The Brookston Family Blog
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After the movie, Alice played on the back deck with Porter’s new fire station that runs on the Thomas train tracks.

“Hey, Porter’s not playing with this, so …”

“I’m a firefigher, not a fire-man, Daddy! Get it right.“

The movie we saw today was the new Wallace & Gromit Movie, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. We were thinking about taking Porter to see it and toward that end we showed him the three previous Wallace & Gromit short films to see if he even liked them. Well, he loved them all but especially the first one. I’m hitting myself in the head (no Karen, you can’t help) that I didn’t think of it sooner, but A Grand Day Out, the first Wallace & Gromit film, is about a trip to the moon on a rocket ship they built in their basement. He calls the three films, respectively, Rocketship, Train (The Wrong Trousers) and Sheep (A Close Shave) and we watched each of them twice (and Rocketship four times). So we talked to him about going to the movie with Grandma and he seemed to like the idea, although even then he thought Grandpa should come, too. We tried to explain that Alice was too young to go and that Grandpa was going to take care of her, but he wasn’t getting that idea.

Anyway, when we got to Sarah’s folks’ place, he wanted to stay with Grandpa and we didn’t fight him on it. After all, I can’t really complain if he’d rather spend time with a real human being than watch a movie. In fact, I think that it’s a great attitude and one I hope he keeps as he gets older.

The movie was fantastic and I’d recommend it for kids and adults alike, especially if you already love Wallace & Gromit (and who doesn’t?). It had all the usual touches that make W&G so great and was filled with subtle details that demand multiple viewings to catch everything. I imagine with stop-motion animation, which is sloooooow and painstaking, they have loads of time to think up clever stuff for virtually every minute of film. The fact that they gently skewer the British aristocracy doesn’t hurt, either (although that may just be the socialist in me). Anyway, it’s very, very funny and you should go see it. Yeah, you.

Sunday we took the kids to their grandparents so Sarah and I along with Sarah’s mom could go to see a movie while Lyman watched the kids. Porter and Grandpa played in Ruthanne’s “Big Red Truck” before we left for the cinema.

This was taken through the window glass of the passenger door, which gives the image a certain quality.

Also taken through the glass, Porter practices his driving so when he gets his learner’s permit in 12 years he’ll already know what to do.