Tag: HAR: Trade

Spirited Away. Dir Hayao Miyazaki. Toho Company Ltd. 2001.

Miyazaki’s 2001 Spirited Away, blurs the binary of human, animal, mythology, and spirit. Each character has its own version of this intersectionality, creating different presentations of ontology that in turn create varying perceptions. The film encourages us to reflect on how our own perceptions of fear in cinematic animal species are moulded through the presentation…

15th January 2023
One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Dir. Wolfgang Reitherman, Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske. Buena Vista Distribution. 1961.

One hundred and one Dalmatians, ninety-nine of which are puppies, in a terraced house in London. How wonderful! The perfect Disney dream ending. Or in the realms of reality, a deluge of responsibility that is only going to increase if Roger and Anita, the owners, don’t begin to take spaying and neutering seriously. It is,…

4th February 2022
Rio. Dir. by Carlos Saldanha. Blue Sky Studios and 20th Century Animation. 2011.

Opening with the vibrant celebration of colours and exotic sounds of the Brazilian rainforest, our focus is drawn to a nervous exotic baby macaw bird called Blu who plucks up the courage to attempt his maiden flight. Predictably he tumbles towards the ground, making a soft spongy safe landing, before commotion strikes and an attack…

3rd February 2022
Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!. Dir. By. Peter Lord. Columbia Pictures. 2012.

Aardman never shy away from the ludicrous. So when a crew of incompetent pirates endeavour for protagonist The Pirate Captain to win the Pirate of the Year Award by relying on the commercial value of his prized dodo companion Polly (who should have been extinct for 150 years and is believed to be a parrot)…

20th January 2022
Blade Runner 2049. Dir. Denis Villeneuve. Alcon Entertainment. 2017.

Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017) transports us to a dystopian earth, where humans and replicants, bio-engineered humans used for slave labour, live side by side. There is a clear dichotomy within the dystopia since replicants’ entire existence is based on the premise that they are genetically coded to obey orders, rendering them docile slaves,…

18th January 2022
Ferdinand. Dir. Carlos Saldanha. 20th Century Studios. 2017.

Part of the core ethics depicted within Saldanha’s Ferdinand (2017) is that the exploitation of animals, whether bullfighting or meat production, is unacceptable. However, the opening scene of this film depicts the bulls as having the agency to use their power to choose to fight and vie for the attention of the matador. By representing…

18th January 2022
God’s Own Country. Dir. Francis Lee. Picturehouse Entertainment. 2017.

As a film which centers around a farming family, God’s Own Country is inseparable from animal life. Francis Lee sets the 2017 rural drama during the lambing season at a farm, thus crafting a display of the distress caused by animal breeding and the inevitable horror of animal death. Customary to the Social Realist tradition,…

16th January 2022
Snatch. Dir. Guy Ritchie. Columbia Pictures. 2000.

– “Okay, I reckon the hare gets fucked” – “What? Proper fucked?” In Guy Ritchie’s comedic crime thriller Snatch, he uses this hare coursing scene to draw parallels between the animality of the dogs and the gangsters, whilst also simultaneously using the mise-en-scene to create a contrast between the agility of animals alongside the clumsiness…

13th January 2022
Annie. Dir. John Huston. Columbia Pictures. 1982.

John Huston’s musical comedy-drama Annie follows the life of an orphan and her trusty adopted dog Sandy. The film repeatedly draws parallels between orphaned children with caged animals, inciting audiences to acknowledge the ways in which the children are treated alike abandoned animals. Huston’s shot of the bustling environment surrounding the unconcerned caged chickens works…

4th January 2021
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…

15th January 2019