[ajprice]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/4326286.stm



The warehouse has burned down, 3 floors collapsed and the walls are unstable. All models and sets from the company's entire history were stored there and are now destroyed .

Aardman Animation's work includes:
Wallace & Gromit
Creature Comforts
Chicken Run
(edit) and Morph

[ShotgunEd]

Yeah I heard this on the radio. Bad news, so many great props and sets all gone.

Nick Park released a statement saying that its sad, but there are real tragedies happening elsewhere.

[Ω]

Originally Posted by ShotgunEd

Nick Park released a statement saying that its sad, but there are real tragedies happening elsewhere.

[dcmacdaddy]

I just saw Curse of the Were-Rabbit when it opened on Friday.

What about their archives, all their corporate history? Surely some of that was kept elsewhere, right?
How terribly sad. But, to gloss what Nick Park said about tragedies, there are a lot worse things going
on in the world right now. It is almost a luxury for us in the developed world to bemoan the loss of
some cartoon characters.

Still, all in all, very sad.

[bad_quote]

uh... so they were keeping everything in a building that didn't have a sprinkler system?

[ajprice]

Agree with you, there is worse stuff going on, but its still sad. dcmacdaddy, how was the film, apart from being .

[cmeisenzahl]

This is asbsolutely horrible! ;-(

Chris

[himself]

I'm sure that most of their stuff was insured... plus, add the box office receipts from the movie this weekend (no. 1!), and they'll have no problem rebuilding.

[dcmacdaddy]

Originally Posted by ajprice

Agree with you, there is worse stuff going on, but its still sad. dcmacdaddy, how was the film, apart from being .

My had more to do with the fact that I just saw the movie and learning that all of its source material was destroyed than with the quality of the movie itself, which was excellent.

I have one complaint and that is that the movie seemed a little too commercial, a little too Americanized. They seemed to be riffing on too many contemporary memes as if trying to hit all the comedic buttons of all their possible viewing audiences.
(Spoilers ahead).













Wallace turning into the Were-Rabbit is shown like Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk, all torn clothing and popping buttons. There is even a few bars, maybe five seconds worth, of the "tinkling piano" bit from the Hulk in the background.

There is one scene shot in Matrix-style "bullet time".
How crazy is that?!?

And towards the end the plot seemed to get lost in the action. It seemed to me the thrilling spectacle became more important than the story-telling.

The fact I was thinking these thoughts during the movie which is unusual as I am all about getting immersed in a narrative. But, I couldn't help feeling this disconnect between what I was seeing and what I knew/thought/expected to be normal for W&G.

[ShotgunEd]

The stuff from the new movie is fine as it wasn't put into storage yet.

And himself's post about insurance, thats not the point, the stuff that was lost has much more non-monetary value.

[Cubeoid]

Poor bastards.. all that clay.

[Eriamjh]

I heard that the Tim Burton "Corpse Bride" team is suspected.

[mdc]

that's horrible.

talking about aardman, has anyone seen angry kid? it's old, but maybe some people haven't seen it.
i love it

[ApplCmptrDood]

Ah man, that really royally sucks... W&G ROCK... Hopefully they'll be able to rebuild

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by bad_quote

uh... so they were keeping everything in a building that didn't have a sprinkler system?

Depending on how a fire starts and spreads, a sprinkler system might not do any good. Given the media Aardman works with, I wouldn't be surprised at all if this were some sort of chemical or grease fire, and if that's the case then even if there were sprinklers -and there probably were- they wouldn't have helped.

[Cubeoid]

Originally Posted by mdc

that's horrible.

talking about aardman, has anyone seen angry kid? it's old, but maybe some people haven't seen it.
i love it

Me too. I wondered why nobody said anything about Angry Kid thus far.. it's great.

http://www.atomfilms.com/af/spotlight/series/angrykid2/

[ajprice]

Yeah Angry Kid is great is great. Forgot about that one when I posted.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by dcmacdaddy

I have one complaint and that is that the movie seemed a little too commercial, a little too Americanized. They seemed to be riffing on too many contemporary memes as if trying to hit all the comedic buttons of all their possible viewing audiences.
(Spoilers ahead).













Wallace turning into the Were-Rabbit is shown like Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk, all torn clothing and popping buttons. There is even a few bars, maybe five seconds worth, of the "tinkling piano" bit from the Hulk in the background.

There is one scene shot in Matrix-style "bullet time".
How crazy is that?!?

And towards the end the plot seemed to get lost in the action. It seemed to me the thrilling spectacle became more important than the story-telling.

The fact I was thinking these thoughts during the movie which is unusual as I am all about getting immersed in a narrative. But, I couldn't help feeling this disconnect between what I was seeing and what I knew/thought/expected to be normal for W&G.

The splitting clothing bit is much older than the Hulk movie, so that's not a rip off. "Bullet Time" is just a term for slow motion, which is a common thing in action sequences-again, no rip off. You seem to have missed the homage to Snoopy and the Red Barron (down to the Fokker Triplane) in that action sequence, by the way. It was a send up of action stuff, just as W&G have always been a send up of a variety of things; what about Gromit's "Electronics for Dogs" book? It's all supposed to be a bit over the top.