Coraline: The Movie
February 10th, 2009
I'm a big fan of Neil Gaiman, and subscribe to his blog feed.
It was through his blog, in fact, that I learned about his book Coraline, and purchased it for the library so I could read it.
Then, more recently, he's been talking about the movie release. After watching this trailer on the blog, featuring him, I went to see the movie.
It goes without saying that Neil is just cool. But on top of that, how great is it to have an author talk about and promote his work, not only in a very personal way through the blog, but also in a very personal way through the very impersonal medium of movies? To wit:
Not that this movie would need much promotion, but a library could do a movie-to-book-to-other-books-by-this-author tie-in quite easily by embedding this trailer into a page on their website and also including an annotated listing of his other books, and link to those books in their catalog.
Oh yeah, and the movie was great. Different than the book (from what I remember), but great in its own right.
February 11th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
You did like the movie? I just blogged about the book, and voiced my skepticism about the movie– the previews just don’t seem creepy enough. Glad you liked it though– gives me hope 🙂
February 12th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Yes, I did. One benefit of having a horrible memory is that, by the time the movie comes out, I’ve forgotten much of the book – that way, I can enjoy the movie for what it is, and not worry about how it represents the book.
Also, though, since Neil Gaiman was involved with the movie, I don’t know that it needs to be compared with the book – it’s his creative work (partly, anyway – he gives much credit to Henry Selick).
Kind of like the various versions of Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams was involved with the books, radio plays, movies, etc., so even if the movies were different from the books, they were still Douglas’ creations, and, apparently, not supposed to be like the books.
Anyway, back to Coraline – the movie was pretty creepy, but it might have been moreso for adults rather than kids. The theater I was in was loaded with kids (I thought most of the seats were empty, but I just couldn’t see their heads), because when the theater finished, all the kids were happy and cheering.