Movies – Page 4 – Pain In The Bud

Would Your Cat Survive The ‘Quiet Place Challenge’?

Buddy is many things, but he’s NOT quiet. His incessant chattiness can kill my sleep and my peace and quiet, but in the world of A Quiet Place, it would kill me! Would your cat get you killed in the movie franchise’s monster-stalked reality?

As a cat lover, big time science fiction fan and appreciator of the first two A Quiet Place installments, the very first thing I thought when I saw the trailer for A Quiet Place: Day One was “I hope the cat doesn’t meow!”

My second thought? Bud and I would be so, so dead.

Dead immediately. Dead a thousand times over.

Apparently I’m not the only one, because fans have taken to social media to participate in the “Quiet Place Challenge,” which involves reenacting some of the scenes from the movie with their own cats to see if their furry overlords can stay silent.

As PITB readers know, Buddy never shuts up. He’s got something to say about everything, he often narrates his activities in real time, and he’s got an entire meowing ritual that starts at least a half hour before Food O’Clock, gaining in volume and annoyingness until a fresh bowl of turkey is placed before him. His personal patois, the Buddinese dialect, makes heavy use of trills, chirps, grunts, chuffs and sniffs to elaborate on his meows.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Quiet Place movies, they imagine a world that’s been invaded by so-called Death Angels, dread creatures of extrasolar provenance who are completely blind, but have extraordinarily sensitive hearing. The first movie, about a family surviving on their farm in upstate New York months after the initial invasion, was universally lauded for its taut script, effective tension and novel use of a quiet/loud dynamic that is a marked departure from the usual horror-thriller formula.

In A Quiet Place (2018), its 2020 sequel and the recently-released prequel, Day One, entire minutes pass soundlessly. As a viewer you can’t help but wince and tense up when a character errs and makes noise, knowing the consequences can be immediately tragic.

There’s simply no way Bud and I would survive more than five minutes, and if I had to put money on it, I’d wager we’d probably be dead within 60 seconds of the terrifying monsters showing up.

Indeed, the movie doesn’t dither: the Death Angels make planetfall at around the 12 minute mark. Mild spoilers from the beginning of the film follow:

12:31 – On Chinatown’s ruined Pell Street, within a haze of dust so thick you can’t see more than a few feet in any direction, a man shouts loudly into his smartphone, telling the person on the other end that something meteor-like had landed just a few hundred feet away. He’s pulled suddenly and violently into the smog, his scream ending as abruptly as it began. Verdict: Death by Buddy. He’d probably meow in protest at the dust and get us both killed immediately.

12:53 – A female National Guard soldier sees Nyong’o’s Sam and shouts at her to take cover. The guardswoman’s radio crackles with the panicked screams of her comrades saying the enemy is everywhere, and then she’s dispatched as quickly as the guy on the phone. Verdict: Death by Buddy. He’d almost certainly huff derisively at the soldier’s order to take cover, and we’d both be crushed underneath the foot of one of the lumbering beasts.

13:34 – Sam huddles behind a vehicle with another woman when a panicked man screams, drawing the aliens like moths to a flame. Verdict: Death by Buddy. Little dude’s default reaction when he’s scared is to run screaming and hide behind my legs. He’d draw the monsters right to us and we’d die.

13:50 – Sam wakes up inside a theater several minutes after an explosion knocked her out. She’s about to speak when Djimon Hounsou’s Henri clamps a hand over her mouth and raises a finger to his lips. Unfortunately that doesn’t work with a cat. Verdict: Death by Buddy. Attempts to get him to shut up would be fruitless, and while I’d know my only chance for survival would be to throw him like a football so the aliens track his indignant screech, I wouldn’t have the heart to do it. We’d die together.

Frodo, the feline co-star of Day One and “service cat” to Lupita Nyong’o’s Sam, is precisely the opposite. He’s a Good Boy extraordinaire, consistently calm in his mother’s arms and reliably silent when he needs to be.

