Coming to DVD March 24th
Tales of the Black Freighter was a story within a story in the Watchmen graphic novel. A young black man visits a newspaper stand everyday and reads comic books without paying for them. A pirate story bled through the pages and introduced the reader to a man who had lost his entire crew thanks to the attack of the Black Freighter. He decides to head home in hopes of warning the people before the Black Freighter makes it to his town. After making his way back to shore, he uses the corpses of his crew to make a raft and sets out to sea. He winds up going mad in the process as the Freighter impairs his judgement of what's truly fantasy and what is actually reality.
The storyline was almost identical with the source material in this animated feature. The only issue I had was the character design. Everything else looked fantastic and was animated beautifully. The sky was incredibly vibrant the entire time and the sea looked almost lifelike at times. The characters were animated rather poorly, in my opinion though. It may just be the design, but their quality looked poor and their animation wasn't up to par in comparison to everything else around them. Reminded me a bit of the character designs in Aeon Flux. All in all, it's well worth seeing. But it's rather short as it only clocks in at around twenty one minutes without the credits.
Rating: 7/10
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Under the Hood is the autobiography of Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl. It's basically his version of the events that transpired during the time he was a superhero and was a part of the Minutemen. There's a feature devoted solely to this autobiography on the Black Freighter DVD.
The feature is basically a documentary of Hollis Mason/Nite Owl being interviewed about Under the Hood and everything he included in his book. It also focuses heavily on the Minutemen, the original team of superheroes from the thirties. Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre and Edward Jacobi/Moloch are also in it quite a bit. There's even a brief cameo from The Comedian. It's really just a companion piece to the film that sheds a bit more light on characters that were only briefly touched on in the actual Watchmen film. A must see for anyone who was a fan of the film.
Rating: 7/10
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