Libramedi Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

HottWwjdIam There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

vibespidersstudios This film is very gorgeous of its unsettling themes of Gothic, and horror. The animation is very different than most animation films that I've seen because for most of the movie it just a silhouette. However they put the details of buttons on their clothes to recognized class. Our main character, Jasper Morello's clothing is very nice and the audience knows that he is intelligent because of his career of being a geographic. However at the beginning of the film, he feels unhappy of one little mistake during one of his explorations leads one of the crew members died. This film made me feel for the main character a lot and he cares about the people of his city that he lives in. I can't say that much of the climax but I have to say that it is very creepy and gets into the monster horror element of the story. And it is something that first time audience has to experience first. My only complains about the film is the story is just narrative driven by at the end of the film someone finds his journal and reads it because my theory suggest that Jasper's city that he lives in no longer exists because of the plague has already decreased the human population. And after a long period of time, someone found the journal and reference the title of the film. That he is a "mysterious geographic" and his explorations. And that is what I believe this is the whole point of the title of the film, and the last of the human population that found his journal use that to cure the plague that spread in Jasper's world.

jennyhor2004 A nominee for a Best Animated Short Film Oscar in 2006, this is a visually beautiful and richly layered Gothic steampunk adventure story that is equal parts Lovecraftian and Conradesque horror. Young navigator Morello (voiced by Joel Edgerton) in the industrial city of Gothia accepts a commission to help fly a dirigible to parts unknown. He does this partly to atone for a previous voyage in which, due to a mistake he made, a crewman fell to his death. Morello leaves his wife Emilia at home as she is needed at a hospital to nurse patients dying from a mysterious plague.An eccentric scientist Claude Belgon joins the crew and the ship chugs away; it crashes into an abandoned vessel and the crew quickly transfer to that vehicle. In his regular radio correspondence with his wife, Morello hears her hacking coughs and realises she has contracted plague. Nevertheless the men continue their journey despite one man also sickening from plague and they soon come across several sky islands. By accident, they discover that the boiled blood of a strange creature on one island cures the sick crew-member so they collect cocoons and take them back on board the ship. While on the journey home, Morello realises that crew-members are mysteriously vanishing and stumbles across the awful truth about the hatched larvae from the cocoons and their link to the disappearances.The story is very focused, not too complicated, and the pace moderately fast. The animation is a mix of layered 2D pictures and cut-outs made to resemble 3D objects and the characters themselves appear as silhouette cut-outs reminiscent of an Indonesian wayang shadow-puppet play. The use of first-person narrative makes the film resemble a Joseph Conrad novel and Joel Edgerton's measured and refined tones make his young navigator a sensitive character. Morello does tend to be passive and easily influenced by the sinister Dr Belgon and the blustery Captain Griswald, and this passivity brings a touch of J G Ballard to the proceedings. The mix of Australian and near-English accents brings a salty nineteenth-century flavour to much of the film. The story gradually transforms from the thrill of adventure in its first half to quietly macabre and devastating in its second half, topped by an open-ended conclusion in which Morello, in the manner of a Ballardian hero, submits to the advice of the malevolent Belgon in the near-hopeless belief that by so doing he will save his wife's life if not his own.Themes of sacrificing one's own life for the greater good of society and the advancement of scientific knowledge, and of the moral dilemma that faces Morello when he discovers what the last larva from the cocoons needs to survive – yes, if he kills it, he'll save his own life but not his wife's life; if he allows it to live, then he must offer himself to it - give "… Jasper Morello" a deep, dark intensity befitting its Victorian Goth look of sepia, blue and grey tones. Belgon is a typical mad-scientist type who embodies Conrad's Kurtzian hero: his thirst for knowledge and fame drives him to commit heinous acts of murder. Interestingly the film has as its climax a conflict between Belgon and Morello that forces Morello into choosing whether or not he should repeat a past mistake, and it is this choice that determines whether Morello becomes his own man, albeit with horrifying consequences.Morello's passive nature, the switch from Jules Verne adventure to macabre horror and the anti-climactic cliffhanger ending probably counted against the film in competition for the Best Animated Short Oscar but I find this is a very immersive short piece of great intensity, technical detail, bittersweet tragedy and many allusions to great horror and science fiction writing: depending on where viewers are coming from, they can probably find hints of Edgar Allan Poe, H P Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, H G Wells and Bruce Sterling. The film is aimed at a general audience though it is very creepy and chilling for young children, and it's well worth watching a few times to appreciate its distinctive animation.

bob the moo In a Victorian world of steam driven air ships Jasper Morello is an aerial navigator haunted by a mistake he once made that caused the death of one of his crew. He leaves his home with his wife ill with the fatal plague sweeping the country and joins a mission with Doctor Belgon seeking a possible remedy for the disease but also redemption of his soul. The mission looks like it will be a success but with Belgon maddened with his discovery, Morello must decide if the terrible price is worth paying.Nominated for an Oscar, this animated short is a great piece of work. The plot has elements of old Jules Verne adventures in the design but it is seeped in a wonderfully dark, Gothic air that runs from the animation through the music into the story and characters. Those not used to short films might moan at how the plot moves quickly and how it is quite superficial. These are fair comment but can be forgiven by the nature of this film, besides the film has much to cover minor issues. The story is engaging and well told with tragic characters complimenting the dark tone. Edgerton makes a great lead character and brings out a lot with his voice. Likewise Bakaitis is strong as the doctor while the support cast fill in the rest of the characters.The animation makes this film though. Delivered mainly in 2 dimensional shadows, the design is impressive and captures the Gothic atmosphere just right. It is full of imagination and is beautifully dark to watch. Overall then a very strong and enjoyable short film. Gothic, dark and visually impressive with a solid narrative it is just a shame that the nomination did not get the film more exposure and a bigger audience.

Polaris_DiB I love this because I feel, to a degree, that this is the best argument for what animation is for: creating an entire unique world that no amount of special effects and actors could bring out in a live-action movie (how close were the Star Wars prequels to being animation anyway?).It's one of those fantastic child imaginations that go into worlds anachronistic and improbable, one that has airships powered by coal and dusty sultry air with islands floating amidst them, that have no real basis in real physical being but still has scientists and its own set of rules.The imagination is very richly animated in a weird sort of 3-D/2-D way, where the majority of the world definitely has an optical illusion of three dimensions but the characters are simply silhouettes constantly moving in two variable directions. It's pretty unique and at first it's hard to distinguish just what kind of animation it is... if it's just the silhouettes shot on cells of paintings, if there's CGI, if the backgrounds are thus animated. It becomes pretty clear from a lot of the movements that it is, actually, CGI, but still, it's very rich and painterly. It's a definite argument to the artistry of animation that can be created when involving a lot of creative approaches to a time-consuming and difficult field.My only problem with it is that it's about as anticlimactic as any other surviver-journal story. We spend our entire times following a narrator who eventually throws it up in the air over whether he even survives or succeeds on his adventure. It's an interesting cliffhanger... maybe the first time you're introduced to such a story. But it gets tiresome after a while and one has to really question if it's worth it to really bother sometimes.--PolarisDiB