Wallace and Gromit Retrospective FINALE: Curse of the Were Rabbit: Hop of the Heap
Hello all you happy people and welcome to the FINALE of my Wallace and Gromit retrospective! It’s been a heck of a fun ride: We’ve seen cheesy trips to the moon, criminal pengys in thrilling model train chases, robot dogs who can somehow own a business and whose business model is “muder a bunch of sheep, murder some humans ????” profit and...
...... the kind of things an elder god pops into your head to drive you hoplessly insane. IT’s been a fun ride, all thanks to my creative partner and fincial backer @weirdkev27. If you have cartoons you want me to cover, just hit up my inbox, and you can commission your own reviews.
But the ride ends here... as I mentioned last time I decided to end with this film rather than Matter of Loaf and Death as I felt it was a far more fitting climax for this: Wallace and Gromit is one of the most iconic bits of animation in both the UK and US, and it only made sense not to end with the whimper of an okay, traumatizing short.. but with the bang of their first and most likely only feature film: Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Curse was Aardman’s second feature film after Chicken Run, an utter classic that also proved to be a massive box office success, and as of this writing 21 years later is still the highest grossing stop motion animated film, with a Sequel coming to Netflix next year thankfully Mel Gibson free.
So with that momentum and a four film deal with dreamworks, it was only natural they planned a Wallace and Gromit movie.. AFTER their next planned film, Tortoise and the Hare. You all remember that childhood classic right?
So yeah let’s talk about that for a sec because i’d never heard of this failed project and i’ts honestly fascenating: Aardman, wanting to get another hit out as soon as possible, rushed the script for TAH into production, something their own spokesman admitted in. This went about as well as trying to ride a bear after taking a bath in a tub filled with salmon: The film was a mess and aardman was forced to halt production and lay off over a hundred staff members, something to their credit they deeply regretted and took full responsblity fore unlike most layoffs. Here they ddin’t have a choicec and fully intended to, and likely did, hire them back once they got started proper on Curse of the Were Rabbit.
So with it’s comptetition having caught fire and jumped into an oil derrick to douse the flames, Wallace and Gromit was bumped up to their current feature.
So naturally things went better this time with more planning and what not.
There was still a massive problem though... and that problem was Dreamworks.
See despite the simple facts that Chicken Run was one of their biggest hits, Wallace and Gromit being both a fincial cash cow and a critical success with two oscar wins and one nomination across the original trilogy, the fact said oscar loss was to Creature Comforts ANOTHER aardman short that made Katzenberg want to do buisness with them in the first place, DreamWorks having thought anything about Antz from trying to make what’s essentially a woody allen movie with antz into a childrens film, to the horrible art style, to having anything to do with known child molestor woody allen.... Dreamworks decided they knew better and wanted to make some changes to make the film more “marketable” in the US by americanizing it. They wanted a more bankable name to play Wallace, him to drive a cool big dicked sports car, and in general wanted it to be “less british”. Nick Parks reaction to this was swift and just:
And he and the rest of Aardman stood their ground: Sallis was irreplacable as Wallace and his car being a throughly british junker was part of the charm. They made a valid compromise though adding some bigger name british stars to the mix in side rolls with Helna Bohm Carter as Lady Tottingham and Ralph Finnes as the Villian, Lord Victor Quartermaine, both of which are terrific and i’ll get more into that soon enough.
As far as I can tell Dreamworks didn’t succeed in “amercanizing it” and as an american I kinda scoff at the idea they did: the terms, structure of the small town, and general everything still feels quintesentially british as always. And it’d be the last time dreamworks made a horrible mistake...
THE LAST TIME
As you can probably guess the partnership here didn’t last much longer: They made one more film with Flushed Away and ended it early, a story I will also likely get to someday. For the present join me under the cut as I take a look at Wallace and Gromit’s Finest hour.