Frodo the Cat — Frodo is a handsome and resourceful little guy, and much of Day One’s tension comes from putting him in danger. Credit: Paramount Pictures

Without meows to rely on, director Michael Sarnoski gets quite a performance out of Nico and Schnitzel, the two cats who play Frodo. They’re expressive felines who could teach Nicolas Cage a thing or two about how to emote with subtlety, as in one scene when Frodo sees a man emerge gasping from a flooded subway station. Frodo regards the stranger with curiosity, his little face registering surprise at the man’s sudden appearance with just the slightest twitch of his mouth and whiskers.

It’s effective and very cute, but we never forget about the incredible danger that faces Frodo and Sam as they ~~return the One Ring to Mount Doom~~ navigate the ruins of New York City amid blind predators with extraordinarily sensitive hearing.

buddyroarbanner — “LOL I got you killed, dude! Hey! Wake up! I’m hungry! Turkey time! I’ll take my evening meal on the balcony and dine al fresco this evening, okay? Big Bud? Dude?”

If Day One’s world was reality — and I’m extremely thankful it’s not — I suppose it’s possible I’d get lucky if we were in a deep subterranean level of a building for some odd reason, and if Bud decided it’s not worth disturbing his nap to investigate the ruckus above.

But the moment his belly rumbles and he starts screeching for yums, or the second he gets it into his little head that he just has to tell me his latest theory regarding entangled subatomic particles, it would all be over, for me at least. I could totally see Bud making noise, then dashing to his customary hiding place behind my legs while a “Death Angel” impales me with one of its giant claws.

What about the rest of you? Is your cat a Frodo, a Bud or another sort entirely? Would you be dead as quickly as we would be, or do you think you could survive with your furry pal?

A Quiet Place Day One: Are ‘Service Cats’ A Real Thing?

Service animals and emotional support animals are not the same thing.

A Quiet Place: Day One stars Lupita Nyong’o as Samira, a terminally ill woman, and Joseph Quinn as her nurse, Eric.

But it’s the third main cast member — a feline named Frodo — who’s been hailed as the surprise star of the film, which one reviewer called “a love letter to cat owners.”

Nyong’o’s Sam has been given the equivalent of a death sentence with her aggressive cancer diagnosis, but when the nightmarish creatures who play the antagonists of the Quiet Place franchise arrive, Sam fights for her life with her trusty “service cat” by her side.

“You can’t have a cat in here,” the clerk at a bodega tells Sam early in the film, before she fixes him with a no-nonsense stare and flatly declares: “He’s a service cat.”

Service cats: Fact or fiction?

So are service cats a real thing?

Unfortunately, no. In the US, only dogs and miniature horses can be registered as service animals, and that’s by law. The latter are more rare, but horses labeled emotional support animals are no more official than an emotional support llama.

You’ve probably heard stories or seen photos of people trying to take other animals into places they’d normally never be allowed. In 2019, a woman decided to push the boundaries by taking a miniature horse onto a domestic flight, forcing passengers to share extremely limited space with the olfactorily potent, skittish animal. She even scolded social media users who didn’t get the horse’s pronouns “correct.” (They’re she/her, by the way. We’re not making this up.)

https://x.com/barstoolsports/status/1167440007956746240

https://x.com/tsturk8/status/1167472085918240768

The woman, who says she needs the horse because she suffers from PTSD, told Omaha, Nebraska’s KMTV that the managers of a grocery store allegedly violated her rights by asking her to leave rather than allow her to march a horse through a place where people buy food and its operators are required to follow Department of Health rules.

“I was treated so poorly and the manager’s responses when I followed up were poor,” she said. “They are going to be hearing from the Department of Justice and I’m definitely going to be pursuing legal means as well.”

In 2023, a man tried to take a “service alligator” to a Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park. Stadium security weren’t buying it and he was turned away, but not before other fans snapped photos of the attempt. In Nevada, a man who had his USDA license revoked for “multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act” argued that authorities couldn’t confiscate his 10 tigers because he claimed they are emotional support animals.

“My doctor has written that she feels that the tigers are beneficial to my psychological well-being and so therefore I got what the law requires,” Karl Mitchell told KTNV, an ABC affiliate in Las Vegas.

Emotional support tiger — An emotional support tiger depicted in a Reddit photoshop contest for the most ridiculous “service animals.” Maybe some ambitious dreamer will cook up a service elephant or an emotional support bison.

