Daisy Kenyon

Posted on Sep 29, 2008 By Julia Szabo

Daisy Kenyon

Twentieth Century Fox, 1947, 99 minutes

Imagine a cinematic cross between Sex and the City and the 1940 Ginger Rogers classic Kitty Foyle, and you've got this movie, in which a single New York career woman must choose between two men: one married and rich, the other single and not-so-rich.

Joan Crawford, in 1940s-era Mildred Pierce mode, plays Daisy Kenyon, the single gal in question, a commercial artist who makes illustrations for fashion magazines, living and working in a mouthwatering Greenwich Village apartment. Daisy is single yet hopeful that her Mr. Big, slick attorney Dan O'Mara (Dana Andrews) will eventually leave his wife and kids to marry her. Just as the impossible starts to happen - Dan's divorce is underway - Daisy marries returning war veteran Peter Lapham (Henry Fonda).

In the movie's early scenes, we meet Daisy's best friend Tubby, a handsome Border Collie. Strangely, Tubby disappears, never to be mentioned again for the rest of the movie - even though Daisy winds up relocating to a lovely house in Massachusetts, a locale that would be heaven to any dog, especially a Border Collie.

Although the movie as a whole is enjoyable, the mysterious dog deletion comes as a double dis - i.e. a disrespectful disappointment - and it's even more of a letdown when you consider that the director of this flick was none other than the highly esteemed Otto Preminger, who ought to have known better than to just forget about a canine character. So go ahead and add this title to your Netflix queue - but be sure to also add another movie in which the dog stays in the picture. For a list of FetchDog's recommendations, go here.
Presence of dogs: 1
Respect for dogs: 0
Canine star quality: 4
Family friendly: 1

A Little Vicious

Posted on Aug 20, 2008 By Martha Garvey

The Doc Tank, 1991, 30 minutes

Available at The Doc Tank (www.thedoctank.com)

To view a clip, go here: http://www.thedoctank.com/galley

Once upon a time in the late 1980s, there was a dog named Bandit who lived in a sketchy part of Stamford, Connecticut. Then, Bandit bit a neighbor brandishing a broom, got locked up, returned home, and then bit his owner. Though the owner, an elderly African American man named Lamon Redd, defended his dog Bandit as a consistent, excellent watch dog, the local authorities put the dog on death row, in part because he was a so-called "vicious pit bull."

Unlike so many dogs labeled dangerous, Bandit got lucky - thanks to his owner, a legal defense team, and an eccentric dog trainer named Vicki Hearne, a poet, scholar, and philosopher who wrote lyrical books about the lives of animals. This documentary, warmly narrated by Kevin Bacon, focuses on Bandit's stay of execution while he is trained to be a good dog by Hearne.

In anticipation of a crucial temperament test, Hearne trains Bandit on a rustic farm far from the tough Stamford streets. When we see Bandit perched on the front seat of a car as it approaches his bucolic training grounds, you can almost see him thinking, "What the hell is this?" Hearne seems to feel that Bandit represents a chance to regain Eden. Maybe. Nevertheless, while occasionally we see Bandit resist Hearne's training, he also appears to be a smart, funny dog who even climbs a ladder at her urging.  

Producer-director Immy Humes deftly captures the eccentricities of both the people who love Bandit most of all - trainer Vicki Hearne and Lamon Redd - with a great assist from cinematographer Jean de Segonzac and some sly music choices. Bandit's incarceration and rehabilitation illuminate more than a single dog's story; they expose some not-such-nice assumptions about race and class. Be warned that Hearne wasn't ever a warm and fuzzy trainer, and that while a kind of justice was done, there is no Disney movie ending for this quirky, sturdy documentary.  

When the film was originally released in the early 1990s, it appeared on the American public television series P.O.V. and on Britain's Channel 4 and received an Academy Award nomination. But Bandit's story must be told at a breathless pace to fit 30 minutes. According to an article in The Bark, Humes is considering revisiting her footage on Bandit.

Sadly, Hearne, whose books have been reprinted, and who wrote a whole book about Bandit, died in 2001. Let's hope wherever she is now, there are lots of dogs to love.

Red

Posted on Aug 14, 2008 By Martha Garvey

Magnolia Pictures, 2008, 98 minutes

Is there any way to review this movie without giving some of it away? Probably not. And for many dog owners, the movie's lacerating catalyst may be too much to bear.    

