The Gate to the Mind's Eye

It rocks man! Perfect stuff to put on the tv screen with the sound off and play comething on the stereo! The images seem to go with any music! The city scapes look like Blade Runner. It's better than that stuff in Lawnmower Man! Lots of emryo-like images...

When I looked and saw that this movie had only been rated by 49 people, I was surprised. I mean, the music is genius, the animation was way ahead of its time, and only 49 people in the universe care enough about it to review?

Man, are the people of the world missing out. Thomas Dolby is a musical genius, and the people who did the animation spent loads of hours on their pieces. I think this movie deserves more than what it is getting.

I first remember seeing it when I was in third grade. My mother was the head librarian at that public library, and I was nuts about the 1st mind's eye. She finally just bought that one and this one for me so I'd quit checking them out... o_Ox This is definitely worth your time.

For those that remember Thomas Dolby only for "She Blinded Me with Science", you have a real suprise and treat in store. Dolby has moved on and shown how good he really is, doing the score for this movie. Part of the reason I go on about this is I discovered the soundtrack before purchasing the video (and later DVD).

The computer animation for 1994 is very well done. It could probably be done in real time today, but it's certainly very impressive even today at the detail that was done. The journey starts with the end of the world, moving along though the birth of a new world, following evolution and history, with Dolby's brilliant music helping set the tone and the pace.

The blend of music and art makes it a must buy. No extra features, it's not even 5.1, probably one of the first DVDs made. But it's still worth it.

In the early '90s computer animation was beginning to take hold and one-hour films like this would feature this new technology. There is supposed to be a story here, but good luck finding it. The fun is in the visuals which range from good to outstanding. My favorite segment is the music one with the jazz players and Washington-Lincoln.

Speaking of music, not all of it is the standard instrumentals. There are a couple of vocals. There also is some short narration. The whole thing is about 45 minutes with 10 minutes of ending credits tacked on.

This may be over a decade old in a technology that has grown leaps and bounds, but it's still good stuff and worth checking out.

I remember short scenes from this movie being aired on TV1000 (or was it CANAL+?) when I was younger. I had just bought a book on ray-tracing and was wondering how did they do that outstanding animation when it took an hour of my puny PC to render just a simple scene. I never knew the name of the movie - they just aired uncredited parts of it on the TV to fill the gaps in the schedule. Some days ago I found it by chance and I'm very happy - it brought me back to my happier childhood :)

Overall - great music and great animation. Very advanced CGI scenes for the time of its making. And the music blends flawlessly with the video. It's definitely not some random 3DS Max video & electronic sound compilation like the ones creeping around nowadays.