Cleanin Up The Town:
So we open with the classic theme, amped up slightly for theater and a lovely intro where we see our heroes over the ages including Puppy Gromit and 70′s rocker hair Wallace. There’s even a really creative bit that has the heroes getting into a tiff, ending up in seperate photos and making up, including the sweet detail that gromit was knitting a new sweatervest for wallace that’s purple that I honestly wished while watching he’d wear in more stuff.. only for it to show up later in the movie! It just goes to show if you ask something of 16 year old movie it’ll give you what you want. Maybe if I try that with Are We There Yet? it’ll cease to exist. Ya never know till you try.
So our film proper opens as we pan over the town with everyone preparing for the annual tottingham hall big veg competittion, where the biggest veg, the very british term used here, earns it’s owner the coveted golden carrot. We’re introduced to many of the old folks including the Vicar who i’ll get to later because he is a treat.
The important one here is Mr. Growbag an old man who finds something nibbling on one of his wife’s pumpkins
Thankfully he presses a button and calls our heroes who are now running the cleverly titlted pest control service Anti-Pesto. Another touch I like is that there are paintings all around the duo’s house, each with a picture of a customer whose eyes light up when baldy and pupper are called to save their produce.
Our heroes get a neat sequence and easily capture the offending rabbit and throw him in their van. It’s a nice, short, but sweet sequence that shows our heroes new job, how valued they are in town, the automatic sensors they have set up to summon our heroes right away, all sorts of important exposition delivered almost entirely through actions. It’s a masterclass in storytelling honestly and something I only realized as I sat down to write this review.
So the next morning our heroes get on with their day: After Gromit feeds the rabbits, who their keeping on site for now in lieu of killing but are running out of space for, Wallace gets served breakfast which tragically isn’t some cool contraption this time but just him serving Gromit some veggies. Turns out Wallace is putting on some pounds, can relate, and is on a diet. Yes that old chesnut. It’s shown up in just about every sitcom, most comic strips, and I think was even chissled on some rocks some where in caveman days. Though it DOES occasionally work...
It’s just to me personally most diet jokes boil down to “the food dosen’t taste good” or
This being Wallace and Gromit though, they manage to make it work: It’s a minor element of the plot more there to set up that Wallace dosen’t like vegtables for plot reasons so it dosen’t take up too much time and we get two really cracking good gags out of it: Wallace having to be HAMMERD down the chute due to his weight, with Gromit looking at a jar labeled middle aged spread while he presses the button for it, and when Wallace tries to get some cheese while Gromit checks on his watermelon for the contest from his secret stash, he instead finds a mousetrap.
Though what also helps is unlike mos tof these plots where either someone’s forced to diet because someone else is or there’s just a lot of nasty sniping in general Wallace dosen’t resent Gromit and vice versa: Wallace gets it’s for his health, itt’s just like most of us he also dosen’t have any impulse control.
So Wallace decides to go with the most Wallace sollution imaginable: use a nifty invention to fuck with his own brain, the mind manipulation o-matic. Because as Psychonauts 2 showed absolutley nothing can go wrong when experiment iwth your own brain, certainly NOT mass murder, MPD or goat based cooking shows no sir.
Before Wallace can make his own brains extra crispy our heroes get another job and we’re introduced to one of the best parts of the film and it’s arguable third lead, Lady Tottingham. I honsetly didn’t remember totty much from my memories of the film so I was shocked at just how good a character she is. Helena Bohm Carter just fits perfectly into the flow of Aardman’s throughly british humor, bringing a nice amount of innocent, perky energy you normlaly don’t see in her rolls. Totty is a kind, sensitive and energetic young animal lover and rich lady and you just can’t help but like her and out of Wallace’s three love intrests, she’s easily the best. Granted one’s a murderer, but still she gets the most time and fleshed out personality and is one of the better love interests i’ve seen in a kids film.
Wallace is excited about the job because having a high profile, wealthy client like this could really improve their standing socially and economically and Gromit is.. well Gromit about it but nonetheless the two speed off.
