ZooScope

Tag: HAR: Interest/Observation

  • The Fox and the Child. Dir. Luc Jacquet. Pathé. 2007.

    Luc Jacquet’s The Fox and the Child depicts an unnamed girl (Bertille Noël-Bruneau) exploring the French countryside and following its animal inhabitants. She develops an obsession with the titular fox and it becomes more trusting, but the girl disastrously oversteps the boundary and attempts to make the wild animal her pet. The film is interested in binaries…

  • The Fox and the Child. Dir. Luc Jacquet. Pathé. 2007.

    When asked in an interview how he approached making The Fox and the Child (2007) following the popularity of The March of the Penguins (2005), French director Luc Jacquet replied: I went into my childhood; into a memory I have of having looked into the eyes of a wild fox when I was a kid. I also noticed that…

  • 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…

  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Dir. David Yates. Warner Bros. Pictures. 2007.

    In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), Harry contends with his isolation as a result of the ministry of magic, and a large portion of his fellow students, believing him to be lying about his experiences at the end of his last school year. These experiences include the return of the dark wizard, Voldemort,…

  • I am David. Dir. Paul Feig. Lion’s Gate Films. 2003.

    I am David (2003) is a film adaptation of a children’s book of the same name by Anne Holm. The protagonist David must journey north alone after escaping a Bulgarian prison camp, in order to reach Denmark which he has been told is safe. As he is walking through a vineyard in Italy, he is startled…

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

    The Wild YouTube video of the film’s theatrical trailer: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE3mEgqqlCM> ‘Start spreading the newspaper.’ Disney’s 2006 animation, The Wild, by first-time director and ex-special effects artist Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams, is a family comedy film centred on a group of zoo animals: Samson the lion, Bridget the giraffe, Nigel the koala and Larry the anaconda. Along with their…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • A Matter of Loaf and Death. Dir. Nick Park. BBC. 2008.

    Beloved characters Wallace and his side-kick canine Gromit return for another film, and this time they are running Top Bun, a brand new bakery. Business is booming for the duo, but a serial killer is on the loose, killing all the bakers in town. While Gromit begins to fear for the pair’s safety, Wallace is…

  • Aladdin. Dir. Ron Clements and John Musker. Disney Studios. 1992.

    Ron Clements’ and John Muskers’, Aladdin (1992) [1]  follows the life of a poor street dweller and his sidekick monkey, Abu in the fictional city of Agrabah. After being coerced into entering the subterranean ‘cave of wonders’ by the villain Jafar and his accomplice parrot, Iago, Aladdin retrieves a magic lamp containing a genie. With the…