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Monday, July 27, 2009
BD impressions: Coraline
11:58 AM / BD Impressions / 
25 Comments
I almost didn't see Coraline. The 'tude-infested poster made me expect a smug, self-satisfied movie brimming with pop culture references and centred around a wise-ass, sassy heroine. It just goes to show that appearances can be deceptive, for the poster does a very poor job of selling what is arguably the best film of 2009 that I've seen so far. Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman, this stop motion delight was written and directed by Henry Selick, who back in 1993 directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, possibly the greatest feature length stop motion animated feature ever made (not that there have been many).
Many people erroneously believe that film to have been directed by Tim Burton, who in actual fact merely produced and provided the original story for it. Selick and Burton also collaborated on the rather disappointing live action/stop motion hybrid James and the Giant Peach, before parting ways. A few years back, Burton returned to the world of stop motion animation with the shockingly disappointing Corpse Bride, a bland, stiff and unappealing movie that wasted the considerable talents of both its animation crew and its voice cast. Watching Selick's Coraline last night, it became blatantly obvious to me who deserves the lion's share of the credit for The Nightmare Before Christmas, and it ain't Tim Burton. Coraline has everything that Corpse Bride didn't, namely a vivid imagination, appealing designs, a sense of whimsy and that wonderfully crooked aesthetic that made The Nightmare Before Christmas so interesting to watch. (About half way through the opening credits, my brother commented "Well, this is already ten times better than Corpse Bride," and that feeling stayed with both of us throughout the film's duration.)
If I had any criticism to make, it would be the brattiness of the titular character. Mr. Gallows says that, in the novel, Coraline was a refined British girl, which sounds to me to be more in keeping with Neil Gaiman's style than the character presented in the film. Mr. Gallows also suspects that the character of Wybie, not present in the novel, was added purely to give the boys in the audience someone to root for. There may be some truth in this, but I suspect his main purpose was to give Coraline someone to talk to, externalising what I presume were internal thoughts in the book. Either way, he's considerably less annoying than I thought he would be, although I must confess to preferring his mute doppelganger (watch the film and you'll understand).
Seriously, see Coraline as soon as you can. I don't often get this worked up about an animated film that isn't by Pixar. I gather Henry Selick had a pretty rough time with 2001's Monkeybone, by all accounts a considerable disappointment due to a combination of studio interference and budget cuts, but he has come back fighting with Coraline, and I hope we don't have to wait another eight years to see another feature from him.
Image quality: Coraline arrives on BD with both 2D and 3D versions contained on the same disc. I'm not going to comment on the 3D version, except to say that I wonder whether Coraline's colour scheme - yellow raincoat, blue hair - was chosen primarily because these colours could be reproduced using the cheapo green and purple glasses that come with the disc. (Or perhaps I'm simply reading too much into it - she does ditch the raincoat later on, after all.)
In any event, the 2D version offers pleasing but not outstanding image quality. The entire image appears to have been either sharpened or slightly pre-filtered, or even both: it's often difficult to tell which of these is in play, because both tend to create similar-looking artefacts when applied lightly. Light ringing is visible around edges throughout the film, giving the movie a harsh digital look (yes, I know it was shot with digital cameras, but...). Take a look, for instance, at the outline of the cat in Example 14, or the general harshness of the separations between the characters' foreheads and hairlines in Example 7. In addition, perhaps as a result of cramming two copies of the film and a number of HD bonus features on to a single disc, compression artefacts can be glimpsed in a number of scenes, at times making the image appear slightly mushy. One shot in the film (Example 13) is aggressively pre-filtered, presumably because the compressionist realised it would likely turn into a sea of artefacts if not greatly simplified. I was pleased with the image overall, but don't believe the "Perfect, 10/10, 100% reference quality!" hyperbole being spouted by many reviewers. 8/10
Coraline
studio: Universal; country: USA; region code: ABC; codec: VC-1;
file size: 19.2 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 27.43 Mbit/sec
25 Comments
Todd:
(re: Fantastic Mr. Fox) Aieeee! What the fuck is that? Please tell me it's a joke and that they aren't seriously planning on using these puppets for the film?
Chris:
There are many criticisms I would level against Tim Burton (his overuse of Johnny Depp and Helena Cardboard Box being one of them), but I'd never accuse him of poor visuals. On the contrary, I've tended to find that even his worst movies look spectacular, with the exception of Corpse Bride, where I think he attempted to apply his live action sensibility to stop motion animation, much to its detriment.
(Posted on Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 12:06 PM)
Todd:
I noticed on Gallowmere that you were looking for disgusting, violating, disturbing, depressing movies. Can I suggest the French film Martyrs by Pascal Laugier? In my opinion it fulfils all these criteria to some extent.
Erik:
Didn't you hear? Anyone who wants to visit this site has to pledge allegiance to the flag of Argento and watch The Phantom of the Opera on a continuous loop for at least 24 hours. ;)
In all seriousness, though, not a fan? That's cool with me. He's nothing if not an acquired taste, and I'd be the first to admit that his films frequently contain elements that are screamingly awful. Of course, the best ones also contain many more elements of hypnotising beauty and audacity which in my opinion negate the moments of sloppy characterisation, implausible plotting and clumsy dubbing.
(Posted on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 6:04 PM)
Todd:
I know what you mean about the last half-hour. One of the reasons why I still haven't managed to come up with a definite position with regard to the film is that I'm just not convinced the extended torture scenes really have anything to say. There's a place for gratuitous violence, but I tend to think it works best when there's an actual point to it, particularly when it's ugly, unpleasant, degrading violence like the sort you find in Martyrs.
According to the director, it's supposed to be an anti-religious tract. I can sort of see this, given the obsession so many religions (from the ancient Aztecs all the way to current "mainstream" religions like Christianity) have with the notion of the blood sacrifice and obtaining purity through suffering, and the final revelation by Anna that there is in fact nothing after death. (In that regard, it's sort of the antithesis to The Passion of the Christ, a film far more deserving of the label "torture porn" than any horror movie to which the gutter press have so far attached it.) That said, I feel the point could have been made far better, and I'm definitely struggling to apply that interpretation to it, because regardless of what Laugier may have been intending to say, I don't feel that very much of it makes it to the screen.
(Posted on Thursday, July 30, 2009 at 1:02 PM)
Yikes, that's even worse than the low-res pictures made it out to be. I'm with Mr. Gallows on this - whatever that film might be, it's certainly not Roald Dahl. Ignoring for a moment the crudeness of the animation and puppet designs, who in their right mind thought it would be a good idea to turn this story into a smug heist movie? Fantastic Mr. Fox may not have been Dahl's best book by any stretch of the imagination, but it didn't deserve this kind of treatment.
I suppose, if it's any consolation, his name isn't actually mentioned anywhere in the trailer - just "Based on the book by the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". I wouldn't the blame Dahl family if they'd seen what the film looked like and asked for his name to be removed!
(Posted on Friday, July 31, 2009 at 9:49 AM)
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1. Kram Sacul said:
Surprised there would be any edge enhancement. There certainly wasn't halos when I saw it in digital 3-d. Still looks excellent but it's a bummer it crept in there at all.
Wybie's animation is so smooth isn't it?
(Posted on Monday, July 27, 2009 at 1:47 PM)