Since then the FAA and Department of Transportation have issued new rules clarifying emotional support horses, peacocks, flying squirrels, parrots and other animals are not allowed on planes, prompting one flight attendant to quip that “The days of Noah’s Ark in the sky are over.”

That, however, has not put a dent in the confusion over what constitutes a service animal versus an emotional support animal, and what rights people have when it comes to bring their furry (or scaly, or feathered) friends into public and private spaces.

Although we’re happy to see Nyong’o in her first lead role since 2019’s freaky horror thriller Us, unfortunately A Quiet Place: Day One is almost certain to contribute to that confusion with its fictional “service cat” character.

A service animal and an emotional support animal are not the same thing

First, there’s an important distinction between a service animal and an emotional support animal.

Service animals can only be dogs or miniature horses, and must be trained. People who depend on service animals can train them themselves, but the animal must meet specific needs, like guiding the blind or vision-impaired.

Emotional support animals, by contrast, are not trained, certified or “official” in any capacity. Anyone can adopt or buy an animal and call it an “emotional support animal.”

Emotional support alligator — A Phillies fan’s “emotional support alligator.” The stadium turned him and his carnivorous apex predator companion down. Credit: Howard Eskin/X

Unfortunately due to the confusion involving service animals vs ESAs, predatory sites have popped up online promising to “officially register” ESAs for a fee.

In addition to charging for something that doesn’t exist, the proprietors of those sites also tell people they can take their “officially registered” support animals into places normally off limits to pets, like stores and restaurants. Some sites offer consultations with alleged mental health professionals who will “diagnose” customers remotely and write letters on the customer’s behalf.

Abrea Hensley with miniature horse — Abrea Hensley with her miniature horse, Flirty, in an aquarium. Hensley’s social media accounts document all the places she goes with the animal.

Those sites operate similar to the numerous “buy a star” sites that claim celestial objects can be officially owned. Like their emotional support animal “registry” counterparts, the star sale sites offer official-looking paperwork, but they’re selling something that can’t legally be sold, and the certificates are legally and practically meaningless.

Buying a “certification” won’t make your cat a service feline, and contrary to how they’re portrayed in the movie, calling a pet an emotional support animal does not allow you to bring it anywhere you like.

For legal purposes, there’s only one perk to be had by claiming an emotional support animal: under the Fair Housing Act, landlords generally cannot refuse tenants who have emotional support animals. The act specifies that allowing emotional support animals is limited by “reasonable accommodations.” That means a dog or a cat is okay, but you can’t keep an animal that poses a danger to your neighbors, negatively impacts their quality of life, or requires the landlord to make major and costly alterations.

The general trend in recent years has involved curbing the limits of emotional support animals, a trend that appears likely to continue as more people abuse the privilege, burdening other members of the public by insisting they must silently endure the inconvenience, potential allergic reactions, sanitary concerns and practical problems caused by bringing animals into spaces that are not designed to accommodate them.

While we’re certainly sympathetic to pet owners — this blog wouldn’t exist if we were not — the fact is that the more people abuse societal boundaries with emotional support animals, the more difficult it makes things for people who have legitimate service dogs and rely on them to navigate life and maintain their independence.

Note: This post has been updated to further distinguish between service animals and emotional support animals. An earlier version contained a paragraph with potentially confusing phrasing.

h/t Susan Mercurio for pointing out that emotional support animals are coveted by the Fair Housing Act

Cat Mom Lupita Nyong’o Takes A Furry Friend To The Red Carpet

Lupita Nyong’o not only shares the screen with a feline co-star in the new film A Quiet Place: Day One, she’s also a devoted cat mom to a ginger tabby named Yoyo.

Although I haven’t seen most of Lupita Nyongo’s movies — I really liked her performance in Us and her voice work in Disney’s Jungle Book remake — I’m a big fan now that I know she’s a cat lover.

Nyong’o took to the red carpet for the premiere of her newest film, A Quiet Place: Day One in London on Wednesday, and her plus-one was a cat named Schnitzel, who also stars in the movie. Photos show Nyong’o posing along co-star Joseph Quinn, smiling as she cradles Schnitzel in her arms.

