The animated-clay movie Chicken Run was very popular among Dopers last summer.
You should know that the film’s director/producer, Nick Park, of Aardman Animation, got his start with a series of three short films featuring the characters of Wallace and his dog, Gromit. These three shorts will be shown on the Cartoon Network Sunday morning from 10:00 AM to Noon, EDT.
The films are:
"A Grand Day Out" Wallace and Gromit love cheese. The Moon is made of cheese. So, they build a rocketship and fly to the Moon to get cheese.
"The Wrong Trousers" Wallace invents robotic trousers. A penguin uses them and a sleeping Wallace to rob a jewelry exhibition. Highlight of the film is a dizzzying chase throughout W&G’s flat on a model train.
"Close Shave" W&G rescue a flock of sheep with a home-made airplane.
All are worth watching and/or recording.
Aardman Animations is also responsible for the talking car commercials for Chevron.
Damn, I can’t program my vcr to record on that channel. I love Wallace and Gromit and my mom’s making me do the church thing on Sunday. [The only reason I’m waking up to go to a sunrise service is to go out to breakfast afterward.]
If you get a chance, check out Creature Comforts, also by Ardman Animation. It’s older than the others but also won an Academy Award for best short and is the Pluto family’s favorite of them all.
I’ve never seen it all by itself but I’ve found it in a couple of animation compilations. Check the animation videos in the public library.
You may also be interested to hear that Chicken Run was the first in a, IIRC, 3 movie deal for these guys. Again, IIRC, the second movie is going to be a Wallace and Grommit movie. (I know I got that right, with the possible exception of the numbers…)
Nick Park is amazing, and I love all of his work (Creature Comforts is also his). I think, however, that the win for Creature Comforts was bitter sweet.
He was in a film school (the N.F.T.S.; hence why it’s presented by Aardman & them) when he started making A Grand Day Out; that was in 1982. He needed money so he took a job at Aardman. The school kept funding him and allowed him to work at Aardman. So he finished the first Wallace and Gromit in 1989, the same year he finished Creature Comforts for Aardman. Now, CC is a great film, but it would have been nice for him to have won for what had become his labour of love (though the preceding two Wallace & Gromit films won).
Oh, and the three are available in a set. I bought my set a few years ago for $10 (Canadian). A travesty to be priced so cheap, but I was glad: they really are great films.
Smeghead, you got it all right (from what I’ve heard). I can’t wait for the W&G feature.
It’s a word. According to one source, it’s a variation on gourmet. From personal experience, it’s also a generic term for an unidentifiable technical ‘thing’ – grommits, widgets and so on.
Well, I say the Academy is already guilty enough of giving out Oscars for sentimental reasons. Creature Comforts was by far a better film than AGDO (IMHO, the worst of the 3 W&G films), so I’m glad the Academy didn’t submit to the idea that longer/more ambitious automatically equals “better”. And I assume you mean the subsequent W&G films won, not “preceding.”
As do I, Dave. I wouldn’t have pegged a Mets fan for having any taste!
[sub](And no, lets not hijack this thread…you can return with one cheap shot to me which I will let slide)[/sub]
A question for eveyone. What’s your favorite of the 3 W&G’s? Mine is “The Wrong Trousers”. That Penguin just kills me. “A Close Shave” is very near to TWT. However, I think that those two are heads above “A Grand Day Out”. That one doesnt do much for me.
To each their own, ArchiveGuy. I didn’t say that the Academy Awards should have picked A Grand Day Out, I simply said it would have been nice for Nick Park.
Since you brought it up, though, I like Creature Comforts but prefer A Grand Day Out. Again, to each their own (maybe it’s the seemingly countless times I’ve seen CC on television; many, many more times than any of the Wallace & Gromit’s have been aired, here).
But yeah, AGDO is the weakest of the three films, but that doesn’t make it bad. Still a great flick (that won the British Academy Awards for animation that year, which maybe meant more to Park).
And yep, I did mean subsequent.
Favourite has to go to The Wrong Trousers. The train scene is just amazing and I just really like the whole film.
Thanks for the alert, Jab1. If you’ll go to http://www.rottentomatoes.com , you can see that Chicken Run was the only movie released in 2000 to get 100% positive reviews.
