of dementia and at odds with his son (James Marsden), who has bought a robot companion (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) to look after him. At first Frank resents the presence of the robot but soon a kind of friendship evolves when Frank realizes that his new mechanical friend is just what he needs to get back into his old career. This funny and sad character piece treats future technology, such as the robot, in such an off handed, mundane manner that you lose any sense of wonder of it and just accept it just as you accept your smart phone and tablet nowadays. This allows the audience to be submerged in the world without being distracted by the bells and whistles that so often accompany looks into the future.


5. The One I Love (2014) Director Charlie McDowell
A married couple (Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss) on the verge of divorce are sent to beautiful coastal retreat by their creepy marriage counsellor (Ted Danson). Once there, they discover doppelgangers of themselves that represent their ideal version of the other. The movie uses this premise to explore a deeply troubled relationship and how our expectations and desires are often in stark opposition to the reality we live in. While the film sometimes feels like a Twilight Zone episode that has ran too long at times, as well as having a couple niggling plot holes, I guarantee that you will be thinking about it for days to follow - which is a sure sign of good art.

The Rottenest of the Undead.

We here at the Emerald City Zen Center love us some zombies and in The Martian Invasion of Oz we introduced the Ozombies, led by Gabraham Stinkin.  That said, we don't love all the zombies that have been put out there. Here are three zombie films that we highly recommend you avoid.

1. Against The Dark (2005)

That coat button is about to shoot off and go right through a zombie's brain. Well played, Seagal.

 

Imagine a world in which a plague has transformed the majority of the population of the planet into vampire-like zombies. You flee for your life and barricade yourself in a hospital to avoid the horde of ghouls from ripping you to shreds. Things look bleak indeed but take hope! Help is on the way - in the form of bloated, right-wing, ego-maniacal, mumble-mouthed, zero-charisma having has-been Steven Seagal and some nameless sidekicks dressed like geeks everywhere did right after The Matrix came out in 1999. The problems with this straight-to-video, Romanian produced brain haemorrhage of a film are legion but if you're making a zombie picture in which your unstoppable horde of flesh-eating fiends is easily defeated by the sluggish sword play of a well past his prime Steven Seagal, you have some pretty lame zombies on your hand. I mean, the guy can hardly bend!

2. Dead At The Box Office (2005)


One of those where you wish the film makers would have spent the money it cost to make this movie on cyanide instead.

A mysterious film canister containing a Nazi experimental film somehow ends up in a Chicago area cinema. When it is played, the audience is transformed into zombies. Not the worst premise ever but the execution makes you beg to be executed. This Gary, Indiana filmed no-budget, eye-gouge inducing piece of blech is an example of why the democratization of the media via digital technology is not exactly going to lead to a utopian future. With its poor lighting, horrible acting, sloppy cinematography and Kevin Smith-wannabe dialog, this could be one of the worst things to ever happen to the horror film genre. We attended the premiere of this hot-mess nearly a decade ago and there are parts of our brains that have still not returned to their normal state after being atrophied by this miserable excuse for a movie.

3. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972)

If only the movie was half as interesting as this poster.





A group of actors are led to an island somewhere near Miami but their director, who is the most annoying person on the planet. This young, vaguely hippy-ish film troupe end up having to deal with the not-at-all funny practical jokes of their director, played by actor/director/make-up artist/doll-maker Alan Ormby, who in the midst of the lame-hijinks accidentally raises the dead when he stages a kind of black magic ceremony. Director Bob Clark went on to make the classic slasher-film Black Christmas (1974); the inexplicably popular, unfunny, teen sex-comedy Porky's (1982) and the holiday classic A Christmas Story (1983) but this tedious piece of low-rent junk has none of the tension of Black Christmas or the humour of A Christmas Story, but it does have all of the unfunny of Porky's. When the zombies finally do show up, about half-way through this soul killer, you just hope the cheap looking things quickly do away with the cast so you can work on self-inflicting head injuries in the hope that you will lose the memory of having seen it.                                           

Big News!!!!!!

It's here! The sequel (sorta) to A Zen Master In Oz!!!!!

 Available on Kindle here.