Yesterday instead of studying I watched that movie Babe: Pig in The City it’s the second movie about Babe the pig. I love pigs. To eat and to look at.

But too many people found it ‘disturbing’ like the scene when the dog was being hanged over water and the fish bowl breaking. I can understand if you don’t like the movie but to call it ‘mindless violence’ is a little much. Babe saved both the dog and the fish eventually and those people who found it ‘disturbing’ really didn’t get the message of those scenes. You can’t have a hero if nothing bad happens. They just saw violence violence violence The End.

Anyway the last time I saw the movie I must’ve been around 7. When I watched it yesterday I liked it more than I liked it when I was younger. There was so much to admire in the movie. I kept saying ‘ooohhh’ ‘aaaahhh’ ‘look at that!’. I know sometimes babe and mostly the rats were robotic but there was some scuttling scenes that were real and I’m wondering how the animal trainers were able to do that (food I guess). And that chasing scene with the dog and Babe, that dog looked like he was really going to kill babe if he got a chance.

Another thing I really like about the movie was the city. It’s a fictional city called Metropolis and if you looked closely it’s a mixed of different cities around the world and different time eras. There is a scene when the cars look like the are from the 1940s but the people at another scene look modern (or at least 1990s modern) and there was that party from what look like from the 1800s.

If you look closely you would see the Hollywood sign (Los Angeles), Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco),  Eiffel Tower (Paris), Sydney Opera House (Australia), Statue of Liberty (New York) and various sky scrappers from many cities all over the world.

This is outside the hotel that Babe is staying and as you can see it looks very European. I’m guessing the inspiration for this was Venice, Italy.

Gaaahh! I wish I had a night scene picture it looks so much better at night. Just like what Ratatouille did to make me want to visit France this movie did wanting me to visit Metropolis. I want to watch the movie again just for the sake of looking at the artwork.

I’ve been looking at Mark Ryden’s work for some time now. He’s a modern painter who currently works in Eagle Rock. He usually combines, blood , cute animals, little girls, slabs of meat, Abe Lincoln, religious figures and symbols together. His paintings have a very Alice In Wonderland feel.

Here I’m sharing his less disturbing pictures.

Here are pictures from his gallery The Tree Show.

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