Blu-Review of the Week - 8/7/09 - Coraline

Blu-Review of the Week – 8/7/09

Coraline (2009)

Coraline was a film that I was really excited to see.  Back in February, while vacationing with my wife in Florida, we went to the theater and saw My Bloody Valentine 3D.  I was so impressed with the 3D technology (not so much the film), and I instantly wanted more.  We saw the trailer for Coraline, and I was instantly captivated by the look and feel.  Add to that the fact that it was directed by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas), and I was pumped.  I wanted to see it bad in 3D, but never did get the chance.  I had it high on my radar for Blu-ray releases.  I waited half a year, and finally on July 21^st got my hands on it.  Was it everything I had hoped that it would be?  Well, not at first, I can tell you that…

MOVIE – 7/10

Coraline is an animated stop motion fantasy film about a young girl who moves with her parents to a dark grey and cold locale in Oregon.  Her parents neglect her most of the time as they work hard to try and make ends meet.  This leaves Coraline to do her best to entertain herself and learn about her new surroundings.  She comes across a secret door that launches her into another world; a world just like her own…but different.  Her parents are there, but something’s not quite right.  They are completely the opposite of her real parents.  Her “other” mother cooks her all kinds of wonderful food, her “other” father works hard to keep up their unbelievable garden, they play games, and everything seems too good to be true.  Do I need to continue?  What follows is a surreal journey with a fantastic finale, and all kinds of interesting things in between.  Now, I’ll just go ahead and put this out there right now.  I fell asleep twice on two separate occasions trying to watch the film.  Maybe it was because I started it way too late both times.  Maybe it was the Jack Daniels.  Whatever it was, it wasn’t happenin.  The first half of this film is pretty slow in my opinion.  She visits the “others”, then comes back to the real world to sulk.  Then she visits the “others”, then comes back to the real world to sulk.  Rinse and repeat.  I was afraid that the film was going nowhere, and I pretty much fell asleep at the same spot both times.  Then, I got up the next morning, clean and sober J, and gave it one more college try.  I’m glad I did.  Once the film really gets going in the second half, it is absolutely wonderful.  It’s a very creepy and foreboding film; one that I think would scare most kids of the younger age.  I’m pretty sure I would have nightmares as a kid.  There are some genuinely freaky moments, usually involving the “other” mother.  This very much feels like a Tim Burton movie, but a bit more restrained.  The cast is spectacular for the most part. Dakota Fanning (War of the Worlds, Push) voices Coraline Jones, Teri Hatcher (Tango and Cash baby, Desperate Housewives) voices both mothers and John Hodgman (the PC guy in the Mac ads) is both fathers.  The supporting cast is strong as well with Keith David (The Thing, Chronicles of Riddick) and the MAN Ian McShane (Deadwood, KINGS - a show you should be ashamed of yourself for not watching!) amongst others.  The score by Bruno Coulais is awesome, with some seriously classic moments.  I’m listening to it now and Loving it. 

Overall, it’s no Nightmare Before Christmas, but it doesn’t need to be.  Once it gets going, Coraline is a very entertaining ride. 

VIDEO – 8.5/10

Coraline is very impressive on Blu-ray.  Being that it’s animation, it’s something you would expect, but I have to admit that I wasn’t in awe over the transfer on The Nightmare Before Christmas.  This is much better, with deeper blacks and sharper detail.  For the most part, this is a very dreary and darkly muted looking film.  Because of this, it doesn’t have the pop that other animated films have.  There are some incredible looking scenes, one which takes place in the garden, where colors come to life and really change the mood with bright chroma and vibrant surroundings.  There’s very little to complain about in the transfer, but the intended overall look of the film doesn’t necessarily make it a candidate for video of the year. 

The Blu-ray has both the 2D transfer as well as 3D.  Four pairs of pink and green glasses are included in the packaging.  Let’s face it, 3D in the home is just not ready for primetime, and won’t be for quite some time.  I appreciate the fact that films released in 3D for theaters are attempting to bring that experience home for consumers, but the results are underwhelming at best.  The color is stripped from the film due to the glasses and you’ll go cross-eyed after fifteen minutes of viewing.  That being said though, I was actually a bit surprised by how good the depth of field was at times.  You should definitely check out a couple of your favorite scenes to see what it’s like, but it would be extremely difficult to watch the entire film this way.     

AUDIO – 8.5/10

You get a solid DTS-HD 5.1 soundtrack with Coraline.  The voices are crystal clear and the sound effects and score shine through in style.  I was a big fan of the score.  It’s a touch eerie, a bit whimsical, and it all fits the on screen action to a tee.  I did notice that most of the film’s audio came from the front three speakers, which surprised me in a film shot for 3D projection.  They could have used the surrounds quite a bit more in certain scenes to give them more punch, so for that I had to knock the score down just a little.  Overall though, it’s an impressive soundtrack and adds a lot of mood and feeling to the film.

