I could write an entire book about horses and how into them I am, but let's just say that I was a horse from ages eight to fourteen. Former classmates still ask me, "Were you that girl who drew ponies and crawled around on all fours ALL the time?" You guys, I've seen a lot of horse movies.
I somehow convinced my boyfriend's family that going to see War Horse was a good idea. Thank you, Adam's family! Sorry! Thank you!
Regardless of whether the movie was good or bad, I knew I'd enjoy Battle Equine as long as there were abundant shots of shiny horses galloping through fields. Here's my review.
(WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS)
• Spielberg does us right and starts off with newborn colt-frolicking.
• The story gets going when an old drunk man buys War Horse at an auction. What and how much is a guinea?
• The old drunk guy then regrets buying such a spirited animal, but that's okay, his Abercrombie & Fitch model son will give horse training a try!
• In case you're unfamiliar with the genre, EVERY horse movie is about a plucky young person forming a special bond with an otherwise difficult and unruly horse. Because that's the dream, for a wild creature to totally trust you and become your buddy. It's the ultimate flattery. It's also the ultimate disappointment when you take riding lessons and your horse doesn't care about you and tries to rub you off on a tree.
• I'm disappointed they named him "Joey" instead of "War Horse." Couldn't they have at least named him something more horsey, like "Joey's Little Wiseguy" or "Joey Me the Mo'Hay"?
• I'm also disappointed that War Horse isn't more bad-ass and this isn't a horse version of Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
• GOOSE! There's a goose that keeps chasing/chomping people and showing up in scenes randomly. It has more charisma and charm than anything else in the movie. Goose for Best Actor!
• The woman sitting in front of me keeps falling asleep and I want to yell "HEY SNORE HORSE" so bad it hurts.
• Spielberg made a big deal about casting an unknown actor as the main dude, but he's really just a hunk, a baby Casper Van Dien. He's good at running through fields and aiming wet looks at the horse.
• If you explain how important something is to a horse, it will understand you and do that thing!
• Ooh Emily Watson's character has one really good line: "I could hate you more, but I couldn't love you less." I'm totally saying that to the next friend to fart in my presence.
• Horses' faces are oddly expressionless for the most part; they gaze at you over those long, beautiful noses and you don't know what they're thinking. I assume they're pondering carrots and ways to destroy mankind, but who knows?
• For my college sculpture class I made a pair of ceramic horse heads, and my professor got really worked up over how strange and enigmatic horses are. At one point she kept loudly repeating, "WHAT IS IT ABOUT THEIR FACES? WHAT IS IT ABOUT THE FACE?!" while we stared back at her, stunned. What is it about the face?
• The premise of the movie seems to be that lots of people fall in love with and are willing to risk everything for this horse. This horse is a siren and should be destroyed!
• Benedict Cumberbatch only appears onscreen for a second, but it's worth mentioning because he's Benedict Cumberbatch. Have you seen BBC's Sherlock yet? It's on Netflix, go watch the first episode. Then come back here and we can talk about how that show is cumberbatches of fun.
• Sometimes when I'm riding in a car, I look out the window and imagine I'm riding a horse running alongside the road and we're jumping over fences and mail boxes and benedictcumberbatches and stuff.
• And also sometimes when I’m jogging, I pretend I’m a horse, and then if I’m really in the groove I make quiet rhythmic clucking noises to myself so I’m also the rider? I’m riding myself?
• I'm glad War Horse doesn't talk out loud or have thoughts.
• Spielberg has some clever ways of hiding the carnage of war; we see riderless horses jumping over cannons, the sails of a windmill conceal an execution, etc. It's a non Gore Horse approach to violence.
• The soldiers' horses are all marching in silhouette against the backdrop of a beautiful, firey sunset and ONE OF THEM IS POOPING, I SEE THE SILHOUETTES OF POOPS.
• War Horse just "volunteered" to take the place of his friend, who in War Horse's opinion was too sick to pull a wagon. Do horses have the ability to volunteer?
• I'm pretty sure horses only volunteer to do their favorite things.
• THE OTHER HORSE JUST DIED!! Argghhh this part is really sad! Oh no, I'm crying. Shit, shit, I've got feelings diarrhea!
• Okay, but the saddest part is followed by THE VERY BEST SCENE: War Horse faces off with a tank, then gallops crazily through No Man's Land, leaping in and out and over trenches before getting tangled in barbed wire. I try to start an audience chant, WAR HORSE WAR HORSE!, but it doesn't catch on.
• The soldiers are using so many different styles of periscope! Good job, prop master.
• This part where the German and British soldiers temporarily put aside their differences to help War Horse could have been schmaltzy, but it's done very tastefully.
• There are at least three scenes where somebody is aiming and about to shoot the horse for no reason, and the horse has no idea! Because he's a horse.
• IN CONCLUSION: This is a standard horse movie about projecting human ideals, emotions, and symbolism onto animals, with a decent war movie sandwiched in the middle. There are about four "pretty horsey runs really fast" scenes, so I give it 4 out of 5 horseshoes!
