a robot, i am not » theatre experience http://jritchie.com an antidote to determinism Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:44:48 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Bringing back old memories http://jritchie.com/180 http://jritchie.com/180#comments Mon, 09 Feb 2009 03:36:52 +0000 jritch http://jritchie.com/?p=180 It started in Vermont… Bennington, Vermont that is. My long time friend Tyler Pratt brought me along with his family to visit relatives and that’s where I bought my first comic book. I’m quite sure it was the year 1998 or 1998 when I saw it so beautifully there in the store. It was Thor #50. What blew me away was the artwork at first. And when I read it, the story captivated me. I had perused the old comics at my grandma’s house before, the old comics that belonged to my uncle Chris. Even though they were great old issues of Captain America and the Avengers, it was all just so hokey. But this Thor comic opened my eyes to the power of the graphic medium to tell complex stories.

Fast forward a few years and I had outgrown the serialized format, exploring DC’s Vertigo line and reading Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. I Yahoo!ed (Google wasn’t as prevalent back then) and saw that he was releasing a “children’s novel”, Coraline, I thought it would be worth a pre-order via Amazon.com because it was at a price within the range of the money from my tips delivering pizza.

When Coraline came I decided to read a chapter a night to my parents, kind of a reverse bedtime story kind of thing. Most families might find this kind of strange but it was fun… and so worth it.

This movie brought back the first experience I had when reading Gaiman’s Coraline aloud so long ago. The imagery (in 3D), the imagination, the growing dread and the ever-present feeling that something is delightfully amiss. Unsetteling in a way that you can’t just quite put your finger on.

This was my first 3D theatre experience… somehow I missed MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D. I was shocked at how many previews for 3D movies led up to the start of our feature presenation. I think every movie that is under PG-13 next year is in 3D. But surprisingly the 3D part of Coraline wasn’t distracting.

Brilliant adaptations take a good story and make it accessible or bring your imagination to life without tainting the original imagery. This movie does both.

Henry Selick’s Coraline is visually intriguing while retaining all the important aspects of Gaiman’s original book. I could even remember each scene in the book (from my head) as it appeared in the movie and some of that credit goes to Gaiman for creating such a vivid world originally.

From the dancing mice to the “other mother”, every piece of the book remained and what little liberties Selick took, only made the story more appealing. I even heard a family behind me discussing the moral of the story after the credits rolled: how the alternative to your parents might not be that great. The point had transcended the written word and was now forever entered into the annals of film. A magnificent feat for the world that lives in Neil Gaiman’s head. Will we be seeing an American Gods movie sometime soon?

Coraline was the first truly refreshing film I’ve seen this year and I hope its not the last.

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