Product Description
-------------------
DVD Special Features:
Photo Gallery
BBC Christmas Idents
Dolby Stereo
Ratio: 4:3
Subtitles: English SDH
.co.uk Review
-------------
A Grand Day Out
Nominated for an Academy Award in 1990, the first short-film
adventure of Wallace and Gromit was this 24-minute comedy,
created by clay animator Nick Park over a six-year period at the
National Film & Television School in London, and at the Aardman
Animation studios that Park boosted to international accl. In
their debut adventure, Wallace and his furry pal Gromit find
themselves desperate for "a nice bit of Gorgonzola", but their
refrigerator's empty and the local cheese shop is closed for a
holiday! Undeterred, Wallace comes up with an extreme solution to
the cheese shortage: since the moon is made of cheese (we all
know that's true, right?), he decides to build a rocket ship and
blast off for a cheesy lunar picnic! Gromit's only too happy to
help, and before long the inventive duo is on the moon, where
they encounter a clever appliance that's part oven, part robot,
part lunar skiing enthusiast ... well, you just have to see the
movie to understand how any of this whimsical lunar-cy can make
any sense! It's a grand tale of wonderful discoveries, fantastic
inventions--and really great cheese!
The Wrong Trousers
Clay-animation master Nick Park deservedly won the 1993 Academy
Award for Best Animated Short for this 30-minute masterpiece, in
which the good-natured inventor Wallace and his trusty dog,
Gromit, return for another grand adventure. It all begins on the
morning of Gromit's birthday, when Wallace gives his beloved
pooch the gift of his latest invention--a pair of mechanical
"techno-trousers" that can be programmed to take Gromit out for
"walkies" while Wallace sits comfortably at home. Gromit's not
exactly thrilled with the new gadget, and things go from bad to
worse when Wallace rents a room to a new boarder--a rather
suspicious-looking penguin--to offset his rising expenses. As it
turns out, the penguin's a notorious thief, and the amazing
techno-trousers provide a foolproof method of pulling off a
diamond heist! It's Gromit's big rtunity for canine heroics,
and The Wrong Trousers turns into one of the funniest, most
inventive caper-comedies ever made, with an action-packed climax
on a speeding miniature train. Will the notorious "Feathers" wind
up in jail where he belongs? Will Gromit finally get his due
re? Watch this amazing marvel of clay animation to see
why Wallace and Gromit have become global celebrities--this is
comedic ingenuity at its finest.
A Close Shave
Hot from the international triumph of The Wrong Trousers, clay
animator Nick Park knew that his third Wallace and Gromit film
was going to have to be the biggest and best adventure yet for
the mild-mannered inventor Wallace and his perceptive pooch
Gromit. With the ambitiously zany plot of A Close Shave, Park and
his fellow animators rose to the occasion and their film won the
1995 Academy Award (Park's second O) for Best Animated Short.
This time out, Wallace and Gromit have teamed up to provide a
window-washing service, and that's how Wallace meets the lovely
Wendolene Ramsbottom, a wool-shop owner whose malevolent dog
Preston turns out to be the mastermind of a sheep-napping scheme!
Of course, no Wallace and Gromit adventure can be without a
grandiose gadget, so Wallace's latest invention is the
Knit-O-Matic, a yarn-making machine capable of shearing a whole
flock of sheep just a bit too efficiently! When the villainous
Preston gains control of the mechanical knitting marvel, Gromit
must race to the rescue, and A Close Shave reaches new heights of
clay-animation mastery. Every is a testament to Nick Park's
patience, his clever ingenuity, and his film-making flair. The
movie's so technically impressive, in fact, that the whole world
wondered where Park could go next. It was no surprise, therefore,
to find him making the transition to the big screen with Chicken
Run. --Jeff Shannon