Previously: What Dogs Want.
Lisa Hanawalt lives in Brooklyn and does illustrations + funnies for publications like the New York Times, McSweeney’s, Vice, and Chronicle Books. She’s best known for her comic book series I Want You.
That's about the look I'd have on my face if I tried to hold 30 guinea pigs at once. I love that face. (Guinea pigs don't oink.) Also, will the Peace Pony promise not to rub us off on trees? Because I will brush it forever if it will.
@wharrgarbl (Guinea pigs don't oink.)
Maybe they oink if they're being used as currency?
@area@twitter Nope! Not even then. They mweep, they percolate, they purr, they chirp, they shriek like banshees, they chatter their teeth together, but they do not oink.
@wharrgarbl According to my Peruvian mother, guinea pigs make sounds like "coo-ee coo-ee" and that is why in Spanish they are called cui. Incidently, in Peru, they are also eaten, so perhaps that's only the sound they make when they're frightened :(
@wharrgarbl mweep! Adorable. I would like all the peegs, a whole big armful of peegs right now please.
@wharrgarbl @area@twitter Mweep is EXACTLY the noise they make.
@pastina I think the sound she's describing is their happy/excited noise. It's like a purr/coo noise that's really hard to describe because I've never heard any other animal, ever, make anything like it. It's probably the noise they all make when the guinea-flock gets fed.
Their angry/frightened/hurt noise slides between a rodent-scream and really, really loud mweep! noise (their ears sort of flap a little when they really get going).
@wharrgarbl Ah, I see. I always think its interesting how animal sounds are translated across languages. Like, dogs in English are "woof" but in Spanish they're "wao-wao."
One of friend had 2 of the fattest little pigs ever and they used to make these whiste-y sounds when they were being fed. And they would dance! Cutest little gluttons ever.
@pastina Haha yeah, my Ecuadorian friend was like, "You keep them as PETS? But they're FOOD." And then I was sad.
@wharrgarbl My family always described that noise as a reent (although you have to build up to it like, it's more of a rrrrrrRREEEEEEENT reent reent)
@pastina Maybe Spanish dogs actually sound different? But yeah. A friend with a Scandinavian mom with flipping through a children's book one time and we were all puzzling over the animal sounds as transcribed therein. We had almost come to the conclusion that they must have some weird mutant chickens or that the phoneme values were radically different than how we were reading them before someone got the bright idea to repeat it a bunch of times without a pause.
@dragoness I think it's kind of like domestic ferrets vs. mink. American guineas tend to be bred for personality and aesthetics, insofar as there's any rhyme or reason to it. (Same with rabbits, really.) Meat-yield is more the thing with food-cavies, so they're probably mostly dicks.
I have a feeling I enjoyed this review much more than I actually would enjoy the film.
But I specialize in WWI history and I'm trying to figure out a way to get my department to pay for my movie ticket. I need to see if I can lump this in with part of my thesis research. "STEVEN SPIELBERG MOVIES ARE TOTALLY RELEVANT can I get some popcorn too?"
@The Lady of Shalott
Definitely, Lisa's reviews are so much more fun than the movies, like the very best possible Cliff's Notes!
@The Lady of Shalott I will never see this movie but I will read this post more than once.
[nerd]
A guinea is 21 shillings (1 pound + 1 shilling) according to the old British currency system, pre-decimalization.
[/nerd]
But I like the armload-of-guinea-pigs interpretation better.
@Nicole Sauvage@twitter Do you happen to have a [nerd] WWI-shillings to current-GBPs conversion? Or a British great-grandmother lying around to tell you how many shillings a pair of shoes cost back then?
@wharrgarbl Sadly for all, I have neither of those things! What I know about this [more nerd] is that historico-financial conversion calculations (let's pretend that's a thing) is more complicated than it appears because goods are manufactured, sold, and valued differently now than in the past. Ex.: in 18th-century London you could send a letter within the city (and maybe beyond?) for a penny and have it arrive the same day. Today we call that a "courier service" and it costs $$$$$. (Or £££££) But to take your example, a pair of shoes is probably cheaper in relative terms due to mass manufacturing vs. hand-making.
"The Best Time I Bored On & On in the Hairpin Comments Section"?
@Nicole Sauvage@twitter While we're at it : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16450526
This makes me appreciate pineapple so much more.
@Nicole Sauvage@twitter We were pretty well into mass manufacturing by WWI, though. Hence the sheer level of (off-screen) carnage we were able to manage.
@wharrgarbl I asked my Step Dad about the ol' shilling thing because a guinea being a pound and a shilling didn't make much sense to me, and eventually found out the a shilling is five pence and in the olden days this would buy you...LOTS.
Reading Angela's Ashes puts this into a food based perspective that I can understand though, so maybe Dickens or someone can help you out?
