Dog Road Movie

Detour, L'Avventura, North By Northwest, the list of great road movies is neither especially long nor particularly winding. Most film buffs, I suspect, would limit the list of great road movies to the three I mentioned, since all the others are so tiresomely predictable that most viewers end up wishing that the characters had never left home in the first place.
Of these worthless cinematic bores, with the possible exception of anything starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, Lola In Low Gear (directed Baldwin, 2011) is probably the most boring of all.
Below are stills, courtesy of Cahiers du Cinema, from an exceptionally dull scene in which an excited Lola thinks she's reversing out of the driveway, en route for a fund day at the dog park. Unfortunately, much to Lola's disappointment, her feet are too short to reach the pedals; consequently she and car remain stationary and, staring mournfully out of the window, Lola realizes she won't make it to her destination.

It's no 101 Dalmatians fun for the whole family, obviously, but then it's no depressingly sentimental Old Yeller, either. Personally, I like to think of the film as a cross between Alain Resnais' yawningly enigmatic L'Année dernière à Marienbad and that mythical snore-fest Lassie Does Absolutely Nothing At All.
For those interested, if God forbid anyone is, here is the Lola In Low Gear trailer, featuring all the best bits of the film like all movie trailers always do.

Christmas Classics

Despite the suitability of a lowly cattle shed as a sort of makeshift kennel, dogs really have no place in any conventional Christmas nativity scene. Barking at the three wise men and chewing the ends of the shepherd's crooks, then sticking their snouts in the myrrh when Joseph isn't looking and being sick under the Christ child's manger. That's just the way dogs are: more 'Howling at the Moon' and less 'Silent Night Holy Night,' that's for sure.
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, on the other hand, provides the perfect canine setting. It's easy to imagine some Scroogey poodle appearing in this timeless Christmas classic, being forewarned by the restless spirit of Jacob Marley's gloomy basset hound of the depressing doghouse in store if it isn't obedient to its owner's wishes. "This is the choke chain I forged in life. Look how enormously long it is. Some of those links are for peeing on the carpet when I was a puppy, others are for all the library books I've torn to shreds, but most of them are for stubbornly refusing to come when I was called. Change your bad dog ways, you dumb mutt, before it is too late."
Here is a photo of Lola as Eberschnauzer Scrooge, being visited by the Ghost of Rawhide Past.

Oddly, I don't recall any dogs wandering around the Cratchit household, but that's probably because Dickens didn't think those scenes through enough when he was writing his novella. Surely the schmaltzy Victorian heart-rending quotient could be increased tenfold if a mangy cur curled up in the corner with Tiny Tim. I think Lola with her one floppy ear and perennial bad hair days would also be excellent in this role.

The Canine Couch Potato

The canine couch potato, despite its lack of chips and dip and Mountain Dew, is a particularly lethargic type of vegetative entity. It is the type of dog that any self-respecting quick, brown fox has always dreamed of jumping over. Only a single, quivering, antennae-like ear gives any indication that life exists within the furry frame sprawled on the cushions.
The canine couch potato is not vexed by questions of space and time; there are no bone burying deadlines to meet; that artisanal cheese crumb under the dining room table will still be there tomorrow; those sounds and smells from outside must growl at their own provocations this afternoon.

I've tried preaching to Lola with Biblical proverbs: "The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied." But, like the prodigal pooch in the kennel of its breeder, she merely responds with a drooping eyelid and a short wrinkling of an apathetic snout.
Perhaps this particular canine couch potato believes she has entered a state of suspended animation; that she will wake at some future date when dogs have mastered the art of opening the fridge and making a chicken sandwich for themselves. She is mistaken, obviously, but you can't convince a canine couch potato that the truth is actually very different.
The irony here, of course, is that the canine couch potato should not be on the couch in the first place, but such flagrantly flouted rules of law are topics for another post.