Tag: HAR: Pet Keeping
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Bringing Up Baby . Dir. Howard Hawks. RKO. 1938.
In the romantic comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938) Hawks explores the association between animalism (behaviours or feelings associated with animals) and chaos. The comedy emerges out of the interactions between the unlikely pair: Susan (Catherine Hepburn) and David (Cary Grant). This is because Susan is an eccentric, chaotic and a law evading romantic and David is a…
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Breakfast and Tiffany’s . Dir. Blake Edwards . Paramount Pictures . 1961.
In Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) Audrey Hepburn performs as Holly Golightly, formerly Lula Mae Barnes. We learn that Holly has moved to New York to reinvent herself. As a consequence, she has changed her name. By destabilising her identity, she demonstrates that she takes control of her life. When Paul Varjak (George Peppard) moves into her apartment…
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The Green Mile. Dir. Frank Darabont. Warner Bros. Pictures. 1999.
Adapted from Stephen King’s novel, The Green Mile tells the story of Paul Edgecomb, a prison guard on Death Row, and his relationship with John Coffey, a convicted of the rape and murder of two young girls. Large and burly in his physique, John arrives at the ‘Green Mile’ as a timid, deeply emotional man who doesn’t…
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A Close Shave. Dir. Nick Park. BBC. 1995.
Following the great success of director Nick Park’s A Grand Day Out in 1990 and 1993’s The Wrong Trousers, eccentric inventor Wallace and his canine companion Gromit returned in 1995 with A Close Shave. The action begins as the duo – now running a window cleaning service – have their breakfast interrupted by Shaun the…
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The Ugly Dachshund. Dir. Norman Toker . Walt Disney. 1966.
The Ugly Dachshund (1966), adapted from the 1938 novel by Gladys Bonwyn Stern, begins as Mark Garrison (Dean Jones) frantically prepares to drive to the hospital. This tricks us in to thinking that his wife, Fran Garrison (Suzanne Pleshette), is going to give birth when in fact they are taking their Dachshund Danke to the animal…
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Fantastic Mr. Fox. Dir. Wes Anderson. 20th Century Fox . 2009.
2009 saw Wes Anderson turn his unique eye for detail and style to stop motion animation, with his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. The film has a distinct and consistent colour scheme of warm oranges and browns, changing only to show the warehouses and homes of the evil farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean.…
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The Future. Dir. Miranda July. Roadside Attractions. 2011.
The scene begins with Paw-Paw the cat waiting to be picked up from the adoption centre, asking: “How long is 30 days?” It is not clear who this question is directed at, but since there is no one else within the scene we can only assume that these are Paw-Paw’s internal thoughts. The only part…
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Born Free. Dir. James Hill. Columbia Pictures. 1966.
Born Free deals with the contradictory question of how to demonstrate the behaviour of a wild animal in a tame, domestic environment. Through an exploration of the binaries between wild and tame, domestic and barbarous, Elsa’s hamartia is revealed; she is too wild to be a tame pet, but too tame to be a wild…
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Scooby-Doo. Dir. Raja Gosnell. Warner Bros. Pictures. 2002.
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Room. Dir. Lenny Abrahamson. A24 Films. 2015.