Steamboy
(Sony Pictures)

Strings
Wellspring

If you’re looking for something different than the usual animated fare for your kids, here are two discs worth searching out. Strings is the vision of Danish director Anders R¯nnow Klarlund, who has created an epic fantasy with old school wooden puppets. Unlike the Muppets who are manipulated from below, the strings that control the characters’ motion are woven into the script as part of their life energy. While a hand or leg can be replaced, once the “head string” is severed, that puppet becomes just so much kindling. Visually arresting, the story is set in ye olden days where a dying Emperor takes his own life and attempts to pass on a secret to his heir, but is thwarted by opposing forces. Believing his father was murdered, the son seeks to avenge his death, but in the course of his travels, falls in love with the leader of his people’s sworn enemy. At first it’s a little disconcerting that the puppets have no mouths – at least mouths that move, but once you get into the rhythm of the film, it’s not that big of a deal.

Anime fans will be familiar with director Katsuhiro Ôtomo from his groundbreaking 1988 film Akira and his technique since then has only become more sophisticated. Set in England in the 1860’s a young inventor named Ray Steam is given a mysterious ball that contains enough energy to power an entire country, but it’s not long before he and it are in enemy hands. Ray finds himself caught between his grandfather who gave him the invention and his father, long presumed dead and working for a giant corporation who seek to control the population using weapons of mass destruction (steam-powered robots and machines). Over 180,000 drawings were used to create the fantastic machinery and battle sequences that rely on wheels, cogs and levers instead of the usual arsenal of futuristic toys we’re used to. One suggestion: normally, I would watch a film like this in Japanese and turn on the English subtitles, but since all the characters are Caucasian and use expressions like “crikey,” I found I enjoyed the dubbed version more. - David Bassin