Just finished watching: Mirrormask, written by Neil Gaiman and directed by Dave McKean. This was a strange and wonderful movie that made me think of Labyrinth as I watched it...to no surprise, because Lisa Henson said in the special features that her company was looking for a fantasy film in the spirit of Labyrinth and the Dark Crystal. The plot is fairly simple: Helena's father runs a small struggling circus, Helena is unsatisfied with her life, argues with her mother about it, and feels horribly guilty when her mother is suddenly stricken with an unnamed illness (which is probably cancer, from what they say about it). She manages to resolve her feelings but only through a surreal journey through the world of her drawings, in which she is given the task to find the Mirrormask in order to find the Princess of Darkness and return her home. What I love about Gaiman's writing is that he takes children and their feelings and concerns very seriously and allows them a "safe" place in which to resolve them. The brilliant thing about this movie is that the Queen of Darkness is never portrayed as evil: as McKean remarks in the commentary, the point is that she's just a worried mother. The special effects are really cool, especially the mirrormask itself (which they said was actually one of the easiest things to do). Really, isn't this neat?
Would I have liked Gaiman's work when I was a child? I honestly don't know...much of it is very genuinely creepy. But then, I also loved Roald Dahl's The Witches which is probably just as creepy, so maybe I would. Maybe the difference is that Gaiman, although humorous, is often very dark; and Dahl, though sometimes dark, is usually humorous.
I also found this online today, and I thought it was really funny given our discussion in my History of the English Language course about the standardization of English spelling and the continued attempts to do so:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13716134/
Would I have liked Gaiman's work when I was a child? I honestly don't know...much of it is very genuinely creepy. But then, I also loved Roald Dahl's The Witches which is probably just as creepy, so maybe I would. Maybe the difference is that Gaiman, although humorous, is often very dark; and Dahl, though sometimes dark, is usually humorous.
I also found this online today, and I thought it was really funny given our discussion in my History of the English Language course about the standardization of English spelling and the continued attempts to do so:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13716134/
Boo, it just started storming outside...maybe I'll wait here for a little and see if it stops before running out to my car....
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