EXTRAS 7/10

The extras on Coraline aren’t going to dazzle you, which was a bit disappointing to me.  I wanted much more in depth making of features especially for a film like this, but what you get here is mostly standard fare.  You do get decent value for the money here though as the Blu-ray also includes a digital copy and the standard DVD version, which is nice (although I don’t personally see myself ever using the standard version).

• U-Control

I’ve never been a big fan of Universal’s U-Control.  It’s a Blu-ray exclusive technology that allows the user to bring up different types of picture in picture features while you watch the movie.  It’s also pretty clunky and poorly implemented in my opinion.  You get to select from three different types of features; Tours and Voice Sessions, Picture in Picture and Picture in Picture Animatics.  A U appears at the bottom right of the screen letting you know that U-Control is turned on, and then icons appear representing the three types of features when they are available.  The bad thing is, many times there is more than one feature at a time, making you choose between them.  So, you would need to watch the film multiple times (or back it up) to see everything.  That’s just clumsy to me, and it just doesn’t flow right.  On the plus side, there is quite a bit of entertaining and informative content to be seen here if you are patient enough and none of it is included on the other extras on the disc.  You can go to the U-Control menu and select an extra to go right to that point if you would like.  It would just be nice if you didn’t have to constantly select the features every time, and rather just bring them up automatically.  Universal should take a look at Warner’s Maximum Movie Mode for some inspiration.  At least they are on the right track though.    

• The Making of Coraline (HD – 35:53)

This holds most of the meat of the extras, but it could have been so much more.  It covers the adaptation from the book, the character design and art direction, directing the voice actors and making the puppets.  It was pretty cool to see the different puppet parts and variations.  You get a look at all of the costumes used for them as well, which is interesting.  We also get to see them making and placing all of the set pieces, which was pretty sweet.  They go into detail on the garden and all of the plants and flowers, which was pretty amazing.  The best part, of course, was watching the actual animation happen.  You get a taste of them moving the puppets for each frame being shot (24 per second) and you realize just how much work goes into a film like this.  It’s pretty mind boggling actually.  It takes a top animator about a week to capture just seven seconds of film.  Wow!  Also quickly touched on are the CGI effects that were intertwined with physical effects, and shooting the film in 3D.  There’s really good stuff here, but unfortunately they are all very brief segments that only scratch the surface.  I would have loved to have gone deeper into the art of the animation and puppetry.  I was pretty surprised that this is all we got. Too bad…

• Deleted Scenes (HD – 8:37)

Director and screenwriter Henry Selick introduces the scenes.  His segments are edited chaotically, and it’s distracting as all hell to try and concentrate on what he’s saying, but there’s some decent scenes we get to see in HD that were ultimately edited out of the film.  You also get to learn about the sequence at the end of the credits that took sixty-six days to animate.  Pretty cool.

• Voicing the Characters (HD – 10:46)

This was probably my favorite extra.  We get to see the entire cast talk about doing the voice work for Coraline.  I had no idea that her father was played by the PC guy in the Mac ads.  HA!  It was also cool to see Ian McShane (one of my favorite actors) do some of his scenes. 

• Creepy Coraline (HD – 5:03)

This consists of interviews with animators and the director talking about the different creepy elements and players in the film like the rats and the “other” mother’s transformation (which is awesome).  We also see the designers who took dead bug collections to help shape the look of some of the clothing in the film.  Pretty interesting. 

• Feature Commentary with Director Henry Selick and Composer Bruno Coulais

I apologize to the folks who love commentaries.  I don’t. 

• BD-Live

Universal does a decent job with BD-Live, but you can tell that they are still trying to figure it out.  What we get here is a cool little featurette called The World According To Henry where the director talks in even more detail about certain aspects of the film that weren’t covered on the disc supplements.  It runs about five minutes, and is worth the download.  Universal is big on the My Scenes feature where you can create your own personal collection of favorite scenes and share them with your friends who also have the disc.  I personally don’t find this necessary. 

We also get multiple film previews.  Universal chooses to stream their previews and special features instead of a full download.  This was the first disc from them that I was able to get through an entire video without having it stop often to buffer.  It looks like they are improving their distribution, which is great.  Unfortunately (but realistically) they are all in SD with stereo audio at this point. 

•  D-Box

For the T-Bags. 

FINAL VERDICT

I waited a long time to watch Coraline.  Yeah, I may have fallen asleep the first couple of times I tried to watch the film, but when I finally saw the entire story, I was very pleased with the outcome.  It might not measure up to The Nightmare Before Christmas (and I apologize for comparing the two as much as I did) but it’s still a creepy, fantastic and sometimes emotional piece of art.  This type of filmmaking is absolutely incredible to me, and it takes true masters of their craft to be able to pull it off as well as Coraline.  You may want to wait for your children to grow a pair before you let them see this, but the tough one’s should love it.  The Blu-ray presentation is solid, and even though the extras may be a bit underwhelming I can still recommend this as a disc you should have on your shelf.    

FINAL SCORE – 7.5/10 – BUY!

http://www.amazon.com/Coraline-Blu-ray-Combo-Digital-Copy/dp/B00288KNJU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1249612349&sr=1-1