Mirrormask

What a beautiful movie. The images are definitely Dave McKean (with a dash of Cirque-ness), which is much more to my taste in 3-D. The plot? Well, I won't post spoilers. Fun, fascinating, funny, with a somewhat predictable ending, but what a trip getting there. I am incredibly impressed with all the visuals, the interesting textures and lighting, the creatures and characters (the books!), the masks and hats. A tiny nit: two very short scenes where briefly-appearing characters' lines were mostly indistinguishable to my ear, other than it was likely to be English.

Gaiman wrote in his blog that the book has somewhat different material, not being as limited to Helena's point of view. Now that I've seen the movie, I'd like to read the book (the other order is usually unsatisfying for me, and since the book was written as a novelisation of the movie, it doesn't feel as wrong as with movies made from established books).


Though the styles are very different, I was also reminded of paintings by James Christensen.