Damn that Dolphin: Aquatic mammals in ‘Ticket to Paradise’

I know movies are fake. That’s not my complaint.

I get that the people kissing on screen are not in love, that they are indeed actors. I know the violence is largely special effects and contained. I know how the sausage is made, or not made.

I know the train rushing at full steam on the silver screen isn’t going to run me over. I don’t feel helplessly enthralled. I don’t feel the need to scream. I don’t feel gagged, nor do I necessarily feel tied to the tracks.

I just really hate that dolphin leaping over Julia Roberts’ head in that one scene in last year’s Ticket to Paradise.

Yesterday was a cold and rainy day. Gillian and I watched the first 45 minutes or so of Ticket to Paradise. Romantic comedies are an easy sale. The last film I watched is Tár (2022). Tár is not an easy sale.

I bring up Tár because I’m pretty sure it features a CGI dog in one of its most pivotal scenes. When Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) drops off a young celloist from her orchestra at an abandoned building, the young celloist leaves a stuffed animal behind in the car. Lydia attempts to return it and ends up in a dark and shadowy basement layer of the building. She is in the leaky ruins of the building’s subterranean foundations. The menacing dog growls, telling us this is…