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Abstract
Two of the most interesting movies slated for the fall season, capable of attracting both young and old viewers, are new Claymation creations the first full-length Wallace & Gromit adventure from Aardman and the terrifyingly true-to-life Corpse Bride from Tim Burton.
The latter two shorts star the cheese-loving Brit twit [Wallace] and his loyal mutt Gromit, who are front-and-centre for Wallace & Gromit - The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the duo's first feature- length movie.
Cheese-loving Brit twit Wallace and his loyal mutt Gromit are front- and-centre for Wallace & Gromit The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the duo's first feature-length movie from Claymation studio Aardman.
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Dreams of box-office gold for 2005 might well turn to clay.
Two of the most interesting movies slated for the fall season, capable of attracting both young and old viewers, are new Claymation creations the first full-length Wallace & Gromit adventure from Aardman and the terrifyingly true-to-life Corpse Bride from Tim Burton.
Aardman is the British company led by Nick Park, Peter Lord and David Sproxton, who spin whimsy out of moulded Plasticine and stop- motion animation. They had a global hit with Chicken Run in 2000, which featured Mel Gibson as the voice of a talking rooster named Rusty. The Aardman guys have won a slew of awards, including three Oscars, for the short films Creature Comforts, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave.
The latter two shorts star the cheese-loving Brit twit Wallace and his loyal mutt Gromit, who are front-and-centre for Wallace & Gromit - The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the duo's first feature- length movie.
Scheduled for an early October release, the film has Wallace and Gromit toiling as the owners of a pest-control firm called Anti- Pesto (groan). They specialize in humane trapping techniques, which come in handy when they are summoned to clear a field of cute-but- pesky rabbits that threaten to lay waste to their town's Giant Vegetable Competition.
The dynamic duo figures they have the problem just about licked when a mysterious beast starts terrorizing the town and ravaging the well-tilled soil. Competition hostess Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham- Carter) calls upon Anti-Pesto to engage the fearsome beast. But she hasn't reckoned on the schemes of Victor Quartermaine, a local toff who seeks not only her hand in marriage but also a quick ticket to heroism by dispatching the errant hare.
Of course, neither of them have reckoned on the stumbling ministrations of Wallace and Gromit, who always manage to be in the wrong place at the right time.
A 20-minute reel of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit previewed at Cannes last month, promoted by a giant inflatable Gromit doll on the beach, and the picture looks promising. The Aardman players were all present for a question-and-answer session after the screening, which was emceed by Jeffrey Katzenberg of studio partner DreamWorks.
Katzenberg wanted to know why Aardman likes the Claymation technique so much.
"It's just a love of Plasticine, really," Park replied.
He wasn't joking.
"The real love of clay is that you do characters so well," he continued. "It's really good for human emotions."
It's also incredibly painstaking, which is why it's been five years since Chicken Run.
Park said it takes a day's work of moulding Plasticine and shooting it frame-by-frame to yield just three seconds of animation. And that's working with 30 animators using 30 cameras on 30 sets.
There's more, plus a clip of the film, at the website www.wallaceandgromitmovie.co.uk.
Tim Burton's new stop-motion animation Corpse Bride, which uses a different form of Claymation, has something in common with The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Both films feature the voice of Helena Bonham- Carter, who also happens to be married to Burton.
She's the title corpse in Burton's latest, set for a Sept. 23 release, which will remind many people of his earlier stop-motion sensation The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Corpse Bride seems like horror fantasy, but it is rooted in historical fact.
In 19th-century Russia, a time when anti-Semitism was rampant in eastern Europe, highway bandits often attacked Jewish wedding parties en route to celebrations. The bride would be pulled from the carriage, murdered and then buried in her wedding gown, an appalling act aimed at preventing future generations of Jews.
Burton takes that terrible truth and adds to it a typically twisted love story about a timid man named Victor (Johnny Depp) who is set to marry his sweetheart Victoria (Emily Watson) in a small European village. Shortly before the ceremony, Victor and a friend are travelling through a forest when they stop for a rest. Victor sees what he thinks is a stick protruding from the ground and he places Victoria's wedding ring on it, using it as a prop while he practises his vows - he has a tendency to get tongue-tied.
The "stick" turns out to be the bony finger of a murdered woman (Bonham-Carter), who is brought back to life (so to speak) by the unintended nuptials. She insists that Victor has pledged himself to her and she whisks him off to live with her in the Land of the Dead, leaving Victoria to pine for him back among the living.
There's not much yet on the website for the movie, but there is a fine trailer wwwcorpsebridemovie.com.
PINK BLINK The remake of The Pink Panther, with Steve Martin boldly trying to go Peter Sellers one better as Inspector Clouseau, is starting to look like more of a dog than a cat.
The release has been delayed again, this time way past the prime summer season it had been made for. Aug. 5 has become Feb. 10, and Sony has a lot of explaining to do about why a movie it considered a big tentpole for the temperate months is being hammered into the frozen February wasteland.
The company says it is hoping to do as well with The Pink Panther during Valentine's week as it did this year with Hitch, the light Will Smith comedy that drummed up decent business. That might work, but Clouseau is not only a hilariously inept cop but a clumsy lover. He's the opposite of Smith's smooth-talking Hitch, in other words, not exactly what I'd call date bait for the Cupid crowd.
Cheese-loving Brit twit Wallace and his loyal mutt Gromit are front- and-centre for Wallace & Gromit The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the duo's first feature-length movie from Claymation studio Aardman.
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