9 (Nine)

Posted May 24, 2012 by Speed - 0 comments

Mankind has died after sentient machines created on demand of a dictator turned against him and gassed the entire planet. In the wake of things, a small puppet called “9″ awakens. Not knowing where he is or what is going on, he goes outside to explore and finds there are other puppets as well, all with their own very distinct personality. When one of them gets captured by a machine which looks a bit like a dog, 9 decides to go to an old factory where the machine went in order to help him, but accidentally awakens a huge machine that immediately starts going after the puppets.

While some of them want to get away and find another shelter away from the machine, 9 realises that running and hiding isn’t an option but that they must find a way to terminate the machines once and for all. But for that, they’ll need to find out more about how they came to exist and how to shut down the machines once and for ever.

Sound and Vision:
Except for some very small aliasing surrounding the machine, this transfer is demo material. The amount of detail, the colors, level of black, contrast, … it’s just magnificent to watch and rivals releases from Pixar.

The sound comes in with a DTS-HD track that will blow you away. There’s plenty of action that goes through all the speakers and the subwoofer will make your house shake. Great stuff!

Extras:
– Audio commentary
– “9″ The Original Short
– “9″ The Long and Short of It
– The look of “9″
– Acting Out

Plenty of nice extras that even include the original short movie that was the basis for Tim Burton to get this full motion picture made. What more do you want?

Conclusion:
9 isn’t made by Pixar but it might just as well have been. The story starts off with a pretty simple backdrop and little information about the puppets is given at first, but as the movie progresses you’ll get to know where the puppets came from and what happened in the past. Not that there’s much to that but that’s not the strength of the movie either. The strength lays in the fabulous animations and gorgious action that is displayed along with the depth of the characters on screen. No, 9 doesn’t manage to outdo a movie like Wall-E, but if it weren’t for Pixar it would no doubt be at the top of your list for “need to see” animation movies.

This blu-ray release is demo material for your home cinema set and the added extras are a very nice addition as well. Great stuff over the entire line.

Horsemen, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The