A potetial obstacle to our duo’s big break pops up at the door though, Lord Victor Quatermaine, played by Ralph Finnes who like Carter does a REALLY amazing job, having a perfect air of an egomanical jackass who thinks shooting animals compensates of his lack of caring, personality and junk that dosen’t spotantiously light on fire when he’s arroused. Victor has been “courting” her ladyship . And by that she’s been reluctantly dating him while he’s been pushy, trying to shove her into marriage, and ignores her opinon on anything, wanting to gun down her Rabbit Problem when she not only keeps telling him she already has professionals on teh way but wants this done humanely.
Another thing I only noticed when I thought about the film for this review, and something I really like is it has a message: the film is clearly for no kill pest control, with our heroes running a no-kill service and it being very clear that while the people of namleless wallace and gromit town deserve not to have their hard raised crops eaten, these bunnies don’t deserve to die for it. Furthermore hunting, and hunters themselves are shown through victor which while not subtle, given rich white idiots like Victor love going to other countries to shoot precious wild life to replace the love their parents never gave hem with a big dead carcass, is something that really DOSEN’T need a subtle hand. It dosen’t whack you over the nose and GO this is bad.. it simply SHOWS why via victor, and shows an alternate method, if in a fantastical way: simply caputring the animals and finding somehwere else to put them.
That’s what our heroes end up doing, arriving to find a whole yardfull of bunnies.. .and while their usual neck trap won’t work on THAT many, they have a vaccum for that. Granted I don’t know how humane grabbing rabbits by the neck or sucking them up via vaccum is... but compared to lord “shot them and use their dead carcasses to prove my love to you”, it’s still far less psycotic. They also suck up Victor’s hairpiece, to his annoyance.
Her Ladyship though is throughly impressed.. and throughly turned on by wallace. And while as we’ve established the thought of Wallace climaxing...has an effect on me
I can see why he’d be attractive to someone given he’s kind, thoughtful and while a little attracted to her ladyship a through professional. She invites him to stop by any time. Lord Incel is not amused now that his girlfriend you know, has an option that cares about her and not trying to break his neck swimming aorund in a pile of coins because unlike Scrooge he has no upper body strength.
Profiteering!
There’s still the storage issue though. I mean i’d love pile upon pile of rabbits in my basement, but that’s on a conceptual level. Feeding them’s expensive, the waste situation would be too horrifying to comptemplate and my brother currently lives down there so I think he’d have a few objections to that. So Wallace goes for the simple solution: Brainwash the bunnies into not liking veg using the mind manipulation-o-matic!
But lucky for Wallace the ethics commity for small wallace and gromit town consists of a really stern poster of alan rickman that says DON’T under a picture of him that Wallace already lost, so tampering with the minds of innocent creatures it is!
So Wallace hooks himself up to the Bun Vac which I gotta take a second to say is just a gorgeous effect, though one using CG. But it’s telling I honestly couldn’t tell watching it, and i’m perfectly okay with mixing cg into a stop motion animatied movie to do things you simply CAN’T do with clay or puppets.
So shockingly Wallace trying to change a creatures basic nature with a giant fishbowl helmet hooked to a giant vacum on his head goes badly and a bunch of rabbits get jammed in the top of the vac an donce gets into Wallace’s helmet directly. The resulting explosion seemingly cures the Rabbit of liking Veg, Wallace considers it a success and the two go to bed.
Naturally given the film’s title and Wallace doing something that’s dumb even for him...
We get the titular were-rabbit that night that makes a mockery of Wallace’s own defenses, eats metric tons of Veg, and scares the shit out of the local Vicar, whose a parody of your standard doomsaying old man in a horror film.
So the next morning our heroes awake to ALL the alarms going off, and a pissed off town meeting ensues
Naturally our heroes are yelled at for not doing enough.. even though their traps were built for a regular rabbit and not the immortal hulk of hares. Though our heroes sleeping through it is on them.. and you know CREATING this problem in the first place.
