Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: MirrorMask ::
by William the Bloody
Helena is sick of life with her family's circus. She's much rather sit in her room and draw than juggle and perform in a show and one night she has a shouting match with her mum over her frustration. Later, when Helena is in the center ring with her father, mum collapses and needs to be rushed to the hospital. Riddled with guilt over their fight, Helena goes to bed to be woken in the middle of the night by violin music. She curiously follows this melody out of the flat and down to the road, where she discovers some odd street performers. Suddenly, these tentacles of blackness come stretching out from nowhere and turn some of the performers to dust. Frantically, the last street performer grabs Helena into a door off the alley and to safety. Only, this room beyond the door is in a whole different world. Here, seemingly everyone wears a mask, books float back to the library when rejected, fish fly the streets and giants orbit. Helena finds out that she is now in the City of Light, only the Shadows have been encroaching upon its boarders of late because something mystical happened to Queen of Light and she's trapped in sleep. There is rumoured to be a charm that will aid the ailing Queen, except that no one knows what it is or what it looks like. Helena takes it upon herself to find this charm, with her reluctant street performer friend Valentine helping her along the way.
The Good: If there were anyone in this world whose leg I would dry-hump, it would writer Neil Gaiman's and this script only gives me all the more reason! The film is a lovely work for children of all ages along the lines of Gaiman's other children pieces, The Wolves in the Walls and Coraline, and also films such as the immortal classic Labyrinth. This movie is very stylized in director Dave McKean's own unique fashion. If you're at all familiar with any of his work (Sandman covers, the illustrations in Coraline, Punch and Judy, etc) then you will likely see this movie as one big McKean drawing and that in of itself is quite fascinating. Most of the film takes place in a blue screened dream world, and the CGI over 90% of the film is superb. Henson studios did their usual wonders in bringing the imagination of the filmmakers to life. The actors aren't people I'm familiar with since they're English actors and they mainly did work for English television, but they all do wonderful jobs, mainly Stephanie Leonidas, who plays Helena.
The Bad: This film while very creative and gorgeous, is NOT nearly as original as I'd hoped. There are definite obvious elements from other children's classics like Alice in Wonderland and the aforementioned Labyrinth. There were spots when the CGI and blue screen where not only dodgy, but outright obvious (the bit where Helena goes up the spiral staircase in order to speak with the orbit giants immediately springs to mind). What exactly happened to Helena's mother is never explained and that sort of bothered me a little. Also, whether or not Helena's adventure in the dream-world was real or a realistic dream is never discussed. The scoring for this movie by Ian Ballamy was pretty weird and tenor saxophone heavy. It wasn't AWFUL, just kind of... odd (you can pretty much tell his only other experience is doing one of Dave McKean's short films, [N]eon.)
In the end, I quite enjoyed it. This movie was fun-tastic on the eyes and the story was fun and innocent, with that touch of Henson nostalgia that had me remembering days of yore. There are parts that are genuinely funny and parts that creep me out (eyeballs with spidery legs???) but that's just what they're meant to do. This is the sort of fantasy film I wouldn't mind forcing all children to watch as Gaiman has this way with his writing that just feels like it urges the viewer/reader to use their own creativity and that in your imagination, things are limitless.
A-
