3-D you say? Isn't stop motion animation in 3-D already?! Okay, so as duly noted I am a huge fan of Henry Selick. The Nightmare Before Christmas is absolutely amazing and I think the world needs to be filled with more stop motion films like this. Along with that I think that Neil Gaiman is one of the great writers and for me everything he writes turns into golden donuts. Yummy. So yes yes I know you all know this. What I find delightful is the fact that I went to this movie on opening day, of course, but I was really put off by the fact that I was forced to watch this movie with 3-D glasses. Wearing glasses on glasses is a bit uncomfortable, but not only that there was a bad taste in my mouth left from my 3-D experience with Nightmare in 2006. The movie left me dizzy and less than impressed with the 3-D animation becoming more 3-D. So really I thought the 3-D was gimmicky. I was really reluctant to participate in what I thought was an attempt to draw more viewers on opening day.
You can see where this is going. I cannot tell you how amazing this film is. Again the story is fantastic and the design is DYNAMITE. What I love about the 3-D is that this film was recorded specifically for a 3-D experience. Meaning that for every second there are 24 stills to slowly move the animation. This is typical for any type of film really... but this film had a still for the right eye and the left eye to create the 3-D effect. And the result was phenomenal. The foreground, middle-ground, and background were presented in such a designerly way. I have never seen 3-D movie look so beautiful. I don't want to watch this film without that experience ever again and I hope that they develop something so the home-viewer can have the same enjoyable experience. Unfortunately this movie will only be in 3-D up to three weeks after it's initial release so if you haven't seen it yet I urge you to see it before time runs out.
Coraline received a 88% "Certified Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes and from me a 4 out of 5 stars.