@wharrgarbl I sadly cannot tell you any of these things exactly, either. But here is what I can tell you! In Canada during the time of War Horse (1914-1918), you could order a pair of shoes from the Eaton's Catalogue (equivalent of Sears and Roebuck or Montgomery Ward), for $3.45 for a pair that was partly cloth, and $5.00 for a pair that was all leather (sole and uppers). Now, around this time an average hourly wage in Halifax was 30 cents an hour for unskilled labour (think dockworker or factory employee without specialized knowledge), higher for a skilled labourer. The cost of the shoes included their delivery.
So you can figure out roughly how long you'd have to work to earn yourself that nice pair of fancy leather high-button boots. Other types of shoes, especially low-heeled shoes, slippers, etc. could be had for between $1 and $2.
Like I said, considering that a man's average wage in Halifax was about 30c an hour for unskilled labour, a lady's wage would have been correspondingly lower, but I can't say for sure how much.
This comment was brought to you with the assistance of the Catalogues exhibit from the Canadian Museum of Civilization, available here: http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/cpm/catalog/cat0000e.shtml I encourage people to poke around and look at the old catalogues available there! They are all in .pdf format and really fun to look at!
@megancress I've also heard (Journal of Saw It Somewhere Studies, as an Internet friend calls it) that the possession of, or pricing of items in, guineas was a social-class cue: it was so much money that only wealthier people would carry guineas or think in guinea terms.
@Nicole Sauvage@twitter We always have a pineapple on our dining table at Christmas, sometimes kept company by a pomegranate and I could never figure out what on Earth that was all about as we have neither at any other time of the year and they don't get eaten. This year, after 22 Christmases my mum explained. Apparently her dad used to go to the fruit and veg market in London around Christmas to get a pineapple and pomegranate just because he could. He'd display it proudly on the dining room table until it was time to throw away, it was never eaten either. Just like that I gained a family tradition.
@wharrgarbl I'm not sure about the conversion, but I believe that cattle sales are actually still made in guineas in the UK, just some kind of archaic thing (e.g http://www.britishcharolais.com/eros.htm)
@Nicole Sauvage@twitter Actually (Hactually.... if we're going to be posh and all superior like) a shilling was 12 pence, which meant that a pound was in fact 240 pence (being 20 shillings). A crown was 5 shillings, a florin 2 shillings (2 bob-bit), a half-crown was 2 shillings 6 pence. Then there's thruppence, a sixpence (tanner). If someone said "that's 3 and sixpence" It meant it cost 3 shillings and 6 pence = 42 pence.
I hope this clears things up for you ;)
Oh, and we resisted the decimalisation of the currency because it would be too complicated.
and just to round things off: sales of livestock is still in guineas as the 5p (5%) is the auctioners cut - the seller would get the value in pounds.
@Nicole Sauvage@twitter According to the good folks at measuringworth.com, 30 guineas in 1914 is roughly equivalent to either £2,360 or £9,300 in modern UK money, depending on whether you look at the consumer price index or the average earnings index. I think the average earnings index is a more realistic measure to use for a horse. The higher price works out to about $14,000 in modern American money. Not cheap! That horse was an investment.
BRILLIANT
@Katie Heaney Aren't these the best? I read the Planet of the Apes one about once a week.
I was lucky enough to see an advanced screening of this movie, and I lost track of how many times I started crying hysterically. It was a lot of times! This is why I generally avoid seeing sad movies in the theater. That kind of bawling should be done in the comfort of one's own home.
@Nutellaface: As someone who cried hysterically while reading The Proud Tower and The Guns of August, I think I'll give this movie a miss.
Although the guinea pigs and Benedict Cumberbatch in a bridle have certainly piqued my interest.
@Nutellaface I saw an advanced screening too and by some ridiculous miscommunication thought I was going to see Like Crazy, a movie about love and long distance relationships. I hadn't heard anything about War Horse and I missed the first 5 minutes and thought I was watching a trailer for a horse movie. So imagine my surprise when it was like haha JK actually this is a war movie and everyone is going to die a horrible, heart wrenching death and will leave your soul aching for the inanity of violence and war and human nature for days after you watch it lollll! I was practically hysterical and almost walked out of the movie. So what I'm trying to say is I feel you. And I never would have gone to see it had I known what it was about.
@ohbladi Are you in LA and seeing a ridiculous number of screenings right now like I am? I'm totally waiting for that confusion to happen to me.
@Nutellaface Ha no, I wish. I'm in Texas and my brother is a movie theater manager and my family is bad at communication. Livin' the dream!
@Nutellaface That story is way better. And now I feel like kind of a jerk for saying I see soooo many screeeenings. I don't, really! Ugh, this is un-savable. I'm the worst.
@Nutellaface haha no, don't worry. You're not the worst. You can't help all the fabulous screenings in yo lyfe! Sidenote, considering your username you've probably already tried this, but have you ever had Nutella on a croissant?? It seems like an obvious combination but it is so much better than you'd ever even dream it could be! Oh God I need to get laid.
