An old man with a steady look sublime, That stops his earthly task to watch the skies; But he is blind—a statue hath such eyes;— Yet having moonward turn’d his face by chance, Gazes the orb with moon-like countenance,

I promise you nothing,' said the dolls' dressmaker, dabbing two dabs at him with her needle, as if she put out both his eyes.

All these familiar flavors are again front and center in The Pirates! Band Of Misfits, the feature that returns Aardman to theatrical stop-motion after the CGI of Arthur Christmas and Flushed Away.

Parenthood, untouchably sacrosanct in so much of our culture, is on “24” a grotesquely compromised institution.