The factory might have gone up in smoke, but not the fun. Nick Park's thoroughly delightful Wallace and Gromit animation -- his first full-length feature with these characters -- mixes the pizzazz of co-producers DreamWorks with the gentle English talent of a Roy Clarke, or Ronnie Barker's alter ego Gerald Wiley, or even Alan Bennett. It's a lovely family film packed with cheeky gags and buoyant fun, like the best-ever Bumper Holiday edition of the Beano, with the merest hint of Viz. The script, co-written by Nick Park with Steve Box, Bob Baker and Mark Burton, is a model of high-IQ comedy writing, and every scene and every frame is crafted with flair.
Wallace, of course, is the doughty north-country cheese-enthusiast, lovingly voiced by Peter Sallis, who lives in a small town with his faithful hound Gromit. They are making their living running a firm called Anti-Pesto. Wallace and Gromit cruise around in a homely van rounding up the rabbits who are devastating the locals' precious vegetables, with which they are hoping to win prizes at the annual fete.
Rabbit-related emergencies trigger an alarm at Wallace and Gromit's command centre. Each of their clients has a portrait whose eyes flash in a crisis, like the pictures of the Tracy family. Wallace and Gromit then slide down elaborate chutes to their vehicle, in fine action-hero style, and get stuck into the situation, caring for nothing but helping the community. But Wallace has red blood flowing in his Plasticine veins, and he wouldn't be human -- or rather quasi-human -- if he didn't have feelings for his distinguished and beautiful client Lady Tottington, voiced by Helena Bonham Carter. She has a serious rabbit infestation on her magnificent estate and Wallace is able to use his hi-tech rabbit vacuum pump to remove the beasts without cruelty.
His success with the bunnies enrages Lady Tottington's long-term suitor -- the villainous and splendidly named Victor Quartermaine, who is a hardcore field-sports man and believes in letting rabbits have it with both barrels. Victor is terrifically voiced by Ralph Fiennes, showing a hitherto rather underdeveloped talent for comedy. Clearly a terrible showdown is on the cards between Victor and Wallace. But have these romantic passions, heaving in Wallace's noble and manly breast, unlocked the beast in him? It is time for the film's cheerfully surreal moment of metaphorical madness. In order to cure the captured rabbits of their greedy ways, Wallace hooks them up to his most controversial invention: a machine for sucking inappropriate thoughts out of brains. The experiment goes horribly haywire, and he gets connected to the rabbits' minds, like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. And when scudding clouds disclose a full moon of an evening, Wallace's ears start sprouting and pink fluffy hair forms on the backs of his hands. The resulting horror is filtered through Gromit's drolly watchful presence.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would