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| Tragedy Strikes - Aardman Animations Studios Incinerated! |
| 2005-10-10 |
| Meltdown for Wallace and Gromit NOT since Ben Hurâs chariot went up in smoke when Cecil B DeMilleâs original wooden studio caught fire has the film world suffered such a loss. Just as the makers of Wallace & Gromit were celebrating their number one success at the US box office, a storage warehouse containing characters and sets from their previous hits was burning down. The three-storey Victorian building in Bristol contained the âentire historyâ of Aardman Animations. Sets from films such as Chicken Run and the Wallace & Gromit series were destroyed in the fire. Lucy Wendover, a company spokesman, was holding back tears as she described what had been lost. She said: âThere was Wallaceâs bedroom from The Wrong Trousers and Gwendolineâs wool shop from A Close Shave. I canât want to go into the details of everything weâve lost. It is such an emotional time for the company.â The sets were part of Aardmanâs archive dating back to its creation in 1972. It included scripts, storyboards, props and several characters created long before the Plasticine figures of Wallace and Gromit were a gleam in the eye of their Oscar-winning animator, Nick Park. In the beginning was Morph, the original animated character who appeared in the childrenâs television programme Vision On. Several early Morph figures stored in aluminium flight cases are among the casualties, although the box from which he emerged was safe in his creator David Sproxtonâs office cupboard. Also missing feared melted are the stars of the television shorts Creature Comforts, including Frank the sporty tortoise, Fluffy the hamster, Pickles the dog, who works as a social services carer, and Terry the nervous octopus. Mr Park, who is responsible for Aardmanâs best-loved creations, was taking a philosophical view of the disaster yesterday. He said: âEven though it is a precious and nostalgic collection and valuable to the company, in light of other tragedies today it isnât a big deal.â A lot better than I could have done in his place. Ten fire crews fought the blaze as flames leapt 100ft into the air from the Aardman building in central Bristol in the early hours yesterday. Avon Fire and Rescue Service is trying to establish the cause of the fire and says it has not ruled out arson. The fire came on the same day that Aardmanâs latest film, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, topped the US box office. The film made $16.1 million (£9.1 million) on its opening weekend, compared with the thriller Flightplan, which was in second place with $10.8 million. Kieran Argo, 37, the companyâs events and exhibitions manager, said: âItâs a bittersweet day. We were all meant to be celebrating the fact Wallace and Gromit went straight in at number one in the US box office and is proving to be a huge success. Yet we came in to find this news this morning.â One of the largest items to have been incinerated was the pie-making machine from Chicken Run, which took thousands of hours to build. Mr Argo said: âIt was one of the largest pieces of set we have kept. It took months to research, develop and build at huge cost and was the centrepiece of many of our exhibitions over the years.â One of the few bits of good news was that none of the sets from the latest film was damaged. Others items of Aardman history also escaped because they were on display elsewhere, including the rocket from A Grand Day Out and Hut 17 from Chicken Run. By their very nature, film sets are not built to last, but the small size of Aardmanâs creations meant it was able to keep much of what it produced. More than 250 people worked on The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, painstakingly sculpting six-inch-high Plasticine figures by hand rather than resorting to computer graphics. In comparison, little of Hollywoodâs output has been preserved. One exception is Cecil B DeMilleâs original studio, which was rebuilt after it burnt down in 1996. Among the casualties that could not be saved was the chariot used in the 1926 version of Ben Hur. AARDMAN LOSSES Among the pieces of Aardman history feared lost in the fire are: * Plastic figurines, storyboards, sets, scripts and props from the Wallace and Gromit films A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave. * Plasticine and latex figures of Wallace, his sidekick dog Gromit, Shorn the Sheep from A Close Shave and the Evil Penguin from The Wrong Trousers. * All paraphernalia relating to Chicken Run â including the famous chicken pie-making machine. * Plasticine figures of all the animals in the Creature Comforts