The Pirates! Band of Misfits: A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - I'm not going to bury any sort of lead here. I really love Aardman studios and I have since I was a kid and watched their classic Wallace and Gromit cartoons. I always admired their brilliant stop motion animation and was a little disappointed when they decided to conform to standard CG animation, even if Flushed Away was modelled after their token character designs. Still, their story telling and quirky sense of humour usually wins through and that certainly is the case with The Pirates! Band of Misfits. This also marks a return to form for the studio as they have returned to their stop motion roots, incorporating CG animation for some of the special effects only.

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Panique au Village (A Town Called Panic): A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - My Uncle used to work for the famed Will Vinton Claymation Studios, which produced several Emmy award winning programs such as A Claymation Christmas Celebration, but the one that always sticks out the most profoundly to me is their feature film, The Adventures of Mark Twain (1986). I adored this style of animation, and I cherished the opportunity that he presented to my brothers and I to tour the studio when we were younger. If you're unfamiliar with claymation, it is animation that utilises stop motion filming techniques with clay models to tell stories through film. Wallace & Gromit have been among the more popular contemporary uses of it, same with Chicken Run, both by Aardman Animations out of England. As a result, this style of animation has always had a special place in my cinematic-loving heart, particularly with the decline of Disney animated films in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 2009 though, my attention was captured by a trailer for Panique au Village, a Belgian stop motion animated feature film, which debuted at the 2009 Cannes film festival.

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