Best:

10. The Road

One of the most significant SF-themed literary novels of the past decade, Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic epic, was adapted into an arthouse film starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee. And while the novel's themes didn't quite work as well in a movie format, and we had serious issues with the movie's sentimentality, we still found the movie's post-apocalyptic vision compelling. In an era where the apocalypse strikes inside cinema with alarming regularity, this was the grimmest and most unflinching look at a world where every ounce of green, and almost every spark of human kindness, has been destroyed.

9. Gamer

This film, on the other hand, may have boasted slightly less of a literary pedigree. But if you love over-the-top, crazy exploitation films with a satirical edge — and we certainly do — then this tale of remote-controlled killers and sexbots will surprise you. It's easy to see why Gamer never got its props: It's crude, nasty, and full of day-glo wigs. But its plot, about a new biotech called "Nanex" that can replace your brain cells with remote-control devices that can never be removed, is creepy. And the architect of this evil scheme to own your brain? Is Dexter (Michael C. Hall). Who does a song-and-dance number about how much he enjoys yanking your synapses around. Really.

8. Coraline

Veering back towards literary adaptations, there's Henry Sellick's gorgeous version of Neil Gaiman's Hugo award-winning horror/fantasy book. Forget Avatar — this was the most visually striking use of 3-D this year, and it was in the service of a story that felt like a classic fairy tale.

7. Drag Me To Hell

Thank goodness Sam Raimi decided to take a break from Spider-Man movies and return to his horror roots, with this amazingly snarky, Evil Dead-esque journey into the heart of class insecurity. Charlene, a young loan officer at a bank, is desperate to advance up the corporate ladder and escape her hick past, not to mention impress her boyfriend's snobbish family. So she decides to deny a home loan to an old woman — who turns out to be the wrong person to mess with. As we said in our review, "Like all good horror, Drag Me To Hell takes real-life fears, dresses them up in blood-soaked costumes, and sets them running."

6. Paranormal Activity

As we mentioned, this was the year of low-budget movies that focused on a few unforgettable characters, and this film managed to turn a low budget into maximum scariness. As we wrote in our review, "Nothing ever felt like padding or gratuitous "we're going to amp up the tension with cheap jolts" bullshit. The terror was raw and real - all the more so because it was so understated." But the real horror in this film is the dysfunctional relationship at its core, between a woman stalked by a demon and the boyfriend whose antics wind up making things much worse.

5. Zombieland

This post-apocalyptic comedy swept us away with its cool style points — Columbus' rules for surviving the zombie apocalypse, Tallahassee's creative zombie-killing techniques — but it really won us over with its clever romance between Columbus and Wichita, and the way it conveyed the experience of geeky coming of age against a chaotic backdrop. Like all the best road movies, it's about the journey.

4. Avatar

James Cameron's long-awaited out-of-body-experience movie was everything we were expecting: It was just as clunky and preachy as his original "scriptment" suggested it would be, and the native peoples were just as much of a "noble savage" stereotype as we'd expected. But it was just as beautiful and thrilling as we'd expected, too. People have been in the habit, lately, of saying that Avatar has great special effects and a terrible story — but in addition to the incredible CG world-building, the film also does have some thrilling performances from Sigourney Weaver and Sam Worthington, in particular. It's not just the cool flying dragons that suck you in — it's the characters.

3. Star Trek

Gene Roddenberry's optimistic space opera needed a long rest after the blunders that were Enterprise and the last two movies. In fact, we weren't sure Trek's tired old saws ever needed to be brought back. But J.J. Abrams somehow managed to make Trek seem fresh again, mostly by giving Kirk and Spock a new backstory. Unexpectedly, we found ourselves caring what happened to these guys again, and the scene where Sarek finally admits he married Amanda because he loved her is surprisingly powerful. For the first time in too long, Star Trek became a universe where anything could happen — even the destruction of Vulcan. Who knew Trek could be unpredictable?

2. Moon

Sam Rockwell brought enough conviction and character for twenty actors to this story of a lonely worker trapped in a lunar mining outpost. His loneliness and brushes with madness are captivating — and that's even before there turn out to be two of him at once. By the time this psychological thriller unravels into a story of an evil corporation treating its workforce as a disposable commodity (literally), we're so wound up into Sam Bell's loneliness and yearning to go home that the fate of both Sams becomes more urgent than the fate of entire worlds.

