The 2013 Cannes Film Festival just wrapped up and anyone hoping for a charming dog movie the likes of Best In Show, Babe, or 101 Dalmatians left disappointed. There’s about a 0.0000% chance that any of this year’s dog movies which were shopped at the festival are going to inspire anyone to run out and buy a pooched based upon the canine star.
In fact, the first of this year’s line up of steaming dog excrement appears to have been written so that the film company wouldn’t actually have to hire a real canine actor to appear in the movie since the dog is INVISIBLE!
Fresh off his stellar run as “The Guy from the Beneful Commercial,” David DeLuise plays a bumbling crook who steals two magical potions from a science lab which accidentally give some overly-perky tween’s dog the ability to talk and turn invisible and awkward make-it-stop non-hilarity ensues!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnaA-XCj4I4]
Lance Henriksen was illiterate until his 30s when he taught himself to read using the movie scripts he was given to portray. Apparently he still hasn’t mastered the ability to tell if a script he reads is crap or not because everyone’s favorite Android from Aliens can’t pump any life into this snooze-fest of teen angst and agility dogs.
Two actors we’ll probably never see again deliver poetic lines like “she’s not a cattledog, she’s a champion!” while they trip over cliche teen mating rituals by making sexual innuendos about dog training:
“Do you think you could, like, um, show me how to train her?” she said bashfully, kicking the ground.
“Sure!,” he said exuberantly, simulating his copulation techniques by dancing like Michael J Fox got struck by lightning.
Watch the Trailer (with epic French Horn music!) now!
Morgan Fairchild, who only took the role to prove that she isn’t dead yet, takes on the thinly reskined clone of Cruella DeVille as the evil antagonist who wants nothing more than to buy a family’s shelter Weiner dog to make it into a schnitzel or something, only to suffer humiliation as the dog wins the Wiener Dog Nationals! Keep an eye out for Alicia Witt, fresh off her role as the randy Ms. Pasternak and entirely un-reminiscent of her role as child super genius Aria Atreides from Dune. “For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiHMU6Sz1j0]
Not all news is bad news for dogs at Cannes, however. Stealing the spotlight in the Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra, is an aged, pasty, one eyed pocket pooch named Baby Boy, and no, I’m not talking about the prosthetic in Matt Damon’s speed0. The festival committee gave their punny “Palm Dog Award” to the decrepit miniature poodle which represented the entirety of the chemistry between Damon and Douglas: nearly lifeless and sort of creepy.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCkn6l8oEAI]
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What you need are those movies where the dogs talk with moving lips. Those are always good.
Marmaduke should’ve won best picture.
retrieverman recently posted..Smiley dog
Hmmm…so that’s two thumbs down from the dead guys?
Red Dog finally came out on DVD in America, years after it came out in Australia where it was filmed. Nope, it was not about Clifford of our childhood storybook days. It is about the legend of a local “Red Cloud kelpie” from a tiny town called Pilbara.
Even the Aussies said it was an embarrassment to their kind, as no one would think anyone there knew how to make a movie even in modern times. A few sentimentalists only focused on a few teary moments, so I opted to watch it no matter what.
It would have bombed in Cannes too. In fact, I don’t think it made it to any other American film festival save for one in Dallas TX? I think that’s the city that aired it.
Horrible horrible horrible, but I cried a touch at the end. I mean, the lies on the grave of “the only man he ever loved”, and then he too dies at the end. What can I say? I’m a softie!
I’ve only seen clips of that film. It looks good.
Red for a Kelpie is what I call liver. Still drives me crazy.
retrieverman recently posted..Encounters with a wild turkey family
I think of what I see in German Shorthaired Pointers as ‘liver”. But the reds in “red” kelpies or red & tans varies a lot in hue. I’ve seen many more GSPs live than I have kelpies though. GSPs are just more common my way. In pics if nothing else, some kelpies do look livery. But others are a rich, striking red.
Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to get to the Casterton AUS kelpie muster one day.
