22 lines
2.9 KiB
Plaintext
22 lines
2.9 KiB
Plaintext
when jim henson passed away , he left behind diverse legions of fans and a company whose ultimate success , it now seems , hinged on his input .
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jim henson productions and the creature shop are still thriving financially , but as the last two muppet films ( or that silly computer-generated monkey from lost in space ) demonstrate , the thrill and genius are gone .
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i'm not sure the dark crystal , made today , would generate from an audience of kids five to fifty the same awe-filled response .
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an all-powerful crystal has cracked , causing the leaders of the green world to split apart into two beings : the big , gentle mystics , and the vulture-like skeksis .
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the mystics send jen , a naive gelfling boy , on a mission to find the shard that cracked away , which must be reinserted into the crystal before the skeksis become eternal rulers , before the great " conjunction " of three suns .
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along the way , jen encounters and teams up with the only other gelfling alive , the rebecca demornay-like kira , an ogre-witch named aughra , who removes her eyes to look at things , and a spastic-but-friendly , tumbleweed-like animal named fizzgig .
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much of the beauty in the dark crystal , which is a simple tale ( though it does not condescend to any viewer ) , lies in its art direction and creature design .
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the puppeteering is phenomenal--observe the scenes in which jen plays his flute , or the landwalker chase--but i must stress that any thoughts of strings and hands and remote controls all but vanish in the opening moments of the picture , a delicately-narrated ( by john baddeley ) , absorbing prologue .
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the voice work in the film , by muppet regulars and irregulars , is tone-perfect .
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as well , trevor jones' score should not be discounted : it contributes to the film almost as an unseen character .
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i suppose , due to the complexity involved in executing a movie of this nature , that it couldn't be helped , but i wish the film was longer .
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jen and kira have wonderful . . . well ,
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chemistry , and more scenes of them quietly conversing would have been appreciated .
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the dark crystal has a very small cult following .
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the weaker labyrinth is probably better-known , which is upsetting .
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a friend of mine related a story to me that henson was pressured into planting humans among labyrinth's creatures due to the financial failure of people-less the dark crystal .
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that film never quite found its footing ; it played like an acid-trip episode of " the muppet show " with david bowie as guest-host , borrowing from tolkien and pandering to tolkien's fan-base .
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( i suppose i just made labyrinth sound appetizing to a certain sector of the public . )
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the dark crystal deserved ( and still deserves ) a bigger audience .
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it's the best kind of children's entertainment : elegant , fantastical , and courageously un-hip .
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brian henson , fortunate son , keep looking back at this , your father's masterpiece .
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