adverts. * Several early figures of the childrenâs TV character Morph If you are not familiar with the superb work being done by Nick Park, you owe it to yourself to rent all of his work and view it. I have shown his animation to Vietnamese Buddhists, Fundamentalist Christians, toddlers and octogenarians alike and all of them have simply adored it. Park has successfully marketed his work in the Chevron talking car commercials and Serta Mattress ads with the numbered sheep. As an artist and fan of high quality animation this is nothing short of a catastrophe. My heart goes out to Nick Park and all of his crew. How sad that just as their latest feature length film entered the American movie market in the TOP SLOT, they are confronted with this bittersweet victory. I urge all of you at Rantburg to attend "Wallace and Gromit - Curse of the Wererabbit" as often as finances will allow. Parks and crew need all of the financial support they can get during this horrible turn of events. I hope others here at Rantburg will contribute their own reviews of Park's work. |
| Posted by:Mister Rogers |
| #4 Stunned adults and weeping children watched a preview in disbelief as Papa Smurf and Smurfette were blown to bits when bombs rained down on their village. Oh, be still my heart! I SMELL OSCAR! Only baby Smurf survives the carnage, far worse than anything dished out by their usual enemy Gargamel. Final argument for massive defense R&D spending increases towards optimizing Throw Weight to Kill Ratios in all categories of conventional munitions. Now, if they'd only go after that purple dinosaur That last line is what I come here for. Apologies in advance ... [Airline Steward Voice]The maximum ranting light is ... on.[/ASV] What you read is posted by a man who most often features Bugs Bunny upon his "Informal Friday" necktie at work. I wouldn't have it any other way. Mel Blanc, Chuck Jones, (and the entire vintage Warner Brothers cartoon crew) produced some of the most beautifully intelligent, artistic and irreverent animated film ever. That said, The Smurfs and Barney the Dinosaur represent some of the most hideous animated character manifestations of all time. I will cite two very specific and utterly unredeeming ways both of them revolt any sort of common sense. 1) Per the Smurfs: Note carefully how frequently the plot line pivots upon individuals who often fail where groups instead succeed. A cast of unvarigated skin tone homogenizes any denominator of accurate cross-cultural identification and instead enters upon a world utterly lacking in credible individuality. 2) Per Barney: This Lobotomized Lizard © should never be permitted within the least hearing range of your children. Allowing those you love most to be incessantly bombarded with how some poorly sketched, long extinct non-gender specific imaginary companion loves them again and again is simply criminal. FREE CLUE to MOONBATS: DO NOT let philosophically amorphous and largely featureless entities play any significant role in your child's upbringing. Especially lest these entities should have an opportunity to say such a thing as, "I love you" to your child more often than you do yourself. Barney and the Smurfs represent a most hideous perversion of artistry and message. We lose Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy, Keaton, both Marx & Warner Brothers, Hannah & Barbera, Walt Kelly, Eyvinde Earle plus The Three Stooges. We obtain a disinfectant homogeniety sufficiently prophylactic against individuality so as to render mankind immune to the rare genius (See: Jared Diamond - "Guns, Germs and Steel"). I dread and fight against such a sterile world by denouncing politically correct thought, socialistic doctrine and its endless load of least-common denominator programming pap and so-called "news.". Please go and see any sort of Nick Park's work. You'll be transported into an artisan's world of rare and decent humor. The inverse nature of such programming as Barney or the Smurfs does not merit further discussion. [Airline Steward Voice]The maximum ranting light is ... on.[/ASV] |
| Posted by: Zenster 2005-10-11 00:00 |
| #3 Oh no! Aardman's stuff rocks - the best of the best animators. Ouch! |
| Posted by: .com 2005-10-10 23:47 |
| #2 Oops, sorry, thought it was a Smurf hideout. |
| Posted by: UNICEF 2005-10-10 20:52 |
| #1 Here's the link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1820035,00.html In my distress, I neglected to enter the link or even my correct monicker. This is a tremendous loss of priceless animation history. Again, I welcome others to post their own impressions of Park's work. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2005-10-10 20:35 |