@ohbladi I have had Nutella on everything imaginable. Including an egg salad sandwich. There's a place in my new neighborhood that makes NUTELLA FRENCH TOAST stuffed with nutella and chopped hazelnuts and served with hazelnut syrup. EESSOGOOD.
I was/am also a horse-obsessed girl, but I think I'm too old and jaded by my experiences with actual horses to love this movie like this movie wants me to love it. The 8-year-old inside me was ALL ABOUT War Horse, but the 26-year-old who actually exists was like, "come on! COME ON! COME!!!! ONNNN!!!!!"
(spoiler here)
Also, the theater I was in, when the field of turnips or whatever gets ruined, everyone was like, "AAAWWWWWWWWWW." But then when the two boys got executed, not a peep. Nothing! We feel bad about turnips but not about dead children? That's some messed up shit, there.
"Feelings diarrhea" accurately describes my mood today.
Desperately trying not to make a "ride him hard and put him away wet" reference to Benedict Cumberbatch. OH WHOOPS
@monicamcl I first learned this expression from my farmer grandfather, who used to compare people to animals a lot in this way. The context he used it in: if someone looked really rough, they looked "rode hard and put up wet." My grandfather was awesome, if a little mean.
Apparently there's a BBC radio play (starring Stephen Fry!) called Warhorses of Letters that may be relevant to your interests. It's a gay equine epistolary romance between Marengo and Copenhagen, the horses of Wellington and Napoleon. Has anyone heard/read this?
@wallsdonotfall No, but I am fascinated.
@wallsdonotfall Anyone who's heard/read this needs to come sit by us and tell us all about it.
@wallsdonotfall Okay I finally made a Hairpin account to say that yes, I have listened to Warhorses of Letters, and it is every bit as fabulous as you are imagining it to be. Fanboyish Anglo-French warhorse flirting is the best flirting.
EQUUS is the best movie about horses. Or at least the one that has tainted all subsequent understandings of horse/human interaction on film. That last picture makes me feel squicky.
"Ohhhhh! OK, I thought we were just dicking around out here."
Can't. Stop. Laughing.
Those inexplicably drawn to the "why did I draw this" illustration should check out Carol Emschwiller's The Mount. No questions asked!
Great job Lisa! There should be more movies that allow you to review them through your warped little lens. Can you do this with other animals too?
LISA!!! You can come ride my horse any time you want as long as you write one of these for every single movie you watch for the rest of your life.
I mean, I fell off her on Saturday, but she stopped and didn't trample me or anything.
@Nicole Cliffe I'M COMING OVER, POCKETS FULLA CARROTS
but what about Tom Hiddleston, who plays the young and handsome and tragic officer?! hiddlestooooooooooon
Also, Lisa, you do the best movie reviews. Armful of guinea pigs!
@area@twitter: Tom Hiddleston is in this movie? Suddenly I am 10 times more interested.
@RK Fire YES. This man is the greatest. His look in the charge scene, oh my god, tears. (Which reminds me, when you see this movie, stick extra hankies in your pocket, because you are going to NEED them.)
@area@twitter Tom Hiddleston was the best 15 minutes of this movie BY FAR. (My mom made me go see it on Christmas because she wanted something Heart-Warming and also knows that I am a Movie Crier and wanted to punish me, for whatever reason).
@area@twitter My brother went to university with his sister, I found out today. A little pointless factoid no-one wanted to hear.
Oh man, this takes me back to the olden days of my youth when I also thought I was a horse and would shove the corners of towels in my leggings so I could gallop around the house with my "tail" flowing majestically behind me. This was just the tip of my horsey iceberg.
So's what I'm sayin' is, this made my day!
P.S. Lisa, ever consider doing a Gwar-Horse? Think it over.
@LolaLaBalc One of my friends' first memories of me is of me tearing around the house with a piece of string tied to my beltloop saying "This is my TAIL!" But I was being a mouse. Yeah.
@LolaLaBalc I was a two-legged horse (the better for a nice gallop) BUT I drew horseshoes and a (horse's hoof) FROG on the sole of my saddle shoes.
Aaaaaaaaaah! Did I break the hairpin with my first comment? why is everything in italics after my thought-i-closed-it tag? Sorry all!
OK, can we start the Benedict Cumberbatch discussion please? Because I'm from London and last nights Hound of the Baskervilles with BC, Martin Freeman and Russell Tovey was about as woof as it gets.
And I mean 'woof' in the 'full of really hot, intelligent amazing actor guys' sense of the word.
@Emma_DB If we're talking about Benedict Cumberbatch, can we talk about how Sherlock is back and I can't watch it because I am not in London? Where can I watch it? I WANT TO.
Also, did you hear that they cast him as the villain in the next Star Trek movie? Because I did and I nearly fainted, no lie.
@Emma_DB Is he gonna be Khan though?
Also: internet. I download mine from ISO hunt because most streaming sites aren't very good, but there are lots of streaming sites too.
