In Contention

Tag: Coraline

  • Best scares in film

    Janet Leigh in PsychoIt’s only hitting me today that we haven’t offered up any Halloween-y content yet.  Strange.  This is my favorite time of year, though season-less Southern California certainly does it no favors.

    Last year we got the contributors together to name the top 20 horror films of all time, an installment of The Lists I’m quite proud of.  This year I’ve been settling in each night to a new perennial favorite.  Last night it was “Beetle Juice.” I took another look at Carpenter’s “Halloween” earlier in the week and I expect Ill be tossing in the “Coraline” Blu-ray once again, maybe a little Romero.  “White Zombie” with Bela Lugosi was a novel distraction the other night.

    I don’t worship at the altar of genre, but I do enjoy getting in the spirit, so to speak.  Rather than cook something up for the holiday, I figured I’d point you to a pair of UK stories spotlighting the best in horror.  The first, in the Daily Telegraph, announces Bernard Herrmann’s “Psycho” theme as the scariest horror theme of all time.

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  • We can officially add ‘A Christmas Carol’ to the animated list

    Gary Oldman in A Christmas CarolYesterday we covered the animated feature film race and the potential for the category to have five nominees this year, largely dependent on Robert Zemeckis’s “A Christmas Carol” being submitted as animation (a decision completely in his hands).  As it turns out, the film will indeed be submitted for consideration.

    That, along with “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure” brings the tally up to 16 titles.  Some are expressing doubts that “Tinker Bell” can qualify, but I’m told the film “looks great, is made professionally, and will receive a theatrical run in LA, so those are the criteria.”  Still, being right on the edge, this thing could go either way.

    I’m still waiting on confirmation that the French film “A Town Called Panic” had a qualifying run or will have one (mass confusion), and ditto Summit’s “Astro Boy,” but that would be 17 and the absolute ceiling (by my calculation) on the number of submitted titles.

    Assuming five nominees, here’s what I’m thinking…

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  • Animated feature forecast: could be ‘Cloudy’

    Cloudy with a Chance of MeatballsOver at The Odds (The Wrap’s new Oscar blog, in case you haven’t been reading), Steve Pond brings up the fierce competition of this year’s animated feature category and brings up an intriguing tidbit worth considering.

    In looking through Time Out London’s list of the 50 greatest animated films of all time, collected by the magazine’s editors and filmmaker Terry Gilliam, Pond takes note of the complete absence of both “Up” and “Ponyo.” These are two films considered very much in the thick of this year’s toon Oscar race, of course.

    However, after that aside, he comes to the two animated films from 2009 that did make the list.  The first is Henry Selick’s “Coraline,” but, well, hopefully the other note will provide some insight to those puzzled over my animated feature film predictions.

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  • ‘Up’ vs ‘Coraline’ vs … the Jonas Brothers?

    UpLast month I mentioned that the Venice Film Festival is making a rather large gesture of faith in the current 3-D fad by introducing a new award for the best 3-D film of the year. The prize will be awarded by a separate three-person jury comprising critics Dave Kehr and Scott Foundas and experimental filmmaker Nadia Ranocchi.

    The award is not limited to films competing at the festival — but in case you didn’t get that, the point is made abundantly clear by this frankly bizarre 9-title shortlist for the gong that was unveiled yesterday. Via Variety:

    “Battle for Terra” (Aristomenis Tsirbas)
    “Coraline” (Henry Selick)
    “The Hole” (Joe Dante)
    “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” (Carlos Saldana)
    “Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience” (Bruce Hendricks)
    “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (Eric Brevig)
    “Monsters vs Aliens” (Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon)
    “My Bloody Valentine” (Patrick Lussier)
    “Up” (Pete Docter)

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  • The economics of 3D … and why I don’t care

    CoralineI’m going to sound about three times my actual age for saying this, but I’ll say it anyway: I could not care less about 3D.

    I know it’s important, I know it’s fun, I know it’s the future. I know all this largely because almost 20 years ago, a group of cheery traveling 3D promoters visited my elementary school in New Jersey, and told the packed assembly exactly the same thing.

    “Hey, 3D! Yay, 3D! Everybody see in 3D!” they sang, before showing us some jazzed-up motocross footage in the third dimension. Does anybody else remember sitting through the same demonstration?

    I wasn’t thrilled then, and while I’m aware of the massive leap and bounds the technology has made since I was 7 years old, I’m not particularly thrilled now. I like a gosh-wow gimmick as much as the next man — a stupid part of me wishes I’d lived through Smell-O-Rama — but once the novelty of items popping off the screen settles in, I find 3D a dispensable accessory: an extra “D” doesn’t amount to a lot of beans in the cinematic departments I really care about — writing, storytelling, performance.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Whittling further as convention flees

    Max Records in Where the Wild Things AreAnother month, another step closer to the awards season.  As the summer winds down and the industry slowly begins to square itself with the off-season’s bombshell Oscar news, the picture becomes a little clearer.  Kind of.

    Universal Pictures, in a move speculated upon endlessly by now, shuffled two of its contenders — Paul Greengrass’s “Green Zone” and Joe Johnston’s “The Wolf Man” — off to 2010.  As Anne Thompson shrewdly noted in a recent item, the decision likely has everything to do with a numbers game.  The studio has experienced a rocky two quarters this year and things aren’t necessarily looking up.  Some think, in the case of “The Wolf Man,” the shift was made to avoid another box office misfire in 2009 (as by now, with push after push, the film is beginning to smell fishy).  Others say the “Green Zone” shift had a lot to do with “The Hurt Locker”‘s release pattern.

    Whatever the case, the evacuations change the Oscar landscape ever so slightly, giving us just a few more talking points in the vacuum of August before we have anything of value worth discussing when the fall festival season hits in less than a month’s time.

    Universal is now left with two critically divisive, commercially dubious titles in Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” and Judd Apatow’s “Funny People” to hawk for awards consideration, effectively (if you’re asking me, though I realize no one is) taking the studio out of the game this year — or, at the very least, making the hill steeper.

    But taking note of the studio awards landscape, it doesn’t seem to me that anyone else is on surer ground.  As I look out at the many contenders and the campaigns being prepared for them, it appears the entire industry will be dealing with unconventional approaches and product to go along with the new changes in the Best Picture category (and all the headache that comes with them) this season.

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  • Comic-Con on the way

    San Diego Comic-Con InternationalLike the rest of the web geek world, I guess, I’m gearing up for this year’s San Diego Comic Con International, which begins with preview night on Wednesday.

    All eyes, of course, are on Thursday’s slew of events, a treasure trove of goodies that made for a ton of Sophie’s choices when putting together my personal schedule.  I’ll definitely be at the Disney panel, with glimpses of Robert Zemeckis’s “A Christmas Carol” in 3D and a taste of Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” among other things.  Speaking of 3D, perhaps the most anticipated panel will be James Camerons “Avatar” event.  I’m definitely looking forward to that, but the likely crowd of humanity that will be doing same?  Not so much.  Trying to wrangle some VIP consideration as we speak.

    The Peter Jackson-produced “District 9” isn’t as high on my to-do list as most, but I’ll probably park it for Paramount’s “Iron Man 2” Panel on Saturday.  The film just wrapped a 72-day shoot over the weekend, by the way.  Warner Bros. also has a panel, on Friday, but Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are” is the only thing that has me interested there.  Focus Features also plans a considerable presence with “Coraline” (the Blu-ray and DVD of which hits shelves tomorrow) and “9.”

    Oh, and Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.”  I suppose I should check that out.

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  • Sneek peek at the ‘Coraline’ DVD

    Neil Miller over at Film School Rejects has an exclusive clip from one of the special features on the forthcoming “Coraline” Blu-ray/DVD. “This little sequence is called ‘Wrapping Up Coraline,’” Miller writes, “and it focuses on director Henry Selick talking about the final stages of work that went into creating this wonderful little film. He also speaks a bit about the incredible amount of work that was turned in by countless artists and animators.”  Take a look below.  The disc hits shelves July 21:

  • Could ‘Mr. Fox,’ ‘Carol’ join toon Best Pic hopefuls?

    Fantastic Mr. FoxJoBlo has an exclusive first look today at the central character from Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” a Scott Rudin-produced animated Roald Dahl adaptation.  The film was recently shifted from Fox over to Fox Searchlight for the purposes of distribution, lest a small, niche film such as this be lost in the shuffle.  But I have also heard murmurs (none of them confirmed, mind you) that the film will be pushed for a Best Picture nomination now that there are 10 slots up for grabs.

    What is confirmed, however, is that Henry Selick’s “Coraline” will be campaigned for the top prize by Focus Features (while Richard Curtis’s “The Boat That Rocked,” recently speculated in this space as being primed for Oscar, will not).  And of course, Disney/Pixar will be hitting the pavement in favor of “Up.”  Before long, the question becomes, “Well if they’re going for it, we should, too.”  Which leads me to wonder…

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  • 5/11 Web Round-up

    Tilda Swinton in Julia• With J.J. Abrams’s reboot landing in theaters this weekend, and Emmy talk on the brain, Tom O’Neil asks which versions of the popular series deserved small screen awards attention. [Gold Derby]

    • Geoff Boucher, meanwhile, talks to Leonard Nimoy and gets the actor to admit that some “Star Trek” fans can be “scary.” [Hero Complex]

    • Sukhdev Sandhu: “Why I love Cannes.” [Daily Telegraph]

    • The editing of an NPR review of “Outrage” sparks same. [indieWIRE]

    • Neil Gaiman discusses the adaptation of “Coraline” across the pond. [Empire]

    • Donna Freydkin talks to actress Tilda Swinton about her role in “Julia.” [USA Today]

    • David Poland loses himself in a dazzling 63-second shot from Steven Soderbergh’s 1999 film “The Limey.” [The Hot Blog]

    • Similarly, Glenn Kenny gets caught up on a “strangely evocative” frame from Sidney Pollack’s “Three Days of the Condor.” [Some Came Running]

    • Stephen Frears talks “Cheri,” which released in the UK over the weekend.  (Guy’s review here.) [The Guardian]

  • Neil Gaiman pens a love letter send-off to the Caped Crusader

    Cover of Batman #686I don’t know how many readers became regulars as a result of last year’s “Dark Knight” awards march, but I do know there are quite a few who share my enthusiasm for comics and Batman comics in particular.  This post is certainly aimed at that crowd, but anyone eager to get their hands on a great story, in any medium, this is for you, too.

    With the 70th anniversary of the character coming next month, author, screenwriter and comics scribe Neil Gaiman has been charged with writing up the final chapter of Batman’s existence in the books as we’ve known them throughout that history.  “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” is his “love letter” to the Bat, fashioned after Alan Moore’s similar send-off to Superman 20 years ago: “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”

    Wired recently posted an in-depth interview with Gaiman, already high off the successful adaptation of his novel “Coraline” this year, and you get some great insight into his off-the-wall graphic denouement, which culminates with a sequence at once touching and unsettling, an homage of sorts to the finale of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”  Asked whether the character has lived in his heart for a while, given the deep attention and appreciation for his history in just two swift volumes, Gaiman had this to say:

    When I was 5, I was in a car with my dad and he mentioned that there was this Batman TV show in America about a man who dressed up in a costume and fought crime. The only bat I ever knew was a cricket bat, so what I thought he looked like was rather odd, based on that. Months later, the series hit the U.K., and I remember watching and being affected by it. Really worrying, genuinely worrying, on a deep primal level, “Will he be OK?” That is the way it was with every deathtrap. If I missed the end of an episode, I’d get my friends to tell me he was OK.

    Because of the Batman TV show, my dad picked up Smash! comics for me, which reprinted a Batman cartoon strip, which were much more about continuity than the television program. Those were my gateway drugs into Batman. Even when batman went twee in the ’60s, Neal Adams reinvented him as a long-eared, shadowy character. And when I was in my 20s, Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns came out and I found myself writing my first piece of academic criticism on it.

    I wanted my comic to contain all of that, from the story to the art. I wanted it to have that love in there. I wanted to write the last Batman with honor and love.

    If you haven’t read these two books, I encourage you to do so, even if you aren’t up to snuff on what’s going on in the series at the moment.  It reads as an independent study of the Dark Knight’s final hour.  You can find “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” in the pages of “Batman” (#686) and “Detective Comics” (#853).  And catch the rest of that Wired interview here.

  • OFF THE CARPET: Handicapping 2009 a year in advance!?

    Ewan McGregor and Hilary Swank in AmeliaAhh.  The dust is settling.  And on the horizon, just visible through the mist and waiting to drive us all up the wall once again: the 2009 Oscar season.

    I’ve been writing this year-in-advance column for probably six years now, and I always look forward to gazing ahead.  No one dives in so pathetically deep this far out as yours truly, but in exchange for not having a life for the past few months, I get to unload this burden the day after our annual season’s peak and forget about little gold men entirely for a few months.

    It’s quite liberating.

    The most interesting thing about the season to come, from my vantage point, is the lack of a dreaded “frontrunner status” for any of the contenders.  Some might say Clint Eastwood’s Nelson Mandela project (which is not called “The Human Factor,” mind you — the director says the film is currently untitled and is based on John Carlin’s book “Playing the Enemy”).

    Others might say Rob Marshall’s “Nine” (coming from a money-tight company hoping to avoid echoes of “Memoirs of a Geisha”).  But I don’t see a “Geisha” from here, or a “Charlie Wilson’s War,” expected heavies waiting to miss the mark.  The field is curiously flat, and as a result, excitingly broad.

    Let’s get to it, shall we?

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  • ‘Coraline’ trailer debuts

    And very lovely it looks, too. You’d expect a marriage between Henry Selick, Neil Gaiman and Focus Features to be on the classy side of the spectrum, and so it appears to be here.

    February still seems to me like a curious month to open this kind of product, but I’m guessing if the film lives up to its promise, it’ll be an early contender for the 2009 Animated Feature Oscar. Dive in:

  • 11/18 Oscarweb Round-up

    Coraline• Jeffrey Wells responds to the documentary short list. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Dave Karger and Missy Schwartz go back and forth on the Oscar prospects of “Slumdog Millionaire.” [Entertainment Weekly]

    • T.L. Stanley catches up with a report from the “Revolutionary Road” screening this weekend. [Gold Rush]

    • Peter Bart whines about a lack of Oscar ads…again.  And insultingly draws the conclusion that studios are hanging talent out to dry.  Again. [Variety]

    • Patrick Goldstein chastises Bart for the whining (fair enough), but in calling for a moratorium on ad buys, fails to understand that their existence might have something to do with the fact that he hasn’t had to accept a buy-out yet.  Just sayin’. [The Big Picture]

    • Reporting with the Dudes from the “Big Lebowski” festival. [The Guardian]

    • Kathy Marks reports from the ground at the “Australia” premiere in Sydney. [The Independent]

    • Alonso Duralde runs down 10 competitors for Best Picture. [MSNBC]

    • Mickey Mouse turns 80. [CNN]

    • David Frank comes up with 10 reasons not to make a third “Batman” film.  Kris Tapley hunts David Frank down with a pair of garden sheers. [Rope of Silicon]

    • Helen Mirren talks about the joys of being in her birthday suit. [The Times]

    • Susan Wloszczyna talks to Henry Selick about the upcoming “Coraline.” [USA Today]

    • Praising the film for the most part, Glenn Kenny hopes “Revolutionary Road” can find an audience. [Some Came Running]

  • Revealing ‘Coraline’

    Focus Features unveiled 30 minutes of Henry Selick’s “Coraline” today in Beverly Hills in two separate press events, and the material was as stunning as you would expect.

    Based on Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel of the same name, “Coraline” is Selick’s first fully stop-motion feature effort since “The Nightmare before Christmas” 14 years ago.  All of the puppets are hand-crafted, many of them on display during the reception that followed the footage, including this miniature set, featured in one of the scenes revealed today (forgive the crude iPhone shot — I wasn’t expecting such goodies):

    Minature set from Coraline

    Based on these fleeting moments, I’d say the film will be a creative dazzler.  The 3-D really pops without drawing attention to itself, and that’s a breath of fresh air after “Beowulf” failed to capitalize on the by now decades old technology in a similar fashion last year.  (How many “look, it’s in 3-D!!” moments did we really need in that thing anyway?).

    What’s more, the film seems to be carrying Gaiman’s eerie tale across properly, without a lot of fuss and with an eye toward preserving the author’s atmospheric intentions.

    Selick spoke brielfy beforehand and mingled afterward, but I had to leave before getting any face time with him myself.  The film is set to bow in February and will be part of an interesting duo of animated endeavors for Focus next year (along with “9”).  Can’t wait to see the rest.

  • ‘Coraline’ featurette

    Still waiting to find out whether this one will be finished for an Oscar qualifying run in December.

    I must say, I didn’t realize Neil Gaiman sent Henry Selick a manuscript 18 months before the book was published.  Looks like he wanted this to be on the screen early on and had his ideas from the start.  Check it out.

  • Behind the scenes of Henry Selick’s ‘Coraline’

    Every time I walk into the comic book store lately I feel the urge to pick up Neil Gaiman’s “Coraline.” I haven’t done so yet (mainly because I’m buried in so many other books at the moment), but it’s an interesting tale that could make a fabulous feature film.

    Henry Selick is, of course, doing just that and Rotten Tomatoes has secured a behind-the-scenes look at the film. Focus Features is set to distribute “Coraline” in February of next year, but there is still an outside shot at an Academy-qualifying run in 2008 if the film is finished in time. It would enter into the animated feature derby with “WALL-E,” perhaps Sony Classics’ “Waltz With Bashir” and DreamWorks SKG’s “Kung Fu Panda” (which is just asking to be kicked to the awards curb).

    Next year, the competiton looks to be Pixar’s “Up,” Walt Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” and Focus’s own “9.” Perhaps Robert Zemeckis’s “A Christmas Carol” will turn the tide for motion capture for the animators, but I doubt it.

    “Coraline” is currently set for release on February 6, 2009.

  • Another animated title off the list…

    In response to Brian’s item this week about Focus Features’ animated film slate, I’ve received notification from the studio that “Coraline,” the Neil Gaiman adaptation from Henry Selick (which looks extraordinary, I might add) is set for a February 2009 release.  Obviously, this takes it off the line-up for Oscar contention this year, so update your lists.

    Additionally, though Brian notes that he “has heard that ‘Coraline’ [will be rated] PG-13,” Focus would like it known that the film has not yet been rated.  Just so the air is clear on that.

    The studio also insists that no release date has been settled yet for Shane Acker’s “9.”  However, that doesn’t jive with another report I received earlier this month which indicated the film would be pushed to next year.  According to the studio, since the film is still “in production,” they’re not committing to a date.  Brian, meanwhile, was told at the early screening he attended that the flick was “still on for a Christmas 2008”  release.

    It’s all beside the point for now.  Things shift and slide.  Maybe the studio will find an opening in the holiday season for “9”  and prime it for launch, maybe not.  But none of it takes away from Brian’s point, that it is interesting to see the studio trying its hand at being an animation studio, and one dedicated to unconventional fare at that.