My Dog Tulip doesn't so much interpret J.R. Ackerley's loving and lovable short memoir as a filmed story, so much as it provides the book with moving illustrations. Animators Sandra and Paul Fierlinger share writing and directing credits here, their first feature-length film. Despite the charming and promising source material they have chosen to work with and the evocative power of their design sense, the Fierlingers don't do enough in terms of dramatizing Ackerley's story, choosing instead to stay dangerously close to the text (delivering much of it verbatim in the form of narration and dialogue), which stiffens the narrative from a cinematic perspective. English reserve and understatement were developed and perfected on the page; when read in voice-over (even by a...Read the entire review

As an American, I'm accustomed to tales of dog ownership in film to skew toward the cute and cuddly, or perhaps the outright tragic. The animated endeavor, "My Dog Tulip," holds no such ambitions, preferring to tackle the event of canine companionship as an occasion to itemize instincts and bodily fluid minutiae. Initially, it's an unsettling proposition, but the deft filmmaking language soon takes over, bringing J.R. Ackerley's 1956 book to life in a most surprising and offbeat manner, turning the daily business of pooch ownership into a flavorful cinematic poem.

Directors Paul and Sandra Fierlinger attack Ackerley's book with a respect for its internal monologue presentation, providing an episodic series of encounters for the elderly author (voiced by Christopher Plummer) an...Read the entire review

There's so much of Paul and Sandra Fierlinger's My Dog Tulip that is so lovely and memorable, I'd like to just call it a treat and be done with it. But it's an oddly misshapen picture that shambles along agreeably for a good chunk of its running time, only to take an odd left turn in its third act that throws off the equilibrium of the entire enterprise. It is based on a memoir by British writer J. R. Ackerly, and while it has some lovely passages, the filmmakers might have been wise to second-guess their absolute fidelity to the source material.

The film opens with a wonderful on-screen quote from the author: "Unable to love each other, the English turn instinctively to dogs." The narration (voiced by Christopher Plummer) is taken from the book, in which Ackerly reca...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

What with all the talk of the subprime mortgage crisis and how it's effecting the common citizenry, many of whom are losing their homes, it's hard to imagine that most people looking to watch a good documentary would want to pick a film about the long-lasting effects of urban sprawl; yet, the recent arrival of Laura Dunn's The Unforeseen on DVD would almost seem like fortuitous planning as, in a lot of ways, its message is exactly what we need to hear. Though land development is the topic of choice, the greater meaning of The Unforeseen extends beyond who wants to build houses where; rather, it encourages us to stop and think about what it is we may be doing, to take stock of how our actions today may impact our future. One hopes in all t...Read the entire review