Rating: NNNNN
WALLACE AND GROMIT (Nick Park, 1989-1995) collects three of Park’s best shorts, two of them Oscar winners. Park is the animation genius behind Chicken Run. In A Grand Day Out (89), The Wrong Trousers (93) and A Close Shave (95), he developed the Chicken Run technique – putting the wry humour and lowered expectations of British middle-class life into the mouths of animals and pop-eyed people who look like animals. Even in their faces, Wallace and his dog Gromit evoke a world of tea biscuits, woolies and camper holidays. It’s an incredible feat, considering Park works with plasticine, not actors. “It’s not just a case of moving the figure each time as it would be with a wire-skeleton model,” he says. “With clay you’ve got to re-sculpt each time, otherwise, after moving an arm for a few frames, it just falls off. So with 25 frames per second, it’s quite a lot of sculpting.” Park, who also made Peter Gabriel’s groundbreaking video for Sledgehammer, is one of the most expressive sculptors in cinema. NNNN (July 28-29, Fox July 30-August 1, Revue)