1. District 9

It's easy to think of this film as just a polemic against Apartheid and the mistreatment of refugees — but the story of aliens herded into shantytowns is much more than that. The story of Wikus Van De Merwe, a total bastard who enjoys watching alien children pop like popcorn, feels uncomfortably like our story. After Wikus gets infected with some kind of alien goo, he starts to discover what it's like to be one of the downtrodden aliens, but this revelation doesn't particularly make him a more noble person, at least not for most of the movie. Brilliant production design adds to this film's sense of stark realism, and even some ugly Nigerian stereotypes fail to detract from the film's unforgettable portrait of human cruelty and alien family values. This was the film, more than other, that stuck in our heads long after watching it.

Honorable mentions: I really wanted to give a shout out to Men Who Stare At Goats and Push, two films that got unfairly panned this past year. Goats is way more fun than people gave it credit for, and had occasional moments of total brilliance, especially from Jeff Bridges. Push is stylishly shot in Hong Kong, full of homages to Wong Kar-Wai, and features world-builiding about mutant powers and secret organizations that feels lived-in and clever.

Worst:

10. Surrogates

This film could have been terrific — based on a brilliant graphic novel written by Robert Venditti, this "shut-ins go out in robot bodies" epic is a potent metaphor for our relationship to technology. Unfortunately, the film version, starring Bruce Willis, is a cluttered, clunky mess. It's every dumb action-movie set piece jammed together with bits of chewing gum, plus an incredibly preachy screenplay that doesn't trust the audience to reach conclusions on its own. And that's really the worst sin a dystopian movie can commit: force-feeding us messages, because the dystopia isn't powerful enough to reach us on its own.

9. The Fourth Kind

Even as Paranormal Activity was making the Blair Witch-style "real-life recordings" vibe seem fresh again, The Fouth Kind was trying to pass off fake alien abduction tapes as real, and unfortunately the film-makers put more effort into trying to hoodwink the press than they did into crafting a compelling movie. The actual film is a mish-mash of bad "archival" footage, unscary alien abductions, and flaky plot twists like the idea that a professor can speak ancient Sumerian because he's seen some texts.

8. New Moon

There's something to be said for a book and movie franchise that has converted so many new people, especially girls, into SF/fantasy lovers. But still, this movie slathered us with cheese and bored us with long stretches of Bella moping after Edward, who's decided they can't be together. Edward starts appearing to Bella, Obi Wan-like, as she becomes an adrenaline junkie and runs around with shirtless Jacob. The moments where the film winks at the audience, or veers into outright self-parody, can't quite make up for the goopiness of much of the rest.

7. X-Men Origins: Wolverine

If we had a crane with a camera on it following us around all the time, we would feel tempted to look up at the ceiling and howl as well. Where can we get one of those? The fourth film in the X-Men saga continued X3's slide into mediocrity, with too many random mutant cameos and a campy mutant self-discovery plot that felt instantly forgettable, even without a memory-erasing magic bullet. At no point in this endless film do Logan and Sabretooth feel like brothers, and we don't really care which one of them kills the other. Is there any way that Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool movie can make up for this disaster? We can only hope.

6. The Time Traveler's Wife

We loved Audrey Niffenegger's clever, disciplined time-travel novel just as much as we hated the schlocky, smug movie version. The film excised some of the coolest parts of the novel, and substituted a lot of cookie-cutter romantic-dramedy whininess and angst. What was a classic love story, as well as a insightful look into the way in which we're all time-travelers because we're constantly reliving our pasts and dreaming of our futures, becomes a mindless (and heartless) exercise in pouting as character development. All the more disappointing, because it had such great material to work with.

5. 2012

It's tempting to give this film a free pass, because who expected greatness, or anything other than explosions, from Roland Emmerich's umpteenth disaster film? But it's worth calling out this film for its brain-dead destruction porn and focus on special effects to the total exclusion of characters, or anything really. Bad science, bad writing, bad acting... but most of all, it's kind of boring, and you really have to turn off your brain to enjoy any of it. To quote from some of the comments in our review: "I didn't care who lived or died," "I felt dead inside," "My problem with this movie isn't the rampant destruction, but the boringness in between."

