At Home with John and Debbie

On Saturday, Debbie had an examiners’ meeting to attend, so I watched some more films at The Electric.

First off was a selection of short films collected into a programme called “Channel 2″ (”Channel 1″ had already been, and “Channel 3″ is today I think). The organisers had a problem with their printer, so the planned programme handout didn’t happen. Rather than comment on the films without giving proper titles and background, I’ll wait until they email me the programme.

The most astonishing part of the collection, though, was “I’m Bobby”. Some bloke from Wisconsin, mad keen on Bollywood films, had taken a film crew to Bombay and Goa, to dress street kids up and re-enact scenes from the classic 1973 Bollywood film Bobby. It used the original sountrack, and cut out puppets for the parts where they were stopped from filming, and was… odd.

After the shorts, I stayed on for Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s MirrorMask. I think McKean’s visuals did better out of it than Gaiman’s writing. In places it looks absolutely lovely. I think the story’s meant to be a fable about a young girl maturing (like Labyrinth — with which MirrorMask shares a Jim Henson connection), but I’m not certain it succeeds. Perhaps I’m looking for too much depth in what is really a children’s film.

Rob Brydon is excellent — as we’re becoming accustomed to — and Stephanie Leonidas as the young protagonist Helena is very good indeed.

Residents of Brighton will want to see it just to see their burnt pier on a big screen.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2006 at 10:08 and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.