Urban Collie Chick, you’re showing your urban biases, and you must have very urban Australian friends if they didn’t like it (it was a big box office success in Oz)
The Pilbara is NOT a small town, it’s a huge desert area, known for iron ore mining. Google says it’s 193,823 sq miles. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’ll watch it, if just for the scenery. The Pilbara is gorgeous. Lest UKC’s panning put people off, The Reel Bits, while admitting that Red Dog is corny in places, describes it as:”Red Dog is one of the most beautifully shot, and told, “animal” films (Australian or otherwise) in years. Designed to be enjoyed by anyone with a pulse.” Amazon gives it 4.5/5 stars with 69 reviews…and none of the few 3star reviews got any helpful votes.
Liver is a horrid name for a colour. I never know whether it’s a reference to raw liver — no dog I’ve ever seen has the purplish overtones of that colour — or cooked liver (Weimerarner colour). A red cloud kelpie is a red earth colour…the dominant colour of the Pilbara. (I had a boarding kennel in Western Australia and got to know hundreds of kelpies).
My online name does come from the fact that I live in NYC and it was my #1 address, but I spent tons of time growing up in very rural areas, so I am familiar and not at all condescending to any such areas.
Having said that, what makes you jump to the conclusion that only city folk could find the movie poorly made? Isn’t THAT a bias?
Yes, the desert scenery was/is very pretty. That’s not enough to make a movie good. The writing, direction, cast chemistry, and many more things matter.
And I don’t defend opinion by quoting someone else’s opinion, which is all that The Reel Bits or Amazon is. Why would I like a film just because some website TOLD me it was good?
When most people talk about small or large towns, cities, they are speaking about the populace, not geograhic size. Otherwise the great Gobi desert could be considered a large town if you only added a couple of mines and ten people. Please let me know if this reference is insanely skewed.It says Pilbara has a population of under 50K. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilbara
Okay, that’s not something as small as 1,000 people, but from a world view, the world population being over 7 billion, 50K is considered small today.
Please don’t take what I said personally.
Umm? I am unfamiliar with the notion that town or city has nothing to do with geographic size. Certainly town or city connotes a named place that has a higher population density than the surrounding countryside, and is distinguished by social/economic features and built landscape. A region, on the other hand, is usually characterized by geology, climate, ecology, etc. (although there may be cultural regions). The place named Pilbara is recognized as a geographic region, not a town or city. The Gobi Desert will never be classified as a large town.
If you don’t think I should quote others’ opinions, please describe the sample on which you based the statement “Even the Aussies said it was an embarrassment to their kind, as no one would think anyone there knew how to make a movie even in modern times.”
If this is true, how come Red Dog did so well in the Australian box office? Try Herald Sun Review (a major Australian newspaper) http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/movies/fim-review-red-dog/story-e6frf8r6-1226108272342 . . . which is wildly enthusiastic.
Why the hell am I bothering to reply to this?
Okay fine. Have it your way. Pilbara is a region with a populace of at or about, 50K. Does that sound better?
I only said I, personally, do not quote other’s opinions in deciding what films are good. Never suggested what you yourself should do.
And all the Aussies who disliked it were on FB, and various sites, the likes of which I do not recall now. I’m not about to spend time looking for all of them.
I cannot account for why it did well at the Box office in Oz. There are a lot of dog lovers everywhere and I’m sure many people, including myself, were going to go because they loved dogs, no matter how the movie was made. It’s naturally dog-lovers who are going to be enthused to go, so maybe a lot of sites will have it skewed in that positive direction and put it as a good movie.
Websites today also seem to put bad reviews last, for movies as well as other things. These people below who did not like the movie were already at the end. The dropdown options were pre-set to show those who loved the movie first.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0803061/reviews?filter=hate
I have used YELP to criticize businesses. I find that the bad reviews tend to get hidden and you have to go out of your way to uncheck a box that asks to hide things.
