Tag: farmers

Memoir of a Snail

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 13 February 2025
1 Comment on Memoir of a Snail
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Director – Adam Elliot – 2024 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 94m

*****

A young woman recounts her life story to her newly freed pet snail after her best friend dies – stop-frame animation marvel is out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 14th

Following a bravura title sequence which consists of a camera moving around (a scale model set of) detritus from a life, everything from soap on a rope to snail poison, with various objects bearing upon themselves various credits for the film, a young woman has tears in her eyes as her bedridden friend Pinky (voice: Jacki Weaver from Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell, 2012; Animal Kingdom, David Michod, 2010; Picnic at Hanging Rock, Peter Weir, 1975) breathes her last, briefly coming back to life to utter the legend, “potatoes”. But what can this word mean?

Taking her pet snail Sylvia (the name is painted on the back of the creature’s shell) out of a glass jar and setting her free to cross Pinky’s garden in the course of her subsequent narrative, the woman remembers her childhood down to the smallest detail, and starts to recount it to the liberated gastropod. She was born prematurely as Grace Prudence Pudel (voice: Sarah Snook from Steve Jobs, Danny Boyle, 2015; Predestination, The Spierig Brothers, 2014), shortly followed by her twin brother Gilbert (voice: Kodi Smit-McPhee from Maria, Pablo Larraín, 2024; The Power of the Dog, Jane Campion, 2021; The Congress, Ari Folman, 2013; ParaNorman, Chris Butler, Sam Fell, 2012).… Read the rest

Tags 3D animation, accountant, Adam Elliot, alcoholic, Alexander Esenarro Santafe, animation, apple farm, Australia, bedridden, Bernie Clifford, Big Dipper, birthing, blood transfusion, book deposit, Canberra, cheap labour, child abuse, Child Services, childhood, Christian, church collection, cleft palette, cleft upper lip, correspondence, creating her story as a vehicle for his stop-frame puppetry, Dominique Pinon, drunk driver, eccentric, Eric Bana, exploitation, fairground, farmers, fathers and children, foster homes, foster parents, freedom, friend, fundamentalist, Garden Of Eden, gibberish, head sculptor, heroism, hoarding, hospital, Jacki Weaver, key parties, Kodi Smit-Mcphee, letters, library, love of fire, Magda Szubanski, marriage, Memoir of a Snail, memorabilia, molluscologist, music box, netball, Nick Cave, nutcase, orchard, ornament, orphan, orphanage, paraplegic, Paris, Paul Capsis, pet snail, potatoes, pray, premature birth, production line, religious, Sarah Snook, school bully, self-help books, separated, shoplifting, snail, snail poison, soap on a rope, stop-frame, stop-frame puppet, street artist, swingers, Tony Armstrong, toxic relationship, twins, volunteering, woodshed

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Battle for Laikipia

Directors – Daphne Matziaraki, Peter Murimi – 2024 – US, Kenya, Greece – Cert. 12a – 94m

Disagreements in Kenya between indigenous, pastoralist herdsmen and white immigrant farmers come to a head during a severe drought exacerbated by climate change – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 4th

Shot mostly between 2017 and 2019 – so before the COVID pandemic – this is a brave attempt to relate two opposing and seemingly irreconcilable sides to a specific conflict.

Laikipia is a large, wildlife conservation area of Kenya, and the film was made some 60 or so years after Kenyan independence.

On the one hand, indigenous Kenyan tribesmen have been grazing their herds of goats and cattle on the land, simply wandering around and letting the animals graze at any suitable pasture they find. There is no concept of land ownership, except the unspoken idea that this is their country and this is therefore their land, which seems reasonable enough.

On the other hand, the early part of the twentieth century saw white British settlers awarded large areas of land to set up farms on the more profitable, Western capitalist business model. These people have now lived in the country and run their farms as enclosed ranches for some four generations.… Read the rest

Tags acreage, arrest, back-to-the-land, British immigrant, business, business model, candidate, capitalist, cattle, climate change, commercial, common ground, conflict, country, COVID, Daphne Matziaraki, deplete, disagreement, diversity, drought, election, enclosed, enclosed land, farmers, farms, global issues, goats, grass, grazing, Greece, hate speech, herds, herdsman, history, incitement of violence, indigenous, irreconcilable, irresolvable, justice and injustice, Kenya, Kifuku Ranch on modern, Laikipia, land grab, land ownership, land ownership rights, Lempurkel, Maria Dodds, mobile phone footage, nationality, opposed factions, opposing, pandemic, pastoralist, pasture, Peter Murimi, ranches, settlers, slaughter, small scale approach, stress, struggle, struggling financial, survival, tribesman, tribesmen, US, Western, white British, wildlife conservation area

Features Live Action Movies

Cave Rescue

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 1 August 2022
3 Comments on Cave Rescue
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Director – Tom Waller – 2022 – Thailand – US Cert. PG-13 – 99m

****

A Thai-based dramatisation of the 2018 Thailand boys’ football team cave rescue, with some of the rescuers playing themselves – on Blu-ray (US only) Tuesday, September 13th

In 2018, the world held its breath when the 12 boys of a football team and their 24-year-old coach became trapped in a cave when rain fell unexpectedly and water levels within the cave system started to rise. Incredibly, the ensuing rescue attempt involving divers from the US, UK, Ireland and Canada got all 13 out alive. According to this film, sadly, there was one fatality among the Thai Navy SEAL divers involved in the rescue.

Quick off the mark, Thailand-based producer-director Waller made the story into a feature film The Cave (2019), aimed at the Thai market. With Netflix having already secured the rights to the boys’ stories – a miniseries Thai Cave Rescue (2022) is coming to Netflix US in September 2022 – Waller and his co-writers had to find an alternative route to telling the story. A meeting with Irish diver Jim Warny, who was involved in the rescue operation, resulted in the decision to base the narrative not around the thirteen people trapped underground but the men and women who attempted to get them out (mostly men, although there are one or two women featured among the paramedics not to mention an assistant to the local Governor).… Read the rest