Book Review: A Grand Success! by Peter Lord and David Sproxton

A Grand Success! The Aardman Journey, One Frame at a Time
by Peter Lord and David Sproxton (791.433 Lor)

I really wanted to love this book, considering how much I love the short and feature-length films put out by Aardman Animation. But, while I do still recommend this book, it ended up not being quite what I anticipated.

Aardman Animation is the company behind the Wallace & Gromit series of films, Chicken Run, Early Man, and the Shaun the Sheep series. They specialize in stop motion animation, an old-school form of animating figures by moving clay or plasticine figures a tiny amount and shooting a single frame of film. The artists of Aardman have collectively won several Academy Awards and other film industry honors for their work.

This novel tells the story of the company’s founders and how they first got into film-making, and how they initially founded Aardman back in the 1970s. The book then jumps back and forth, exploring the expansion of the company over the years, the various production deals they had with several other studios, both in Hollywood and in their home base of England, and descriptions of many of the artists who are associated with the company. The book spends a lot of time talking about the Aardman business model — the philosophies that the founders have about how Aardman should be run — in fact, a large chunk of the latter third of the book goes into this in great detail…which detracted from the information about their actual productions (which is what I was most interested in).

I definitely learned a lot about the company, and a few tidbits about the production of some of their iconic films and videos (they did the animation for the music video of “Sledgehammer”!). But much of the second half of the book was a bit dry and business-like and I ultimately ended up skipping past sections to get to the more interesting stuff. If you, as a reader and viewer, are interested in the minutiae of running a company in a smaller city in England, you may find it more interesting than I did.

All in all, an interesting book.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to view the films/TV-series Chicken Run, Early Man, Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep or Flushed Away, all by the Aardman Animation studio. They also have multiple YouTube channels available for viewing their work.]

[ publisher’s official A Grand Success! web page ] | [ official Aardman Animation web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

Shaun the Sheep: The Movie on DVD

Shaun the Sheep: The Movie [j DVD Shaun]

This is one of those kid’s movies that is just as funny for adults. Like the TV show, none of the characters talk, even the humans — they just mumble like the adults in the Peanuts cartoons. The story begins on the farm when Shaun begins to think of a way to get a day off their usual routine. Disaster and humor ensue when he and the other farm animals put the sleeping farmer an old camper, which then rolls away to the big city. The farm dog, then Shaun, then the rest of the sheep herd head to the city to find the farmer – as it turns out its not so nice without him. If you liked Wallace and Gromit you are sure to like this too because they are made by the same company using clay models and stop motion animation.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Shaun the Sheep: Season One or Season Two.]

[ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ] | [ official Shaun the Sheep: The Movie web site ]

Recommended by Kristen A.
Gere Branch Library

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!

One Giant Leap for Lambkind

One Giant Leap for Lambkind
[DVD j Shaun]

From the animation wizards who brought us Wallace & Gromit, here are Shaun the Sheep and his many barnyard friends and foes. This DVD contains 6 of the 40 first-season episodes of this British stop-motion animated series. Each episode is about 7 minutes long, and features absolutely no dialog, although plenty of baas and other animal sounds. Shaun has human level intelligence, and is very crafty...which comes in handy for getting himself and his friends both in and out of trouble. Bitzer is the farmer's loyal sheepdog, but he's as much a friend to the sheep as a foe. In this particular collection, in which the episodes are aired completely out of order, two of the six stories feature visits from adorable meddling aliens. The humor is all very slapstick, and resembles that of silent film comedies of the 1930s. And the animation is fresh, unlikely most of the computer and/or hand-drawn animation common to today's televised cartoons. The only negative about this DVD is that the producers have chosen to convert the original widescreen British version to a pan-and-scan version on the US edition -- In several of the cartoons, it is very obvious that part of the image has been cut off. Still...incredibly entertaining. Aimed at kids, but the adults will definitely appreciate it as well. I hope the libraries will get more in this series! -- recommended by Scott C. - Bennett Martin Public Library

[ Internet Movie Database entry for this series ] | [ official Shaun the Sheep web site ]

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide web site. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month.

The Princess and the Frog

The Princess and the Frog

I've long been a fan of Disney animated features, both the "old school" style of 101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan, and the newer computer-enhanced one such as Beauty and the Beast. The Princess and the Frog was Disney's 2009 entry in that series, and featured a return to mostly hand-drawn art, featured Disney's first African-American heroine, and focused on a culture -- Cajun/Creole -- that had never been done by the studio before. I found this one to be only partially successful. The animation artwork seemed very uneven in quality, and although the instrumental score by Randy Newman was flavorful, his originals songs were surprisingly forgettable...a cardinal sin for a Disney film! The characters, on the other hand, were charmingly engaging, as always for a Disney film. The waitress heroine, Tiana, is spunky and driven, the "cute animal sidekicks" in the form of trumpet-playing alligator Louis and backwoods Cajun lightning bug Raymond were quite fun. The "hero", Prince Naveen, transformed into a frog by his enemies, was kind of bland. All in all, this is certainly a watchable film, but doesn't really stack up well to the classics in Disney's vaults. -- recommended by Scott C. - Bennett Martin Public Library

[Also available in vocal selections sheet music, junior novelization formats.]

[ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ] | [ Disney's official Princess and the Frog web site ]

Have you seen this movie on DVD? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide web site. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month.