Memoir of a Snail

Grace in her snail hat

“It doesn’t all have to be Disney,” is animator Adam Elliot’s rallying cry. And in Memoir of a Snail, with jokes about masturbation and death, paedophilia, arson and murder, he proves it. It’s refreshing and yet oddly familiar, as if Wallace and Gromit had been given a wipe down with a mucky cloth. But cute is the overriding impression, from the old-school ragged-edged stop-motion animation – Wallace and Gromit before Nick Park got the big bucks – to the characters on display. The “snail” is actually a girl in a snail hat called Grace, one of two twins with her brother Gilbert, born with a cleft lip to a mother who died in … Read more

Parkland

Zac Efron about to pronounce the president dead in Parkland

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 30 March Ronald Reagan shot, 1981 On this day in 1981, after just over two months in office, President Ronald Reagan was shot outside the Washington Hilton. His would-be assassin was John Hinckley Jr, whose attempt on the president’s life seemed to be part of a plan to impress Jodie Foster, with whom he’d become obsessed after seeing her in the film Taxi Driver. Hinckley’s intention was not to kill Reagan but the President – he’d been focused on killing President Jimmy Carter when Carter was in office until being arrested on a firearms charge. Reagan just happened to be the … Read more