![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Cracking programme, Nick Park
Feb. 23rd, 2009 09:26 pmThere was a new Wallace and Gromit short and nobody told me! I'm stuck here three thousand miles away from the nearest bacon roll and only hearing about everyone I grew up with on TV gradually dying off - someone's got to keep me informed of these things.
I downloaded A Matter of Loaf and Death for us to watch this evening, though, two months behind everyone else. It's a little difficult to believe that it's been nearly fifteen years since the last short (not counting Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which I meant to talk about when I saw it but never got round to it). Something I remember being strangely absent from the film version was Nick Park's wonderful sense of parody, apart from an obvious King Kong bit right at the very end - but this one restored that beautifully from the start, with subtle and not-so-subtle references to Indiana Jones, Batman and Alien, at least, all being present. I also couldn't help noticing a Bagpuss in the foreground of one scene for a couple of seconds.
The strange thing about it was that it seemed to go extremely quickly, so much so that I was surprised when I checked to find that the other episodes were only half an hour as well. I remembered them feeling longer - this one seemed always to be moving very quickly, as if too many ideas were being stuffed in and they had to cut out pieces to make the whole thing fit into the half-hour that they had available. But the charm of what this man can do with semianthropomorphic plasticine dogs is undeniable, and the whole thing builds to an authentically manic Nick Park conclusion that escalates beyond the ludicrous.
In short, I don't think he's ever going to beat A Close Shave, but he's definitely still got something.
I downloaded A Matter of Loaf and Death for us to watch this evening, though, two months behind everyone else. It's a little difficult to believe that it's been nearly fifteen years since the last short (not counting Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which I meant to talk about when I saw it but never got round to it). Something I remember being strangely absent from the film version was Nick Park's wonderful sense of parody, apart from an obvious King Kong bit right at the very end - but this one restored that beautifully from the start, with subtle and not-so-subtle references to Indiana Jones, Batman and Alien, at least, all being present. I also couldn't help noticing a Bagpuss in the foreground of one scene for a couple of seconds.
The strange thing about it was that it seemed to go extremely quickly, so much so that I was surprised when I checked to find that the other episodes were only half an hour as well. I remembered them feeling longer - this one seemed always to be moving very quickly, as if too many ideas were being stuffed in and they had to cut out pieces to make the whole thing fit into the half-hour that they had available. But the charm of what this man can do with semianthropomorphic plasticine dogs is undeniable, and the whole thing builds to an authentically manic Nick Park conclusion that escalates beyond the ludicrous.
In short, I don't think he's ever going to beat A Close Shave, but he's definitely still got something.
