ROCK DOG

ROCK DOG (vt TIBETAN ROCK DOG). Ash Brannon, dir., story, "written by [i.e., script?]." From Zheng Jun's Tibetan Rock Dog Chinese graphic novel. Elad Tibi, production design. China, USA: Mandoo Pictures et al. (prod.) / Summit Entertainment (US theatrical dist.), 2017. See IMDb for "additional story material" and complex production and distribution.

Computer-animated anthropomorphic animal film, unapologetically using traditional patterns of mountain-village/low-land city contrasts and family integration, but with contemporary enlargements, and a good deal of rock-'n-roll. See for contrast between rock star cool cat — he's literally a cat, with dark glasses — Angus Scattergood's isolated and isolating big-city high-tech mansion, with a robot butler and a massive classic mixing-board complex on the one hand, and the simple, very low-tech Snow Mountain Village of Bodi, the Rock Dog (a Tibetan mastiff who'd give up sheep-protection for rock and roll [and, yes, the characters' names are allusive, right down to the possibility of a faint suggestion that Bodi-the-Rock-Dog is a musical bodhisattva]). Since the village is populated by sheep guarded by Bodi's father and advised by Fleetwood Yak, a yak, the villains are wolves, led by an alpha wolf named Linnux, who runs Linnux Industries, a criminal organization that apparently specializes in very extreme fighting matches at a "Fight Palace" and the development of over-engineered, minimally-effective kidnapping devices (they also drive big cars, contrasted with busses). The conclusion integrates the worlds of the film in a rock concert that takes place in the former wolf/Mafiosi Fight Palace, where villagers and city people and reformable wolves join together to listen to music produced with appropriate levels of sound technology.

Note also contrast and association of traditional draymin instrument and a modern Western acoustic guitar, and both with electric guitars and high-tech sound production.

RDE 01/III/17