05 February 2009

Coraline

Henry “The Nightmare Before Christmas” Selick's stop-motion-animated film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's children's book Coraline opens tomorrow.

Mr Gaiman, who is very pleased with the film overall, says that's “the first Coraline trailer I've liked.” He also offers these excellent words on the subject of koumpounophobia, the fear of buttons.

Coraline is sure to inspire a case of koumpounophobia in just about anyone, but don't let that deter you from checking out the film. Gaiman opened his book with a little quote from G. K. Chesterton which I found very affecting when I first read it:

Fairytales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
A good lesson indeed, and I can attest that the book, at least, contains that and much more.

Check it out in 3D while you can: apparently the 3D release will only last a few weeks.

3 comments:

Kate said...

I have loved the trailers seen on tv and wondered whether this is too scary for Esme? Probably. I had put the movie on my "go to" list but with your recommendation will move it up a notch. Unfortunately with my lack of depth perception, 3-D movies are lost on me, so will watch it the standard way.

Jonathan Korman said...

Hard to say. It will definitely be scary --- the book is terrifying, though in a way that gets to adults more than kids. Esmé is pretty young for sometimg like that, but on the other hand she's very resiliant and doesn't seem to notice that anything is scary. I'm pretty sure Atticus would eat it up.

Anonymous said...

That trailer makes it out to be a lot more like a horror film than the trailers we saw. If they had shown that, I think a lot fewer parents would be taking their kids!

Atticus went to see it yesterday with a buddy (I didn't go, the other kid's mom took them) and the kids agreed that it was kind of freaky and should have had a stronger rating than PG ... Not quite PG-13, maybe PG-11 was their estimation. For them to offer that up means they must have been pretty frightened at times.