Peter and the Wolf

Technically stunning, and thematically dark
"Peter And The Wolf" (2008)
Technically stunning, and thematically dark, this amazing adaptation of Sergei Prokoviev's classic children's piece, features marvelous stop-motion animation from director Suzie Templeton.

The film places "Peter" squarely back into its Russian origins, but rather than an idealized rural-agrarian past, it places the story in a more modern setting, amid glum, drab, rundown shacks and tattered forests, a grim vision of a Soviet-era or post-Soviet Eastern Europe, complete with gun-toting thugs (the hunters of the original story here seem more like cold-hearted militiamen) and the nearby village appears as a rundown, dismal cinderblock outpost. Amid this crushing gloom, Peter finds wonder and joy, unlocking a secret garden where he and his friends the bird and the duck (both crippled and unable to fly) are able to play and forget the bleakness around them.

While this may sound a bit miserable, the film itself is a marvel: the amount of...

Beautiful, stark and amazing!
Suzie Templeton may be little known outside of the world of stop motion animation circles, but she is an incredible talent with a penchant for dark, thoughtful and sometimes twisted short subjects. With Peter and the Wolf she delves more into the mainstream and handles her biggest project to date.

Templeton has weaved together an international co-production between studios in Britain and Poland, using stop motion animation and digital effects to create a modern retelling of the Sergei Prokofiev musical.

There are plenty of reviews of the movie itself, but the amazon.com description does not include information about the plethora of extras on this new Region 1 DVD. Included are:

The musical themes
The story in pictures
The making of Peter & the Wolf
Behind the scenes documentary
Audio commentary
Educational workshop

If you are worried about buying an $18 DVD for just a 32 minute feature, you can rest assured you are...

Peter without the narrative (or Prokofiev's ending)...delightful, brave and touching
For a young boy, unhappiness can be a natural state. Peter and his aged grandfather live in a scrabbly old farmhouse on the edge of a forbidding Russian forest. The grandfather has built a wooden fence around the dirt yard and forbids Peter to go into the forest, where dangerous things lurk, like wolves. Peter hates this. All Peter has for a friend is a scruffy, long-necked duck. When he goes into town two hunters bully him. Still, Peter is a good kid. He helps a bird with an injured wing fly again with the help of a balloon. He sneaks out and plays on the iced pond, skittering and sliding and joined by the duck. He accepts his grandfather's fat, fat cat as a creature perhaps not to like, but not to hurt. Peter even manages to catch the dangerous, hungry and mangy wolf in his net. Peter stops his grandfather from shooting the wolf. When he and his grandfather take it to town, Peter is a hero. But it's not to last. Those hunters show up to taunt and bully the wolf. Peter stops them...

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