@Megan Patterson@facebook Not Khan, it looks like.
Also, I am...bad at the internet. But I will have to get over it for the Ben and Martin, I think (I call them that because we're totes besties).
@Emma_DB Can I just say, that while Benedict Cumberbatch is super duper cute, I have it hot (and have had it hot for) Martin Freeman forever. Mmmmmmm.
@SarcasticFringehead I've been using tv-links.eu to stream them! Did anyone else feel like last nights was a little...weak though? I enjoyed it bc obviously I love Ben and Martin too, but it seemed simultaneously a little predictable and a little impossible.
@PistolPackinMama F Benedict Cumberbatch, Marry Martin Freeman, Kill...hmn, who do we kill
@Lisa Hanawalt@twitter Oooh. That's a tough one. I like him and all, but John Barrowman maybe? A little too glinty-toothed for me. Too much Hollywood Smile going on there.
[Although, maybe not kill. Consign to obscurity, which might be equal to death for him, anyway.]
@Emma_DB I like how Russel Tovey is in every damn thing.
I love all of the illustrations but the last one is especially good. It looks like it's out of a children's book. :)
@brista128 And also the horse signing up eat sugar cubes illustration is great, too!
"Sometimes when I'm riding in a car, I look out the window and imagine I'm riding a horse running alongside the road and we're jumping over fences and mail boxes and benedictcumberbatches and stuff."
OH MY GOD ME TOO.
@jbcg
I could not not see wolves running outside the bus/car window at all times when I was that age and sometimes now. Never not wolves all the time, also the aforementioned fake tail fascination.
What has remained is seeing everyone with emotion-revealing wolf ears. (His ears are back, he doesn't want to talk right now...) Anyone? Only me?
@Inkcrafter You are a special kind of genius.
@jbcg I did/sometimes still do this also! I didn't know it was a thing other human beings did. Me and my friend had STABLES full of imaginary horses and I used to 'ride' a different one home from school every day. Like my hands would be in the right position to hold reins. Argh.
@laurel
You better mean that, with all your heart.
@Inkcrafter I am absolutely sincere. If I could, I'd have a tail (though as much as I love the heart-on-their-sleeves canine tails, I'd choose a prehensile tail). And now I'm going to train myself to imagine everyone with emotion-revealing wolf ears as my 2012 effort to better understand people and respond accordingly.
@laurel
Oh, then maybe this would interest you! I'd been wondering about if humans had emotion-showing ears, how society be different.
Like, would we try to control them just like we try to control facial expressions, or would we be more open to showing emotion as a culture? Maybe we'd put them back as a sign of respect to bosses/elderly? Would flirting be sooo much easier because you can see their interest/shyness/disgust? Also, would psychopaths just stare at you, ears up, while they're bonesawing you into bits?
@Inkcrafter Stop looking into my soul.
@laurel
Ears down, hackles up/That's the way we like to interpret each other's emotions.
My fiance promised me a drawing of Eddie from Iron Maiden officiating our marriage as a wedding present and I feel like Lisa might be just the person to render this scene perfeclty.
Yeah, I tried to do the whole 'create special bond with horsy' at summer camp, but said horse-y was much more interested in creating a special bond with the grass. The way she looked at me (on those rare occasions where she did) made me pretty sure she knew I secretly hated the smell of horses. For better or for worse, I did develop a special bond with my shower that summer.
@Knows The Spanish Panic I've only ridden one or two horses and I really did not enjoy it. The last one was named Budweiser and had problems with chronic flatulence. I could feel his whole body contracting to squeeze out farts. Big, mean and stinky.
I love these SOOOOOO much! And I love the
And this one especially reminds me of the time we watched Braveheart in high school. (I think it was in Latin class? Because he speaks Latin for like 3 lines at some point? I didn't go to a very good school.) And our teacher kept saying, "When do they start calling him Braveheart?" and referring to the main character as Braveheart because she was an idiot.
@Katie Scarlett Ahhh Braveheart, that would be a great one to see illustrated. I once went to a 'medieval' dinner at a language camp I was teaching at, and they played the Braveheart soundtrack, which features lots of sweary extracts from the movie. Listening to that with 9-15 year old spanish kids, while eating cheese slices, baked potatoes and tomatoes. VERY HISTORICAL.
@feartie That's wonderful! A medieval dinner where you're fed almost exclusively New World foods sounds perfect and "VERY HISTORICAL" indeed. What is it about potatoes that just scream "medieval peasant food?" I know they didn't have them... but it just SEEMS like it should have, you know?
P.S. Just realized I kinda trailed off in the first line of my original comment. Oopsies!
@Katie Scarlett I know. I think they ate turnips a lot. And in Spain, just almonds mashed into every form? I think? That or delicious Arabic foodstuffs.
I am Scottish too, which gave it an extra piquancy. Everything about that movie is ahistorical, including where they filmed it, so even better.
So good, so good.
