prehistoric Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Producer-Director: Nick Park – 2018 – UK – Cert. PG – 89m

*****

Ancient caveman Brits, rabbits, mammoths, dinosaurs, dastardly Frenchmen, and football – Aardman’s prehistoric, stop-frame marvel is back out in UK cinemas on Friday, 21st August

Nick Park and Aardman Animations’ epic is set in a prehistoric world of cavemen, rabbits and mammoths. For good measure it also throws in dastardly Frenchmen and football. Park coaxes great voice performances out of his all-star cast, while physical animation is in the capable hands of Will Becher (who directed the Creature Comforts TV series) and Merlin Crossingham (Creative Director for Wallace & Gromit since 2009 and subsequently co-director with Park of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, 2024).

At one point a mallard appears in the distance. A caveman hurls a small rock at it. The rock travels an awful long way. Much farther than we expected. Eventually it reaches the mallard, revealed as a gargantuan beast on the scale of a dinosaur. The giant mallard charges towards us and the hapless tribe of cavemen.

This is very much in the spirit of Early Man’s opening sequence wherein volcanoes belch fire and a carnivorous ceratosaurus does battle with a herbivorous triceratops clearly modelled on their counterparts in Ray Harryhausen’s One Million Years B.C.… Read the rest

The End of Oak Street

The End of Oak StreetDirector – David Robert Mitchell – 2026 – US – Cert. 12a – 99m

Film ***

Prehistoric Beasts *****

A family in a pleasant American suburb is inexplicably transported to a prehistoric time where dinosaurs and other dangerous creatures roam – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 14h

A typical family in 1980s American suburbia. At a local community get together, Greg (Ewan McGregor) takes part in a sack race. His wife Denise (Anne Hathaway) takes him aside for a serious conversation about their marriage, which she doesn’t think is working. She is also annoyed that their son Brian (Christian Convery) has bought along their dog Starbuck (played by dogs Buzz and Brisket) who has a habit of getting out of control. Denise is further frustrated when Greg bunks off to do some deliveries (it later transpires that she hates the Pizza Delivery sign he fixes to the car roof when doing his rounds.) The family also has a young teenage daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella).

Denise pays a visit to her elderly friend Mrs. Huddleston (a striking turn form Anne Gee Byrd) who is somewhat perturbed as to the identity of the flower that has sprung up in her garden, growing to about four feet high in two days and resembling a small palm tree or yucca bearing a fruit something like an acorn about the size of a hand.… Read the rest