The Mindscape of Alan Moore (2003)

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The Mindscape of Alan Moore can hardly be called a documentary. It's just what the title says - the mind-scape of a brilliant, unique but also pretentious writer. The film is Alan Moore himself talking constantly for 80 minutes, apparently with no real editing or direction. It starts pretty conservatively with Moore talking about his early life, about how he discovered comics and how he got into the business, as well as some insight about his most important works - Watchmen, V For Vendetta, Swamp Thing, From Hell and Lost Girls, and those segments hold a lot of interest for fans. But from there, in the second half, Moore derails into long philosophical and quasi-spiritual ramblings that give some interesting insight into his mind and creativity, but really drag on for too long and show very little original thought that hasn't been expressed before by philosophers, spiritualists and physicists. As a whole this is less a documentary and more a chance for Moore to talk about whatever he wants; the visuals aren't interesting enough to make it any more engaging. It holds some interests for fans of Moore but keep your expectations low.

This is Alan Moore talking about his life, his work and beliefs for 78 minutes. Its very informative look at why he does what he does and what is lying behind the stories that have become part of the popular culture. It's a heady mix that is sure to both enlighten and confuse (but in a good way.) I liked it and I know that I'm going to have to listen to it again to fully grasp everything that he's saying. The reason I say listen is that much of this program is static. It's a camera pointed at Moore who speaks, often as if he's giving a lecture. There are attempts by the filmmakers to spice things up by showing locations and panels from the comics or tarot cards, but for the most part all of the information is in Moore 's words. One also has to listen because Moore 's North of England accent can be a bit dense at times and it is possible to miss a word or two. (I would rather listen to Moore rather than watch him because I find his physical affectation a bit on the silly side. He is a grand eccentric and he plays it to the hilt with his wild man appearance and more jewelry then Zsa Zsa Gabor. I can't take him seriously as a person). If you like Moore and his work this is something you really need to see.

It's okay, not as good "Crumb", and many other artist documentaries, for the same reason, that it is worth watching at all, that being that the film takes it's information almost completely from Moore's own mouth, in one interview which lasts the entire film. We get no context, explanation, or details which Moore does not provide, and though that's interesting, because he's notoriously private and rarely does interviews anymore, we miss out on a lot of information, not about Alan Moore the writer or Alan Moore the shaman/magician (which as he explains very clearly he feels are pretty much the same thing), but Alan Moore the man.We learn he was expelled from high school (he does not mention for selling LSD on campus), we learn he feels his comics are unfilmable(this same year this film was released he would be sued by Larry Cohen, for allegedly stealing "The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen" from a script he wrote. And would later swear off "royalties" from any adaptation of his works. Then again how could we?), we learn nothing of his family life(he has two daughters, one is a comics writer herself. He is divorced, after a somewhat long term three-way relationship between him, his wife and his wife's girlfriend, all of whom lived together with their children, went awry.) None of which is mentioned.Moore says instead of having a normal "boring" mid-life crisis decided to "give his friends a fright and surprise by completely mad and declaring himself a magician" (also does not mention he worships a Roman Snake God named Glycon, whom he calls Sweety, and is also quite literally a puppet). It's the odd little bits like these, Moore mentions he's worked for over a decade on the pornographic "Lost Girls" but not that, throughout the course of the book, he became romantically involved with Gebbie(last year they married). How many porns become real life love stories? Anyway those are things I knew going in, which I thought were oddly omitted, and might have made the movie more personable, human, and effective.Moore is, despite, his seclusion, a witty, charming, and remarkably clear speaker. Most of the movie, is Moore discussing his belief and ideas concerning Magic, Human Evolution, Spirituality, and the role of the artist in society.Magic is often called "the art", and Moore takes this literally, Magic Gramoire is a simple way of saying "grammar", and the casting of spells, is simply to "spell", and by manipulating symbols and language(writing) produce a change in consciousness of the audience. Moore feels "advertisers" are the modern keepers of this symbolic magical language, a perversion he feels, which keeps us attached only to materialism and the psychical limitations of our environments.The most interesting part of the film is the end, where Moore talks about "Information Doubling" theory, where according to him sometime around 2015, human information, will be doubling every half second. Where literally every second, humanity as a whole, will be learning more in a single moment, than it has in it's entire history, at which point human culture goes from fluid, to boiling, to steam.Moore comes from North Hampton, which he calls "so inbreed the dogs have the same hair lip as everyone else in the family". We see the cold industrial city built out of the Ruins of a castle, and it's juxtaposed to the brightly colored American comic books, which served as an escape from bleak "material" world Moore found himself in as a boy(though if you were to read his novel "The Voice Of The Fire", he would argue, all of human history can be traced in some way to his hometown). That's the contradiction of Moore in general though, or at leas the one he sees in the world, alternating between magical almost Utopian romanticism and cynical, world weary, fatalism.If you have no idea, who or what an Alan Moore is, it's a good documentary, which explores his ideas and beliefs in detail (if it skirts his personal life), which some very at times moody and others psychedelic cinematography and juxtaposition of images. IMoore is one of my favorite writers, so personally I can enjoy just listening to him talk, but all and all, the film itself, just isn't as good as it's subject.Still I'm glad I watched it, and would recommend to anyone who could find a copy, especially if you like writing or art. A little disappointed with the form here, but non the less, inspired by the content....and more conflicted about wanting to see "The Watchmen" than ever before...

This man is one of the authors I absolutely admire. His thoughts are complicated, yet quite clear. His comics are full of action and in the same time full of deep underlying messages.However, he is sometimes very ... controversial. In this document, he tries to explain his thought on magic, his thought on the modern, commercial world, and he talks about how he became a comic writer.This document is strong in moments, when there is only Alan speaking and telling his story. But when the author of documentary tries to use his own approach, the film became boring. So yes, we will see Rorschach on the roof - and it is the most boring Rorschach I have seen. The music is also inappropriate and special effects are laughable (yes, there are special effects in interview. don't ask me why.) But the interview with Alan is really worth watching this documentary or buying it on DVD.