I love stop motion animated clamation, and this goes back to Gumby, Davey and Goliath and Wallace and Gromit’s shorts shown on nickelodeon. Wallace (Peter Sallis) and Gromit is probably my favorite of all. The Curse of the Were Rabbit is a great adventure for both the young and the old

On this adventure Wallace and Gromit are no longer washing windows for cheese and crackers. They have a security agency that monitors and manages alarms that protect specially grown vegetables to enter in the great vegetable contest that takes place every year at Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter) stately mansion. Suddenly Wallace and Gromit get a call from Lady Tottington as she has a bunny problem. Wallace being an inventor comes up with a special sucking machine, designed to ingest massive amounts of bunnies over a wide area. There at the mansion Wallace and Gromit meet Lady Tottington and the evil Victor Quartermaine.

Wallace and Gromit succeed in capturing the bountiful bunnies and succeed in making an enemy of Quartermaine. Wallace wishes to impress the alluring Lady Tottington, but his experiment to electronically brainwash his captive bunnies to reject veggies as a food source goes badly awry. He creates a monster rabbit that transforms into a ravenous veg-eating beast with the full moon.

Picture Quality:

The stunning anamorphic video is presented in 1:85:1. There are no edge halos to be found in the picture. Colors are well saturated, free of chroma noise, and dynamic and punchy. Shadow detail is excellent. Fine detail, textures of clothing and background are all well presented. Focus is sharp, and the only problem I could find was a bit of strobing that is inherent of all stop motion animation features. There is some CGI in this video, but I was hard pressed to find it as it is so well integrated in the presentation. The average bit rate is about 5mbps, with occasional blips that peak at around 7mbps.

The Sound:

The 448kbps 5.1 soundtrack is well balanced, and serves the movie very well. The film score produced by Julian Nott with help from Hans Zimmer is very well recorded with outstanding imaging in the front soundstage. The soundstage was deep, wide, and folded well into the surrounds. There is not excessive use of the surrounds as they only serve to enhance the frontal action. The LFE channel is mostly used to punctuate the deep bass in the music, but also some sound effects like the hopping big bunny are effectively rendered through the LFE. I did notice some unusual panning, and some what I would call mis-panning of sound effects that split them between channels in a rather unusual way, but it was not particularly objectionable. There is also a 192kbps 2.0 English, French, and Spanish soundtracks.

Extras:

The first real supplement is a feature-length Cracking Commentary by codirectors/cowriters Nick Park and Steve Box. They discuss in painstaking detail the writing, storyboarding, designing, developing, shooting, scoring, and editing of the film.

There are nine deleted scenes are also included

There are several quality featurettes that touch upon various aspects of the film and the studio that made it. How Wallace & Gromit Went to Hollywood is a biographical portrait of the creation and evolution of the pair as well as Aardman Studios. The documentary is punctuated with scenes from early Wallace & Gromit work and other studio productions, like the wonderfully droll Creature Comforts.

Behind the Scenes of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, A Day in the Life of Aardman, How to Build a Bunny round out the remaining feature segments.

[b]Stage Fright;/b] is a non-anamorphic widescreen presentation of co-director Steve Box’s first independent stop motion animation film. This is a quirky little film about Tiny the dog juggler, a vaudeville music hall performer incapable of changing with the times.

This is a wonderful DVD for the entire family. Aardman Studio’s did an excellent production job on this disc. In my opinion this is a DVD for your collection if you really enjoy Wallace and Gromit adventures.