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Title: Kimssi pyoryugi (Kim's Island) - Castaway On The Moon Year:  2009 Director:    Lee Hae-Joon (AKA Lee Hae-Jun) Running time: 116 min. Country: South Korea This film is about a man stranded as a castaway on a deserted island and was a pleasant surprise for me. The story evolves very unexpectedly and I really enjoyed it. It contains many memorable funny scenes and a bizarre love story. Wait, wasn't he alone? The answer is a bit complex, so it is better to watch the movie. I don't intend to write a review about this film. There are many blogs that do this job better than mine. This is a pigeon-centric blog so I'm only summarising here the human-pigeon interactions. There are actually several of these moments which are very interesting and funny. Before talking about them, let's firstly contextualize the scenes: At the beginning of the story we find a starving castaway called Kim who is trapped on a desert island. What should he do when his stomach is demandin

Title: Burning man Year:  2011 Director:    Jonathan Teplitzky Running time: 110 min. Country: Australia There are sad movies and cruel sad movies. One example of latter is Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. I think that it is nice film, but I didn't like it at all. When I left the cinema after watching it, I felt something like I had been suffering emotional torture with a plot which was specially designed to sadden the spectator. Is such a cruel story really necessary? Such is life, Eastwood would probably say, but this is not the point. The point is the aim of this film style: they write a deliberately cruel story in order to shock the spectator and increase the film's popularity. Burning man belongs to this category. It depicts the sad life of Tom (Matthew Goode), a skillful chef who is specially enthusiastic about cooking sea food. His wife dies of cancer and left him alone with his son. This film consists of continuous flashbacks and flashforwards where his h

Title: Predator 2 Year:  1990 Director:    Stephen Hopkins Running time: 108 min. Country: United States. Mike Harrigan is an LAPD Lieutenant who is in search of an alien which is slaughtering city inhabitants. Dorinda Seed is a female pigeon from L.A. She and her folks had a nice day and now are getting some rest on a roof (a place that they call home). In this sequence, Dorinda and Mike's lives are going to cross dramatically. Mike is chasing the predator on a roof. He is very nervous, because this creature is a monster which slaughtered several colleagues of his. A common man would escape running away, but Mike wants to fix this mess. On the other side of the corner, we find Dorinda and her friends, that are scared and fly away (scaring Mike too). This is a nice picture of the pigeon, captured with its legs and tail feathers fully extended. This situation is also dramatic for Dorinda. It is not nice for a pigeon to fly in the darkness and it is ever worse, if it is flying in t

Title: Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Year:  1992 Director:    Chris Columbus Running time: 113 min. Country: United States. Central Park at night is not a safe place. When darkness falls, many harmful creatures appear in the middle of park, including hungry pigeons.A naive reader could think that pigeons are not a serious risk for humans, but in Home Alone 2, we can see a clear example of how to fear a wild pigeon flock. The sequence is as follows: a massive flock of pigeons gathers in Central Park waiting to receive food and care from a Homeless lady.  She obviously was very fond of these creatures and loved to be surrounded by them. Meanwhile the protagonist was being chased by the two bad guys of the film. During his escape he meets the lady and her feathered gang. Fortunately she is on the side of the protagonist and she helps him throwing a sticky mixture of pigeon food on the bad guys. Soon, both of them are surrounded by hordes of hungry pigeons that literally cover them in a

After this long break I have resumed the blog activities. 2013 was a challenging year for me: the first squab in the family arrived and we moved to a new nest. Both things demanded plenty of time. On top of that my job was pretty intensive too. All these factors left me without any time to dedicate to this blog. Now I have more spare time and my plan is to continue working on the blog. Maybe with less intensity than I would have liked, but  contributing as often as I can. Fortunately, during this long period I added to my film list many pigeon appearances, so I have plenty of material to publish. I also would like to thank all the contributions that I have received from people that also spotted pigeons in films. My plan is to deliver more pigeon appearances. I hope you will enjoy them.

