MirrorMask

I was listening to a public radio interview this morning where Neil Gaiman credits the plot of MirrorMask to Dave McKean. Neil said he saw his work on the script as having to do mostly with characters and dialog (I'm paraphrasing in the absence of a transcript). Having read a bunch of other interviews I'm still not sure that it breaks down as simply as that, but it does help me make sense of my reaction to MirrorMask. It felt very much like a cast of clever new Gaiman characters getting together with a bunch of archetypes commonly evoked by Gaiman to tell a story that was ultimately not a Gaiman story. The story was crafted with such structure and focus that it quickly moves out of the realm of (pardon the term) escapist fantasy, and moves on to become something like a case study of escapism. I like that, simple as it may ultimately be. Seeing Dave McKean's art brought hugely to life by an amazing team of animators and a small gang of actors submerged in the world by a clever use of filters and flying fish was an amazing experience, and it makes me more then a little proud to have a small piece of his work tattooed on my skin. (It feels a bit creepy to say that, the tattoo always has been more of a personal thing then an exercise in fandom, but proud is honestly how I felt after seeing that movie) It also made me curious enough about Dave McKean's own writings that I'll probably be shelling out quite a lot of money to buy the collected edition of his comic "Cages" soon enough. After all that entertainment and insight it was almost easy to overlook what a fantastic job Gaiman did of channeling and updating the style of Labyrinth, which is exactly what Henson Studios wanted.

So basically: Fine movie, not at all what I'd expected from either Gaiman or McKean, must go see it again, may update this post later with more thoughts, in the meantime chime in with comments.