Animals of October

Content warning: Frequent mentions of animal harm and death - skip this post if you are sensitive to such issues Where are we at with that 'No Animals Were Harmed' disclaimer that we get at the end of film credits? The welfare of animals is one of the things that most lifts me out of the 'suspension of disbelief' when watching a movie or TV programme, as I'm sure is the case for many of us. Who else ends up quickly doing various mental gymnastics to convince yourself that what you just saw was CGI, or very good training, or some kind of hyper-realistic model? It's usually not a problem for your big blockbuster where an expensive bit of invisible CGI is more easily and slickly incorporated, but I do worry about some of these 'artier' lower budget films that lean more towards realism and authenticity. Yesterday I watched the 2017 film The Rider , directed by Chloe Zhao, and it was abundantly clear on multiple occasions that the horses were not having a par...

Yesterday, I finished the video game Ori and the Blind Forest on the Switch, escaping (after many attempts) the wrath of Kuro the Owl, the game’s main antagonist. She is a velvet-dark mega-bird of hatred and revenge who spends the whole game trying to vanquish Ori, the little light spirit you play as. She’s actually pretty terrifying; looming in the background, screeching and keening somewhere off-frame, and if your clumsy human thumbs don’t quite hit the right buttons at the right times and in the right directions, she doesn’t hesitate to cut down Ori in quick-flash swipes of pure terror. Meanwhile, the rest of the game is similarly staffed with nasty creatures, ranging from amorphous slug-like blobs and chittering spiders, to armored rhinos and weird frogs who spit balls of pain. It is the most human-like creatures who are the heroes of the day, while the animals are suffused with unbridled fury.  Which is not to say I did not enjoy the game - I did, very muchly. It was more cha...