Notes from a Fiery Nest

The movie was almost all I'd expected and hoped for: Joan Jett's guitar solo didn't impress me much.

Now that that's out of the way, on to the good stuff.

It's pretty. It's pretty gory, too, but not to the point of being too much. It came out as a very solid gothic rock opera, with an interesting cross of steam- and cyberpunk aesthetics. The music was generally solid, very much in the style of Broadway musicals, to which there were a good number of deliberate references (Phantom in particular is brought to mind). Unlike most stage musicals, the (convoluted, contrived, operatic) plot was easy to follow, thanks to some quite well-done flashback bits. All of the main characters were well-played, but I think my favorite character was the narrator... he epitomizes the setting and mood of the whole thing, for me.

If you haven't seen it, catch it while you can; apparently, there aren't many prints of it around, so it will wear out quickly! There was some distortion of the audio near the beginning of last night's show, but they got it sorted out after a few minutes.

Also, based on a preview, I now also want to see Waltz With Bashir. I am a fan of Joe Sacco's work, and this is rather evocative of it, but from a different point of view.