ZooScope

Category: Year: 2005

  • Hoodwinked!. Dir. Edwards, Cory. Kanbar Entertainment, Blue Yonder Films. 2005.

    Hoodwinked!. Dir. Edwards, Cory. Kanbar Entertainment, Blue Yonder Films. 2005.

    A retelling of the folktake Little Red Riding Hood as a police procedural, using backstories to show multiple characters’ points of view.[1] Hoodwinked! follows the classic who dunnit trope, deconstructing the fable of Little Red Riding Hood with a modern twist to narrate the mystery of the Goody bandit. It entertains basic animal stereotypes to translate the…

  • Me and You and Everyone We Know. Dir. Miranda July. IFC Films. 2005

    Me and You and Everyone We Know – fish scene Goldfish have been domesticated by humans for thousands of years, and Me and You and Everyone We Know invites an engrossing encounter with the sea animal as it appears in a plastic bag swaying on top of a fast-moving car. This clip of a fleeting…

  • Corpse Bride. Tim Burton. Warner Brothers. 2005.

    Corpse Bride. Tim Burton. Warner Brothers. 2005.

    ‘In the act of othering, what is projected onto the other is all that must be refused in constructing the identity of the self’[1]. Consequently, establishing a human/animal binary often leads to a hierarchical relationship, highlighting the difference between human and non-human ‘other’. Such binary differences are reminiscent of common tropes in gothic literature, with…

  • Batman Begins. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Warner Bros. 2005.

    Why does Batman dress like a bat? In the words of Batman himself, “bats frighten me. It’s time my enemies shared my dread.” In Batman Begins, the boundaries between human and animal are psychologically breached through Bruce’s lifelong phobia of bats. This all-consuming dread leads to Bruce’s attempt to confront this fear through exposure therapy.…

  • King Kong. Dir. Peter Jackson. Universal Pictures. 2005.

    King Kong is the modern remake of the 1933 classic, which follows Carl Denham (Jack Black) in his attempts to film a movie by coercing his cast and crew into following him on his voyage. His voyage is an attempt to find the mysterious Skull Island where he hopes to film the ‘last blank space on…

  • Grizzly Man. Dir. Werner Herzog. Lions Gate Films. 2005.

    A fascinating aspect about Werner Herzog’s exploration of the life of Timothy Treadwell and his relationships with the wild grizzly bears of Alaska is his investigation of the way Treadwell interpreted the animal world, and the extent to which this reveals aspects to his character. A scene which exemplifies this interpretation is when we’re shown…

  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Dir. Mike Newell. Warner Bros. 2005.

    In Mike Newell’s ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’, dragons are portrayed as symbols of the overriding danger that follows Harry throughout the film. This is made particularly apparent during Harry’s chase with a Hungarian Horntail in the first task of the Triwizard Tournament. In this scene, Newell’s use of both diegetic and non-diegetic sounds…

  • King Kong. Dir. Peter Jackson. Universal Pictures. 2005.

    King Kong (2003) is a remake of a 1933 film of the same name where a giant prehistoric gorilla is taken from its native island in captivity to New York where it consequently escapes. The climactic scene where Kong is protecting Anne on top of the Empire State Building is a crucial moment as it…

  • The Squid and the Whale. Dir. Noah Baumbach. Sony Pictures, Samuel Goldwyn Films, Destination Films. 2005.

      The Squid and the Whale is a film all about conflict. It tracks the divorce of a couple of New York intellectuals and the effect it has on their two sons. The film opens with a line from the younger boy, Frank; ‘mom and me versus you and dad,’ cleverly summing up the central…

  • Racing Stripes. Dir. Frederik Du Chau. Warner Bros. 2005.

    Racing stripes (Frederik Du Chau 2005) is an American sports comedy which centres on the glamourous and wealthy sport of horseracing in Kentucky. However the film does this through a comedic twist. The film has a bildungsroman performance narrative and follows the journey of a young girl and her unconventional mount Stripes, a zebra. After a…