Hundreds of Animals were jailed this afternoon, after a group of angry protesters interrupted the Noon Nuttiness screening at the Park Cinema and demanded that audience members hand over their cackle™–enabled devices.

The protesters, who belong to a group that calls itself Realidad Incorporated, stormed the Cinema during the opening credits of the comedy Kribbles. In between making cackling sounds and insulting the cinema’s patrons, they grabbed the cackle™–enabled devices within their reach and threw them to the ground. They then demanded that all patrons relinquish their devices.

“At first I thought it was a stunt…part of the comedy experience,” said one witness, who appeared to be in shock. “Even when they were breaking them [the devices]…I thought it was [representatives of] GooseBook. Until they started fighting and I saw Animals down on the ground. That’s when I knew it wasn’t planned and I started to get scared.”

Many patrons, who had been lent the devices by GooseBook to use during the film, refused to surrender them. It was at this point, Park Police say, that the scuffle turned violent.

“The RI members were yelling at the audience, but the audience wouldn’t give up their devices,” said a Park Police Officer called to the scene. “They didn’t even belong to them. It was kind of strange. It was like they were willing to die for them,” he said.

The RI members then became aggressive and began to physically attack the patrons in an effort to force them to release their devices. This resulted in a counterattack by the patrons, according to a police report filed this afternoon. In all, almost three hundred Animals were hauled off to The Park jail. Eleven others, who were sent to The Park Hospital for the Afflicted and Infirm, will face charges as soon as they are discharged, Police said.

According to a statement released by Realidad Incorporated (also known as Reality Incorporated), the members of their group were acting in protest against cackle, the new “happy only” social networking site rolled out in August by GooseBook.

“At such a difficult time in the life of The Park, we find it unbelievably offensive that a company would invent a site that, in effect, denied the reality of Park Animals in favor of a sugar-coated view,” the statement read in part.

Manwel Kelb, left, and Eamon Madra star in The Dog Paddle as rival swimmers forced to compete together as paddlers after a mixup occurs in the qualifier for the “big race.”

The Dog Paddle
♥♥♥♥♥♥

Starring Manwel Kelb, Eamon Madra and Vicente Perro. Directed by Sofia Koira. First screening: October 2; repeat screening October 4 at the Park Cinema. 72 minutes.

The Dog Paddle, which stars two of The Park’s best known Canine comedic actors (Kelb and Madra) as well as newcomer Vicente Perro, hinges on a familiar Park issue: two rival Canine swimmers are vying for the opportunity to compete in the first-ever Dog paddle event of the Interspecial Summer Games. After the qualifying final is cancelled due to a vicious storm, the athletes are told that both their names have been entered in the “big race.” What Kelb and Madra’s characters realize too late is that the big race they’ve been entered in is a different kind of Dog paddle race: one that involves two Dogs, two paddles, and a canoe.

The reaction of the two characters to the news that they must cooperate with each other rather than compete (and do so in a canoe) nets us some priceless physical comedy — the sort that both actors are famous for.

But it’s what happens next that elevates The Dog Paddle to comedic art: the film slows down just long enough to allow us to see both Dogs in a different light. In this case, it’s the twilight before the big race, when they finally decide they’d better talk strategy if they’re going to have any chance at all of winning.

In the hands of another director, this scene might have turned the film into a tragicomedy. But in the hands of the skilled and savvy Sofia Koira, who is quite a hoot herself, the poignancy becomes so off-balance that it rights the canoe and steers the rest of the film to its conclusion, which I won’t spoil for you here.

Who would have thought that a send-up of the Canine Athletic Association’s bid to reinstate the Dog paddle as a competitive swimming stroke could be so funny? Certainly not this critic, but the surprise was well worth the humility with which I will be forced to live for some time.