Video review: "9"

"9" is one of the boldest, most original films to come out in 2009. It didn't get much of a box office reception, but now that it's hitting video, audiences have a chance to discover this animation gem.

Director Shane Acker based the feature film on an Oscar-nominated short he made about a dystopian world where all of mankind has perished. About the only living things around are tiny puppet-like creatures made out of burlap and bits of metal, with numbers for names.

The voice cast is especially good, with Elijah Wood as the title character, Christopher Plummer as 1, the authoritarian leader, Jennifer Connelly as the knight-errant 7, and Martin Landau as 2, an old tinkerer.

They must battle a faceless army of machines looking to dominate the post-apocalyptic word -- and capture the strange talisman 9 is carrying around.

The animation is just terrific, with inky pools of darkness and a wonderful tactile feel -- things you don't normally get from computerized animation.

Despite the PG-13 rating, which I feel is misplaced, this movie should be suitable for children above toddler age.

Extra features are good, not great. Neither the DVD or Blu-ray versions come with a digital copy of the film, which at this point should be standard fare.

Both versions come with original 10-minute short by Acker, and the commentary is especially interesting; he talks about working on his UCLA senior thesis film for more than four years while taking leaves of absence to do things like work on the last "Lord of the Rings" films.

There's a 16-minute making-of doc that includes all the principle talent, even producer Tim Burton, who lent his name (but not much hands-on participation, it appears) to the production. There are also two featurettes focusing on the design and animation process, and seven minutes worth of deleted scenes, still in storyboard format.

A commentary track by Acker and several key collaborators adds few new insights, but is still worth a listen.

In addition to these, the Blu-ray comes with a tour of the Starz animation studio hosted by Acker, and interactive features you can turn on and off during the movie.

Movie: 3.5 stars
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "9"

"9" is a cyberpunk fantasia disguised as an animated children's movie. It's also one of the boldest and most original films of 2009.

And along with "District 9," it's the second movie to come out in the last month based on a short film by an unknown director that was expanded to feature length with the support of an established filmmaker (and with the numeral 9 in the title, to boot). In this case, Tim Burton liked the 2005 Oscar-nominated short film by Shane Acker so much, he signed on as a producer for a full-size "9."

The world Acker has created -- along with screenwriter Pamela Pettler and an army of computer animators -- is a dystopian apocalypse, in which all of mankind has been wiped out by war. The only critters moving about are these funny-looking puppet creatures with big, mechanical eyes and a slapdash of zippers and buttons holding their burlap torsos together.

These are stitchpunks (though they're never named as such), the last remnant of humanity, created by a dying scientist with a terrible burden to bear.

Even though we're used to being dazzled by each new CG animation feature, the textures and tactile quality of "9" really jump out at you. Despite having no names, only numbers, the stitchpunks are readily distinguished from one another due to the animators' minute attention to detail.

As the story opens, 9 (voice of Elijah Wood), the newest of his kind, awakens in the dead scientist's laboratory. He finds a strange device, and takes it with him as he ventures out into the urban wasteland. (The setting seems to be WWII-era London, or what's left of it.)

There he encounters 2 (Martin Landau), an old tinkerer who fixes 9's voice transmitter so he can talk. But they're attacked by a fearsome mechanical feline that makes off with 2 and the scientist's totem.

In short order, 9 encounters the rest of his kind. 5 (John C. Reilly) is one-eyed and friendly, while 8 is a lumbering bully who barely speaks. There's also 6 (Crispin Glover, who also sings a song for the soundtrack), the half-crazed oracle; 3 and 4, the symbiotic twins who compile lost human knowledge; and 7 (Jennifer Connelly), the heroic knight-errant of the bunch.

Leading them, ostensibly, is 1 (Christopher Plummer), though he seems more interested in hiding from the threatening machines than challenging them.

I don't want to reveal more, since part of the film's delight is discovering the frightening implications of the movie's themes, and what they say about humanity.

If there's a criticism to be leveled, it's that the opening 20 minutes or so feels rushed, as if it was edited to introduce the action scenes as quickly as possible so younger audience members wouldn't grow bored. Although "9" is perfectly appropriate for older children (say, 7 and up), I am certain adults will find it most satisfying as a film-going experience.

After watching this movie, I was astonished to learn that it has been given a PG-13 rating by the Motion Picture Association of America. The mild depictions of violence are wholly undeserving of anything harsher than a PG.

Perhaps it's the dark tone and post-apocalyptic setting that negatively affected the ratings board. But these are also integral parts of what makes "9" the best animated film so far this year.

3.5 stars

Oscar countdown: Day 6

So about day 9...

Hopefully by now everyone's caught on to my little gimmick of using a movie poster with the number of that day's Oscar countdown in the title. For instance, today is day 6, so I dug up a poster image for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Anyway, it was fairly easy going for most of the numbers, since I already had a movie in mind: "Seven" for 7, Dudley Moore's "10" for 10, and so on. I kind of had to cheat with 8, using Fellini's 8-1/2, but so it goes.

Nine kind of had me stumped, though. In doing a Google search, I came up with that rather amazing poster from "9". I'd never heard of such a movie, but something about it was familiar.

I put the pieces together at a Sunday showing of "Coraline." There was a preview for "9," which is being released on, you guessed it, 9-9-09. It's a visually stunning film, with a dystopian and marvelously creepy vision, about beings made out of bits of cloth fighting some kind of apocalyptic war.

What's the connection to the Oscars? I'm getting to that.

Anyone who knows me knows I have a terrible memory for names. Large parties are torture for me, because I forget new names 30 seconds after I've learned them. I take copious notes at review screenings so I can remember the names of characters, places, etc.

But my visual memory is quite good. While we were watching the preview for "9," I turned to Jean and said, "I think this is based on a short movie that won an Oscar a few years ago."

Long shot, right? And yet I was right.

Writer/director Shane Acker won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 2005 for an 11-minute version based on the same characters and storyline. It also was titled "9." I only know it from the 20-second clip they show when they show you a bit of all the nominees at the Oscars. But I remember how arresting the images were, and hoped I'd get to see it someday. I haven't -- Academy Award-nominated short films are hard to get ahold of.

Filmmaker Tim Burton, who's worked on several stop-motion animation movies, obviously liked what he saw and got behind Acker to make a full-length version of his film. The results look very promising.

Swing your browser here to watch a hi-def version of the "9" trailer.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/9/hd/

This sort of thing is not without precedent in Hollywood. For example, Billy Bob Thornton won an Adapted Screenplay Oscar for his screenplay for "Sling Blade," which was based on a short film with the same character and story called "Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade." There was some controversy at the time about it. Thornton directed the feature length version, but not the short one, so it may have been about a screenwriting credit, and thus shared glory for the Oscar. I can't remember, and my Web searches have come up for naught.