It’s a shame that I can’t include No…what the hell was that?…ah with Under the Skin, since we are seemingly in the Year of the Insane Dog or the Lack of Affect Rat. I’m not familiar with the Chinese calendar. But I’d like to encourage the 0.0000000021% of America to see Under the Skin, so I’m going to write that right now. Now I’m back. And that’s how long you think it takes to write these things – the space between a period and a capital letter. You didn’t even miss me.

Fortunately Noah was the camp masterpiece that we all wanted and hoped it would be. Honestly, I would have settled even for the original story, in which, let’s face it, God doesn’t come out so good, what with the kind of end-of-the-world nonsense motives we now give to supervillians. ‘I shall destroy the virld…ah ha ha! And aftervirds, I vill make you kill your own son to prove your love for me. Fake out! I’m crazy! A ha ha!’ Somehow recycling (ahem) this tale into the environmental message makes the various granola huggers into the sociopaths we all wanted and hoped they would be. The only people worse than God, you could say. And I did.

But what I’m really grateful for is Noah‘s financial success. This can only be good news. Hollywood has a history of simply remaking the form of success without the content, and while that can lead to various Matrix-y, Dark Knight-y slurpie headaches, in this case, it will only mean more Bible mash-ups, which, by their definition, must be great. I would come up with a giant list, but I’d be worried that a small boy with a sling and a nanobot rock might take it down.

Instead, a less obvious bit since it relates not to the film but to the story. It occurs to me watching this version, where it’s the destruction of the environment that it is the sin that one must ask: what the fuck did the animals do to deserve utter destruction? I mean, sure, they save two of each, but how did they choose? Were the other sloths really…covetous? Were the other lions really…prideful? (Apologies). Can we please, please tell the story of city with snake brothel in temples of the sparrows (see Bible mash-ups, above)?

Fine. The Ben & Jerry’s stand was closed this early. So it wasn’t that great.

And I would have been content with the various disaster effects, lord knows (literally!) that many American audiences were. But then following in God’s footsteps, Noah becomes obsessed with killing babies because, you know they’re sinners and all, and it goes into Douglas Sirk trying to outdo Michael Curtiz territory. Best for me, changing the story enviro-wise and family annihilator-wise necessitate two awesome camp moves. The first is the quality of the dialog, which I could not stop writing down, which, so you don’t have to see it:

The ground is rich with Zohah! 

It begins!!!!!

Take the girls, give me the meat!

I can’t believe it’s true! Not when I look at my sons!

Speak to me!!!!!

The creator brings him home!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Punish me, Noah!

and my favorite,

Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth!

Can you believe it? And this line after there’s only one girl who’s fertile, meaning all of humanity will be products of incest. It’s a camp masterpiece, with sequel potential! Who comes up with this stuff?

But best of all were Mr. Aronovsky montagist visions, shot in glorious glorious seizurecam. Here, he transforms the creation story into a version of the Big Bang, as well as an montage of humanity’s inhumanity to ‘Oh the humanity’. Do I have to say that the latter included silhouettes of men with M-16s, while the former starred Adam and Eve as Beings of Light. Take note, Albrecht Dürer, if you had just painted pulp fantasy covers, you could have solved the genital question and invented science fiction. Normally all this would be irritatingly topical if it made any sense, but it doesn’t. See it. See it now. I was grinning from ear to ear.