Paddington bear first made
his appearance on October 13th 1958, in a book called A Bear Called Paddington.
He was the creation of Michael Bond, and was based upon a bear he had noticed
sitting alone on a shelf in a London store near Paddington Station on Christmas
Eve, 1956, which he bought for his wife as a Christmas present.
In the story of the bear
whose favourite food of all was a marmalade sandwich, of which, in cases of
emergency, should be kept stored under his hat, came from the 'Darkest Peru',
and was sent by his Aunt Lucy to live in London as he was always guaranteed a
welcome.
Paddington is taken home
by the Brown family. He's called Paddington by Mrs Brown, after the name of the
station to which she finds him. His 'bear' name is a serious of loud growls,
which aren't exactly printable.
It was the television
series that drew my attention to the marmalade loving bear. Those began
broadcasting in 1975 by a London based animation company called FilmFair. It
was a different kind of animation to those of Danger Mouse and the animation of
today. Paddington was a stop-motion puppet that moved around a 3D set, where
much of the other characters, Mr Brown and family, Mr Curry - who Paddington
always managed to upset somehow, and Mr Gruber with whom he visited for his
elevenses on a daily basis were 2D characters. It was interesting, although I
didn't think about it at the time, how this form of animation worked. Whenever
one of the characters interacted with Paddington, such as when Mr Brown would
hand Paddington a jar of Marmalade in 2D, it would immediately become a 3D
object as soon as Paddington touched it.
So I was very curious as
to how Paddington was going to work as an animation in a film with real people.
Well, actors! Of course, we've seen it before. We've seen it from television to
cinema screens. Working with a character that doesn't really exist and you
spend your entire time talking to a stick with a tennis ball on the end, or a
green screen!
What's very interesting is
how 'lifelike' Paddington is. Over the years we've seen how advanced animation
has become, from cinema effects such as Planet of the Apes, to video games,
where every hair on the animated body moves individually, giving the effect
that it is infact as real as the actors performing with it.
The film was great on so
many levels, of course, I always have an ulterior motive for reviewing this
film, as you may already know. There are some very familiar cast members who
have obviously appeared in some of our favourite reviewable shows, none more so
than a certain 12th Doctor, and Hugh Bonneville, who played a Captain of a
pirate ship with the 11th Doctor, some years past. There's also quite obvious,
half the adult cast of Harry Potter, without perhaps Hagrid star Robbie
Coltrane of course.
Peter Capaldi plays the
iconic nosey neighbour, who we've all known in our lives at some point. We all
hate them but we wouldn't wish them any ill will - well maybe a smidgen. But
his character as bad as he is initially, does have a heart of gold that comes
out towards the end of the story, so it's as well to look out for this. There's
absolutely no element of the Doctor, nor should there be. I think this film
came out before he was the Doctor if I'm not mistaken. (I'm often mistaken).
The film was released on
28th November 2014. It had a star studded cast, with Michael Gambon, Imelda
Staunton, Matt Lucas, Hugh Bonneville, Peter Capaldi, Ben Wishaw, Julie Walters
and Nicole flippin' Kidman, playing as ever, the scary baddie, and oh does she
play it well.
It's a great film, with a
lot of comedy elements as well as a few sad scenes. It's well put together and
a fantastic family movie. If you haven't seen it yet – Where have you been, Darkest
Peru?
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