Tag: Penguins

  • Mr Popper’s Penguins. Dir. Mark Waters. 20th Century Fox. 2011.

    Jim Carrey and Penguins. It does not get any better. Think Beethoven but with Penguins. Try to spot the difference between the CGI penguins and the real ones. Grab the popcorn. As you can surmise from the title, the film details Mr Popper who is played by Jim Carrey and his hijinks with the penguin…

  • Surf’s Up. Dir. Ash Brannon & Chris Buck. Columbia Pictures. 2007.

    Surf’s Up. Dir. Ash Brannon & Chris Buck. Columbia Pictures. 2007.

    Released in 2007, during the surge of penguin movies, Surf’s Up is a unique animated mockumentary exploring how penguins are the ‘real’ inventors of the worldwide sport, surfing. A documentary crew (ironically, Brannon and Buck cast themselves) follow the journey of Cody Maverick (Shia LaBeouf), a Rockhopper penguin from Antarctica who dreams of becoming a…

  • Storks. Dir. Doug Sweetland, Nicolas Stoller. Warner Bros.Pictures. 2016.

    Anthropomorphism and stereotypes are often utilized in children’s animation since they cater to a broad audience. The film Storks uses anthropomorphic animals in order to create vivid and lively characters with human characteristics whom the audience can relate to. Moreover, integrating well-known stereotypes in the storyline can evoke empathy or disdain for real animals, such…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Dir. Robert Zemeckis. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc.. 1988.

    Robert Zemeckis’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) is set in the ‘Toon’-dominated animated film industry of Hollywood in 1947, 40 years previous to the film’s actual release. [1] Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins), [2] a private investigator and the film’s human protagonist, ends his hiatus from sleuthing, caused by his brother: his professional partner’s Toon-related death, after receiving a…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • March of the Penguins. Dir. Luc Jacquet. Warner Independent Pictures, Buena Vista International. 2005.

    March of the Penguins is a 2005 Oscar winning documentary directed by Luc Jacquet depicting the annual journey undertaken by Emperor Penguins in the Antarctica, from the sea where they spent their summer months, to their breeding ground, miles away, to which they must waddle through harsh conditions to find a partner with whom to…