MirrorMask Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.5

MirrorMask Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Sir Terrence November 19, 2008

I quite frankly have never seen anything like Mirrormask on film. This film is so unique in so many ways it is indescribable, and there are just no words in the English language that could help me out. Mirrormask is about visuals, visuals, and more visuals. Whether we are talking about unusual CG backgrounds, unusual creatures and characters, or just the way the story is told. The characters are not just any characters; their design is sharp, angular and made up of hybrids by combining different shapes together, and adding recognizable features like a face or mouth to them. Some of the images are jarring, some funny looking, others just plain weird and strange, but all are captivating making it difficult for this reviewer to take his eyes off the screen. They are meshed together in such a non traditional way, more like a collage pieced together from many different sources. Those sources include live action, computer generated characters, and paint and pencil all layered over each other. This is combined together to create Helena’s dream world, and to a lesser extent her real world. It is one of the most interesting and unique way of telling a story that I was just sucked in, no matter how weird and strange it all got. The storyline of Mirrormask is surprisingly simple, yet told in a slow dreamlike pace. Whether you enjoy this way of story telling will highly depend on your ability to be seduced by the visuals you see. I was definitely seduced! If I could compare this movie to anything, it would be a Tim Burton movie on steroids. But I could see vestiges of Jim Henson productions all over this. It has the same unusual creatures and fantasy like story telling of “The Dark Crystal” and “Labyrinth” but it goes beyond them in the creative use of visuals. It has the abstract story telling of the horrible “Southland Tales” but is a much more interesting watch by far. The astonishing visual presentation and endless imagination makes Mirrormask more than worthy of a Bluray presentation.

Helena (Stephanie Leoandidas) works in the family circus with her mother and father. One evening she gets in an argument with her mother because she wants to break free of the family circus business. Her mother makes the comment “you’re going to be the death of me”, of which Helena response “I wish I was”. During that evenings show, Helena’s mother collapses and is rushed to the hospital, and several days later Helena finds out she need to undergo an operation. Helena is overwhelmed with guilt and blames herself for what happened.

On the night the operation is supposed to take place, Helena wakes out of a strange dream and sneaks out of the apartment only to see three men in masks. A shadow begins to descend over and consume two of the men in masks. Sensing danger, Helena flees with the remaining masked man named Valentine. Valentine takes Helena to the City of Light where there is an exodus taking place because shadows are overcoming and engulfing every one. She is mistaken for a “Princess” and forcefully taken to the Palace of Light. Once she arrives at the palace, she is introduced to the Prime Minister who realizes she is not the princess at all. The Prime Minister explains to Helena that the Queen from the Land of Shadows came and stole their “charm” and put the White Queen in an unnatural sleep. She agrees to help find the charm.

Valentine and Helena seek to find the charm, but are tricked and deceived on every hand. Is all of this real, or is Helena dreaming?

MirrorMask Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Mirrormask comes to Bluray in a dazzling 1080p/AVC encode framed at a 1:85:1 aspect ratio whose picture quality really is difficult to ascertain as it is very stylized. The usual adjectives one uses to describe film just do not apply here. Helena's dream world is composed of large amounts of computer generated imagery interwoven with live action, real objects and people. Before Helena enters her dream world, colors look muted and disaturated, and a bit gloomy which provide a backdrop to what will happen once she enters her dream world. Once in her fantasy world, images take on a soft, diffused dream like quality, swimming with sepia tones, off white and other neutral colors. Black levels are deep, stable and consistently inky throughout the film. Red and its hues dominate the color palette, along with very well saturated greens and blues which give images a nice tonal register. Contrast is excellent, as whites are nicely rendered without over cooking them. Fine detail on foreground shots was excellent, but the background shots appear to be a bit diffused. Grain is well managed and never obtrusive under any conditions. David McKean's images come across beautifully on this Bluray release, almost as if it was tailor made for this format.

MirrorMask Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Mirrormask audio features an excellent sounding 5.1 Dolby TrueHD soundtrack encoded at 16/48 kHz that is as compelling to the ears as McKean's images are to the eyes. We are treated here with a soundtrack that is painted like a canvas, fully utilizing every space in the sound field to support the images on the screen. It is dynamic, nimble, playful and extremely well crafted. The sound field is filled with sounds of scurrying spiders, the flipping pages of flying books, ticking clocks, flying fish, a stone skipping across water that flow through the room ending in the surrounds. While most of the action is up front, the surrounds are used very effectively, with pans that move from front to back, and occasionally from back to front rather fluidly. The LFE is strong, with below 25 Hz signals at very high levels, but its use was strictly to compliment the bass in the main channels. There is an abundance of audio nuance which require a very quiet room to appreciate. Iain Bellamy's Jazz laced score is infectious, and works perfectly with the visuals and the overall story line as well. No matter what was happening sound effects wise, dialog is always clear as a bell. This is one fantastic well crafted sound track that is very pleasing to the ears.

MirrorMask Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Instead of the usual technically based extras found on most releases, this release features a more conversational set of featurettes that lean from good to pretty boring and pedestrian.

Neil Talks (6 minutes) has the films writer talking about the collaborations between he and Dave McKean, touching on stories such as "Violent Cases", "Signal to Noise", and talks very fondly about the story "Mr. Punch".

Dave Talks (6 minutes) has the Director/Designer Dave McKean going deeply into the production from his perspective. He also talks about his team now, and over the years.

Beginnings (4 minutes) The producers of Mirrormask talk about how both Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal long term popularity provoke them to produce another fantasy movie.

Day 16 (2 minutes) is a time lapse photographic perspective of the day to day production, covering the entire production step by step. You can see how relentless the crew was in keeping production on schedule. While that is on screen, various "fact collages" appear across the screen in different places with production trivia. I thought this was the best of all of the extras on this disc.

Flight of the Monkey Birds (4 minutes) puts together early animation work with the wirework from the blue screen work.

Giant Development (2 minutes) is a combination of conceptual art, Marquette's, storyboard, and 3D model that show the evolution and transformation of Mirrormask floating stone giants' animation.

Q and A (20 minutes) is a compilation of several question and answer sessions on the film.

Audio Commentary features McKean and Gaiman in a very lively and ear filling track, as they go through the movie providing tidbits as it moves along.

Lastly we have trailers from other fantasy movies featured on Bluray. No trailer from the movie was included

MirrorMask Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This movies pace is not brisk, and the story as simple as it is, not always clear. But I was so enamored with the visuals and sound that quite frankly I could care less. What a terrific 101 minute adventure that effectively transported me into Mirrormasks space, and got me so caught up, time just passed away. In my opinion, this is exactly the way I want to feel when I watch a film. Some people will not like this movie simply because it does not move at MTV speed, with quick multi-angle camera work. No, this film takes its sweet little time revealing itself layer after layer, giving us small details, big visuals and big sound and all. If you like movies such as The Dark Crystal or Labyrinth, you can get into this movie. If you like fantasies as a genre at least rent this, and give it a view. It may just surprise you!