Title:  Training Day Year:   2001 Director:    Antoine Fuqua Running time:  122 min. Country:  United States Taking into account the nature of this blog, the answer to the question in this post's title may be pretty obvious. Let's contextualise the scene of this film. Jake (Ethan Hawke) is a rookie cop that has a new workmate: the veteran Alonzo (Denzel Washington). In this film Denzel Washington does one of my favourite performances. He is cool... ... but at the same time, there something twisted about him. But anyway. He is one of the best cops. What can be wrong here? The first weird thing comes with a sudden argument between them. The poor Jake is tricked by Alonzo into smoking something that actually is a strong drug, and soon he enters into a narcotised state with nothing better to do than look out of the window. So, the question is: what does Jake see when he's under the drug's effects? Streets, trees, and a large pigeon flock (quite relaxing view, by the way) do

Title: Sea of love Year:   1989 Director:    Harold Becker Running time:  110 min. Country:  United States I have watched many Al Pacino films. In some of them he is a brave drug dealer with almost no scruples, or evil itself, or, like in this film, a brave policeman in search of a serial killer. In almost all his characters he plays as a tough man, very prone to using violence and also very hard to shock or unflutter. However, in this film,  Detective Frank Keller (Pacino) finds a very disgusting surprise when he is pursuing a murderer. In the pigeon starring scene, Frank is a bit drunk heading back home  (following the stereotype of many detectives, he enjoys drinking and smoking) when he senses something suspicious in the apartment block corridor. He seems to think that the serial killer may be hiding outside the window. When he looks, he is violently scared by a group of pigeons that probably were sleeping near the window and are suddenly disturbed by this drunk and violent man. It

Welcome to the Fourth Edition of Pigeon Quest. Here, instead of finding the pigeon in the film,  you have to find the film with the pigeon . Just write in the comments the film name with a recognized user name. An anonymous comment will produce an  anonymous  winner. The first one in succeeding will win and receive an honorary certificate.  You can see other editions of this Quest  here . Here there is a sequence of the film. We can see an eye-to-eye stareoff. Very intriguing and a little perturbing... it doesn't bode well.

Title:  The Duchess Year:   2008 Director:    Saul Dibb Running time:  110 min. Country:  United Kingdom Today we have a special pigeon appearance. Contradicting the post's title, it is not a pigeon well respected by the avian nor human community. It is not flying, nor roaming around. The pigeon is served in a dish for a sad Duchess that is maritally frustrated and on top of that, has no appetite at all. The scene could not be more dramatic. The poor animal is served but the lady (Keira Knightley) has no interest in it, and she looks totally absent minded. In front of her, her husband the Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes) and his mistress are sat and enjoying the meal while the Duchess' lover is shouting at the front door demanding to talk with his lover. It is understandable that in such a bizarre situation, one wouldn't be interested in any kind of meal. After banishing her lover, the Duchess goes back to dinner and sits again. The Duke looks up, chewing and says:  What’

When I saw a Dwayne Johnson film (sorry, no pigeons in it), I could not resist creating a tribute to this massive and tough actor. This is a tribute to The Rock ...

Title:  Lego Batman: The Movie - DC Superheroes United Year:   2013 Director:    Jon Burton Running time:  71 min. Country:  USA I was very pleased when I discovered that the iconic megalopolis of Gotham City has pigeons living in it. I think that this is a good example of how we (humans) extrapolate our living environment to imaginary scenarios. One exception that makes me deeply sad is Star Wars, where I couldn't find a single pigeon appearance in the whole saga. It seems that the pigeons had been unable to reach the Star Wars galaxy, that is too far away. I think that we will address this topic in another post. Regarding this film, the context of the scene is the following one: Batman and Superman are fighting against a robot piloted by the Joker and Lex Luthor. In the middle of the combat, the robot falls in a park in the centre of Gotham city. What kind of innocent creatures were in the midst of the combat, roaming around the park? I think that it is not necessary to answer th

Title:  Mr. Nobody Year: 2009 Director: Jaco Van Dormael Running time: 133 min. Country: Belgium It is very interesting to find a non-pigeon-oriented film (I mean, not a documentary about pigeons) where the main credits are exclusively devoted to a beautiful dove. And of top of that, to illustrate how clever the animal is at solving complex tasks.  Indirectly, this scene also introduces us to "pigeon superstitious animal behaviour" . In the scene we can see how a dove is trying to catch a piece of food. Unfortunately, the tasty meal is too high and the bird cannot reach it. Oops!!! The pigeon realises that the food is too high. The suspense level dramatically increases when the dove notices the existence of a pedestal than can be used to reach a higher position but it is too far away from the food. However, the dove is able to drag it using its beak, and finally, in a quite surprising way, leverages it to reach the tasty meal. From the bird's perspective, this is a hap