making up an entry about Coraline

I saw Coraline on Saturday, in 3D!! It was amazing! I definitely liked how nothing flew out at me (although there was a needle poking out at the beginning…)

Random comments…

Not sure about the boy character. Maybe he served as a person for Coraline to talk to in the movie.

The 3D aspect was tiring my eyes after a while. It didn’t help that either A) my ears are crooked or B) my eyes are crooked, so I couldn’t quite see the screen clearly without holding up one side of the 3D glasses. (Also, the 3D glasses took an instant dislike to my eyeglasses and kept trying to put distance between them.)

But I still think it was worth the $5 seeing the movie in 3D. :D Mum and I went to see it in the new, fancy, higher-priced theater which charges about $3 more, and then there was a $2 charge for use of the 3D glasses.

I really liked the 3D-ness of the movie. It was definitely subtle, but pulled you into the movie. But because my eyes are funky somehow, it hurt to look at anything too “close” to me. (The closer something is to the audience, the more blurry it is, and the more I have to cross my eyes to focus on it…it’s weird. I was also never any good at those Magic Eye 3D picture books, either.)

Going into the theater I saw these preschool-aged kids, and I sort of worried for them. But I shouldn’t have. Kids these days are so jaded, nothing can faze them. Either that or they were just covering their eyes during the movie, which I couldn’t see.

Dude! That movie was so creepy! I was seriously feeling anxious about Coraline and even myself! And I don’t normally get scared in movies unless it’s in my face—you know, people or things jumping out of the dark, some maniac running toward the viewers with a bloody hacksaw…

The Other Miss Forcible? (Or was it the Other Miss Spink?) Hi-larious. She got a lot of laughs in the theater.

The Other Mother’s real form … creepy. And they didn’t come up with it until near the end of production?! Totally worth it. I would hate to ever meet her face to face.

The Other Father and all the other people in the Other Mother’s world … oh my gosh, I felt for them, really I did.

I loved the movie. :D Even if it didn’t look the way I pictured it in my head (Dave McKean wins with me, hands down). It’s just a different take or interpretation of the story. Definitely buying when it comes out on DVD. Which reminds me, I still have to buy Stardust. O_o

B Is for Buy

I couldn’t help myself. I bought Neil Gaiman’s M Is for Magic. I was browsing the children’s section of Borders (research for book design class) when I saw it and started staring at it and the “First Edition” line on the copyright page, and trying to figure out which stories I had and which ones I didn’t.

I think I have almost half of them. Which means that almost $9 was technically wasted. But I spent more than $9 on new Neil stories! woot! Should tide me over until his next book comes out.

(I wonder what it means that I don’t go more than a few months without buying something Neil has written. Is he prolific? Am I obsessed? Both? I bought The Absolute Sandman vol. II and Stardust: A Visual Companion [where he is quoted or something, and Maddy shows up too :b] within the past, I’d say, three months.)

books about other books?

Hah! I knew I couldn’t be imagining things when I read about Neelgaimon in Children of the Jedi! (Although I didn’t catch the sandmine/sandman thing. Probably because I’m not a big fan of Barbara Hambly’s writing style. >_> It seems like not only is she telling too much, but she’s showing too much as well. [I don’t necessarily believe one should show over tell or vice versa, just whichever one works best for the situation.] No wonder it’s taking me so long to get through the book.)

Then earlier, when reading InterWorld, I was reminded of Ender’s Game/Shadow. I don’t remember if it was the school, or the Nowhere-at-All and flying/falling (down). Then there’s also a character named Jai. heh.

/end dork

online library catalogues

Hmm, Shelfari is indeed shiny, but I like the indie sort of vibe LibraryThing has.

I just remembered, Neil Gaiman once mentioned getting some sort of ISBN reader to catalogue his books in LibraryThing…? Which made me envious, but alas I do not have the thousands of books that would necessitate the need of a reader.

But anyway! I think I should stick with the service that Neil uses. XD;;

book to movie

I’ve decided that I will try to stop comparing movies to the original books. Mostly influenced by Neil Gaiman’s comments on his blog. Latest, “A film isn’t a book.”

But it is true. Like Count of Monte Cristo (I read it for an hour this morning and I kept thinking of the last movie), I consider them two different stories. Same plot, similar characters, but two different takes. You just can’t fit all of Alexeandre Dumas’ (paid-by-word O.x) story into a feasible movie. Maybe it’s better as a mini-series…

Also the Harry Potter stories. I was sort of meh about the first book. But I liked the first movie. (I think I read all four books before seeing the movie. I’m not sure.) I found it great fun. I don’t remember how I felt about the other books the first time, but I’ve always enjoyed the movies the first time around. Although the Potter movies are pretty close to the books. So not much of a point there.

Maybe a better example would be V for Vendetta? *hides* Ignoring the Wachowski Brothers-esque elements, I thought it was a good story. It’s not the comic. It’s a different story. I guess liberties were taken to mold the story more to current events. But who’s to say we shouldn’t have that? The original graphic novel is still there, 100% and whole for anyone who wants to get the original story. In the meantime, there’s another idea out there that was based on that story. And after a while, another movie could be made, perhaps one that’s closer to the original story.

That’s another thing, the way people rail against movie adaptations, you’d think the movie was the end-all be-all of the story. But with Count of Monte Cristo you have so many movie versions. Take your pick, which one do you think is the best? Mickey likes the French version. So does Mum. But she still likes the Guy Pierce version. I’ve never seen the French one, so I can’t really say.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, what about movie adaptations that I didn’t like? The ones that come to mind are A Wrinkle in Time and The Face on the Milk Carton. *twitch* Poor made-for-tv excuses of book adaptations. If I forget the story they were originally based on … they’re still pretty bad. But I suppose they work, for the medium that they’re in (film).

Okay, all this post serves to prove is how bad of a writer I am. Blah.