The Third Dimension
CORALINE is really good. I mean, really. The puppets overact, and the climax is not as exciting as the sub-climax, but these are quibbles. Henry Selick’s visuals and Bruno Coulais’ music are so consistently inventive and charming. (The music, the best I’ve heard in a recent film, doesn’t sound too much like anything else in movies, except maybe VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS a little. It was recorded in about four different countries. a ridiculous rigmarole that turns out to be well worthwhile.) It’s finally a film that makes good use of Neil Gaiman’s writing.
But LISTEN, here’s what you have to do. When the movie ends, there will be a small group of kids dancing around in front of the screen. Join them. If there aren’t any, be the first — start a fashion!
When you get so close to the screen that you can’t see the edges, well, alright, everything does go a bit smeary and out of focus. BUT, you are now in the frame, so close to the 3D figures which swoop out of the screen (flying terriers! Terrierdactyls, if you will) that you have to duck and swipe as they come at you, and then you realise, those kids weren’t dacing, they were dodging and weaving, trying to stay out of the path of the fast-moving winged canines, and so are you.
“That was the most enchanting experience I’ve had in a cinema in ages!” exclaimed Fiona.
shadowplay 
May 26, 2009 at 2:09 am
So glad you and Fiona got to see this. I caught it not long after seeing Moore’s WATCHMEN, unlike the latter I would think that Gaiman has no reason to want his name unattached to this adaptation of his work. So you were wearing 3D glasses, yes? Had this been released in 1968 they would’ve flocked to it in droves, those counterculture imbibers of substances that induce altered states. It may still happen, I could see this become a midnight cult classic for the college campus crowd. The use of color and design is what got to me, some here thought that the subject matter might be too dark and grotesque for children, but this is 2009 for God’s sake, kids are a pretty sophisticated lot these days. I never got to show you those View-Master packets I’d brought to NYC David, the art form utilized back then was very much like what you see in CORALINE (some erroneously refer to the View-Master reels as claymation, but since the images were stills, there’s no animation involved. They’re more accurately termed diorama packets). I believe there’s also a “Making Of” documentary of CORALINE to be found on YouTube, much recommended.
May 26, 2009 at 4:04 am
I wasn’t sure about taking Gaby to it, very scary in parts, but I may reassess my opinion. Or at least go by the DVD
May 26, 2009 at 8:21 am
We were expecting hysterics from one or two kids, but they were SILENT. Fiona suggested they were confused. “Kids are ALWAYS confused,” I said, “It’s their condition.” I took the view that they were enchanted.
The one viewmaster I ever owned did have similar colouring to this, but in my memory it was flat art rather than a 3D sculpture… I expect I’m wrong. I was confused a lot back then.
May 26, 2009 at 9:18 am
Fee here (Mrs Cairns)
Hey Guy!
I said exactly the same thing to David. A drug/student classic. In fact I felt a bit out of it watching it on nothing – unless you count paracetamol. (Hang on, it also had a bit of codeine in it….Uh Oh. It’s started already) BTW Thank you so much for Elsa Lanchester.
May 26, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Re. what you had, you aren’t wrong. There were a lot of View-Master offerings that consisted of flat images, but there were also many that had diorama settings, scenes that were sculpted, painted, lit and shot for inclusion in these packets. I collected them back in the Nineties, sold my collection for a small but tidy profit by that decade’s end, then reacquired a great many of the same a year or two back. Some of the highlights are Disney (THE JUNGLE BOOK, PETER PAN, BAMBI), Hanna Barbara (FLINTSTONES, QUICK DRAW McGRAW, PEBBLES & BAMM-BAMM), fairy tales (Grimm’s, Hans Christian Andersen, specifically The Little Mermaid), ALICE IN WONDERLAND, THE WIZARD OF OZ, and others too numerous to mention. One of my personal favorites is THE LITTLE YELLOW DINOSAUR, the colors are quite dazzling, primary and secondary, as well as such things a white pterodactyl (albino, maybe?) featured prominently in reel 3. Unfortunately, in the Seventies GAF, the company that owned View-Master, used non-Kodachrome stock for a time, resulting in packets of reels that are now faded, magentized, I’ve stumbled across them on occasion. Things got quite psychedelic toward the end of CORALINE, but from beginning to end they were never less than interesting, visually and otherwise. I’ve read that Gaiman and Selick are planning a second collaboration. Mrs. Cairns (I had to think for a second, Fee? What am I being charged for?), you’re very welcome. It doesn’t exactly fit in with the other prints on my site (plus Universal is very vigilant when it comes to others making profit from their stable of monsters), but I occasionally give them out as gifts to friends. Plus I saved a bundle giving it to David face-to-face as opposed to shipping it to Scotland.