american humane association Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If you love movie awards and dog shows, there's a new event that's perfect for you: the Fido Awards, which recognizes cinematic canines. Presented in conjunction with the London Film Festival, these awards were presented Sunday night with the top honor, "Best in World", going to five corgis -- named Poppy, Anna, Alice, Oliver and Megan -- that appear alongside Oscar-winner Helen Mirren in The Queen. The same dogs also won another award, "Best Historical Hounds for a dog/dogs in a film set in bygone days", beating out dogs from Control (I don't even remember a dog in this, which means it makes sense it didn't win) and Molière. Other winners include Travis, a Welsh cardigan corgi named "Comedy Canine for smochiest pooch in a romantic comedy " for his "method-acting" in Year of the Dog, Logan, a "Bernese Mtn English Mastiff X" named "Blockbuster Bowser -- best canine achievement in an action flick" for sharing a beer with Mark Wahlberg in Shooter, and dogs from the short film Dog Flap and the London Film Festival entry Far North. In addition to those from Control and Molière, losers included pups from The Holiday, Feast of Love, Shoot 'Em Up, The Savages (for some reason listed in the action category) and Paddy Considine's short Dog Altogether. Hopefully none of them were Old-Yellered because of their failures.

Isn't that cute? The Fidos are technically considered "the world's first-ever international awards ceremony for canine screen stars," but this isn't the first time awards have been given out to animal performances in film (I would be shocked if it were). Since 1939 -- after a horse was accidentally killed on the set of Jesse James -- the American Humane Association has honored animals in cinema and television with the PATSY Awards (yet apparently the first actual PATSY went to "Francis the Talking Mule" in 1951). Some of the obvious past winners include Lassie, the pig from Green Acres, the dog that played Benji (name: Higgins), Gypsy the horse (from Gypsy Colt) and Orangey the cat, who appeared in Rhubarb and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Unfortunately I can't seem to find a full list of the winners through the years, just this spotlight from TCM.

What is your favorite animal performance, canine or otherwise?

Just yesterday I was watching Atomic Cafe and being thankful for The American Humane Association. Sure, that 1982 film was not responsible for the treatment of pigs as atomic bomb test-subjects -- that would be the U.S. government who shot the gruesome footage -- but nonetheless I couldn't help but hope the AHA keeps such abuse from happening today.

Well, they may have representatives on some shoots, such as on the New Mexico set of James Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma remake, but while they can prevent intentional cruelty to animals, they can't keep the occasional accident from happening. On Monday, there was such an unfortunate event during the filming of 3:10 to Yuma, as a horse and its rider collided with a "camera-carrying vehicle", causing enough injury to the animal that it had to be put to death (the rider went to the hospital in critical condition). Beginning Wednesday, a whole team of AHA personnel were on site to conduct an in-depth investigation and request a necropsy in order to find out if there were any non-random factors involved.

Certainly with few westerns being made these days, accidents involving horses are kept to a minimum, but last year two horses died during the filming of the new film Flicka. I guess the only thing to avoid future tragedies would be to feature only CGI animals.

To keep up with the AHA's monitoring and review of animal safety in new releases, visit their Film & TV Unit page.