{"id":364,"date":"2005-10-12T18:05:52","date_gmt":"2005-10-12T18:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=364"},"modified":"2005-10-12T18:05:52","modified_gmt":"2005-10-12T18:05:52","slug":"wallace_and_gromits_home_is_go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2005\/10\/12\/wallace_and_gromits_home_is_go\/","title":{"rendered":"Wallace and Gromit’s Home Is Gone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bummer news for fans of Nick Park’s droll claymation creations (of which I am one, even though I haven’t gotten around to seeing the new Wallace and Gromit feature yet): the Aardman Animations studio in Bristol, England, has been utterly destroyed by fire. Casualties included the sets, props, and models from all three Wallace and Gromit<\/a> shorts (A Grand Day Out<\/i>, The Wrong Trousers<\/i>, and A Close Shave<\/i>), as well as from Park’s Oscar-winning Creature Comforts<\/i><\/a> series and the company’s first feature-length release, Chicken Run<\/i>. Items from the Wallace and Gromit movie that was just released this past weekend, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit<\/i>, were unharmed.<\/p>\n


\nIt’s a disaster for the studio, but as Park himself points out, there are worse things:<\/p>\n

“Today was supposed to be a day of celebration, with the news that Wallace and Gromit<\/i> had gone in at No. 1 at the U.S. box office, but instead our whole history has been wiped out,” Aardman spokesman Arthur Sheriff said. “It’s turned out to be a terrible day.”
\n…
\nWallace and Gromit’s creator, Nick Park, said the earthquake in South Asia helped put the loss into perspective.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Even though it is a precious and nostalgic collection and valuable to the company, in light of other tragedies, today isn’t a big deal,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the complete story here<\/a>, if you’re interested.<\/p>\n

For the uninitiated, Wallace and Gromit are charming characters brought to life through good old-fashioned (and painstaking) stop-motion animation. Wallace is a fairly daft human inventor who is constantly concocting ridiculous machines intended to make his life easier, but which never work quite right; Gromit is Wallace’s resourceful, heroic dog, who spends much of his time making sure Wallace doesn’t get pulverized by one of his own creations. The films in which these two star are delightful little pastries that combine timeless, Buster Keaton-ish sight gags with a gently British (but not too<\/i> British) sense of humor. The Wrong Trousers<\/i>, in particular, is a masterpiece; practically every frame is somehow informed by the old Hollywood classics. There are riffs on Hitchcock and film noir throughout as brave Gromit tries his best to stop a sinister penguin’s nefarious plans. The films are goofy, yes, but also very smart and warm-hearted. Sad to think that all the artifacts that created them have vanished from the earth…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bummer news for fans of Nick Park’s droll claymation creations (of which I am one, even though I haven’t gotten around to seeing the new Wallace and Gromit feature yet): the Aardman Animations studio in Bristol, England, has been utterly destroyed by fire. Casualties included the sets, props, and models from all three Wallace and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}