NEWS: \'Coraline\' the movie.

CULTURE: 'Coraline', the Movie

Unless you've been buried under a rock, you know of Neil Gaiman. His epic "Sandman" spanned twelve collected volumes, each one bearing a quote by Norman Mailer, proclaiming it to be the first comic book for intellectuals. He's since won more Hugo awards than a modestly talented stick-shaker could shake his stick at. The most recent of these was for Coraline, a children's book so dark in places that it left many parents shaking their heads.

Neil reports in his blog that there looks to be a movie version on the way. Wait, this is good news. It's going to be handled by Henry Selick, the writer/director behind Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Wow. Just... wow.

w00t! I love Selick's work. I wonder if it's gonna be live-action or animated?

Now I gotta work on my dream cast...

I hadn't heard he was directing it, but neilgaiman.com had a little blurb about a movie in the works, and I saw it on IMDB

I didn't like Coraline nearly as much as "Stardust" which I think would also make an absolutely stellar movie. (pun so thoroughly intended)

henry selick mentioned this himself on SG over a year and a half ago

http://suicidegirls.com/words/Henry+Selick/

Give unto me! (makes appropriate Zim-like grabby hands) GIVE!

I think he could do it really well as a live action flick, I'd like to see that.

I've been buried under a rock and I didn't even know it.

Eh, Henry Selick's work is pretty spotty at best. I mean, Nightmare was fucking amazing, but James and the Giant Peach was weak - particularly the live action scenes. And if they can get Danny Elfman to do songs, it would be awesome, but as talented as Randy Newman usually is, his work on Peach was frankly awful.

Oh, and let's not mention Monkeybone.

this book is so amazing. yay!

Neil Gaiman's blog says that it is supposed to be entirely stop motion...Awesome

Selick is at his best when he stays away from live action (ie James and the Giant Peach )

But his animation is always top notch..Slow Bob was amazing, as were his MTV ID spots.

Nightmare, and the animated portions of James were great, and I can only assume thats the animation for Monkeybone was stellar as well.

Coraline is one of (if not entirely) my favorite Gaiman book, and my favorite childrens book ever...amazing! An animated film would be perfect, I cant wait!!

Grrr, Double post

[Edited on Sep 10, 2004 2:07AM]

I'm pretty sure this will be a lot like James and the Giant Peach, Where she starts out in a live action world, but the...Button world?...would be stop motion animation...

What would really be cool is if everything was stop motion except the mice...oooh...

Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot...

I thought I remembered hearing Michelle Pfeiffer was going to play the mother.

*bump*

I saw this film last night. It is so perfectly executed as to be held unbelievable. I was thriled the entire time! I really got into the movie as much as I got into the novel. It really stuck to canon!

I saw it today and really enjoyed it. The use of the 3D was really nice; very subtle for the most part. (Side note: How do you count 12 volumes of Sandman?)

A-men. The subtlety was so nice.

I didn't like it. Too many changes from the book. I didn't think it captured the dark suspence of the story.

I was counting Sandman: Endless Nights and Sandman: Dream Hunters in addition to the 10 books of the main series.

I saw a great exhibit about this movie at the Cartoon Museum in San Francisco. They had models from the movie on display , along with some preliminary drawings of the characters.

Linkovitch.

I didn't like the changes either, but that happens whenever a book is made into a movie.

I thought it was fun, and I really love 3-d. I thought it was still creepy enough that adults could enjoy it, but kids could watch it too.

I think it's pretty rare to introduce an entirely new major character, at least while still pretending to be faithful to the original source material. Especially one that weakens the characterization of the protagonist. Wybie was unnecessary and unwanted, and his swooping in to save Coraline when she was perfectly capable of saving herself even more so.

And I wish it had had the Rat Song. But other than that I liked it well enough.

Agreed. I didn't see a point for him. The book was just fine without him