Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

United Kingdom

2005

85 Min

Color

1.85:1

English

Currently 3.7/5 Stars.
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EXEC Michael Rose, Cecil Kramer

PROD Claire Jennings, Peter Lord, Nick Park, Carla Shelley, David Sproxton

SCR Nick Park, Bob Baker, Steve Box, Mark Burton

DP Dave Alex Riddett, Tristan Oliver

CAST Peter Sallis, Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Nicholas Smith, Peter Kay, Liz Smith, John Thomson, Mark Gatiss, Geraldine McEwan

ED David McCormick, Gregory Perler

It’s ‘vege-mania’ in Wallace and Gromit’s neighborhood, and our two enterprising chums are cashing in with their humane pest-control outfit, “Anti-Pesto.” With only days to go before the annual Giant Vegetable Competition, business is booming, but Wallace & Gromit are finding out that running a “humane” pest control outfit has its drawbacks as their West Wallaby Street home fills to the brim with captive rabbits.

Suddenly, a huge, mysterious, veg-ravaging “beast” begins attacking the town’s sacred vegetable plots at night, and the competition hostess, Lady Tottington, commissions Anti-Pesto to catch it and save the day. Lying in wait, however, is Lady Tottington’s snobby suitor, Victor Quartermaine, who’d rather shoot the beast and secure the position of local hero – not to mention Lady Tottingon’s hand in marriage. With the fate of the competition in the balance, Lady Tottington is eventually forced to allow Victor to hunt down the vegetable chomping marauder. Little does she know that Victor’s real intent could have dire consequences for her …and our two heroes. —wallaceandgromit.com

Director

Nick Park

Nicholas Wulstan “Nick” Park, CBE (born 6 December 1958) is an English filmmaker of stop motion animation best known as the creator of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep. He was nominated for the 2010 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film but lost out to Logorama. He has been nominated for an Oscar a total of six times, and won four.

Park was born in Preston in Lancashire, England, the son of Celia, a seamstress, and Roger Park, a photographer. He attended Cuthbert Mayne High School (now Our Lady’s Catholic High School). He grew up with a keen interest in drawing cartoons, and as a 13-year old made films with the help of his mother – who was a dressmaker – and her home movie camera and cotton bobbins. He also took after his father, an amateur inventor, and would send items – such as a bottle that squeezed out different coloured wools – to Blue Peter.. He studied Communication Arts at Sheffield Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University) and then went to the National… read more

Nicholas Wulstan “Nick” Park, CBE (born 6 December 1958) is an English filmmaker of stop motion animation best known as the creator of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep. He was nominated for the 2010 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film but lost out to Logorama. He has been nominated for an Oscar a total of six times, and won four.

Park was born in Preston in Lancashire, England, the son of Celia, a seamstress, and Roger Park, a photographer. He attended Cuthbert Mayne High School (now Our Lady’s Catholic High School). He grew up with a keen interest in drawing cartoons, and as a 13-year old made films with the help of his mother – who was a dressmaker – and her home movie camera and cotton bobbins. He also took after his father, an amateur inventor, and would send items – such as a bottle that squeezed out different coloured wools – to Blue Peter.. He studied Communication Arts at Sheffield Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University) and then went to the National Film and Television School, where he started making the first Wallace and Gromit film, A Grand Day Out.

In 1985, he joined the staff of Aardman Animations in Bristol, where he worked as an animator on commercial products (including the video for Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”, where he worked on the famous dance scene involving oven-ready chickens). He also had a part in animating Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Along with all this, he had finally completed A Grand Day Out, and with that in post-production, he made Creature Comforts as his contribution to a series of shorts called “Lip Synch”. Creature Comforts matched animated zoo animals with a soundtrack of people talking about their homes. The two films were nominated for a host of awards; A Grand Day Out beat Creature Comforts for the BAFTA award, but it was Creature Comforts that won Park his first Oscar.

Two more Wallace and Gromit shorts, The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995), followed, both winning Oscars. He then made his first feature-length film, Chicken Run (2000), co-directed with Aardman founder Peter Lord. He also supervised a new series of “Creature Comforts” films for British television in 2003.

His second theatrical feature-length film and first Wallace and Gromit feature, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, was released on 5 October 2005, and won Best Animated Feature Oscar at the 78th Academy Awards, 6 March 2006.

On 10 October 2005, a fire gutted Aardman Animations’ archive warehouse. The fire resulted in the loss of most of Park’s creations, including the models and sets used in the movie Chicken Run. Some of the original Wallace & Gromit models and sets, as well as the master prints of the finished films, were elsewhere and survived.

Park’s most recent work includes a U.S. version of Creature Comforts, a weekly television series that was on CBS every Monday evening at 8 p.m. ET. In the series, Americans were interviewed about a range of subjects. The interviews were lip synced to Aardman animal characters.

In September 2007, it was announced that Nick Park had been commissioned to design a bronze statue of Wallace and Gromit, which will be placed in his home town of Preston. In October 2007 it was announced that the BBC has commissioned another Wallace & Gromit short film to be entitled Trouble at Mill (retitled later to A Matter of Loaf and Death).

Nick Park has a part of Preston College named after him. The Park Campus which is situated on Moor Park, was named after him due to the media and animation inside the building. He is the recipient of a gold Blue Peter badge.

The Daily Telegraph remarked Park has taken on some attributes of Wallace, just “as dog-owners come to look like their pets”, overexpressing himself, possibly as a result of having to show animators how he wants his characters to behave.

He is a fan of The Beano comic, and guest-edited the 70th anniversary issue dated 2 August 2008. He also contributed to Classics from the Comics at the same time, picking his favourite classic stories for the comic reprint magazine’s new Classic Choice feature. —wikipedia

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