Animated Animations -- Wallace, Gromit And Other Aardman Creations Showcased

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XXX 1/2 "Wallace & Gromit: The Best of Aardman Animations," a collection of animated shorts by Nick Park and other Aardman animators. 83 minutes. Varsity, today through Jan. 1. No rating; includes cartoon nudity.

Nick Park's clay-animated creations, Wallace and Gromit - a gadget-happy inventor and his wary, faithful dog - have almost become household names, thanks to their Oscar-winning appearances in "A Close Shave" and "The Wrong Trousers." (Both short films have been packaged on one videocassette with Wallace and Gromit's Oscar-nominated 1990 debut film, "A Grand Day Out").

All were produced at Aardman Animations, a British company that's showcased in this new collection of shorts, "Wallace & Gromit: The Best of Aardman Animations," which will be shown at the Varsity for the next eight days. Covering 15 years in the company's development, it ranges from Aardman's 1982 short, "Early Bird," to its most recent Oscar nominee, "Wat's Pig."

The program includes a couple of Park's classics, plus Aardman films by other animators: Peter Lord's split-screen experiment, "Wat's Pig," the tale of two brothers who were separated at birth; Jeff Newitt's "Loves Me . . . Loves Me Not," in which a matinee idol tries to determine the course of true love by pulling petals from a flower; Peter Peake's "Pib and Pog," which suggests a British version of Akbar and Jeff; Richard Goleszowski's "Rex the Runt," about the adventures of a plasticine dog; Lord and David Sproxton's "Early Bird," about an early morning radio show; Goleszowski's "Ident," in which a city is almost literally all done with mirrors; and Lord's "My Baby Just Cares For Me," a four-minute visualization of Nina Simone's song.

Back for the first time in several years is Park's first Academy Award winner, "Creature Comforts" (1990), a well-crafted, deadpan series of interviews with restless animals at a British zoo.

"I'd like to be somewhere a bit hotter," complains a well-spoken female ape. A lion with an Yves Montand accent also moans about the weather and talks disgruntedly of how much more space there is in Brazil. The film is done in a BBC documentary style, with microphones poking in the faces of bears, tortoises and tropical birds.

Also featured are several of Park's television commercials based on "Creature Comforts." This time the animals talk about the wonders of kitchen and laundry appliances.

Last year, the 39-year-old Park won his third Academy Award for "A Close Shave," the "Wallace and Gromit" part of this program. In this most recent installment in their adventures, Gromit is first seen knitting during a national wool shortage. A jail sentence awaits the easily framed Gromit, who ends up using his porridge shooter to save a flock destined for a "mutton-o-matic."

His droll, eye-rolling reactions continue to be the chief treat of this series, in which man's best friend often turns out to be his intellectual superior as well.