Coraline

[tealin]

I hadn't posted a review because I didn't really have much to say that half the people on my friends list haven't said already: it's good, go see it. It was selling out, here, its opening weekend, so it didn't seem to need my help. But I thought perhaps someone might be curious what I thought of it (after all, you are reading my blog) so I shall say this:

How refreshing! The art direction had a lot of integrity and ingenuity, was imaginative and bold, and weird to see 'blog style' actually in something, more or less unadulterated. The 3D was quite good, I thought, and authentic, probably because they were photographing an actual 3D set as opposed to pushing pixels. The story ... worked ... but I have always had problems with Neil Gaiman and most of my dissatisfaction with this movie stems from the same thing that leaves me dissatisfied with nearly everything else he does.* It's not that I have problems with it so much as it could just ... be ... better. And no, I haven't read the book. The animation was good if a little over-animated at times (argh 'Meet Wybie' sequence argh) and it was amusing to hear Keith David's voice coming from a cat. All in all, though: QUALITY. The end.

*Except Good Omens, for the most part, which ... I mean, TERRY PRATCHETT. Come on.

Comments

[tony-cliff.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I guess it's much more difficult when doing stop-motion. (Though Aardman doesn't seem to have any trouble with it.)

[tony-cliff.livejournal.com]

ALSO ALSO, I can't count the number of times that - while watching the film - I wished that it would have been animated traditionally (uh, 2D, that is).

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I know they often do a couple of 'rehearsal' passes before they shoot it for real, and at any rate they should have been thumnailing and planning the scene before they jumped right in with the models. Surely at some point they'd have to show someone before it got into the final cut of the film (preferably before using anything expensive, like film or time), and that someone should have said 'your performance is cracked out, yo.'