To start us off, then, here’s the trailer for the film 9, which was released last fall and which Hanna and I finally had a chance to watch this past Friday.

I really don’t understand how this film got so little press when it came out, since (along with Coraline) it’s easily the most magical bit of animation I’ve seen since Wall-E. Darker, perhaps. It certainly doesn’t end on a cheerful note. But visually, it’s a glorious piece of imagined reality: from the moment the story opens, you’re sucked into the world of these small created beings who are all of the (humanity? well, we aren’t quite sure) that is left on a post-apocalyptic world after the humans have destroyed themselves. All that’s left, that is, except for malevolent machines.

The only real flaw, I thought, in the film, was its ending, which was surprisingly pat given the inventiveness of the rest of the story (and the storytelling team that’s behind it). The surviving beings are left to make of the world what they will, hopefully doing a better job than those who came before. It’s not a bad message, just a little . . . simplistic? unreflective? I’m not sure. I was not left satisfied. It shoehorned in a sort of adam-and-eve theme that explained the need for the one female voice actor in film otherwise full of male voices — not that I opposed having a female character: I was kinda waiting for one to show up. But I also object to specifically creating one so that the end of the film contains the possibility of some sort of hetero reproductive model of future civilization. Personally? I’d put my money with the librarians.

That small critique aside, it was a gloriously realized world with great heroes and villains, and I heartily recommend it to y’all. Best wishes for the week ahead.