The Criterion Collection

[I KEEL YOU]

I am of the opinion that if an animal has to suffer in order to create a true masterpiece as powerful as this, then so be it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpZZo2xYBpA

[trevanian]

Originally Posted by captainron_howdy

Okay. Just checked, I can still handle Andrei Rublev. This is a Tarkovsky film, not Cannibal Holocaust. You'd think ppl who seem so into film & post here every day would have seen Rublev by now but, no & when they find out about some not so nice scenes involving animals they cry and refuse to watch it.
Grow Up.

Hey, as a guy who spent himself broke a couple times trying to make zero-budget film magic, I can tell you that the ONLY living thing that ought to suffer physical pain as a result of filmmaking is the person making the film -- suffering for your art is fine, making others with nerve endings suffer for it is a whole different kettle of fish.

Of course, depending on how one rated when taking a Voight-Kampff empathy test, mileage would vary. I'm guessing you'd come in somewhere well below BLADE RUNNER's Leon.

[captainron_howdy]

Originally Posted by trevanian

Of course, depending on how one rated when taking a Voight-Kampff empathy test, mileage would vary. I'm guessing you'd come in somewhere well below BLADE RUNNER's Leon.

[SammyJankis]

A week away in Yellowstone/Grand Tetons and this is what I come back to. I can't help but love this thread.

Now, it's time for a double feature of McCabe and Heaven's Gate.

[SonnybytheSea]

I'm hoping to see these films as future CC releases
Frank Perry's Last Summer (1969)
Richard Brooks's Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)
Jeunet & Caro's Delicatessen (1991)
Jeunet & Caro's The City of Lost Children (1995)
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie (2001)
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement (2004)

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by lemonski

Yeah, nah. 99.9% of filmmakers have figured out how to make important films without resorting to animal cruelty. Think I’ll file Tarkovsky under “D” for “don’t bother”.

So can I assume then that you'll be getting rid of those copies of Apocalypse Now and The Wild Bunch that you have in your collection?

[Bandit Tajomaru]

Just pretend the animal being killed is an aborted baby.

[Reddington]

Originally Posted by captainron_howdy

Not to mention the difference in artistic quality....

You apply moral relativism to the subjective nature of art, but castigate others for having different values than your own? Quite a paradox.

[The Great Owl]

What about Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game. Roughly 64% of the world's rabbits were killed just for that movie.

I always have to follow that Renoir film up with Night of the Lepus, just to get things right again in my head.

[captainron_howdy]

Originally Posted by Reddington

You apply moral relativism to the subjective nature of art, but castigate others for having different values than your own? Quite a paradox.

Yeah....that's it, just like everyone started to castigate Criterion for upgrading one of their most requested titles (one that's been in the collection pretty much from the start might I add) because there are a few scenes of animal cruelty. Esp. these people who have Apocalypse Now etc...in their own collections. Quite the paradox indeed.

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by captainron_howdy

Yeah....that's it, just like everyone started to castigate Criterion for upgrading one of their most requested titles (one that's been in the collection pretty much from the start might I add) because there are a few scenes of animal cruelty. Esp. these people who have Apocalypse Now etc...in their own collections. Quite the paradox indeed.

My moral pedestal went out the window the day I purchased the Cannibal Holocaust Blu-ray. For so many reasons...

Incidentally, I revisited the 1960 live-action Disney film, Swiss Family Robinson, last night. I was chuckling through most of it, because, by today's standards, most of the animal scenes are totally not okay.

[CinemaBlu]

Originally Posted by captainron_howdy

Yeah....that's it, just like everyone started to castigate Criterion for upgrading one of their most requested titles (one that's been in the collection pretty much from the start might I add) because there are a few scenes of animal cruelty. Esp. these people who have Apocalypse Now etc...in their own collections. Quite the paradox indeed.

The buffalo scene in Apocalypse Now was a documentation of a real event. It wasn't killed for the film. They shot a real ritual slaughter and incorporated it into the film.

[Reddington]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

My moral pedestal went out the window the day I purchased the Cannibal Holocaust Blu-ray. For so many reasons...

Incidentally, I revisited the 1960 live-action Disney film, Swiss Family Robinson, last night. I was chuckling through most of it, because, by today's standards, most of the animal scenes are totally not okay.

It is a complex subject, Owl, and one that deserves civilized discourse without the use of epithets like "crybaby," or those who hold different views being told to "grow up."

I dread to think how many westerns I've watched where trip wires were used on the horses. Or other films in which animals have been intentionally mistreated. All I know is that I try to make informed decisions based on my own comfort level and values.

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by Reddington

I dread to think how many westerns I've watched where trip wires were used on the horses. Or other films in which animals have been intentionally mistreated. All I know is that I try to make informed decisions based on my own comfort level and values.

Here's a paragraph from my review of Cannibal Holocaust that addresses the issue, including a mention of classic westerns...

