ZooScope

Category: Article Type: Zoom

  • Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot. Dir. Dearbhla Walsh. Red Arrow International. 2015.

    Slow and steady wins the race……… Dearbhla Walsh’s 2015 television film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot depicts the tale of two elderly neighbours, Mrs. Silver (Judi Dench) and Mr. Hoppy (Dustin Hoffman), as they progress towards a romantic relationship. The main obstacle to this relationship is Mrs. Silver’s infatuation with her pet tortoise, Alfie, and her…

  • Zootopia. Dir. Byron Howard and Rich Moore. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. 2016.

    Zootopia [1] presents a story about the first rabbit police officer teaming up with a fox confidence trickster to stop their city descending into anarchy. The film is a modern take on a classic animal fable, using Aesopian tropes of animals representing certain personalities alongside a technology rich, modern setting.

  • Pom Poko. Dir. Isao Takahata. Toho. 1994.

    Pom Poko[1] is a film that follows the tanuki of Tama Hills trying to halt development of their woodland through their folkloric transformation powers. In terms of how it shows the animal; the film establishes the idea that animal-human relationships are characterised by a conflict of two worlds that are equally alien to each other.…

  • The Wild. Dir. Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams. Buena Vista Pictures. 2006.

    ZooScope ZOOM: The Wild  Above: ‘This isn’t Happiness’ – 07/04/2014 front cover illustration of The New Yorker by Peter DeSeve shows a vegetarian lion eating salad whilst looking distractedly at a zebra. Living in a world of cultural ethics clearly has its difficulties for a wild predator. Image from https://uk.pinterest.com/kmeyer/peter-deseve/ ‘The core paradigm of many narratives engaging…

  • The Neverending Story. Dir. Wolfgang Petersen. Neue Constantin Film, Warner Bros. Pictures. 1984.

    ZooScope ZOOM: The Neverending Story ‘The animal is distinct, and can never be confused with man. Thus, a power is ascribed to the animal, comparable with human power but never coinciding with it. The animal has secrets which, unlike the secrets of caves, mountains, seas, are specifically addressed to man,’[1] John Berger theorises on our understanding of…

  • Paddington. Dir. Paul King. StudioCanal. 2014.

    The 2014 film ‘Paddington’ appears to champion inclusivity and acceptance of migrants over merely wanting to observe or distance ourselves from animals and people that are different from us, just as Millicent does with her taxidermy. In essence, Paddington is a migrant, ‘an outsider trying to find a new home’ [1] in England after the…

  • Shrek. Dir. Vicky Jenson and Andrew Adamson. Dreamworks. 2001.

    Directed by Vicky Jenson and Andrew Adamson Produced by Jeffrey Katzenberg, Aron Warner, and John H. Williams Production Companies were Dreamworks, Dreamworks Animation, and Pacific Data Images _____________________________________________________ While the 2001 film Shrek has a large cast of animal characters, both mythical and realistic, it is the part of Donkey that is of real interest here. There have been a…

  • Jurassic Park . Dir. Steven Spielberg. Universal Studios. 1993.

    Stephen Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster adaptation of Jurassic Park is most well-known for its strikingly realistic puppet and CGI representations of the most fascinating of the prehistoric animals: the dinosaurs. Though the dinosaurs are impressive, it is the other, less unusual animals which appear in the film who are often overlooked, which provide an interesting point of analysis. 

  • Animal Farm. Dir. John Halas, Joy Batchelor. Pathe, Universal, RKO . 1954.

    Halas and Batchelor’s 1954 Animal Farm holds a firm place in cinematic history as Britain’s second animated feature.  The film is based on the 1945 novella by George Orwell and is often read as an allegory for communism and Stalinism. The unrest of the animals and desire for revolution also has echoes of Marxist ideas about the…

  • Over the Hedge. Dir. Tim Johnson and Karey Kirkpatrick. DreamWorks. 2006.

    After Verne, an anxious turtle, breaks through the boundary of the manicured hedge he enters a pristine garden on the periphery of a middle class suburbia. A far cry from the overgrown animal-populated wood, the suburban garden represents a natural environment controlled by humans, a place where that which is considered wild or ‘other’ is…