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POM POKO Screens April 6th at Schlafly Bottleworks – Strange Brew
“They used their balls as weapons in a brave kamikaze attack.”
POM POKO screens Wednesday, April 6th at Schlafly Bottleworks Restaurant and Bar (7260 Southwest Ave.- at Manchester – Maplewood, MO 63143) as part of Webster University’s Award-Winning Strange Brew Film Series.
Strange Brew just keeps getting stranger!
As the human city development encroaches on the raccoon population’s forest and meadow habitat, the raccoons find themselves faced with the very real possibility of extinction. In response, the raccoons engage in a desperate struggle to stop the construction and preserve their home. That’s the plot of the 1994 Studio Ghibli feature POM POKO, a cartoon with a very strong message about conservation…with testicles. The protagonists of POM POKO are actually not raccoons, but a type of raccoon dog known as tanuki, a unique species of canine native to east Asia. This is but one of the details about the film that will confuse an audience unfamiliar with Japanese folklore, religion and history; all play an important part in the film and the “bawdy” humor in the film, especially the male tanuki’s ability to stretch his testicles to an enormous size for weapons or illusion, may upset parents who mistake this for a children’s movie. Along with the traditional high-flying adventure and humor of Ghibli films, there are also themes relating to death and the urbanization of Japan, particularly the Mt. Tama construction project that went on in the mid-20th century.
POM POKO is a magical and oddly moving studio Ghilbi film and you can catch all the testicular weirdness when it screens Wednesday, April 6th at Schlafly Bottleworks Restaurant and Bar in Maplewood (7260 Southwest Ave.- at Manchester – Maplewood, MO 63143) as part of their Strange Brew film series . The movie starts at 8pm and admission is $5. A yummy variety of food from Schlafly’s kitchen is available as are plenty of pints of their famous home-brewed beer.
A Facebook invite for the event can be found HERE
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