I love horses but never really wanted to see War Horse because I hate war movies and also hate any movie where there is a possibility of an animal getting hurt (I bawled the entire way through Milo & Otis in the theatre when I was a kid, my mom was mortified). So now I feel like I did see it, complete with hilarious observations and illustrations, obv. Thanks!
@emilylouise EMILY, I categorically refuse to see this movie for that exact reason, even though I'm pretty sure War Horse makes it through...
But more importantly, as a child I would watch Milo and Otis every Saturday morning (in that I thought it was a TV show?) and cry EVERY SINGLE TIME. My parents would be like ".....this is the 20th time you've seen this movie."
@samafaye Ugh, oh yeah, it was my "favorite movie" despite the tears and I would freak out and cry every time the kitten was hiding from the bear in that dresser in the shack (does that even make sense? You know the scene I'm talking about).
See also: Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, and of course, Old Yeller. WHY did my parents even let me see that, I was inconsolable. They had to have an hour long talk about how Yeller went to doggie heaven after he got shot.
About a month ago, I was paging through a CHILDREN'S BOOK about a lost puppy (my mom is a children's librarian and has me look for books for her sometimes) and I seriously burst into tears. I'm a hot mess.
@emilylouise @samafaye Before I went to see this, my compatriots and I decided we had to know if the animal died, because not cool, guys. Got an email a few days later that just said, "The horse lives. Got tickets for 6:30."
@emilylouise One of the best Mom Things my mom did was page through my book of Real Animal Heroes stories for me and put a mark at the beginning of each story if the animal died, so I would know to skip it. (heart) you, mom.
@emilylouise totally feel this. I find the prospect of horses getting injured in movies due to being in war, or any other reason, so stressful! I find it so cruel. Watching such scenes gives me anxiety and makes me cry a LOT.
@redheadedandcrazy Did you see The Ring? Remember when the horse freaks out and falls off the boat and drowns? Talk about my ULTIMATE CINEMATIC NIGHTMARE (I am also really afraid of drowning, and ghosts, so come on. I had no business watching that.)
@emilylouise the list of reasons why I have not seen the ring is too long to transcribe here, but it starts with
1. reading plot synopses of scary movies on wikipedia gives me nightmares.
I am not qualified for this position.
@emilylouise I can watch the goriest movies ever but have to hide my eyes and plug my ears if someone so much as hassles a kitten.
If anything is to drive me away from the internet, it's sad animal stories.
@emilylouise: ... That horse didn't drown, it was actually pulled along the slipstream around/under the ship, then cut up by the ship's prop (!)
@Too Much Internet congratulations, you made a sensitive Canadian girl cry today ... ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?!
@Too Much Internet OH YEAH, YOU'RE RIGHT, THANKS FOR REMINDING ME
@emilylouise: But it didn't drown! So that's better, right?
Girls? Hello?
@Too Much Internet I remembered that but had decided not to say anything because the horse going under and then the water turning red were a bit much.
I'll be honest - I had no intention of reading this entire review, but the drawing of an armful of guinea pigs got me hooked.
GUINEA PEEEEEEEEEEEGS.
@Anji
Cuy Mágico!
@josiah That is simultaneously brilliant and horrifying.
@Anji I feel the same way about the "Never Say No to Panda" commercials.
@wharrgarbl THOSE COMMERCIALS. when he slams his paws down in the flour? or when he rips the hose from the IV bag??? thanks for reminding me about those.
@candybeans When he smashes the keyboard and you can see all the keys flying everywhere? When he kicks the pile of groceries?
@wharrgarbl AND THEN STOMPS ON THE GROCERIES?!??!!!
@candybeans Yes. And then he stomps on the groceries. Pretty much everything about him losing his adorable panda shit at people for not wanting cheese makes me terribly happy in that creeping-dread Executive Koala sort of way.
Am I the only lady here who is totally creeped out by horses? I just can't with those things, and the whole human-horse relationship just seems really weird and...eew. Just...gross.
@Roxanne Rholes
They TERRIFY me. My main concern is how easily frightened I imagine all of them being. My only experiences with them are: watching the show Rescue 911 as a kid and seeing one flipping the fuck out in some kind of rescue situation. My memory of the facts is blurry but I became certain that all horses were one scare away from accidentally killing us all. Oh and my grandparents had horses and one somehow hung itself while freaking out. I used to have nightmares about horses coming into my house and kicking me in the face.
All I really wanted to know about this movie is if Benedict Cumberbatch was in it enough to justify seeing it while covering my eyes during the horsey bits.
@Roxanne Rholes Nope. I was always really weirded out by the other little girls in school who were all about the horses and the ponies and that movie with Liz Taylor. The most terrifying day of my life was when a grade-school friend took me to the stables where she had riding lessons, and I was forced to pet a horse. They are large and smelly and CAN STOMP YOUR FACE IN IF THEY WANT. Ugh.