The Vicar naturally rambles for a bit about the beast in classic Hammer Horror fashion. What a pro. Crazy Ralph would be proud. To throw assholine on the fire, Victor comes in, says the poor old man is drunk, and then wants to shoot this monster in the head.
Thankfully Totty stands up for our heroes and shoots down, pun not intended but welcomed, Victor’s “kill the thing we don’t understand plan. So our heroes now have the biggest job of their lives catching a beast they unknowingly created.
So Wallace naturally has a plan: Build a sexy lady giant killer rabbit to lure it out and have gromit show it off.
SHOCKINGLY this only results in said puppet falling off the roof and Wallace going to repair it .. only to disappear. Suddenly the beast shows up, if only underground.. but making a giant hill as it goes. Gromit gives chase and we get an excellently crafted chase sequence... but despite having a lasso, Gromit looses the beast.
The next day Wallace is mad because Gromit supposidly abadoned him.. which is the ONLY time in this entire retrospective he’s been rightfully mad over anything. Who knew?
But Gromit soon gets distracted when he notes a trail.. and finds it leads to their basement, seemingly confirming that one of the rabbits, Hutch, is the monster.
So they go to their specalities: Gromit actually tries to solve the problem by building a trap and Wallace welll....
And don’t get me wrong he makes all the gadgets.. .but at the same time those gadgets have also caused problems in 4/5 of these works: Leaking oil, which pissed off the Moon Meter Robot Thing, allowing the plot of wrong trousers to happen, giving preseton the means to make sheep into meat and of course deciding to play god with a rabbits mind then being shocked that it went horribly horribly wrong. So it’s really hard to give him credit for his inventive mind when it screws him over as much as it helps him.
So while Wallace goes to tell her ladyship the good news, and her ladyship invites him for a light super/date, Gromit finds more tracks after imprisoning hutch.. that go straight to wallace’s room.. which is caked in half eaten vegtables. Wallace is the Were-Rabbit... and the suns about to go down
And Then There’s The Other Guy....
So Gromit scrambles to go rescue Wallace from himself...
While Wallace has a good dinner with chemistry with her ladyship, even wearing the purple sweatervest.... while also showing signs he’s a rabbit man now. It’s just a cute as hell scene.
So Totty takes Wallace to her secret place.... which thankfully isn’t some slang term but her vegtable garden, which is worse for her than if she had actually taken him to bed but better for me and my sanity after last time. So anyway, we then get the two giggling together sensually offscreen just as Victor arrives for another half assed courting attemped and is naturally incredibly cross about this.
....
Okay putting my horror in a box and shoving it under my desk with all my other garbage, let’s talk about the fact Totty is semi-cheating on her boyfriend. She IS in a relationship with Victor, and shoudln’t be doing this and shoudl’ve just broken it off with him as it’s implied she was simply too polite to tell him she dosen’t want the kind of relationship he does. Just because your partner is an asshole it does not make it okay to cheat if you CAN break it off. She still retains some sympathy because Victor is a massive asshat and clearly dosen’t care about her, but it’s clear Aardman didn’t think the implications through on this bit.
Victor stomps off while Gromit pulls up to stop the date and uses the sprinklers to do so. Wallace is ONCE AGAIN actually legit pissed at Gromit... granted he’s not asking WHY Gromit’s doing these things but at the same time Gromit isn’t TRYING to explain it. Though in this specific case, he dosen’t have a choice. He can LATER but right now he needs to get Wallace too.
Unfortunately for our heroes they hit a few road blocks: a giant log in the road, without the proper hm to take care of it.. and Victor who shows up as Wallace is trying to remove the log and, in a shocking show of smarts, has his hunting dog keep Gromit inside as even someone with his head up his ass like Victor can see who the real threat is. Victor wants to beat Wallace up for “stealing” lady from him, which even if I don’t like the cheating thing... isn’t exactly how to solve this, and if she wants someone else beating the other guy up isn’t going to make her want YOU more. If you being a hypermasculine pile of orangutan cocks was something that was attractive to her in the first place why would she be going to someone like wallace?
