Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Borserie it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Rectangular_businessman This beautiful short made by the Brothers Quay (directors of the great animated short "Street of Cocodriles") It's a captivating tale about a master and his disciple. This may sound as something very simple, but the Brothers Quay always manage to create a unique, fascinating world, with strange but very interesting characters, and strange and surreal situations as well. The animation looks beautiful and stylish, just like the other films directed by the Brothers Quay, and this little homage to Jan Svankmajer definitely worth a look, specially if you are fan of filmmakers as Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton.I liked this short a lot. I recommend it to anyone.

Eumenides_0 Having recently become acquainted with Jan Svankmajer's work, I found it a wonderful piece of coincidence that I should discover the Quay brothers, brilliant stop-motion animators in their own right, through this short movie. Perhaps not a coincidence: they owe a lot to Svankmajer and this homage shows it.In Prague, a puppeteer takes in an apprentice. He opens his brain, empties it and symbolically fills with a book; evidently this is the imagination and knowledge the Quays have received from this master. This is the basic plot.But I'll argue we can also find a bigger world of inspirations in this movie. The puppeteer, with the book on his head is clearly a reference to Giuseppe Arcimboldo's famous picture, Librarian. At one point we see the cabinet reflected in a crystal ball, much like an M. C. Escher painting. And the dolls and puppets are themselves throwbacks to the early surrealist movies. This is a lovely celebration of weird art throughout history.As for the movie itself, it's inventive and sometimes creepy. The Quays have a talent for creating surreal imagery that exudes mystery and dread. This is a movie to delight in its strangeness. Still, it looks more like an introduction than something in its own right. I certainly hope the Quay brothers have more to offer.

inkybrown This is an excellent introduction to the work of the Quay Brothers and stop-motion animation. It is enjoyable for fans of Svankmajer, but also for fans of the painter Arcimboldo, whose paintings and characters are featured heavily in this short; most notably the Librarian, which is brought to 3D life as the lead puppet, and also characters from The Seasons, The Elements, and others: Vertumnus, Summer, Fire, and so forth. In fact, a subtitle in the film is Portrait of Svankmajer a la Arcimboldo. Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527 - 1593) was an Italian painter known for creating portraits composed of fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books, all arranged in a fashion that constitutes a portrait of a character which is represented by all those diverse elements.

Polaris_DiB Interesting grasps of motion and artistry here. The Quay Brothers pay homage to their key inspiration, though I not knowing their key inspiration well enough couldn't tell if it's all them or all Svankmejer, though this is very distinctive and beautiful stuff.Interestingly enough it reminds me a lot of Tool music videos, especially their one for Prison Sex (the room of cabinets, cabinets within cabinets, cabinets reacting to characters' curiosity, etc.), which leads me to believe that one Adam Jones is a Brothers Quay fan. Tool's video, however, seems to really focus on the creepy while this one seems a lot more interested in learning and motion. Must definitely be the Quay brothers seeing themselves as the pupil.To tell the truth the most interesting part of this short is the segment called "The child learns a lesson in 1/24th second." In case you don't know (which you should, if you're interested in experimental stuff like this), a single frame of a motion picture shoots by at 1/24th a second, or there are 24 frames per second. Thus this is probably the most self-reflexive part of the film, a little postmodern in its approach to lessons and learning of the form, which is why it's basically a series of jump cuts and a play on time. Very cool.--PolarisDiB