Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Monster and Dumpling - Movie Talk

Here is a movie talk which I just recently did with my Latin 2 students. I was wanting to preteach vocabulary involving body parts, since we will be doing some readings related to monsters and fantastical beasts in the ancient world. Having found this movie short on Jason Fritze's national movie talk database, I thought that it did a great job of introducing this needed vocabulary.

The Movie Talk is called Monster and Dumpling (Monstrum et Cibus in Latin). 

Latin script

English script

  1. Students reacted well to this movie short. A number of them said that it had "feel goods" of the three-legged dog Movie Talk. One student insightfully said, "Both the monster and boy are outcasts - I'm glad that they found each other."
  2. Pause and ask students specifically at 3:00 in the movie short why the monster is sad. Some students thought that the monster felt sorry for the boy, because the boy was blind, but many caught that the monster felt bad for taking advantage of the blind boy.
  3. There is some English narration at the beginning of the movie short (about 6-7 seconds). My students did not like that! They have become so accustomed to Movie Talks having NO English in them that it did not feel right for them to hear it. 
  4. I showed the credits at the end too, because it shows the preliminary storyboard of the movie short. It appears that originally, the monster was ostracized by other monsters because of its looks, the character was a girl not a boy, and that the girl too was ignored and demeaned by others, because she was blind. 


  1. Thanks for posting this. I have a class that has been using dumplings (globuli) in their stories, so this will fit right in!

    1. How cool! Hope your class enjoys this movie talk.

  2. Hey-yo! I just made a slideshow of stills (because I stink at pausing) and a reading in French. If you want to link them here, let me know! Happy to share!