Still the point is moot as there’s a bad moon on the rise... and thus we get our transformation sequence. And as you’d expect from Aardman, it, is, GLORIOUS. It’s horrifying, played completely straight and really would fit in a claymation horror movie, but also beautiful, easily topping some actual horror movies i’ve seen, with Wallace’s pain and slow growth hauntingly desplayed. victor is terrified as is his hound who wants in the truck with Gromit just.. giving him a slow motion head nod no in the best way possible.
And thus we meet Were-Wallace.. and he’s naturally adorable as the real thing, and props to them for this puppet. It’s still a practical effect, though unlike the usual puppets due to it’s size parts of it are automated so they can control it remotely, something that really COUDLN’T be helped given it’s size. Still it looks fantastic. Wallace then throws the giant log.. but not at victor he just wanted to get home. Gromit speeds off, hitting his lordship on the way...
Though Victor.. has plans and goes to the Vicar to get himself prepared... to slay wallace. Yes he’s decided to MURDER the guy just for dating someone he was also dating.
The scene with him and the vicar is fucking amazing though including the classic line where the Vicar says what will take out the rabbit is...... is..... a bullet. Victor of all people has to get him to specify what kind.. which turns out to be gold.
24 Carat to be percise. God I love that pun.
Back at home wallace, despite having Rabbit ears now is in denial about being a rabbit monster, and Gromit is naturally annoyed with it and takes Wallace downstairs, showing that Hutch not only is still locked up.. but unleashing the HORROR that is his current form.... or rather the adorable as we get our animal sidekick for the picture.
Turns out Hutch has become a mini wallace, wearing his sweatervest and saying pitched up old lines from past shorts and this very film. I love everything about this and have no notes.
So Wallace finally accepts he’s become the very thing he’s been hunting and resolves to fix it, while in town at the festival turns out Wallace went on the rampage last night again, so the town wants to cancel things, which Totty is against because this is her family’s legacy. Victor offers a solution though: he’ll shoot the creature and everyone but Totty agrees.. with Totty forced to go along with it for her family name and promising the asshole to make it quick. My heart just breaks for this poor woman and given how Callous victor is about just.. ignoring how she’d feel about this and taking blatant advantage of her desperation, yeah I can’t blame her for cheating. Still don’t think it’s 100% right for personal reasons, but Victor is a monster through and through.
So that night Wallace TRIES to fix things.. but his brain is too rabbity and unfocused to access his usual genius, which makes the poor guy break down. Thankfully Hutch inherited his poppa’s genius and begins fixing the mind manipulation o matic, while Totty shows up with the bad news and her disappointment in Wallace for seemingly lying to her, when in fact he simply jumped the gun. He’s forced to shoo her off... and transforms again, once again looking amazing and with that we’ve reached our climax.
Rabbit Rampage:
To avoid his master being shot, which for a refreshing change of pace feels earned in this film compared to “Wrong Trousers” and “Loaf and Death” as Wallace hasn’t actively done anything ot make the dog’s life worse this time and the worst he’s done, create this whole mess by turning himself into a were bun, is just as bad for him as it is for everyone else.
So Gromit uses the rabbit puppet from earlier to fool Victor and lure wallace out.. who procedes to grab the rabbit puppet’s ass.
I.. I couldn’t end this retrospective with my brain in tact could I aardman? you just had to put in twice the horny Wallace.
But naturally Victor tries shooting the puppet and while this allows Wallace to escape, it also leaves him amok, gives Victor free reign to toss Gromit in one of his own traps and then into his own greenhouse and then head after Wallace.
At the fair everyone assumes Victor won and is happy about it... except Totty who understandably isn’t happy a sentient creature was snuffed out for something he coudln’t control. Things take a turn for the panic as Victor TRIES to tell the local constable the rabbit is still alive quitely.. and he procedes to shout it into a megaphone.