So let's get it out of the way: this film, based on a novel by horror writer Jack Ketchum begins with widower Avery Ludlow (Brian Cox) seeing his 14-year-old dog Red shot dead before his eyes by Danny, a sociopathic teenager. Avery, a courtly, mournful Korean War vet who runs a country store, doesn't want vengeance. He wants justice. He wants Danny, a rich kid with no soul (a seething Noel Fisher), and Danny's two accomplices, include Danny's vulnerable brother Harold (Kyle Gallner), to apologize. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Unfortunately for Ludlow - and the movie - Danny and Harold's father is played by Tom Sizemore, mean and influential, in a bizarre peroxide blond dye job that suggests punk rock, not land baron. Sizemore's scenery chewing signals the movie's drift into weirdness. The film's power lies in Brian Cox's quiet, aching performance. Red's two brief scenes establish him in Avery's heart, and ours, and the rest of the film reveals people who love their dogs, and reach out to Avery in his loss. As Red's absence sinks in, Cox's face grows longer and longer, but his eyes remain dry. A shot of the door that Red used to scratch will be enough to bring most dog owners to tears. But not Avery. It would be a relief to see him cry.

However, when it becomes clear that justice will not be served in the courts, the film's narrative jumps the tracks into 1970s vengeance flick: a little Eastwood, a lot of Bronson, and a whole bunch of guns. A TV news story by a pretty, crusading reporter (Kim Dickens) unwittingly incites more violence, and while there is a resolution, it must be accomplished with another peculiar tone change, some dubious plotting, and a puppy ex machina.

The bizarre shifts in tone can partially be explained by the credits - the original director was apparently replaced. What's good about this movie is very good, and that is most of the cast, particularly the teenagers, who hold their own against Cox. What's weird is very weird. Those who are Dean Koontz or Stephen King fans may find it more to their liking. Tenderhearted dog owners: Stay far away.

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The Bear

Posted on Aug 11, 2008 By Julia Szabo

Sony Pictures, 1988, 93 minutes
 
It's rare for a movie that portrays dogs as "bad guys" to win over dog lovers. Yet Jean-Jacques Annaud's documentary-style masterpiece about an adorable, orphaned bear cub managed to win over this dog lover.
 
As the cub and the older Kodiak bear who adopts him are stalked by two determined hunters across British Columbia's late-nineteenth-century wilderness, I was definitely not rooting for the pack of mixed-breed hunting dogs the men employ to help bring the bear down - even though several of them reminded me of my own beloved dogs. (The big bear is played by a performer named Bart, a nine-and-a-half-foot-tall, 1,500-pound hunk of natural acting talent who played opposite Alec Baldwin, Anthony Hopkins, and Brad Pitt in a long career that ended with his death in 2000.)
 
And yet, when some of the hunting dogs are injured and one - the younger hunter's favorite - must be put out of her misery, you realize with sadness that they were only following humans' orders. That's when the director's message comes through loud and clear: big-game hunting is terrible for all involved, not just the quarry.
 
This film makes such a powerful case for showing mercy to animals that American Humane awarded it a special citation. From the film-industry watchdog that ensures "No animals were harmed" on the movie sets they monitor, that's praise from Caesar. By showing the harm hunters do to animals, "The Bear" has what it takes to inspire more people to forsake this blood sport.

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Kit Kittredge: An American Girl

Posted on Aug 4, 2008 By Elizabeth Edwardsen

Like all her American Girl  counterparts, Kit Kittredge has the determination, courage, and pluck to overcome the obstacles of her day.

In case you haven't known any little girls in the past 20 or so years, each American Girl in the wildly popular doll, book, and now movie, series, represents a period in U.S. history. Kit lives in Cincinnati during the Great Depression, and she watches as neighbors lose their homes and her father loses his car dealership and moves to Chicago to find work.

This is a children's movie, so some of the financial hardships of the Depression are rather cheerfully displayed; the hobo camp where Kit, played by Abigail Breslin, helps solve a mystery is Mayberry-esque in its friendliness. But enough loss and suffering comes through to let young viewers know that these were very hard times. One character affected by the economic losses could very well be a 2008 resident of any U.S. community. Gracie the Bassett Hound, abandoned on the street with a sign indicating her previous owner can't afford to keep her any more. As I watched this movie with my own American Girl fan, I thought of all the /dogs left adrift by the ongoing U.S. foreclosure crisis/ [link to Nose post on foreclosure crisis ] and hoped that Kit's nice mother, played by Jula Ormond, would let her take Gracie home. (Of course she did.)

Gracie doesn't play as big a role as some of the other supporting actors -- a hilarious group of boarders that include Joan Cusack, Stanley Tucci, Jane Krakowki, Glenne Headley and Stirling Howard IV (of Mr. Magorium's Magic Emporium) -- but she holds her own against the other acting animal, a sneaky but cute little monkey.

Like all the American Girl stories, there's a gripping plot that includes a nice kick of girl empowerment in Kit Kittredge's tale. It's a story of friendship and of love and it manages to sneak a little history in. If any young girl in your house has not yet talked you into escorting them to this yet, go see it. It's one of those kids' movies that is as enjoyable for parents as kids and will spark a good conversation on the way home. If your daughter's grandparents didn't live through the Depression, or if your neighbors have not lost a house to foreclosure, use the movie to talk about dog abandonment and rescue and the state that the foreclosure crises has left the nations shelters in.

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