DVD Review: Gigi & Nate

Gigi & Nate
(DVD Gigi)

This 2022 film is a heavily-fictionalized telling of a real-life story. Nate Gibson is a vibrant, athletic young man, preparing to enter college and looking forward to his future. Then a freakish incident occurs at the lake near his family country summer cottage, in which he contracts Meningitis from the late water, and a delay in seeking treatment leaves him mostly-paralyzed. Though he regains speech and some minimal movement in his arms, Nate is ill-equipped to rejoin mainstream society, and mostly lives at home, cared for by his mother and health-care workers.

 

When the opportunity get Nate a Service Animal presents itself, he is paired with Gigi, an intelligent and empathetic capuchin monkey (a rescue animal specially trained to provide assistance to the disabled). Though it takes a bit of time for Nate and Gigi to fully bond, eventually she becomes an extension of Nate, helping him to improve his muscular skills and assisting him in many other ways, improving the quality of his life in many ways.

 

However, when a strident animal rights activist targets Nate and his family for what they believe to be inappropriate treatment of a wild animal, the Gibsons must make some life-altering decisions.

 

The performances in this quiet little film are marvelous. Initially, I wasn’t thinking I would like the performance of Charlie Rowe as Nate, but he ended up doing a great job, as did Marcia Gay Harden and Jim Belushi as his parents. But it is Allie the monkey, a performing animal, as Gigi, who steals this show!

 

My only disappointment is how much was changed from the story of the actual people that inspired this in order to make this movie. But, still, Gigi & Nate was a heart-warming and inspiring film, and I still highly recommend it.

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for this film ) | ( official Gigi & Nate web site )

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you watched this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

New Booktalk Booklist on BookGuide: Books With an Animal Theme, with Jodi R.

On Marcy 17th, 2023, Jodi R., one of the staff at the Anderson and Bethany Branch Libraires, presented a new talk at the Bethany Branch BookTalks, on the theme of books dealing with animals and the animal-human relationship. The 23 books on her list range from older classics, to recent bestsellers. And the animals discussed range from your typical dogs and cats, to horses, foxes, giraffes, elephants, wolves, polar bears and even octopi.

Check out Jodi's selections in this new booktalk booklist on BookGuide at the following link:

Books With an Animal Theme

Book Review: How to Hold Animals by Toshimitsu Matsuhashi

How to Hold Animals

by Toshimitsu Matsuhashi (636.083 Mat)

 

This brand-new, tiny hardbook addition to the libraries’ collection is an English translation of a 2015 book intended for Japanese readers. Author/photographer Matsuhashi works with a pet shop owner, a veterinarian and a reptile shop owner, to create a series of 36 short guides to the best/safest ways to manually handle a variety of common (hamsters, dogs, cats, ferrets) and uncommon (cockroaches, scorpions, crayfish, geckos) animals. Definitely aimed at a Japanese reading audience — many of the animals included are common to Japan, and often end up as pets in Japanese households, but not might be as well-recognized here in the U.S.

 

Each of the guides in How to Hold Animals features very specific text descriptions of how to pick up and hold the type of creature, with (usually) helpful illustrative photos. Each guide features small sidebar “datafiles”, giving the size, origin and natural habitats (in the wild) of each animal. Some guides offer more than one example of a subspecies — for example, the guides for dragonflies and butterflies show how to hold 5 or 6 different varieties of each, and several different types of snakes are included.

 

Some of the chosen animals, you may be thinking to yourself “why would I ever want to hold one of these?” Matsuhashi goes to great lengths to suggest scenarios in which you might have to hold them, or explain to others how best to safely hold such a creature. This is a light, simple read, filled with simple, useful information for anyone who’s adventurous around animals. Don’t expect detailed care guides for the included animals, but if you’ve ever wondered what the best way to pick up a snapping turtle, sugar glider, hedgehog, prairie dog or monitor lizard is, this fun little book will give you the basics!

 

[ publisher’s official How to Hold Animals web site ]

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

Review: Kedi (on DVD)

Kedi
a film by Ceyda Torun [DVD 636.8 Ked]

I’ll have to admit to two things — I’m much more of a “dog” person than a “cat” person, and I’m strongly opposed to cats roaming loose — I have a hate/hate relationship with several neighborhood cats that have chosen to use parts of my yard as their personal litter boxes.

None-the-less, when I saw the trailer for this film on another DVD I was watching from the libraries’ collection, it looked fascinating. And I’m glad I watched it. This documentary is charmingly look at human-cat relationships in Istanbul, a community which has had thousands of cats living on the streets since the days of the Ottoman Empire. The film cuts between fluid footage following several specific cats on their rounds through the city, to interviews with the humans those cats choose to interact with. The humans don’t claim to “own” any of these feline friends, but several have been adopted by some of the four-legged types. The humans have various poignant observations to make about the therapeutic and even spiritual advantages of relationships with the cats — “They absorb all your negative energy,” one shopkeeper comments. “They do me good.”

But most of the film focuses directly on the lives of the cats, with a calm, soft-spoken narrator offering brief explanations of the different cats’ personalities, and how the changing urban landscape of Istanbul is impacting these furry citizens of the city.

This is a pleasant, low-key stroll through an exotic city, its residences and street-front businesses, in the company of some fuzzy locals who enjoy the company of human beings, but don’t feel the need to be restricted to one patch of ground. Recommended for cat lovers and anyone interested Istanbul, Turkey.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Tamed and Untamed: Close Encounters of the Animal Kind by Sy Montgomery, To Catch a Cat: How Three Stray Kittens Rescued Me by Heather Green, or Call of the Cats: What I Learned About Love and Life From a Feral Colony by Andrew Bloomfield.]

[ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ] | [ official Kedi web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

Have you watched this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

New Readerlist - Creature Comforts

Creature Comforts
Bethany Branch, April 10, 2009 and Gere Branch, April 27, 2009
Scott C.


Scott gave a presentation on books and videos that explore the relationships between animals and their humans.

• The Octopus and the Orangutan: More True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence and Ingenuity by Eugene Linden [591.5 Lin]
• When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals by Jeffrey Moussaief Masson [591.5 Mas]
• Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence -- and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process by Irene Pepperberg [591.513 Pep]
• Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams [591.529 Ada]
• Every Creeping Thing: True Tales of Faintly Repulsive Wildlife by Richard Conniff [596 Con]
• Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat [j598.98 M87o]
• Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O'Brien [598.97 Obr]
• To Touch a Wild Dolphin: A Journey of Discovery With the Sea's Most Intelligent Creatures by Rachel Smolker [599.53 Smo]
• A Buffalo in the House: The True Story of a Man, an Animal and the American West by R.D. Rosen [599.643 Ros]
• Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat [599.744 Mow]
• Wolf Wars by Hank Fischer [599.773 Fis]
• Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin [636.088 Gra]
• Dewey: The Small-Town Libray Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron
• Life in the Undergrowth[DVD 592 Life]
• Bees: Tales From the Hive[Video 595.799 Tal and DVD 595.799 Bee]
• The March of the Penguins [DVD 598.47 Mar]