So with that a panic insues as Victor tries to dispell the panic... by shooting into the air, leaving him with one bullet. We also get a great scene with Mrs.Growbag, the customer from the begining, running off with her “baby”.. only to run into Wallace.. and then to bring Wallace right TO them.
Thankfully Gromit arrives> While all this has been going on he’s been trying to escape only to give into despair.. only for Hutch to save him, since his voice pring also works as he has wallace’s voice just a bit squeaky, and the two team up, using Wallace’s prized melon to lure the hungry bun-man. It almost works.. until victor naturally screws things up again by shooting. He misses thankfully, but he proceeds to dig himself digger by trying to yank the golden carrot, the prize for the festival, as he’s out of golden bullets.
He made one mistake though.. he made an ex green beret mad.. no wait no.. he made a giant hulk-like rabbit man made. That’s actually worse. Nick Park admitted he had fun with this scene as it was a reason for Wallace of all people to go on a rampage as Wallace as he attacks Victor and hurls him away
This of course looks to the crowd like he’s just hurling an innocent man protecting them aside and not a steaming bag of dicks given human form so a king kong homage insues. In order to catch up to him, wallace takes one of the coin operated plane rides at the contest, it also has alls orts of neat carnival stuff, and RIDES IT UP A BUILDING IN ORDER TO CHASE AFTER HIS MASTER. But wait, there’s more, then Victor’s hunting dog Phillip decides to give chase leading to a LITERAL DOG FIGHT IN CARNIVAL RIDE PLANES ATOP A SKYSCRAPER AND SOMETIMES IN THE ACTUAL AIR.
It’s every bit as magical as it sounds and proves that Aardman CAN do a theatrical sized climax. We have Wallace pulling a king kong, Phillip chasing after him having stolen the carrot and put it in an elephant gun that’s on display for some reason, and Gromit trying to get to him while dog fighting ANOTHER dog. It might tie “Close Shave” for best climax in the series.
We also get a great bit mid-dog fight where Phillip has gromit on the ropes via a bar, about to push him over when Gromit’s plane, which is coin operated runs out, so they have to stop to refill it, with Phillip even having a lovely flower pouch for his coins. It’s just.. beautiful.
So while Gromit has the fight of his life, Wallace gets Totty alone, and eventually shows her who he is, by doing the little rabbit gesture he did at dinner I forgot to mention because this review has taken several days longer than it should've.
So Victor comes in and tries to shoot him only for her to mentoin it’s wallace and you know, maybe don’t shoot a person.... only for Victor to let it slip he KNOWS that and wants to kill him anyway. Thankfully Totty finally comes to her senses, sprays the guy with Pansy Spray...
And dumps him.. which she shoudl’ve done earlier but hey. No time like the present. Victor isn’t deterred though and has a villianous breakdown chasing after Wallace into the fairground.
Thankfully Gromit finishes his dogfight in time and takes the bullet, so to speak, for Wallace with his plane, saving him, winning the crowds respect for.. some reason.Wallace and Gromit fall into the cheese tent, while victor tries to gloat.. only for Lady to smack him with the reclaimed trophy.
So with all four now in the tent, Wallace seemingly dies only to be revivied by some Stinky Bishop cheese.. which is a real, actual factual brand of cheese. With that he’s saved, and they put Victor in the rabbit costume and let the mob chase him into the sunset. A fitting end for sunch an unfit wanker.
So with that our heroes go back home and un-wallace hutch, Totty presents gromit with the award and says she can’t be with Wallace, and Wallace has a smaller portion of cheese. Huh a bit unsatisfying really, seems like it’s just a lesser version of the close shave ending.... and as the creators said Hutch was so much of a character at this point, it seemd a shame to basically kill him. Really weak stuff
Yup that was just the alternate ending to the film. The real ending has Totty give Gromit the carrot and it seem like her and Wallace are getting married.. only for it to be her and the constable them breaking up amicably and our heroes letting the buns loose on the Worchestcire border, a joke so british my yankee ass dosen’t get it. A little better.. but let’s try this one more time shall we?
