Chimera / Mirrormask
Feb. 20th, 2006 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishWill Shetterly, Chimera
I've owned this for ages (four years now?) but put off reading it because it sounded exactly like Jonathan Lethem's Gun, with Occasional Music: hard-boiled detective story set in a near-future world with human/animal genetic hybrids as sub-citizens. I'm not sure what inspired me to pick it up this weekend. It's good, though; Shetterly's a fine writer, and a lot less odd-for-odd's-sake than Lethem, which makes him more readable. Chimera's a fun story with a bit of social commentary underneath. (If I'd read it a few years ago my libertarianism would have gotten holes knocked in it a lot quicker than it finally did.) The Infinite Pocket is a really nifty idea, too.
Dave McKean (dir.), Mirrormask
OMG THE PRETTY.
Mirrormask, as everyone knows, was written by Neil Gaiman and filmed by Dave McKean, and financed by the Hensons who said "So we want you to make a movie like Labyrinth . . . although Labyrinth had a budget of $40 million dollars in 1986, and we can give you, er, a tenth that." And Neil and Dave said "Sounds like fun," and went off and made this gorgeous artsy thing that about twelve people, none of them theatre execs, would like, and somehow it got in at Sundance and even got on a few theatre screens before Sony realised that they'd been givng screentime to something other than Stupid Comedy XI or Blood-N-Gutz V. [And I missed it, not that I'm still bitter or anything.] And eventually it came out on DVD and was bloody gorgeous.
The bulk of the film is very much a dream sequence, with dream-logic and fantastical beasts and "Giants Orbiting" and all, and there are lots of masks (of course) and not a few mirrors, and a Dark Queen and an Anti-Helena and a very Scottish juggler. Attempts to describe the film fail me utterly. (See Zappa, Frank; "dancing about architecture.") If I were a film student or a lit student I could probably write a wonderful paper drawing parallels between this, Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea, and Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tale about the man who lost his shadow. But I'm not, so all I'll say is that the outside and the shadows aren't evil, any more than Anti-Helena is evil, or Valentine is good, and I think Helena realises that by the end of the film. Subconsciously, at least.
I've owned this for ages (four years now?) but put off reading it because it sounded exactly like Jonathan Lethem's Gun, with Occasional Music: hard-boiled detective story set in a near-future world with human/animal genetic hybrids as sub-citizens. I'm not sure what inspired me to pick it up this weekend. It's good, though; Shetterly's a fine writer, and a lot less odd-for-odd's-sake than Lethem, which makes him more readable. Chimera's a fun story with a bit of social commentary underneath. (If I'd read it a few years ago my libertarianism would have gotten holes knocked in it a lot quicker than it finally did.) The Infinite Pocket is a really nifty idea, too.
Dave McKean (dir.), Mirrormask
OMG THE PRETTY.
Mirrormask, as everyone knows, was written by Neil Gaiman and filmed by Dave McKean, and financed by the Hensons who said "So we want you to make a movie like Labyrinth . . . although Labyrinth had a budget of $40 million dollars in 1986, and we can give you, er, a tenth that." And Neil and Dave said "Sounds like fun," and went off and made this gorgeous artsy thing that about twelve people, none of them theatre execs, would like, and somehow it got in at Sundance and even got on a few theatre screens before Sony realised that they'd been givng screentime to something other than Stupid Comedy XI or Blood-N-Gutz V. [And I missed it, not that I'm still bitter or anything.] And eventually it came out on DVD and was bloody gorgeous.
The bulk of the film is very much a dream sequence, with dream-logic and fantastical beasts and "Giants Orbiting" and all, and there are lots of masks (of course) and not a few mirrors, and a Dark Queen and an Anti-Helena and a very Scottish juggler. Attempts to describe the film fail me utterly. (See Zappa, Frank; "dancing about architecture.") If I were a film student or a lit student I could probably write a wonderful paper drawing parallels between this, Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea, and Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tale about the man who lost his shadow. But I'm not, so all I'll say is that the outside and the shadows aren't evil, any more than Anti-Helena is evil, or Valentine is good, and I think Helena realises that by the end of the film. Subconsciously, at least.