Without hesitation, grab your family, kids and friends, and head to your local movie theater to experience the Cinema at its best today.
The Jungle Book, the Jon Favreau’s (“Iron Man”) creation under the Disney umbrella has opened today to induce its magic into each and every one of us.
What makes this version of The Jungle Book unique and very prominent is its live-action elements set in the majestic Jungle environment, with talking and walking animals that you have a constant urge to reach out and touch and interact.
Jon Favreau’s artistic visual style as the Director of this movie has created a dynamite effect on all of our senses, making the movie going experience an EVENT of its own.
One of the examples and one of my favorite moments in the movie is how it begins. There’s no set-up, no preparation or cues for us to realize that the movie has started. Jon Favreau uses his unique way to take us straight into the Jungle and start running with Mowgli. I think it is so brilliant!
What many of us don’t realize is that the entire movie was filmed in front of the green (or blue) screen. No real animals were involved in acting out the scenes in the movie! The making of the magic we are experiencing on the big screen was truly phenomenal!
Look at this example of shooting a scene with Baloo in front of the blue screen and a final screen shot from the finished movie.
I had a rare opportunity to sit down for a conversation with the actors who lent their voices to the Jungle powerful animals in the movie and with Director Jon Favreau and actor Neel Sethi who plays Mowgli. Read my reflections on these conversations and interviews with Lupita Nyong’o (voice of Raksha), Ciancarlo Esposito (voice of Akela), Sir Ben Kingsley (voice of Bagheera).
These conversations were like a revelation to me when these creative people opened up about their personal lives and careers, and how that affected them in making the characters so realistic and moving during the recording process.
Photo Credit: Walt Disney Pcitures
An Interesting FACT
There are about 70 different species of animals that were created for this movie. From the interview with Jon Favreau, he wanted to see this Jungle world through the eyes of Mowgli, “a man cub.” To do so, they made animals about 150 percent larger than in real life. The magic of this animal world is to produce “this feeling of what it’s like to be a child in a big world.” And we know that Disney is always about MAGIC.
One of the fun animals who appears in the movie
is a PANGOLIN
PANGOLINS are unique, scale-covered mammals with long, sticky, tongues. These “walking artichokes” curl into a protective (and nearly impenetrable) ball when threatened, which is extremely effective against large predators including lions and other big cats.
Photo: IWF.org
Little do we know that it’s one of the favorite animals of Jon Favreau’s and an endangered species who calls for protection. Look, what’s going on with just this one animal in our world fauna.
• Pangolins are the most illegally traded mammal in the world
• An estimated 1 million pangolins were pouched from teh wild in the past decade to satisfy demand for their scales and meat by consumer countries of China, Vietnam, and the U.S.
• Pangolins are protected by International and National laws, but their decline continues at a staggering rate.
• If we do not do something about it, we could be the last generation to see these beautiful animals in the wild.
This Infographic tells a story of a Pangolin and what needs to be done to save this species. Check IWF.org and IFAW.org to educate yourself about and take action on the critical situation that the world animals, like pangolins, face today. Without such massive support, our animal world is heading to extinction. It is no myth any
more. It is happening now.
FAMILY NIGHT WITH THE JUNGLE BOOK MOVIE
If the above “magic” and animal world presentation as seen through the eyes of Disney’s Jon Favreau, Neel Sethi and a pleyade of gifted actors appeals to you – you are bound to have a blast at The Jungle Book event. Yes, with the Dolby Sound and Vision technologies, and with the talented virtual production techniques – this movie will keep your all senses on the verge of excitement and wonder. No Less.
The musical scores are out of this world. With the so-familiar-to-us “The Bare Necessities” tune, this version, performed by Bill Murray (Baloo) and Neel Sethi (Mowgli) will become your new tune to hum all day long.
Without a word, this Jungle Book movie will become a new standard in the cinematography of virtual reality and real-life effects. There’s only one human being among all the menagerie of the Jungle, Neel Sethi, who brought all his talent and resilience of a 10-year-old boy when the movie was filmed, to the big screen. We applaud him for his unprecedented “out-of-his-imagination” performance of talking and interacting with animals that we see in the movie. Would you be able to make it all as realistic as he did? That puts a huge smile on my face, knowing that this young actor has drawn deep from his soul and imaginative world to make this movie as memorable as he imagined it in his mind.
Photo Credit: Walt Disney Pcitures
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