Category: Imaginary Animals: No
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The Artist. Dir. Michel Hazanavicius. Warner Brothers. 2011.
Jean Dujardin as George Valentin, Bérénice Bejo as Peppy Miller and Uggie the dog in The Artist The Artist (2011) is a remarkable modern day silent film that explores the transformation of silent movies into talking pictures in 1920s Hollywood. This change in cinema style affects the lives of both the famous silent movie actor George Valentin…
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The Wrong Trousers. Dir. Nick Pick. BBC. 1993.
Hapless Wallace and his faithful dog Gromit appear again on screen for a dramatic adventure in The Wrong Trousers (1993). The inventors’ worldsget thrown upside down by Gromit’s birthday present: a pair of mechanical trousers. These were intended to self-walk Gromit, but when Wallace’s debts lead him to letting out a room to a penguin, the trousers…
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Shrek. Dir. Andrew Adamson & Vicky Jenson. DreamWorks Pictures. 2001.
Shrek (2001) is a film that invests in the fairytale tropes found in literature to create humour. Characters are typecast and stereotypes are flung at the audience in the beginning scenes of the movie. This is important for establishing the roles of animals in the film, because most of them, being objects of fairytale discourse, are…
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Planet of the Apes. Dir. Franklin J. Schaffner. 20th Century Fox. 1968.
The portrayal of animals in Planet of the Apes [1] is interesting as the roles of humans and animals are essentially reversed from what we are used to in everyday life. The apes are anthropomorphised – they walk and talk like humans, they ride horses, they are intelligent and literate, they have a justice system and…
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Chicken Run. Dir. Peter Lord and Nick Park. Pathe Distribution Ltd.. 2000.
I must have first seen Aardman Animation’s Chicken Run (2000) around the age of seven, not long after its initial release, and I remember frequently quoting it after that. But the film’s self-consciousness about its family audience, manifested in the wonderful attention to detail, has meant that I have kept enjoying, noticing and learning new…
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Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. 20th Century Fox. 1999.
One of the most important scenes in David Fincher’s Fight Club[1] is when The Narrator meets his ‘power animal’ in the cave whilst in meditation. Although it’s only a very short sequence, the penguin represents changes we see in The Narrator’s character throughout the film, which are relevant to the dramatic plot twist near the end. The…
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Oliver and Company. Dir. George Scribner. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution. 1988.
Let’s be honest, most of us will agree that stories can always be improved by the addition of a few adorable animals. It’s understandable then that Disney chose to recreate the classic tale of Oliver Twist using a whole host of cute and quirky quadrupeds in their 1988 animation Oliver and Company. Drawing on its…
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Ice Age. Dir. Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha. 20th Century Fox. 2002.
Set twenty thousand years ago, at a time when animals were migrating to warmer climates, Ice Age follows the story of three animals. Sid, a sloth, is left behind by his family, and meets Manny, a mammoth, who he decides to follow. They come across a human settlement which has been attacked by sabre-toothed cats.…
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How to Train Your Dragon 2. Dir. Dean DeBlois. 20th Century Fox. 2014.
Five years after Hiccup successfully ended the war between humans and dragons, he faces many new conflicts. He and his village of both species are living happily until they learn that the cruel and brutal Drago Bludvist is building a dragon army and will soon come to take them over. While rushing out to stop him, Hiccup…
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The Jungle Book. Dir. Wolfgang Reitherman. Walt Disney. 1967.
The Jungle Book (1967) Walt Disney Synopsis Having been raised by a pack of wolves, with a black panther and a bear as your two closest companions, you would think you would have no troubles, but for Mowgli this is untrue. The Jungle Book is a Disney adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s book of the same name, following…