Lupita Nyong'o with her cat Yoyo — Lupita Nyong’o with her cat, Yoyo. In addition to posing with a cat on the red carpet premiere of her new film, Nyong’o proudly dotes on Yoyo and mentions him often. Credit: Lupita Nyong’o/Instagram

A Quiet Place is a 2018 film about a family that lives a completely silent life on a farm after the civilization has fallen to monstrous creatures that can’t see but are exceptionally sensitive to sound.

The film received nearly universal positive reviews for its use of sound — and the complete absence of it for long stretches — as a tension-building device, and a 2020 sequel continued the story.

Day One, which hits theaters on June 28, promises audiences a look at how the creatures appeared and civilization collapsed.

Schnitzel’s role isn’t entirely clear, but if it’s anything like 2022’s Prey, cats will fill their usual niche as predators, highlighting the difference between terrestrial and extraterrestrial hunters.

Caring for a cat in a world like A Quiet Place could be a double edged-sword: a super vocal cat like my Buddy wouldn’t last very long unless he quickly learned to keep a lid on his constant commentary, but cats are also incredibly sensitive to things that pass beneath the notice of us humans.

Thanks to their incredible hearing, exceptional sense of smell, the advantage of an extra olfactory organ and whiskers that pick up even the slightest stirring, felines are keenly aware of their surroundings.

As for Nyong’o, while Schnitzel is not her cat, she’s the proud cat mom of Yoyo, an orange tabby she fostered in late 2023. It only took her three days of fostering the little guy before she realized “I could not give him up,” she said last year shortly after the adoption was made official.

“I never understood people whose phones were full of photos and videos of their pets — now I am one of those people,” she wrote when she adopted the tabby. “It may look like I saved Yoyo, but really, Yoyo is saving me.”

Nyong'o and Yoyo the cat — Lupita Nyong’o with Yoyo. Credit: Lupita Nyong’o/Instagram

The Greatest Feline In Science Fiction Film History Is About To Turn 45

Making his debut in 1979’s Alien, Jonesy is one of the most famous felines in cinema history.

There’s a popular meme among Alien fans that depicts Jonesy the Cat walking nonchalantly down one of the starship Nostromo’s corridors with his tail up, carrying the corpse of the recently-spawned alien in his mouth like he’s about to present a dead mouse as a gift to his humans.

The joke is self-evident: if the crew of the Nostromo had allowed Jonesy to take care of business from the get-go, the alien would have been disposed of before it had the chance to grow into the monstrosity that haunted the decks of the Nostromo and the nightmares of viewers.

Jonesy Alien — “Who’s a good boy? Who just saved his crew from certain violent death at the claws of a ruthless alien predator? That’s right, you did!”

Of course then there’d be no movie. No ripples of shock in theaters across the US as audiences were confronted by something more nightmarish and utterly alien than popular culture had ever seen before. No indelible mark left on science fiction.

Despite the film’s retrofuturistic aesthetic, it’s difficult to believe Alien first hit theaters almost half a century ago.

That’s testament to director Ridley Scott working at the height of his powers, the carpenters, artists and set dressers who created the starship Nostromo’s claustrophobic interior, the design of the derelict starship where the alien was found, and the bizarre creature itself.

The alien ship and creature designs were the work of Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger, who was little-known at the time but floored Scott and writer Dan O’Bannon with his hyper-detailed paintings of grotesque biomechanical scenes.

Signourney Weaver and one of the cats who played Jonesy in the first film.

Kane explores the infamous egg chamber in the derelict alien ship.

Fan art of Jonesy

A close-up shot of the retrofuturistic tech used in the series, a design decision that departed from the gleaming visions of the future common at the time.

A set photo showing the first film’s crew on the iconic space jockey set.

Giger’s work, specifically his 1976 painting Necronom IV, was the basis for the titular alien’s appearance. The alien, called a xenomorph in the film series, is vaguely androform while also animalistic. It is bipedal but with digitgrade feet and can crawl or run on all fours when the situation calls for it. It hides in vents, shafts and other dark spaces, coiling a prehensile tail that ends in a blade-like tip.

