Salient facts about
A Matter of Loaf and Death, in which Aardman Animations hops on the Jason Voorhees/Lou Ford/Hannibal Lecter bandwagon and has Wallace and Gromit face down a serial killer:
1) The movie, actually a short film for television, "references"
Aliens,
Psycho,
Batman, and
Ghost, according to Wikipedia. Hitchcock lovers might also detect allusions to
Blackmail,
Foreign Correspondent and
Vertigo.
2)
Nick Park, Wallace and Gromit's creator, calls
A Matter of Loaf and Death "kind of a bread-based murder mystery." Its first murder victim, Baker Bob, is based on co-writer Bob Baker.
3) The "making of" feature included on the DVD (on which Park calls
A Matter of Loaf and Death a "who-doughnut") is one of the better examples of its kind, with fascinating detail about how the animators get plasticine faces with no eyebrows and some with no mouths to express such a range of emotions.
4) The term
Anglo-Saxon gets bandied about pretty loosely, but Park is one of the few people I know of who has a real Anglo-Saxon name: Wulstan. (It's his middle name, according to various Internet sources.)
5) One of the characters looks like one of my colleagues. No, I won't tell you which character or which colleague.
(Read about Detectives Beyond Borders' visit to Wallace and Gromit's home town here, including a real-life tour guide who would be perfectly at home in a W&G movie.)
© Peter Rozovsky 2010
Labels: Aardman Animations, animation, movies, television, Wallace and Gromit
I've written about my trip to Bristol, England, for CrimeFest 2009. I failed to mention that Bristol is home to Aardman Animations, which means it's also home to those two lovable characters at left.