4. Knowing

Making fun of a Nic Cage movie these days almost feels like challenging a dyslexic to a spelling bee. But really. This film was so insultingly bad, that we can't let it slide. Cage plays a college professor, whose idea of teaching astrophysics is to hold model planets and say stuff like, "Hey, man. The sun is like, really, really hot. Did you ever think that maybe things happen for a reason?" It's like stoner astrophysics 101. And then he gets hold of a time capsule from the 1950s that's full of numbers which somehow predict every disaster, including the end of the world. Even if you can ignore coincidences like a plane crashing next to the highway where Cage is driving, you'll be clutching your head by the time this movie's final plot twist is revealed. If this is Knowing, then ignorance really is bliss.

3. Pandorum

Zombies infest a spaceship — how could that be bad? Well, um... how about if it's zombies on a spaceship where Dennis Quaid is doing a crappy pastiche of Fight Club? How then? We never knew space madness could be so boring. Actually, the biggest problem with this film isn't Quaid's endless freak-out, or the random cannibal guy who's diagrammed the entire plot in graffiti, it's the boredom. The makers of the film seem to have mixed up suspense with "nothing happening for long stretches," as our heroes skulk around dark tunnels endlessly. It could have been so much better, if the themes of reclaiming your pride as an officer and sticking together had been foregrounded. Even a cool ending can't save this stew.

2. Terminator Salvation

We debated whether to include T4 among the worst letdowns of the past decade — but there were already so many from 2009 on the list. It's shameful to admit it now, but we expected more from this film, thanks to the reunion of The Dark Knight's star and writer, Christian Bale and Jonathan Nolan. Instead, what we got was the giant head of Helena Bonham Carter delivering exposition. Sam Worthington does his best with the role of Marcus Wright, who discovers he's a cyborg, but he's hobbled by a nonsensical plot. And Bale is a major disappointment as John Connor — it's hard to believe anyone could make us miss Nick Stahl.

1. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen

We celebrated this film as the ultimate apotheosis of Bunuel-style surrealism, but if you're expecting it to make a lick of sense, you might as well expect ants to climb out of your hand. Honestly, 2012 only wishes it could be as dumb, as massive — and yes, as boring — as this clunker. These robots can turn themselves into anything — except for compelling characters. And unlike 2012, in which the action set pieces are the punctuation in between long boring sequences, this film's action sequences are the most boring part, because it's hard to tell what's supposed to be going on, and we don't really care anyway. If 2009 was the year that giant CG rainbow showers finally conquered movie screens, then Transformers 2 was the worst offender.

There have been only a few notable Thanksgiving episodes of science-fiction TV shows — after all, not all SF stories even take place inside the United States. But science fiction and fantasy are always happy to remind us that gathering a bunch of characters together at a table is a recipe for stress and disaster.

Cuddly sitcom alien Alf was a huge fan of Thanksgiving, as this bizarre moment from the 1989 Macy's Thanksgiving Parade shows. But Alf went further — his show devoted a whole two-part episode, "Turkey In The Straw," to the holiday.

In that episode, everybody's favorite lovable alien puppet causes a stir when he eats the family turkey, raw. And it all goes downhill from there, when no replacement can be found the Tanners end up at dinner with the crazy neighbors. Then you add in the homeless person that Alf has been leaving clothes and food, and it's a "very special episode" to remember. You can watch it on Youtube

Buffy the Vampire Slayer featured a slayer Thanksgiving in the episode "Pangs." After her mother announces she's leaving town for the holiday, Buffy decides to take over Thanksgiving duties herself. She ends up so obsessed with the idea of the perfect meal that she starts neglecting her slayer duties, as the vengeful spirit of the Chumash tribe starts murdering people. Maybe we don't all have Native American spirits infecting our best friend's penis with horrible diseases, but most people can relate to craziness and stress that our expectations of "the perfect Thanksgiving" can create. Not to mention the final moment when someone lets a secret slip and creates an awkward silence.

Plus, now all geeks everywhere can call the holiday a "ritual sacrifice with pie" and complain about yam shams.

And then of course, there was the Heroes episode the other day, which proves we're still working through our emotions with respect to this particular holiday. Once again, one of our protagonists wants to create the perfect family Thanksgiving, and as always their plans are entirely thwarted by drama.

But even apart from those three examples of Thanksgiving in media SF, there are plenty of other warnings that a table spread with food is a dangerous thing. In Star Wars, our heroes almost become part of the celebratory meal. In Alien, as soon as everybody tucks into their food, somebody's chest bursts open.