But it’s the creature’s head that is most nightmarish. It’s vaguely comma-shaped, eyeless and covered in a hard, armored carapace that ends just above a mouth full of sinister teeth like obsidian arrowheads. There’s perpetually slime-covered flesh that squelches when the creature moves but there are also veins or tendons or something fully exposed without skin, apparently made of metal and bone. Maybe those ducts feed nutrients and circulate blood to the brain. Maybe they help drain excess heat from the creature’s brain cavity.

Regardless, it’s a biomechanical nightmare that the Nostromo’s science officer, Ash, admiringly calls “the perfect organism” whose “structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.”

The alien, Ash declares, is “a survivor, unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.”

Alien xenomorph — The alien, also referred to as a xenomorph, “that thing,” a “dragon,” “the perfect organism” and various other names by characters in the series. Credit: 20th Century Studios

Part of what makes Jonesey so beloved is the fact that, together with the xenomorph and Ripley, he completes the triumvirate of survivors. We see Jonesy scurry into the protection of tiny confined spaces to escape the alien, hissing at it in the dark. We see him dart into the bowels of the ship after sensing the stalking creature, adding another blip to the crew’s trackers. Finally we see him settling into a cryosleep pod with Ripley, like so many other cats with their humans, when the threat has passed.

Jonesy — affectionately referred to as “you little shithead” by Ripley in the second film — appears in the franchise’s two most famous films, his own comic book series titled Jonesy: Nine Lives on the Nostromo, a 2014 novel (Alien: Out of the Shadows), and in hundreds of references in pop culture over the last half century, from appearances in video games (Halo, World of Warcraft, Fortnite) to references and homages in movies and television shows.

A page from Jonesy: Nine Lives On The Nostromo, which tells the story of Alien from the cat’s perspective. These panels depict Jonesy watching Ash and Dallas examining Kane in the ship’s medical lab.

He’s like the anti-xenomorph. Cats are predators, after all, and Jonesy might be the xenomorph to the ship’s rodents just like every ship’s cat in thousands of years of human naval endeavors. But to the crew members Jonesy’s a source of comfort, a warm, furry friend to cuddle with. Unlike the xenomorph he’s got no biological programming urging him to impregnate other species with copies of himself in one of the most horrific gestation processes imaginable.

Xenos are like predators on steroids, gorging themselves on their victims to fuel unnaturally swift cell reproduction and growth. As a result, over the decades some have speculated that the alien simply ignored the cat, deeming its paltry caloric value unworthy of the effort to kill.

The idea that Jonesy was too small to interest the alien is proved a fallacy in later franchise canon when we see the aftermath of a xenomorph consuming a dog. It’s indiscriminate in its quest for energy, feasting on adult humans and animals alike until two or three days pass and it’s a 12-foot-tall, serpentine nightmare the color of the void of interstellar space.

Just imagine sitting in a theater in 1979. Your idea of science fiction is sleek jet-age spacecraft, Star Trek and Stanley Kubrick’s clinical orbital habitats from 2001: A Space Odyssey. You’re expecting astronauts, heroes, maybe a metal robot or an alien who looks human except for some funky eyebrows, green skin or distinct forehead ridges.

Instead you get a crew of seven weary deep space ore haulers inhabiting a worn, scuffed corporate transport ship, complaining about their bonuses and aching for home, family and the familiar tug of gravity.

But home will have to wait. The ship has logged an unusual signal of artificial origin broadcasting from a small planet in an unexplored star system. The crew has no choice but to investigate. It’s written into their contracts, which stipulate the crew will forfeit their wages if they disregard the signal.

So they land, suit up, move out and find a derelict starship. An incomprehensibly massive vessel so strange in detail and proportion that it could only have been built by an alien mind, with unknowable motivations and psychology.

The Egg Chamber — The egg chamber of the derelict alien ship, designed by Giger.

