Friday night was literature. Saturday night was music. Sunday afternoon was film. How does one begin to describe the wacky and loveable Wallace and Gromit? Well, for starters, they are made out of clay.

British director Nick Park created Wallace and Gromit over 20 years ago. Wallace is a cheese loving inventor who, in his debut short film, A Grand Day Out, built a rocket ship to travel to the moon. Why? Because it is made of cheese, of course! His ever-faithful companion is his dog Gromit. Although Gromit never speaks (in fact, he doesn't even have a mouth), he is often the brains behind the operation. Gromit is always getting Wallace out of trouble, not to mention the fact that he is always pampering his master by making him breakfast and such.

In their first feature film, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit, the two quirky characters run Anti Pesto, a pest control business. They have alarms on all the gardens in town and whenever a bunny intrudes on some townsperson's vegetables, Wallace and Gromit rush to the scene and capture it… humanely, of course.

With the annual Giant Vegetable Competition rapidly approaching, the whole town is obsessed with keeping their carrots and watermelons safe from furry varmint. Wallace and Gromit seem to have their hands full as it is when a gigantic, rampaging rabbit attacks gardens and greenhouses all over town. No cabbage is safe. No pumpkin feels unthreatened. The Were Rabbit is loose and on the prowl… and he only comes out at night. Owwwwwwwooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!

What a fantastic movie! Honestly, I need to go see it again because I missed many of the characters' lines as I was laughing so hard. If you don't know Wallace and Gromit from their earlier short films, perhaps you remember the movie Chicken Run? It came out in 2000. The director, Nick Park, is the same Nick Park who created Wallace & Gromit.

After the film, Park came out to be interviewed by Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker. We learned a lot about Wallace and Gromit. We learned that Wallace came first and Park decided that he needed a partner. So he started working on molding a clay cat for Wallace. That proved to be difficult and he scratched the cat idea and moved on to a dog. Just because "dogs have rounder shapes and are easier to mold out of clay."

Park also said that on a good day of moving the clay figurines around on their little sets, they would be thrilled if three seconds worth of action was filmed. That's animation for you. You'd never guess, when you're watching a movie, how long it actually takes and how many frames go into the filming of just one small movement like the waving of a hand. On screen, everything just zooms by looking flawless. In actuality, it is a precise and painstaking process—one that Nick Park absolutely loves.

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit opens everywhere on October 7th. Go see it and tell us what you think!