Clickable Advent Calendar, 14: Wallace & Gromit’s Christmas Cardomatic
A new Wallace & Gromit short, ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death,” premieres on Christmas Day in England, but Americans might have to settle for their “Cracking Contraptions.”
No fair — England’s going to have a merrier Christmas than the United States this year! Why? Because Aardman Animation’s new Wallace & Gromit short film, “A Matter of Loaf and Death,” is scheduled to debut on Christmas Day on BBC One. Briefly titled “Trouble at Mill,” the new 30-minute short finds silly inventor Wallace and his sensible dog Gromit working at a bakery and encountering another mystery, presumably in the same spirit as “The Wrong Trousers” and “A Close Shave,” (both Oscar winners). It comes out on DVD in the U.K. in March, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out when Americans get to see more than a short preview.
A good substitute to tide us over may be the 10 “Cracking Contraptions” shorts developed ahead of the Curse of the Were-Rabbit feature film, each of which features a different impractical gizmo. “The Snowmanotron” features a winter theme, while Wallace and Gromit apply their typically witty whimsy to the holidays with “A Christmas Cardomatic” (it’s two minutes long):