Saturday, June 6, 2009

MC/Squick in the most unexpected of places

So...This is the second time this week I've heard about a new movie I had no knowledge of before this week. The first clip I saw looked intriguingly dark and unsettling for - try not to flinch, now - an animated film. But this animation looks way too dark for Disney or Pixar - or perhaps even for Hayao Miyazaki.

In fact, though I don't know much about it yet, I can't help wondering if this is really (or at least entirely) a children's movie at all. Not that I haven't been known to enjoy many a well-done kid flick, myself. And I'm sure several among us got early MC chills and thrills from Saturday morning cartoons and flicks like The Jungle Book and The Dark Crystal.

Anyway, this movie, no matter the audience, has Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov behind it - and voice work by several of my favorite actors, including the delectable Jennifer Connelly. And the proof of how delightfully dark, perverse, MC-ish, and squicky the movie 9 might be is illustrated by this clip, which I'm not embedding on my blog because I can't make it fit inside the margins. But I will share some stills and descriptions here, in hopes of a) enticing a few of you to follow the link, and b) gratifying those poor souls still on dial-up.

So here we go....

The heroes and heroines of this movie are rag dolls, but this rag doll is even more of a puppet than the rest:


Oooh! Hypno-eyes!


The victim's irises dilate as he is sucked into helpless trance. Notice the reflection of the hypno-eyes in his gaping pupils - nice touch!


And now the puppetmaster (well, mistress, actually) can reveal herself freely:


This'll scar the kiddies for life!


But the victim is too far gone even to be afraid. Notice once again the reflection of the monster's eye in his eye.


And at last the spider/snake/puppetmistress scoops him up and prepares to have her way with him....


Of course, this is only the first half of the clip. The best half. ;-P But you can follow the link above for the rest.

More posts to come, later this weekend.

No comments: