Tomorrow's animal movies

I probably should have done a full-length post on Sounder, which is airing tomorrow (November 30) at noon. Cicely Tyson stars as the mother in a 1930s Louisiana family struggling to make ends meet when her husband (Paul Winfield) gets railroaded into prison, thsi being the Deep South of the 1930s. Against the backdrop of this is a coming of age story about their son (Kevin Hooks) and his beloved dog Sounder. It's a well-made movie, although I have to admit I find it a bit mawkish at times.

Perhaps more interesting is the pairing, or non-pairing, of National Velvet and International Velvet. Elizabeth Taylor, who would have been about 13 at the time, plays Velvet Brown in National Velvet, which tells the story of a young girl who, with the help of trainer Mickey Rooney, enters her horse in the Grand National steeplechase, and even rides the horse thanks to some terrible rear projection photography -- I can't imagine MGM having their new property do horse-jumping even if she were capable of doing it. That's airing at 10:15 PM tomorrow, not next to International Velvet. The latter movie is not a remake of the former, but telling a different story several decades on. Velvet, now played by Nanette Newman (wife of the director Bryan Forbes) takes in a young American (Tatum O'Neal) and teaches her to be a show jumper. International Velvet comes on at 8:00 AM.

One that sounds as though it could be interesting although is more likely to be a damp squib (I haven't seen it before) is Zebra in the Kitchen at 2:00 PM. Child star Jay North plays a kid who, in a fit of pique, decides he's going to try to free the animals from his local zoo.