It's official: if Tim Burton and Henry Selick make a movie together, I'll love it. Like "James and the Giant Peach" and "Nightmare Before Christmas" already are, "Coraline" is certain to end up near the top of my Favorite Movies Ever list.
"Coraline" shares the same whimsically-demented, decayed, spiral-infested, stop-motion animation as the other two, but takes it into absolutely eye-popping levels. In the middle of the movie where Coraline is first exploring the Other world, especially, it's visually astounding. The mouse circus and the garden scene in particular had me laughing in awe. So many beautiful things moving around at once is almost overwhelming. And it's definitely the kind of thing that's improved by the big screen.
The story is good, too !
Well worth the $7.
Uncut raved about Gran Torino this month – looking forward to seeing it when it hits the UK.
I haven’t seen the film yet, though I’m sure I will by the weekend. But when I read Gaiman’s book, well before the film had been announced, I imagined Selick would be a perfect fit. His description of the Other Mother — in particular, of the way her hair moves — made me wonder if Gaiman had Tim Burton imagery on his mind when he wrote it.
i didn’t read this one, but i’ve noticed in the Gaiman books that i have read that he’ll sometimes describe a dramatic event (explosion, teleportation, disappearance, etc.) as if he’s visualizing it as a stock movie effect. can’t name any examples off the top of my head, but i remember reading his books (Neverwhere especially) and thinking that it’s almost as if he’s writing a screenplay, trying to make the book easy for film producers to visualize.
so, yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he was thinking of Burton when he wrote this.
I thought it was a gorgeous film, and appreciated that the 3-D was mostly subtle and used to flesh out the world rather than create schlocky jumping-out-at-you effects.
It should be noted that Tim Burton has no connection with the movie whatsoever. Gaiman did send a copy of the novel to Henry Selick, I believe.
Oh, and Neverwhere actually began life as a BBC miniseries, with the novel coming after the story had been developed for TV, so it’s not surprising that there are screenplay-ish elements to the book.
the 3-D was mostly subtle and used to flesh out the world rather than create schlocky jumping-out-at-you effects.
i saw the (apparently) non 3D version ? we looked around for glasses or whatever device it took to see the 3d… but there wasn’t any. looked awesome anyway.
the new NMBXmas 3D was amazing, though.
t should be noted that Tim Burton has no connection with the movie whatsoever.
ah. wow! my bad!
the promotional materials do their very best to convince people otherwise! it’s easy to assume it’s Burton (and i’m sure that’s intentional). Burton should sue! (kidding)
gotta say, though. this one looks a lot like what they have done together, and what Burton did before he first teamed up with Selick – there’s a lot of Scissorhands and Beetlejuice-esque look and feel in Coraline (and TNBXMas). they have obviously influenced each other quite a bit.