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Weekend Movie Forecast: <em>Coraline</em> Vs. <em>He's Just Not That Into You</em>

Published Feb 6, 2009

Modified Feb 6, 2009

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Stop-motion animation virtuoso Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) releases his long-gestating movie Coraline this weekend. Adapted from a book by Neil Gaiman (The Sandman), Coraline tells the story of a lonely, inquisitive girl who finds creepy trouble behind a forgotten doorway in her drafty old house, which leads into a seemingly better version of her current, dreary home. (Emphasis on seemingly.) If you've got a craving for eye-candy, here's your chocolate factory. The first stop-motion animation film shot in 3-D, Coraline is a work of arresting detail and beauty. And the Times's A.O. Scott agrees: "The 3-D aspects of Coraline are unusually subtle. Now and then stuff is flung off the screen into your face, but the point is not to make you duck or shriek. Instead Mr. Selick uses the technology to make his world deeper and more intriguing. "And of course the stop-motion technique he uses, based on sculptured figures rather than drawn images, is already a kind of three-dimensional animation. The glasses you put on are thus not a gimmick but an aid to seeing whatâs already there. And what is there, on the screen, is almost too much to absorb in one sitting: costumed mice and Scottish terriers; glowing blossoms and giant insects." Read our full interview with Henry Selick here. — Gothamist

John Del Signore

Published Feb 6, 2009

Modified Feb 6, 2009

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For more details and reviews on this weekend's movies, click on the film stills above.

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Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.

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