No Oscar® for Wallace    (08.03.10)
  

   They were billed as the favourites going into the final voting, but
   alas, Wallace and Gromit came home empty-handed from this
   year's Academy Awards night. The stop-motion duo's most recent
   adventure A Matter of Loaf and Death looked on course to win their
   creator his  fifth Oscar®, but in a surprise turn, the award for
   Best Animated Short went to François Alaux and Herve de Crecy's
   "Logorama", a film which makes clever use of a plethora of
   advertising idents and logos.

   Of course, five Oscar® wins would have been a fairytale outcome.
   Can you even get your head around that? Let's face it, to even get
   within a whisker of winning just one is a lifetime dream. But to
   wind up in a position where you might have five of those boys
   on your mantelpiece. Oh, it just beggars believe.

   So who's complaining? - Not us, and surely not Nick Park or
   the Aardman team. Just being nominated again really is well
   worth celebrating, because it means they're still doing something
   rather unique and wonderful down in those Bristol studios. Each
   new production continues to astound and delight, and "A Matter
   of Loaf and Death" packs so many pleasures into its Hitchcockian
   half-hour. No wonder it topped the tv ratings when it made its
   Christmas Day premiere on BBC1, fourteen months ago.
   And let's not forget, it already has a BAFTA to its name too,
   as well as an Annie...

   "I'm inbred meself, you know!"

   Wallace's gloriously inappropriate remark to Piella is The Hound's
   favourite quote from the entire Wallace & Gromit series. It's spoken
   by our inventor pal as he seeks approval from his favourite Bake O
   Lite girl, Piella, and there isn't a drop of irony to be found.
  
   Some folks have dismissed the film as being a little too-familiar.
   And that may be why they lost out in the final Academy vote.
   But The Hound says they should sit down and watch it again,
   and again, and again, because there really is so much to savour
   here. The pleasure's in the detail, it's in the set dressing, the
   witty music cues and those fabulous camera angles, it's
   in those perfectly thrilling scenes in Piella's house and the
   way that the chills are cut short by a quip, or roll of the eyes
   that gets you giggling with glee.

   So they didn't win, this time. But if they keep on doing what
   they do, it surely won't be long before Wallace and Gromit
   and Mr Park get another shot at their fifth shiny statue!...

                                          More: A Matter of Loaf and Death

 
 
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