Yeah as you could probably guess, this was ANOTHER unsused endings, both rejected for obvious reasons: the first not only basically killed Hutch, but was again a retread of Close Shave, intetionally so but clearly underwhelming> The second was a BIT better and they were going to pipe in audio, but they felt wasn’t nice to wallace.
So we get our real ending. We get the carrot, which Gromit damn well earned, and the wedding fake out.. but this time instead Totty has turned her manor into a bunny sanctuary. The buns are freed onto her lawn included hutch, giving them a new, safe home, Totty friends and Wallace and Totty a future at some point. I like to think the next flim happened, THEN they got together after as they were just friends during the course of that film. I mean their just cut together.
So our heroes drive off into the sunset as we conclude this epic story.
Final Thoughts on the Film:
This film is excellent and I hope it streams again someday so everyone can share in how awesome it is. Aardman has the rights so WHY it isn’t I have no idea. But regardless this is the finest work in their catalouge, an epic journey with great side characters, a wonderfully daft main concept in a were rab bit and using vegtables as the victims in a horror spoof and SOOOOO many jokes I couldnt’ cram them into this review without it getting tedious. If you can find this movie cheap on dvd, pick it up. It’s gorgeously animated, acted and scrpited and is Aardman’s finest work i’ve seen to date, and that’s high as praise as I can give any film. It has everything that makes the franchise work stuffed into a 90 minute magnum opus.
Final Thoughts on the Franchise:
Well that does it for now. If it turns out I can play the game on my comptuer, or it ever comes to switch, i’ll review the telltale game at some point, and I might return someday to do the shorts and the world of invention series. But ofr now the sun has set on everyone’s faviorite british duo.
So in rewatching the series what did I think of it? Simple.. it’s excellent. I had my issues here adn there but overall these films are STILL masterworks, some of the best short subjects ever spawned, and easily one of both Dreamworks and Aardman’s finest films with this one. The sheer mind boggling feats they can do with clay, the warm and loving humor and the utterly amazing climaxes make this series a true classic and worth revisiting if you haven’t in a while. I was happy as could be to revisit it over these past few weeks and would gladly do so again and again and again.
So to close this out a quick ranking of the works just for funs sakes, though if you’ve been following these you can probably guess. From best to weakest...
Curse of the Were-Rabbit
A Close Shave
The Wrong Trousers
A Grand Day Out
A Matter of Loaf and Death
So with that I bid these boys a fond farewell. I do intend to return to Aardman at some point, though I can’t say for certain when as i’d have to grab most of their filmography first, but if nothing else this film made me want to grab the rest of the aardman catalouge and relive my life a bit. So look forward to that.
As for what Kev, who made this whole thing possible’s got cookin for me next: this week I go back to the disney afternoon for the tailspin and chip n dale pilots, and then.... it’s time to face a god. After that.. it’s halloween... and I think things are going to get a bit...
This month sees the release of The Dig, a star-studded Netflix film about the discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial in 1939.
To give you an idea of how Netflix’s vision compares with reality, I’ve taken another look at the film alongside archival photos used by the filmmakers – and share some anecdotes about the Museum’s involvement with the film…
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The film portrays the relationship between Basil Brown and Charles W Phillips, appointed by the Office of Works to supervise the dig, as quite antagonistic – a clash of class and culture between the self-taught archaeologist and Cambridge academic. While there is naturally some dramatic licence, Brown’s writings show that the men did not always see eye-to-eye at first.
Strange Days - Police of the Future | Renegade Cut -- An examination of Strange Days as it relates to police brutality in America and the likelihood of conviction following a recording of police murdering African-Americans. Support Renegade Cut Media through Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/renegadecut