Coraline (2009)

  The holiday season has been super-busy so far.  Rob has had three sets of guests:  one pair just after Thanksgiving, one around Christmas, and now one for New Year's.  Since he has to work at least one day during the latter two stints and I don't, I have taken over hosting duties and I gotta say, I would make a shitty tour guide.  The only thing I can think of to do with people is take them to the movies so I've now seen The Muppets twice.  I don't know if that's what they wanted to see or if they were just humoring me, but I took them to it anyway.  Last night, I let his friend Drew pick a movie from my collection and he chose Coraline.  I hadn't seen it probably since it was in theaters since I bought it after I had already passed the C's and was going to wait until they came back around, and he'd never seen it so we were good.

The DVD comes with two pairs of 3D glasses in case you want to watch it that way.  Cute idea, but I can't stand 3D so we went with flat.  I really wish now that I had somehow known I was going to get a blu-ray because I bet this movie would look a-maz-ing.  The colors are so saturated that the animation is like a constantly shifting jewel.  Christy is of the opinion that it is thematically too creepy to be entertaining and especially shouldn't be considered a kid's movie but I disagree.  It shouldn't be a young kid's movie but over the age of 9 is probably okay.

Coraline Jones (Dakota Fanning) and her mom (Teri Hatcher) and dad (John Hodgman) have just moved into a new place.  Bored by the rain, her dad sets her to counting all the doors and windows in their new place.  During which time she finds a tiny door set into the wallpaper.  During the day the door opens onto a brick wall but at night, there is a tunnel leading her to a mirror world where her Other parents dote on her, the weird neighbors are actually awesome, and everyone can pronounce her name correctly.  But soon she starts to realize that not everything is as it seems.

This was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Film in 2009 (lost to Up) and it won the AFI Film of the Year.