Yeah, yeah … it’s old news if you’re in the UK but I’m not and these were never available here …
One of the side benefits to being the parent of a young child is that you get to regress and put your childish behavior and possessions down to the kid. Well, thing is I actually owned everything Pixar and Aardman had released on this side of the ocean well before my son came into the picture and I still enjoy these things every bit as much as the boy does. So I was very pleased when I came across this. Before cooking up the brilliant Wallace and Gromit animator Nick Park put together a short film called Creature Comforts. It took the audio from unscripted interviews with people discussing zoo conditions and placed the dialogue into the mouths of stop motion animated animals. The original Creature Comforts won an Oscar, and for good reason – it’s a hilarious piece of work thanks to the basicly absurd combination of obviously human dialogue in animal’s mouths. The concept was resurrected a few years ago for a series of heating company ads which, in turn, proved so popular that Aardman cooked up an entire series based on the concept. I stumbled across these clips from the show last week and immediately turned around and ordered the UK DVDs. Those turned up today and it’s brilliant stuff … check the clips out here and the two DVDs are available here and here.
And I’ll try to avoid purchasing not so frothy but rather quite flat beverages next time. Huzzah!
If I must. I’ll swap you for the Creature Comforts discs …
Bubba: Borrow my copy of Robbie the Reindeer. One of those things that kids will laugh AT and parents with laugh WITH. If I am not mistaken it stars Ardal O’Hanlon from Father Ted as Robbie.
i highly recommend the series of “rex the runt” if i remember correctly there have been two made but there was a few years between them. the humour is more adult and sophisticated, and the plots thoroughly surreal. “robbie the reindeer” is more like the “wallace and gromit” shorts in that theyre really family watching, easy to follow, fairly familiar plots – but great fun : i think there have been two of these, at around an hour each…
“chicken run” has to be the worst thing aardman have done…
and i am not too keen on “angry kid”… the worst thing about the TV showings of aardman stuff is they tend to be shown over christmas time and so get odd slots in the scheduling so theyre hard to see the entire series. they do repeat them occasionally though.
i highly recommend the series of “rex the runt” if i remember correctly there have been two made but there was a few years between them. the humour is more adult and sophisticated, and the plots thoroughly surreal. “robbie the reindeer” is more like the “wallace and gromit” shorts in that theyre really family watching, easy to follow, fairly familiar plots – but great fun : i think there have been two of these, at around an hour each…
“chicken run” has to be the worst thing aardman have done…
and i am not too keen on “angry kid”… the worst thing about the TV showings of aardman stuff is they tend to be shown over christmas time and so get odd slots in the scheduling so theyre hard to see the entire series. they do repeat them occasionally though.
Though I may be mobbed for heresy, I’ve actually never seen Wallace and Grommit. I did see chicken run and found it…amusing, and not in a bad way.
So Rex the Runt is worth the investment? I’ve only seen a couple little clips online and they were interesting but didn’t really grab my attention. I LOVE Angry Kid, but he’s never been on DVD here. I imported the season one disc from the UK and am eagerly awaiting the season two. We posted a link to the Angry Kid site at Atom Films a few days back. They’ve got about half of the S2 episodes there. I’ve never seen Robbie, either, actually, though thte trailer always strikes me as being pretty funny.
OOPS :
yeh : the early “creature comforts” used (i think) unscripted improvised words from people put to animation of animals… and there was a series of adverts that followed for central heating (spawning merchandise galore)… this new series aired here in the UK over last christmas and is nicely animated but theyre scripted this time and a little contrived. still, if you like aardman, you should like this… what about aardmans “robbie the reindeer” and other series / one-offs : they should also be available? “rex the runt” was superb (but much more adult)… and i am sure “angry kid” also : BTW – theres a new series of that with clips at the aardman site now… theyve done all sorts of adverts too (PG Tips : tea)…