Coraline and 3-D Cinema

Just got back from seeing Coraline. I really enjoyed it. The production design and art direction were beautiful. And the character animation, particularly the facial animation, was top notch. I'm generally pretty impressed by stop motion - I just think it's such an amazing feat in general - and the animation here was especially good. Major props to the artists involved.



The story wasn't spectacular, but it was engaging, and it meshed so well with the visuals that it's almost hard to separate the two. I didn't find the villain to be anything special (the secondary characters in general lacked development), but the hero was pretty well fleshed out and followed a satisfying character arc. I'm being pretty picky... overall, I thought it was excellent.

As for stereoscopic cinema, I'm not enthralled. In my opinion, it adds almost nothing to the movie, and at times it detracts. The illusion really falls apart during action scenes, or any time the characters or the camera are moving quickly. More often than not, it just feels like it's out of focus. In general I think it's pretty gimmicky, and I hope that it runs its course like it did in the 1950's. Unfortunately, I'm not sure the studio executives agree. All future Pixar and DreamWorks Animation films are slated to be stereoscopic (Jeffrey Katzenberg all but hails it as the "savior of the industry"), and I can only suspect that we'll be seeing more and more live action jumping into 3-D as well.

So see it in 2-D if at all possible, but one way or another Coraline is definitely worth checking out.