Inside, hallways that look like ribcages lead to vast chambers with utterly bizarre, inscrutable machinery that seems to consist of biological material — skin, bone, joints, organs — fused with metal. In one of them the corpse of an alien, presumably a pilot, is integrated into a complex array. It’s at least twice the size of a large human man. Its elephantine head is thrown back in the agony of its last moment, when something exploded outward from its body, leaving a mangled ribcage, torn papery skin and desiccated organs.

And beneath that, a shaft leading to another horror — a chamber that seems to stretch for kilometers in either direction, where leathery eggs are cradled in biomachinery and bathed in a bioluminescent cerulean mist.

The decision to enter that chamber sets off one of the most shocking scenes in cinema history, leads to the birth of pop culture’s most terrifying monster, and sent millions of theater-goers home with nightmares in the spring and summer of 1979.

It’s almost too much to handle. But take heart! The unlikely female protagonist makes it to the end, and so does the cat. What more can you ask for?

Jonesy on the Nostromo — Jonesy grooming himself on the flight deck of the starship Nostromo. Credit: 20th Century Studios

Bring Your Cat To The Movies? One Theater Chain Now Welcomes Furry Friends

Would you bring your cat(s) to the movies?

The whole pet thing takes on a different vibe in Asia.

I first saw it in Tokyo where people push their cats along in baby strollers and luxury shops sell thousand-dollar accessories for felines and canines alike.

In countries like China it’s become a thing to dress pets in “cute little outfits” and pose them like dolls for social media snaps.

Now in Thailand — which is second only to China in pet ownership on the continent — people can bring their cats and dogs to the movies.

Agence France-Presse sent a reporter there to witness costumed Chihuahuas and poodles arrive by stroller and sit next to their humans for a screening of The Little Mermaid. A cat, who probably had no idea what the hell was going on, was plopped down on the seat next to her human.

Movie cat — “Shhhh! Some of us are trying to watch The Lion King here!” Credit: PITB

A spokesman for the Bangkok cineplex told AFP he thinks pet-friendly cinemas will bring people back to the movies after the pandemic. Pet owners, he said, have been less likely to leave home because their animals are now used to having them around all the time and experience separation anxiety when they leave.

As Bud’s loyal servant I know he does have separation anxiety, but I wouldn’t bring him to the local Alamo Drafthouse or AMC even if they had pet-friendly screenings here.

For one thing, he’s a damn cat! He’s not interested in screens unless they’re showing birds feasting on seeds in a forest, with all the accompanying sounds, while he’s viewing it from the safety of his own home

Second, I know precisely how he’d react, and he wouldn’t take well to being in a theater with a bunch of dogs and a handful of other cats. He’d spend half the movie hissing and the other half crying. I can’t imagine it being a fun experience for him.

Then there’s the “dress code.” Pets in Thailand’s new animal-friendly screenings must wear diapers and sit in bags provided by the theater. This is to ensure they won’t defecate all over the seats, obviously, but my cat has never even tolerated a collar. The chances of him accepting a diaper are zero.

Cat at the movies — “You gotta see Keanu in IMEOWX, my feline friends. It’s meowgnificent.” Credit: PITB

Lastly, at the risk of getting myself into trouble, the entire idea sounds about as appealing as trying to watch a non-kids movie in a theater full of screaming six-year-olds.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved accompanying my nieces to see the Super Mario Brothers movie, watching their delight at seeing the Mushroom Kingdom, Princess Peach, Mario and Luigi brought to life. (“You kids today with your Nintendo Switches, your fancy graphics and your networked games. We had Gameboy. It only had two colors, and you had to put little cartridges inside it to play games, and when they didn’t work we had to blow the dust out of ’em. You don’t know how good you got it, you kids today!”)

But do I want to be responsible for a feline with the intellectual development of a young child while I’m trying to watch a movie? If by some miracle Bud would stop hissing and/or crying, he’d focus on me and start yapping for snacks.

The movies just aren’t a great place for cats, and I’m not sure dogs would be thrilled to be there either.

Now, a hookah bar where you could bring your cat and give him his own little hookah filled with catnip? Maybe that could work.

“Yes, I’ll take an Amstel Light and a bag of your best Meowie Wowie for my little buddy here. Can I see the bar food and pate menus as well? We’ve just come from seeing John Wick 11 at the movies and we’re both famished!”