@Anji @cat parade I'm not even so much scared of them as I am just...creeped out. I don't like the weird fixation girls get about them. I don't like the smell. I don't like that they can kill you! I don't like the way we've domesticated them and convinced ourselves that the horsies just looooove to work! They neeeeed to run! They can run out in the wild, away from me, please. Every encounter I've had with riding horses has ended up with me thinking "I'm sorry, horsey. I'm sorry you have to carry me around while I kick you, and you can't even see me up here. I promise to not have a creepy obsession with you." I read an article about how some girls get this fixation because they have their first orgasms while riding horses and that is HORRIFYING TO ME.
@cat parade Also, the horse hung himself? That is some grade-a terrible stuff! Ahhhh!
@Roxanne Rholes
Yes, too much time being told by camp counselors not to get to close or the horse will kick you! I try to stay a good 30' away from every horse at all times.
@Roxanne Rholes Was this in the "Girls' Night In" anthology? Chocolate seahorses, WTF?
This is exactly how I feel about horse movies and ballet movies. Is there decent footage of ballet/horse? Does it take up at least 25% of film? I will say it is the best movie of the year. See: Black Swan. I still have no idea whether that was a good film or not, my brain just went BALLET BALLET BALLET WHEN IS THE NEXT BALLET SCENE throughout so I figured it was amazing.
@bouncy castle Except I thought the ballet in "Black Swan" wasn't all that great? I was like, ENOUGH, let's go watch "Center Stage."
What I will give "Black Swan" is that there is some gritty realism to some of the more unsavory scenes. But I think Aronofsky really failed to capture the JOY that goes alongside the pain and obsessiveness of dance.
@dragoness Center Stage 4EVA!
@dragoness YESSSS CENTER STAGE!! It's like "Showgirls" for teens.
@dragoness It definitely wasn't that great but there was more of it than in other films that have no ballet in them? Also yes I thought about Center Stage SO MUCH during Black Swan. It is the best. Zoe Saldana 4lyfe.
Please put a print of that last one in your store, pleeeeease.
Did you guys know that some of the what dogs want are prints? And that I gave one to my dad (and one to myself) for Christmas? And that I also bought this card and am waiting for the right moment to give it to my boyfriend? And that there is a Lisa Hanawalt pocketo wallet (and that I have it)? I am going through my Lisa Hanawalt phase.
@julia I demand that "Oh! Ok, I thought we were just dicking around out here." be added to the inventory. How do I do that? Etsy doesn't seem open to demands. There's no demand button.
But how does it compare to the book? You know it was a book first right, and a play?
@Molly Drury@twitter Did Nathan Lane play the horse on Broadway?
this is my favorite. i just snorted into my coffee mug because i'm pretending to do work not read about war horse. WAR HORSE WAR HORSE! And i don't even like horses.
Because that's the dream, for a wild creature to totally trust you and become your buddy.
I think this is why I adopt stray cats. I'm 3 for 3 so far. Still working on the fourth.
This is the best and most helpful movie review I've ever read. Bravo!!
"Spielberg made a big deal about casting an unknown actor as the main dude, but he's really just a hunk ..."
Back in the late 70s, director Carroll Ballard took the same approach to casting the boy who starred in "The Black Stallion." She wanted a total unknown -- the only stated prerequisite was that the kid had to know how to ride.
I knew how to ride, so my mom took me down to a casting office in Manhattan where they were having an open call for the part. We filled out a form, and then they took a Polaroid picture of my face and said "thank you." We never heard from them again.
See, I didn't know about the "good looking" part or I wouldn't have bothered. The kid they ended up casting was cute, it seems. I guess that's why they took a picture of my face rather than, say, giving us a "how well can you ride?" test at a stable or something.
@MisterHippity Oh, and let me add to the general consensus: This post was awesome!!
BEST. REVIEW. EVER. Also, Lisa, you remind me eerily of myself. Kudos!! : D
Why can't all movie reviews be this visually stimulating?! Also, is there really a goose?
@Equestrienne I will be extremely disappointed if there is not really a goose. I just about died at the goose line.
@wharrgarbl Yes there is a goose! I actually saw this play at Lincoln Center (husband insisted on seeing this). I am not a horse fan but my husband was in fetal position at thsi show. Also, the goose is quite charming in the play. The horses and goose are all wooden puppets.
@CrescentMelissa So the stars of the show, in the play, are the wooden puppets? I guess that sort of makes sense.
@Equestrienne yes wooden puppets. It was really neat actually.
Man, what is it with horses? Jimmy Carr tells a story on the Horses and Hunting episode of QI about coming across a girl in primary school who was sobbing her eyes out. When he asked her what was wrong, she answered, "I just love horses SO MUCH."
This review was amazing.
@annepersand There was a girl in Blubber that was obsessed with horses and they said she smelled like one too. That made me not like horses forever. But I LOVED this review! Made a crappy day much better.
I LOL'ed so hard at this, especially the silhouetted poop. That is just...so good. Also, you are awesome at drawing horses.
WHY DID I DRAW THIS nearly ruined things for my underpants.
