Coraline in 3-D at the Ziegfeld

A Motion Picture Breakthrough!

If you have any interest in spooky children's stories, see the movie Coraline in 3-D, preferably at the Ziegfeld or a comparable movie palace. I enjoyed it immensely last night and found it hard to believe that such a wondrous experience wasn't attracting more of an audience.

Inspired by the book by Neil Gaiman, Coraline tells the tale of a girl who is tempted to disappear into a bizarre but seemingly much happier alternate existence. The story is full of whimsy and plot twists, and the production is both highly imaginative and, I think, a breakthrough in 3-D feature filmmaking.

I've seen many 3-D movies but I don't recall ever seeing one utilize the effects as creatively as Coraline. The basic technology has been around for decades, but too often the prevailing aesthetic was to avoid "too much" 3-D gimmickry because it would be distracting and wearying. (That especially seems to have been the case with big mainstream releases such as Kiss Me, Kate and Dial M for Murder, which are restrained to the point that there's hardly any reason to seek them out in 3-D. Give me House of Wax and Gorilla at Large and 3-D Three Stooges any day!) But Coraline offers a multitude of fascinating 3-D effects that succeed brilliantly in drawing the viewer into the fantasy. At times they were like lenticular images in children's books, except that they seemed to have found a better home in the motion picture medium. It is kind of amazing to realize just how long it has taken for this step to occur.

I'm rhapsodizing over the technical aspect of this film, but I wouldn't be as excited as I am about Coraline if the technique and the substance of the movie hadn't been as beautifully wedded as they are. Kudos to Henry Selick for making film history with this one. See it in 3-D if you can—and stay for all the credits.

See the trailer if you'd like, but you can heighten the surprise quotient by going straight to the movie.



Source (2:26)

CARTOON CAPTION/ANTI-CAPTION COVERAGE CONTINUES!

There's a little more than usual to cover this week. And, it turns out, a little less.

First of all, the winner of Contest 144 (Mick Stevens's fisherman haunted by fish) is

"I'm haunted by the faces of my victims."
Tom Buckner (Asheville, NC)

So that's a real near-miss for me. Tom Buckner, we must have had similar childhoods!


In Caption Contest 146 (Leo Cullum's interview with smiley-faced stick figure), the nominees are

"I'm sorry, this is Tic-Tac-Toe—applications for Hangman are down the hall."
Gavrilo Gnatovich (Tucson, AZ)

"Besides being a stick, what is your greatest weakness?"
Roxie June (Window Rock, AZ)

"It was a rough divorce, but she didn't get the Happy Face."
David Duty (Austin, TX)

My loser:

"You look familiar. Did we meet in the Seventies?"

The big Caption Contest news this week had to do Contest 145. Harry Bliss's "monster outside apartment window" turned out to have been copied from a Jack Kirby cover to Tales to Astonish (as Neil Gaiman and many others have noted). So now the credit for the cartoon is "Drawing by Harry Bliss, after Jack Kirby." The drawing did look familiar to me—I think I've even read the story—but I didn't figure out the source on my own.


As for Anti-Caption Contest 147 (Jack Ziegler's courtroom with lawyer gesticulating next to killer shark), Dan Radosh had not posted the winner by the time I decided to go ahead with this post, so it'll just have to wait.


Caption Contest 148 is here, while Anti-Caption Contest 148 is here.


THE STANDINGS

Here is the current New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest breakdown by state. You can find it all mapped out here.

26 California

21 New York (18 from the Big Apple)

12 New Jersey

6 Massachusetts
6 Pennsylvania
6 Virginia (three from NOVA, two from Richmond, one from Charlottesville)

5 Connecticut (two from New Haven, three not)
5 Illinois (four from Chicago—two captions by Lawrence Wood, two drawings by Leo Cullum)
5 Texas (three from Houston)

4 Georgia (includes two-time winner Carl Gables)
4 Maryland (none named Mary)
4 North Carolina

3 Minnesota (Minneapolis 2, St. Paul 1)
3 Ohio

2 Alaska
2 Arizona
2 District of Columbia
2 Florida
2 Michigan
2 Mississippi
2 Missouri
2 New Hampshire
2 Oregon (both named Eric, both from Portland)
2 Rhode Island
2 Utah
2 Vermont

1 Alabama
1 Arkansas
1 Delaware
1 Iowa
1 Kentucky
1 Nevada
1 New Mexico
1 Oklahoma
1 Washington
1 Wisconsin

Map Introduction

Thanks to Andriy Bidochko for Map Builder.

Image by David Marc Fischer using Samsung cameraphone