disinformation | chicken run on shrooms

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chicken run on shrooms
by Preston Peet (ptpeet@cs.com) - February 19, 2001

Not being much of a go-to-the-theater type anymore, more preferring to rent my movies and watch them at home, for my last birthday I made an exception. My girlfriend took me to see the first full-length Nick Park/Aardman film, Chicken Run, on mushrooms.

Let me tell you, I forgot many times throughout the film that I was watching a bunch of clay chickens singing and dancing, plotting and "organizing," which the head meany of the film, Mrs. Tweedy, refused to believe they were capable of doing. Seeing a woman made of clay tell her claymation husband that claymation chickens don't "organize," or plot escapes, that they were the stupidest animals on the planet, after I'd watched the chickens organizing for an hour already, was truly surreal, and I laughed out loud. I was caught up in the drama and excitement of the film, forgetting that this was animation, rooting for the characters of the story, willing the chickens to learn to fly. The mushrooms just made it an even merrier and more exhilarating trip.

First founded in 1972 by David Sproxton and Peter Lord, Aardman Productions takes its names from their first professional film, a cell-animated short they made for the TV show Vision On, centered around a wimpy Superman-type named "Aardman."

Forming Aardman Animations, they soon were making children's films, such as the Morph series. Aardman's official Web site notes that Sproxton and Lord "always thought there was an adult audience for animated films," and created two short films in 1978 for BBC, one of which, Down and Out, used real-life recordings from a social security office as the soundtrack.

Although both of these films were rejected by the BBC, they lead to a commission of five other "conversation pieces" (the Lip Synch series). In 1989, their film Creature Comforts, featuring zoo animals talking about life in an English zoo, won their first US Academy Award.

Nick Park, who joined Aardman in 1985, and is now co-director with the two founders, created the claymation short Creature Comforts. Parks had another film nominated the same year this one won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short, the now-classic first Wallace & Gromit film, A Grand Day Out, in which the intrepid, slightly daffy inventor Wallace, and his incredibly smart dog Gromit, take a homemade rocket to the moon to get more cheese, since "everyone knows the moon is made of cheese."

I have heard it said that laughter is the best medicine, and will have to say that more than once I have watched a Wallace & Gromit film, who also star in the hilarious The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave (both Academy Award winners), and forgotten the worries and troubles that were afflicting me, at least for a while.

A very funny new series Aardman has created solely for the internet is the Darren Walsh-starring and directed Angry Kid, featuring live-action actors and stop-motion photography techniques, which can be seen at AtomFilms.com. These one-minute-plus clips are definitely not "suitable for family viewing," as Aardman emphatically states. But, I can see myself in this mischievous yet earnest Angry Kid as he practices his cursing in the back of Dad's car, and his Backwards Writing, or fights a neighborhood dog for his own broken elbow bone.

There are a multitude of Aardman creations around, including Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer video, and Rex the Runt, a series of thirteen ten-minute films for BBC, where one can find any assortment of trippy happenings, and lovable, weird, and wonderful creatures with funny mouths and exaggerated accents, whether on shrooms or not.

Nick Park/Aardman Animations
Order your Aardman film here, if you'd like.

Creating 3-D Animation: The Aardman Book Of Filmmaking
Order this amazing book now.

The Wallace & Gromit Homepage
These are my favorite films of this crew, and I am personally enamored of Wilhelmin's devious dog Preston in A Close Shave, for some odd reason.

Wallace & Gromit Appreciation Page
Here is a list of other films that the creators of Wallace & Gromit have made.

Aardman Art Programing
This site is for serious fans of Wallace & Gromit, where they can buy very limited editions of various handmade etches for story boards, and other assorted goods.

DPS AniMate Assists Aardman With Chicken Run
Find out in this industry article (June, 2000) how the creators of Chicken Run did some of their animating.

