Coraline in 3D

I've been a fan of Henry Selick since The Nightmare Before Christmas, which was the first film I drove to see after getting my license back in 1993 (I remember it well). I've been "working" on a paper on James and the Giant Peach since 2002, and I'm extremely happy to see Selick working his magic again with Coraline, which opens wide tomorrow. 

Selick works in the tradition of George Pal, with small armatures for characters' bodies and interchangeable facial expressions for the heads; they're small pieces for different eye shapes, mouth shapes (visemes), etc. And within that field Selick is indisputably the master; he's indisputably America's answer to Peter Lord and the Aardman folks--though they're working in a slightly different medium--and he has for all practical purposes surpassed the work of Pal himself. But Selick's upped the ante this time--why not?--by not only retaining his method in an age of increasing CGI (Thomas the Train and Bob the Builder, for instance), but by deciding to make Coraline the first 3D stop-motion film ever made. I'm not enough of a historian to verify that this claim is absolutely true (claims to being first are often complicated, padded, or patently false, as in Snow White's claim to be the first animated feature when it was really something like the thirteenth). But that's a tangent: I'm giving Selick the benefit of the doubt--I certainly don't know any 3D stop-motion films--and I'm looking forward to seeing this in theaters. The draw is such, in fact, that I will overlook New York City's exorbitant admission fees and make Coraline the first film I've gone and paid to see since Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower over two years ago. 

I therefore wish I knew more about the photography. I was pleased this morning to see that the film is on the cover of this month's American Cinematographer, but I didn't have time to read it today and it's not yet up on their website (and not all AC articles are posted online). The DP is Pete Kozachik, ASC, who's been with Selick since the beginning. (He also shot Tim Burton's Corpse Bride.) Not having more info, I suppose I'll try to find some out and post more on it soon, but suffice it to say that stereoscopic photography is trickier than supposed--it's not just setting up two cameras a few inches apart--and stop-motion photography is also, an exercise is methodological precision that no live-action filmmaker would like to even consider. Combining the two processes would be nothing short of groundbreaking and herculean. Even though it's February I hope the Academy members still remember this fact come next January--wouldn't it be great to have an animated film nominated for cinematography? (Though like Nightmare, I suspect an effects nomination is more likely, if anything.)

Here are some reviews of and resources for the film:

 The official site, where the first thing I did was watch a pixellated mustache. Very cool web design.

Film in Focus

Hollywood Reporter

Wired

And now the trailer:

And a clip:




Just a note to parents, to keep the littlest kids away. I guess I'm conservative in this way, but even Rolling Stone said it'll scare them <blank> (i.e. "quite a lot"). This one's for the bigger kids and, why not, the grown ups themselves.