I WANT A MACHINE-GUN TOTING HORSE
@LolaLaBalc One of my friends' first memories of me is of me tearing around the house with a piece of string tied to my beltloop saying "This is my TAIL!" But I was being a mouse. Yeah.
@LolaLaBalc One of my friends' first memories of me is of me tearing around the house with a piece of string tied to my beltloop saying "This is my TAIL!" But I was being a mouse. Yeah.
@LolaLaBalc One of my friends' first memories of me is of me tearing around the house with a piece of string tied to my beltloop saying "This is my TAIL!" But I was being a mouse. Yeah.
I guess horses don't have the facial mobility of humans, but I've always found that their eyes are extremely expressive and indicative of their mood. Plus all that ear action!
"...your horse doesn't care about you and tries to rub you off on a tree."
/cottonwood
This review is truly inspired, 2012 has started in the worst possible way for me but you repeatedly managed to make me laugh out loud and lifted my sour mood. Bravo!
I laughed so much at this, brilliant. And next time I go jogging (it won't be soon) I'll hear clip-clop-clip-clop.... Epic :)
So much giggling! The guy with the tin can periscope! SO GIGGLESOME.
@TyrannosaurusWreck The looks the other two are giving that guy.
"Horse Wartocol" and its accompanying illustration made me laugh so hard that I spat out my cinnamon raisin toast. True story.
This is funny, really funny
I'm laughing so hard I have tears. Marry me?
I laughed out loud so hard at the '30 guineas' that my dad came over to see what was so funny. We looked through the rest together -laughing out loud at nearly every everything!
Having produced the drawings to go into the film and having worked for 4 months as the Equine Artistic Advisor & Head of Equine Hair & Make-Up this review is surely funnier to me than to anyone else. (My department was even asked to do the make-up on the geese - we politely declined). Needless to say, I love it and have forwarded it to all of the cast & crew who I'm still in touch with.
And the stuff about 'looking out the window and imagine I'm riding a horse'and the 'riding yourself' bit - I still do those despite being 34.
Thank you for this lovely gem - keep up the great work!
Ali
www.warhorseart.com
www.alibannister.com
@Ali Bannister@facebook Well done Ali on all your efforts in the film - and for your lovely oil painting in Iddesleigh Village Hall. That's a story that made me smile.
Look at my horse, my horse is amazing...http://www.weebls-stuff.com/songs/Amazing+Horse/
They started pre-bookings for the stage play in my city a year before it opens, I still want to watch that one first.
This was a well made movie in some respects, but man did I ever hate it. LH's review, however, is of course hilarious and great.
Holy cow (horse?). This may be the best review I ever read. Finally someone is talking about the things that matter--like ponies. Thank you!
Great stuff! I love this!
"Sometimes when I'm riding in a car, I look out the window and imagine I'm riding a horse running alongside the road and we're jumping over fences and mail boxes and benedictcumberbatches and stuff."
Oh my god, me too, almost, but with me it's when I'm driving and there are long shadows from the hedgerows and trees over the road, I do a mental 'hup' jump with the car and 'oof' as I land on the other side. Me and my magic carhorse fly if the shadows are very wide.
Also, when I was a girl I never went through the 'wanting to ride horsies' phase, but I did make reins and tied them to my bicycle handlebars and rode round the garden like that. It's a bitch to get the hang of but once you have mastered it with about 6 inches of rope on either handlebar, it's a doddle, though cornering is tricky (cue grazed knees). I even used to put the long pole with which my mum used to prop up the washing line on the lawn and rode over that, doing the 'hup ... oof' thing. Sad but true.
I am 49. I need to get a life.
I do the riding in a car pretending I'm riding a horse alongside thing! The only way as child I got through interminable drives to wet holiday caravans stuck in back of car with THREE puking siblings. Sigh.
I thought I was the only one who used to be a horse and also did the imaginary-running-beside-the-car thing. Is there a support group somewhere?
GUYS. The War Horse by the Handspring Puppet company is the prettiest most amazing thing ever. Just sayin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-bni4QqSv4
I LOL'd. Congratulations on getting into Popbitch. I don't think I'll be watching the film though
This is hilarious - what a great way to start the day. I now do not regret spending $10.50 to see the movie in a theatre because this review made it worthwhile. I am going to look up Lisa right now and see if I can subscribe to whatever she does whenever she does it!! Thank you for posting this, thehairpin!
That was wonderful, neigh, dare I say, beautiful. To saddle oneself with a task such as this, a review of War Horse pictures in all, is not only ambitious, but brave as well. While, in some cases, pictures can stall the pace of a piece like this, in your case the review trotted along at a lovely pace. The main bit of this review that might stirrup some controversy is the spoiler at the end, but otherwise I think the whole thing accomplishes its mane goal of giving us an objective view of the equine beauty that lies inside. If you haven't done more reviews like this, I behoove you to do so. Can we be married? I promise to feed you many oats.