Recommended: Coraline, and in particular Bruno Coulais' soundtrack.
This blog likes pretty much everything director/stop-motion animator Henry Selick has done, from Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions to Nightmare Before Christmas to the unfairly-derided Monkeybone.
It appears digital 3D puppets are how Hollywood plans to keep luring the preteen set to theatres in the current slump, with parents in tow, natch. Previewed several bad-looking ones before the movie started.
Selick's film has some CGI but he is that rare duck who crafts actual physical models, moves, and photographs them, thus mostly avoiding the horrible rubbery Shrek look.
Coraline has gorgeous sets and some spectacular trippy sequences, such as the "blooming of the night garden."
Coulais' sweet, sad music recalls a mix of Carl Orff and the famous Bulgarian Radio Choir recordings, with a slightly Middle Eastern flavor (the composer's mother is Iraqi). Several children's choirs are used on the soundtrack.
Pricy, because you have to shell out extra for 3D glasses to watch it in the theatre, but worth it. The score also merits a download.
films
Metropolitan de-Hulued
"Whit Stillman's film Metropolitan now available on Hulu!" was a hottish internet story a few months ago; a recent Stillman IFC interview touted that he was re-releasing it there. Well, now it's gone!
Obviously this is not your typical case of a video host "overreaching" and then getting smacked down by a suddenly self-important copyright owner a la a million of your favorite disappeared YouTubes. So what happened? Will Hulu be used as a teaser to relaunch old, dead films only to have them yanked when the "buzz" gets restarted? Were the rights to Metropolitan not entirely Stillman's to give? Did Hulu not meet contracted-upon ad revenue targets? Who knows? The only reason I care is I've been recommending the Stillman movie on Hulu to people--sorry for any waste of click energy.
Tommy Corn Blog Relic
It's comforting to know in a turbulent world that Tommy Corn's blog is still online. This was a promotional stunt for the movie I Heart Huckabees--Corn was the angry fireman played by Mark Wahlberg. The links to the movie's Franco-nihilist philosopher and existential detectives now redirect to Fox Movies and Fox Searchlight, respectively.
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Sounds like bad satire but it's a film being directed by Werner Herzog starring Nicholas Cage.
Looks like Abel Ferrara lost control of his character or story rights as Herzog is saying this isn't a remake but is "like a Bond film."
Whoa, the latest adventure by that masturbating drug addict bent cop--follow him as he takes you vicariously to exotic locales.
Read the interview with Herzog where he claims not to know who Abel Ferrara is and blusters to hide the total hackdom of this movie project.
Update, June 2016: Herzog's version was pretty good.
Alan Moore Won't Watch Watchmen
The lawyers are fighting about Watchmen rights, per the New York Times.
Meanwhile, Alan Moore, who wrote the comic and sold the film rights years ago, remains characteristically caustic. From IMDb:
When asked in an interview with ReelzChannel.com about original Watchmen writer Alan Moore's dismissal of his movie, [director Zack] Snyder was quoted as saying "Worst case scenario - Alan puts the movie on his DVD player on a cold Sunday in London and watches and says, 'Yeah, that doesn't suck too bad.'" When this was brought up with Moore himself in a later interview in the British Tripwire comics fanzine, the writer commented "That's the worst case scenario? I think he's underestimated what the worst case scenario would be... that's never going to happen in my DVD player in 'London' [Moore very famously lives in Northampton]. I'm never going to watch this fucking thing."
The Times has a photo of Nite Owl and Silk Spectre II busting Rorschach out of the hoosegow. SSII looks more "whorey" than in the comic. Her short skirt and "neckline plunging to the navel" have been traded for Aeon Fluxy garters and thigh-high black boots. Nite Owl is supposed to be a slightly paunchy middle aged man--here he is younger and more musclebound. I'm sure Moore will be right, as he was about the V for Vendetta movie. To make it work at all it won't be the Watchmen that was so riveting in the '80s.