Hey, I saw it. I love dogs. I even got choked up at the end. It was a dog. It was a kelpie. Can’t help that in myself. But I’m objective enough to form a film opinion that has no problem admitting it was a cheesy, campy flick, reminiscent of cornball stuff from the 80s.
The film quality wasn’t the best, the fight scenes between red dog and red cat were loaded with embarrassing effects. I can imagine it was intended to embellish a legend. But it was low-budget and to that end, it could only come out so good, meaning NOT so good. Being that they knew they had only so much money to spend, the directors and producers probably should have opted for better dialogue from the humans and put a little more into the animal acting. Overall the theme, the lines, the way things went, were predictable and contrived. That’s not hatred from me. That’s just an honest assessment. And I know I read enough criticisms to know I’m not alone.At least it kept pretty much to the book. That’s more than a lot of movies do.
The box office take-ins no doubt included people who disliked the movie as well as those who did. People cannot form opinions until they SEE it.
I have no idea why you are answering or why you are this upset. It’s just a movie. If you are defending Oz, that’s just fine. Most people root for the home team. That’s natural. Here in the USA, it never made it past one Dallas film festival. It was distributed by DVD only and it took well over a year from release in Oz just to make it HERE, first announced via Wal-Mart.
If you trashed a movie about my area or something I liked, and I liked the flick, I wouldn’t be upset about it. It’s just a movie.
Very sorry for the loss of Koko, the dog who starred in the movie and sadly passed on from congestive heart failure at age 7.
Wow, a fight over Pilbara! Who would have thought.
Something about Australia does attract certain passions. Personally I AM a romantic fan of the Continent and their dogs! 🙂
Some of the towns in Canada which are between 10 000 to 70 000 are still considered to be rural. I haven’t looked up yet what constitute urban or rural yet according to the government.
Dave recently posted..From Which He Flushed
“Small town” was really just a passing comment by me. It wasn’t meant to be reflective of technical aspects, parameters, gov’t determinations, etc. You never know who is going to be taken aback by what.
Found out why some of the highly-populated areas can still be rural:
Dave recently posted..From Which He Flushed
So the OECD defines “region” with population.
If one sq kilo = roughly 2.6 sq miles, then 193,823 sq miles = 74,547 sq miles. 50,000 people distributed throughout, strictly speaking without adjusting for where these folks truly congregate in real life within the region, is about 1.5 persons per square mile.
Quite a bit less than 150. Even if you take into account that most people will naturally tend to cluster in certain areas – to live, to work, to recreate – this counts as rural.
Of course, I said “small”, not rural, but again, it was in passing.
74,547 sq KILOS! Dang!
All in all an absurd discussion. I had had a few beers before i responded. I’m a dual US/Ozzie citizen and spent 15 years in the other WA (Western Australia). I have a PhD in physical geography and have spent some time in the Pilbara. The post still galls me. Facebook is a crappy source…i hate gossip. Australia is diverse. What embarrasses one group of Ozzies will make another group proud as punch. I’ve been active on an Austalian dog discussion forum for many years, and there the main concern about Red Dog was that it would result in a surge of popularity for kelpies, which proved unjustified, but does not support the opinion that Australians were embarassed by the film. UKC would have been fine if she had said Dampier, instead of Pilbara. The Red Dog statue is in Dampier, and a lot of the movie was shot there. Temper, temper, Robinson. Too much said about nothing!
Well Jen, yeah, it IS absurd. So why did you get all up in arms about the little details from the get-go.
FB isn’t a “source” in terms of citations, etc. People posted individual opinions, as they did in that other link. I mean, what are you saying? That people were wrong about their own opinions and expressions?
YOU, you guy on FB. You don’t know WHAT you think! LOL!
And I never disagreed that what pleases some displeases others, plus I gave my feeling on how the box office could be skewed by dog lovers.
This isn’t a study of scientific facts about a disease. Geez!
I do applaud the drinking of beer though, so long as you didn’t get into a car afterwards.
I plan on slamming back a couple tomorrow while I watch the Belmont Stakes!