MOVIE: The Wrong Trousers (1993)

by benmweilertNo Comments
The Wrong TrousersYear: 1993Rating: PGLength: 29 minutes / 0.48 hours There are plenty of movies where the second installment in a franchise takes all the lessons learned from the first film and uses them to make the absolute best movie possible. Terminator 2 (1991) and Spider-Man 2 (2004) are my go-to examples of this. This can also extend to short films, as seen by the second Wallace & Gromit short film, The Wrong Trousers (1993). There were a lot of improvements from A Grand Day Out, and I still think that this is the pinnacle of the Wallace & Gromit shorts. This time around, the Plasticine duo is up against Feathers McGraw—a dastardly villain who takes advantage of Wallace's kindness and gullible naivete. The pacing, music, and tension would fit right in with a Hitchcock film, which is what makes it that much sillier when the antagonist is a penguin with a rubber glove on its head. Having such a solid (and...
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MOVIE: A Grand Day Out (1989)

by benmweilertNo Comments
A Grand Day OutYear: 1989Rating: Not RatedLength: 23 minutes / 0.38 hours I grew up watching the Wallace & Gromit shorts on VHS. There's a certain nostalgia I have for these stop motion films that I wanted to share with my daughter. So I pulled out the DVDs I had of these shorts and watched them again. Not only do they hold up, but just thinking of the technical achievement to create a thing like this is mind-boggling. The first of these, A Grand Day Out, isn't the best of the original three, but it's a grand movie, nonetheless. Like watching a silent comedy of the early era of Hollywood, A Grand Day out has a simple (if not completely absurd) premise of going to the moon because Wallace (Peter Sallis) is out of cheese and he figures it's the best place to get some. The beauty of A Grand Day Out isn't entirely in its ability to appeal to children and...
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MOVIE: Wallace & Gromit – The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-RabbitYear: 2005Rating: GLength: 85 minutes / 1.42 hours Having grown up with the Wallace & Gromit short films, I've always held the belief that this duo is the core to Aardman Animations' success. For their first outing in a feature-length context, there was bound to be some growing pains with the transition from short films. Granted, this wasn't Aardman's first foray into feature-length stop motion films, but there were a lot of expectations riding on this film based on how well the previous Wallace & Gromit shorts had done. With the leap into a feature-length movie, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) pulled out all the stops for its visuals. The whole thing looks great, even if it's clear in spots that there were computers being used instead of just the raw physical medium of Plasticine. As always, Gromit is the most expressive silent character of this century (and I'd even say...
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