Tag: Pig(s)
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We Bought a Zoo. Dir. Cameron Crowe. 20th Century Fox. 2011.
We Bought a Zoo is a film loosely based on a memoir of the same name by Benjamin Mee which describes his purchase and restoration of the failing Dartmoor Wildlife Park – subsequently renamed Dartmoor Zoological Park – in preparation for its reopening. In the film, the death of Benjamin’s wife has led to a…
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Babe. Dir. Chris Noonan. Universal Pictures. 1995.
Based on Dick King Smith’s “The Sheep Pig”, Babe is the story of a young pig that is taken in by sheep dogs and the farmer Hoggett who eventually becomes a sheep herder himself. At the beginning of the film we first meet Babe in a pig farm where the pigs are shipped to meat factories.…
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Earthlings. Dir. Shaun Monson. Nation Earth. 2005.
Fig. 1 The original release poster for Earthlings, the film’s oft repeated challenge to the viewer to ‘make the connection’ features prominently alongside pictures of plants, animals and the evil emperor Commodus (representing humankind). ‘How do you know if someone is Vegan? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you’. So proclaims an increasingly popular meme. Type preachy into…
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State Fair. Dir. Walter Lang. Twentieth Century Fox. 1945.
“State Fair” is a 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, directed by Walter Lang. The film follows the Frake family, comprised of the farmer Abel (Charles Winninger), his wife Melissa (Fay Bainter), their daughter Margy (Jeanne Crain) and son Wayne (Dick Haymes), on their adventures at the Iowa State Fair. After making a bet with a…
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Spirited Away. Dir. Hayao Miyazaki. Studio Ghibli. 2001.
Human and Animal Transformation in Spirited Away When ten year old Chihiro finds herself alone and her parents turned into pigs in the dazzlingly beautiful but dangerous world of the gods and spirits, she must overcome a series of challenges in order to uncover her true strength of character in a vivacious coming of age narrative.…
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Doctor Dolittle. Dir. Richard Fleischer. 20th-Century Fox. 1967.
The genesis for Richard Fleischer’s 1967 film Doctor Dolittle came from Hugh Lofting’s successful chain of children’s books first published in 1920, and focuses on the character of a veterinarian named John Dolittle (Rex Harrison), who can talk to animals after being taught by his multilingual pet parrot Polynesia. The film is bursting at the seams with…
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Doctor Dolittle. Dir. Betty Thomas. 20th-Century Fox. 1998.
Representation of animals in Betty Thomas’s Doctor Dolittle The animal presence in Doctor Dolittle (1998) is extremely intriguing, using impressive CGI and a vast spectrum of species to depict a humanistic side to animals that was, until then, uncommon in film. Eddie Murphy’s character, John Dolittle, provides audiences with an identity crisis: family man vs…
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Beasts Of The Southern Wild. Dir. Benh Zeitlin. Fox Searchlight Pictures. 2012.
Beasts of the Southern Wild is set in Bathtub, a poor and very ethnically-mixed community in the Louisiana Bayou separated from other civilisation by a levee, a backdrop which conjures up the still fresh memory of Hurricane Katrina. The global warming induced flooding of the area and all that ensues are focalised through the imagination of the…
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Upstream Colour. Dir. Shane Carruth. erbp. 2013.
Upstream Colour is a dreamlike vision of the subjectivity and fragility of reality. The film follows Kris (Amy Seimetz) as her life is transformed into an isolating nightmare of confusion and lies, by the mysterious ‘Thief’, a man who uses parasitic worms to hypnotise his victims before extorting money from them. The worms are part…