A real trooper

Sherlock Holmes's dog in Guy Ritchie's movie is called Gladstone and is the victim of Holmes's experiments but Gladstone pulls through every time.  Will he in the next movie?

Golden Globe hero

The Artist won the Golden Globe for best comedy at last night’s awards ceremony.  The lead actor, Jean Dujardin,  received the best actor award.  Surely the real star of the film has to be Uggie, the Jack Russell.  Here is what The Washington Post has to say about him.   

“When you look at the character of George Valentin” — a silent-era movie star whose career ends with the arrival of talkies — “he’s selfish, egocentric, proud. He’s mean with his own wife, he’s not a positive character. But the fact is, the dog loves him and follows him during all the movie. What happens is, the audience trusts the dog. We think if the dog loves the guy, the guy has to be a good person.”

My Dog Tulip

Look out for this beautifully animated film featuring the voices of Christopher Plummer, the late Lynn Redgrave, and Isabella Rossellini.  My Dog Tulip is a bittersweet retrospective account of author J. R. Ackerley’s 16-year relationship with his adopted Alsatian bitch, Tulip.
The distinguished man of letters, Ackerley hardly thought of himself as a dog lover when, well into middle age, he came to adopt Tulip – a beautiful, yet intolerable 18-month-old German shepherd. To his surprise, she turned out to be the love of his life, the “ideal friend” he had been searching for in vain for so many years. In vivid and sometimes startling detail, the film reveals Tulip’s sassy, often erratic behaviour (and very canine tastes) and Ackerley’s fumbling but determined efforts to ensure an existence of perfect happiness for her.