The above cartoon appeared in a recent issue of the free newspaper Metro, as part of Anthony Smith's Learn to Speak Cat series. Nospurratu is a play on the title of and scene from silent film Nosferatu, and is subtitled "Unfed fiend." underneath. It's a pretty accurate description of my cats waiting for their dinner! Especially one of the black cats, whose name is actually Nosferatu, haha.
The parodied scene featuring, Max Schreck, from Nosferatu
Whilst driving along a road near Bampton in Devon we came across this sign featuring a rather spooky looking black cat! It seemed a little random, until we saw another sign nearby:
Black Cat Junction
I guess not everyone was so amused by the eerie feline though, as even further along our journey we found another sign that simply read 'cats eyes removed'. Unfortunate choice of wording!
Based on the Simon Bartram children's book of the same name, 'Pumpkin Moon' is a delightful, animated Halloween tale, directed by Hilary Audus. The story centres around a black cat that gets caught in the middle of a battle between a group of "good" jack-o'-lanterns, and some "evil" witches that want to take over the world. (Naturally. I mean, what else would evil witches in a kids movie want to do?)
The unusually large, orange, Pumpkin Moon is apparently what gives life to the jack-o'-lanterns, as well as all the Halloween decorations that the witches summon.
The animation isn't that wonderful, but it's a very sweet, spooky film, and even a little bit sad at the end. Though I won't tell you what happens of course ;) Also, for those of you that don't like musicals and cheesy songs, there's only one corny number in the whole film. Admittedly, the movie is only 30 minutes long, but still, it's not so bad.
If you have the DVD version of 'Pumpkin Moon', you will also get the extras, which consist of a mummy puppet and scary helper hands demonstrating how to make various creepy Halloween decorations. They look quite effective and are all super simple to make.
More screenshots of 'Pumpkin Moon' after the cut below:
