The voices match the mouth movements nearly perfectly. Danny Elfman's music has little resemblance to his work with Ongo Bongo and "What's this?" (which Jack sings when he discovers the colorful world of Christmas Town) is closer to a tune mixed from Cabaret and The Music Man. The claymation is not what I expected, it was of a high quality and the movements are not jerky like the old Christmas Specials. You will have to view this movie to discover the rest. After an accident, Jack develops a plan to kidnap "Sandy Claws" and give presents out for Christmas in place of Christmas Town. We meet the wonderful mayor with two faces, the evil scientist and his assistant, three local children and our evil boogie-man. Other characters, including many town-monsters, are introduced. The only one who notices is the Rag Doll-style woman Sally. In the background we hear the residents of Halloween Town celebrate another wonderful holiday. In NBC, we see our hero Jack Skellington, aka The Pumpkin King, depressed as another Halloween passes. In many ways this was a good thing, technology was able to catch up to Burton's ideas. Based on a parody of the famous "Night before Christmas" poem by Moore that Burton wrote and illustrated while employed at Disney, this idea was stagnant for many years prior to filming. The more I hear and read about this movie, the more I love it. Perhaps the fact that Halloween is my favorite holiday influenced my opinion, but I doubt it. Add a telling story, and maybe next time he’ll make a ten.I am not a big Tim Burton fan, but this movie is in my top 3 of all time. Which is a pity as, artistically, 9 has pushed computer animation away from the cute and into the shadows. There’s also a problem with 9’s target audience: too violent for tots, too shallow for adults, it exists in a world uninviting to either camp. Yes, we’re introduced to the rebellious 7 and 2, the kind old soul, but their one-dimensional traits do little to help you connect to them on any emotional level. Machines destroyed the world! The survivors must fight! For so much originality of style, you expect more from a narrative that too often dissolves into a series of set-piece chases. Where 9 fails to match Pixar’s output is on story and character this evocative post-apocalyptic sprawl is married to a plodding plot. Our numerical heroes’ coarse burlap bodies all but scratch the screen, and Acker has created (and destroyed) an incredible world with all the angular wonder you might only expect from an architecture graduate. Visually, 9 is extraordinary, offering a level of detail and imagination that makes even Pixar’s back catalogue seem twee. Along the way, they uncover a Pathé-style newsreel that reveals their destiny - 9 and his new chums have been imbued with the last vestiges of humanity and must fight for what is left of the human soul. Self-proclaimed leader 1 (Christopher Plummer) keeps his troops in hiding, but newbie 9 convinces them they must attack to survive. Voiced by Elijah Wood, 9 awakes to find himself in what looks like a World War II-era world destroyed by machines, only to find a small society of similarly sewn sad-sacks hiding from The Beast, a metal machine intent on amassing a living doll collection. Even with a relatively short 68 minutes left to fill, they had their work cut out to expand what is a very simple story. To assist him in expanding his tale, Burton paired Acker with writer Pamela Pettler, who scribed Corpse Bride for the Goth guru. There’s more than a touch of The Nightmare Before Christmas to the film’s look, but Acker has taken his photo-surreal imagery in a refreshing direction. With his Oscar-nominated quickie, Acker revealed his influences, ranging from UK-based filmmakers the Quay Brothers to French comic-book genius Moebius, but it’s clear that Tim Burton, who served as a producer on the feature-length 9, is a good fit. For now, however, we all appear to be dead, and a modern-day Geppetto has left a ragbag collection of numbered hessian dolls to fight for the survival of humanity in writer/director Shane Acker’s full-length debut.Īcker’s skills with exhaustively detailed CG animation were rewarded by the Academy with the 2005 release of 9, an 11-minute wordless short from which this 79-minute talkie has sprung. We’ve been underwater, monkey-ruled, machine-controlled, zombie-infested, and soon we’ll be entirely swept away in 2012. It’s with no small irony that the apocalyptic wastelands have proved such fertile ground for filmmakers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |