Friday night movie

It's been a while since we had a Friday Night Movie up. For one thing, I've been in the past few Fridays (confession: a Friday night movie is frequently a Thursday evening post, as you may have realized). For another, I just haven't had anything come up as a good candidate.

Matter of fact, tonight's FNM is digging into the past quite a bit, and it's one most of you have probably seen more than once. Nick Park's Oscar-winning "Creature Comforts" came out when I was still in high school, back in 1989 and has regularly shown up time and time again since then. But there's a reason it's a modern classic, and I'm throwing it up here because it's an old favorite of mine by one of my favorite animators.

In the unlikely event you're unfamiliar with the concept, here's what they did: an audio crew went around various locations, including a zoo and a rest home, and recorded comments from various random people who were willing to talk into the mike. Then Aardman Animations's brilliant resident Nick Park and his crew came up with plasticine animations to go with the interviews: animals in the zoo talk about feelings of security, how much better it would be to live in a warmer climate, and whether a fondness for steak and chips necessarily means you'd like to eat a lion, among other things.

"Comforts" is made available from AtomFilms, but Atom's embed code is inevitably wonky. I think I've figured out how to edit out the wonky parts, but if the film doesn't appear below (or fails to play, or malfunctions, or coughs up a washing machine from out of the spacetime continuum), you can watch it here at the AtomFilms website. And now, "Creature Comforts":