Real animals were killed during the making of Cannibal Holocaust. The actual Amazon natives depicted on camera ate the animals after the filming of these killings, but this does not entirely assuage my unease, and I still believe that these scenes are the most vilely disturbing moments in the movie. Several truly great films in cinema history, namely Apocalypse Now, Wake in Fright, Walkabout, and The Rules of the Game, have featured actual animal deaths on camera, of course. I say this not to make excuses for any of the scenes in any of the above movies, because I'm grateful that we have evolved in filmmaking so that animal welfare is prioritized. I do think, however, that Cannibal Holocaust, like the other above films, was a work of cinema for its time, and that it comes from an era where mindsets were different with regard to moviemaking, and from an era where, as contemporary filmmaker Eli Roth states in his essay on this release, horses were routinely shot after being wounded during the filming of some of our favorite cowboy westerns. It's worth noting that the Blu-ray of Cannibal Holocaust presents an option to watch the movie with the animal death scenes edited out. In its unedited form, this movie presents an effective sleight of hand, in that the fake death scenes of humans appear more realistic alongside the animal deaths, but the decision to watch it with the animal scenes edited out is understandable and commendable.

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by CinemaBlu

The buffalo scene in Apocalypse Now was a documentation of a real event. It wasn't killed for the film. They shot a real ritual slaughter and incorporated it into the film.

Well, I've heard conflicting stories about this, but even with that being the case it still depicts an animal being killed, which to many is distressing regardless of the circumstances surrounding it. And for others it would put it in the same moral category as Andrei Rublev as the horse was going to be killed anyway.

Personally, I don't like seeing animals harmed, particularly for something as trivial as a movie, but it hasn't stopped me from enjoying and owning certain films that contain it, and I am certainly not going to get judgmental towards anyone who chooses to avoid such films unless they are being hypocritical and /or sanctimonious about it like the person I responded to earlier in the thread.

[The Great Owl]

Have any of you seen the 1981 movie, Roar, which is available on Blu-ray from Olive Films?

It puts an interesting spin on the whole "animals in cinema" thing.

Here's my review...

The tagline for Roar states: “No animals were harmed in the making of this film. 70 cast and crew members were.”

Tippi Hedren, the star of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, and her real-life husband, Noel Marshall, were enthusiastic conservation activists during the 1970s, and they shared their home with actual lions, tigers, leopards, panthers, and other animals. They took it upon themselves to “promote” conservation by making a movie that would star all of their big feline friends.

In this movie, Noel Marshall lives in harmony with about 50 big cats who are allowed free reign of his home. One day, he goes to the airport to pick up his visiting family, played by Tippi Hedren, Hedren's real-life daughter Melanie Griffith, and his real-life sons, John and Jerry, without knowing that his family has already arrived and has gone straight to his home. The family arrives at Marshall's house, only to find themselves surrounded by a multitude of 400-pound lions and tigers. Ferocious mayhem ensues.

Roar is part horror, part slapstick, part adventure-thriller, part warm-and-fuzzy ecological message movie, and never ever boring.

More than anything, though, this whole movie is a bucketful of “WTF?”

Photographer Jan De Bont had his scalp bitten off during the filming. Tippi Hedren suffered several scalp wounds, a fractured leg, and a rough neck bite from a lion. Melanie Griffith was mauled so badly that she needed reconstructive surgery. Noel Marshall himself was bitten so many times by lions that he suffered gangrene. Son John Marshall was bitten and required several stitches. The other son, Jerry, was bitten in the foot through his tennis shoe. The assistant director had his throat torn open by a lion.

The crazy thing is that all of the above injuries are pretty much shown during the film. The lions and tigers are rambunctiously playful, and they are just roughhousing, but it's not exactly safe and sound to play around with a massive 400-500 pound feline that has giant claws and teeth. The movie really gives a feel for the size and immensity of these animals.

I heartily recommend Roar simply because you have never seen anything like this movie, and you never will see anything else like this movie.

[rezpekt]

Originally Posted by Bates_Motel

No, I don't. It was hinted at in the New Year's drawing and mentioned in third party articles, but Criterion themselves never "announced" it until it was ready to be released.

That article is not an official announcement, nor does it give a date for release.

That article simply cites an official press release, which very much was an official announcement.

[mja345]

"Roar" is one of the most insane films I've ever seen. It's really incredible that it was made.

[Abdrewes]

After all this animal talk, I have an itch to revisit Brakhage's The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes.

Or the injury run-down in the Nagano Bud Greenspan Documentary

(in deep monotone baritone) After failing to complete the jump, the skier suffers a ruptured achilles.

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by mja345

"Roar" is one of the most insane films I've ever seen. It's really incredible that it was made.

And what's insane about it is that Tippi Hedren and her husband were supposedly these great animal welfare activists yet they were completely tone deaf to the fact that those sorts of interactions between big cats and humans are very much detrimental to the welfare of the animals, particularly using the myriad injuries suffered by the humans including her own family members as a selling point for their exploitation film.