Atom Films Delivers The Best Of Aardman To Web Viewers Worldwide
This is an announcement (January 13th, 2000) declaring the fact that AtomFilms has launched a new Web site in conjuncture with Aardman to bring you a vast assortment of Aardman films over the Internet, free. Aardman is to be vastly commended for this action.

Cybertainment: Aardman Claymation On The Web
The Times Of India (May 21st, 2000) gives a rave review of Aardman, Nick Park, and the new Aardman virtual newspaper, Aardman Observer.

Pressroom: Wallace & Gromit/Aardman Animations
Here is a short biography of Aardman Animations.

The Austin Chronicle Screen Aardman Animations
This Austin Chronicle article by Peter Debruge (May 5th, 2000) is a great review of Aardman in general.

Magic Mushrooms
Some info on 'shrooms here for those readers in Britain. Lots of info on other drugs too.

Magic Mushrooms Should Be Legal
The Dutch Health Inspection Service, in a government commission report, has decided that from the evidence, there is no reason why magic mushrooms should ever be illegal. In many places one is allowed to pick and eat the mushrooms raw, which figures since many of them grow out of cattle feces, and politicians are used to making the citizenry eat excrement, but as soon as they are boiled into tea, or dried, then there has been some form of "preparation," making them into a "controlled substance."

Aardman Observer
This is the official Web site of Aardman films, and is stuffed with lots to see and hear so take your time, look around, and get ready to laugh a lot. That is, if you like claymation with a twist of weird. Or even if you don't.

Dreamworks SKG Fan Site: Chicken Run
Although I am leery of mass over-marketing, if these guys (Aardman, not Dreamworks),are putting their newest films on the Internet for free (and they are), they deserve all the merchandise sales they can get, at least for now. Check out all the info on Chicken Run here.

Charm School Aardman Animations Dave Sproxton
An interesting 1998 article about how treasured Aardman is in its hometown Bristol, and England in general.

Aardman & Atom Show US "Who's The Daddy Now," With "Angry Kid"
This is a great review of Angry Kid, rapidly becoming one of my favorite animated charactors. The article reveals how Aardman creted his distinctive moves and visual style.

Profile: Nick Park
Find out just who this great animator really is.

Angry Kid
Discover the incredible Aardman character Angry Kid here.

Facts About Magic Mushrooms
This Web site gives you an overview of magic mushroom effects. Learn what to watch out for when shopping, oh, I mean, picking them on your own.

Identifying Magic Mushrooms
This is always something very depressing about the news every year I used to read in Florida growing up about kids who would go out to pick shrooms for the first time, and have no idea what they were looking for, then wind up poisoning themselves to death or coma, due to eating deadly (not magic) shrooms. So please visit, and take a look around this page before going out to find your own shrooms.

Psychotropic Delights
This Mapinc.org review of Sadie Plant's Writing on Drugs (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2000) begins with this delightful tale:
"Beginning in Europe before the Middle Ages, the semi-nomadic tribes of Siberia and Lapland discovered that their native reindeer had a voracious appetite for a certain kind of mushroom, Amanita muscaria. The mushroom, otherwise known as "fly agaric," is one of the most potent naturally occurring psychoactive substances known to man, but in its fresh, unprocessed form, contains chemical compounds that are difficult for humans to digest. So the shamans would follow and wait, and when the beasts had eaten their fill, they would drink the reindeer's urine - and fly. Men with beards, dressed in fur-trimmed coats and long black boots, tripping in the wake of their reindeer. Sound familiar? Yes, Virginia, Santa was a mushroom head."
Great article, give it a visit.

Super Chickens
Now the Chickens are loose in Oz! In this review for The Age newspaper (December 8, 2000), film critic Jim Schembri notes that even (the late) Linda McCartney wrote the film's creators, Nick Park and Peter Lord, telling them that she hoped their film would improve the life of chickens. Park and Lord say they can agree with that sentiment. So, get off your butt, go pick some shrooms, and see this film. Even if you find that shroom season is over, go see this film.

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