But two recent fantasy films prove that the most dangerous combination in film is children and food.

In Pan's Labyrinth, Ofelia has been denied food, when the faun appears to her and tells her to perform another task for him. She's sent into the lair of The Pale Man, who sits motionless in front of a sumptuous and tempting feast. The faun has told Ofelia not to eat anything from the table, and at first she listens and completes her task. But the temptation is too great, and when she samples the food The Pale Man comes to life and pursues her in what is one of the most frightening scenes in recent cinema history.

In another film about a little girl with a huge imagination, Coraline is drawn into a world populated by her Other Mother and Other Father, who have buttons for eyes. In her real world, the food her mother makes is unappetizing and sparse. But in this other world, there is more than enough home-cooked food to go around. The animators worked hard to sculpt food that looks completely delicious, no matter what it may have been made of. The Other Mother's table includes a gravy train, and cakes that with magic icing. All Coraline has to do to stay there and eat her fill is agree to have buttons sewn over her eyes.

But let's not leave things on a downer note — it's not always true that every fantastical feast has to end miserably. In the Lost episode "Everybody Hates Hugo," the survivors have found a cache of food in the hatch. Hurley is given the task of cataloging it and rationing it. This makes him remember the things he went through when he won the lottery, and after briefly considering blowing up the pantry, he instead decides to give all the food away all at once. The survivors enjoy the food together, in a moment of good will and companionship.

So before you sit down to your meal with your family, friends, or fellow superheroes, tell us in the comments what your favorite science-fictional feast scene is. And please pass the plate of mashed potatoes shaped like Devil's Tower.

These delightful images are from the vastly talented Shannon Tindle's blog which is stuffed with gorgeous Coraline art that helped craft this 3D stop-motion work of beauty.

Historians will point to the year 2009 and Shane Acker's sack puppet apocalypse as the starting point of Stitchpunk. But before Stitchtoos and Stitchtatts become popular, before the needle-and-thread revolution, and certainly long before the horrific forthcoming Stitchtorture Sew films, let's take a moment to bear witness to the birth of an entirely new aesthetic.

It seems that everything has a "-punk" suffix these days. Steampunk, Cyberpunk, dieselpunk, biopunk, biodieselpunk. When the images for Shane Acker's film first appeared, the media lost no time in giving the director's unique visual style its appropriate "-punk" moniker. But what are the origins of this handcrafted anarchy? Here are (suitably) 8 of the influences and origins that came before 9's ragdoll revolution.

# 1 & 2: Steampunk and Dieselpunk
First and foremost, Stitchpunk owes its overall aesthetic to Steampunk, and could be construed at first glance as a subgenre. In an interview on Gone With The Twins, Acker himself admits to this being one of foundations of 9's visual style:

I'm a big fan of steampunk. I love the Jules Verneian, turn of the century design aesthetic. It celebrates mechanics but at the same time there's a kind of ornamentation. I think it's really beautiful and expressive and visual. I wanted to bring that to the world. It's as if the industrial revolution had progressed another 300 years and we hadn't gone into the digital age. There's sort of computer technology but it's all mechanical. If the Victorian era were to collapse in some post-apocalyptic event, then these creatures are made from all the bits and pieces that are left over. That's the idea behind "Stitchpunk." It's not steampunk, which fell away, but the bits and pieces of steampunk that got stitched together. I wish I could say I came up with "Stitchpunk" but I didn't. It was someone on a blog, but it really hit the nail on the head.

For the sake of accuracy, and good old-fashioned geek obsession to detail, it should be noted that 9 inhabits a world more closely related to Dieselpunk than Steampunk; Steampunk being retro-Victorian, whereas Dieselpunk is born out of WWII technology and imagery. 9 is rife with references from that period, from the tattered red fascist flags to the landscapes reminiscent of Normandy after the invasion, and Dresden after the bombing.

#3: Little Big Planet
9 is a cornucopia of apocalyptic imagery and visual references, but it was the titular character who seemed most eerily familiar to me. As 9 started out on his adventures of a strange new world, I realized where I'd seen him before. He's Little Big Planet's Sackboy.

Little Big Planet is a videogame created by Media Molecule, the makers of Rag Doll Kung Fu. The game is populated by crafty puppets on a series of adventures in a handcrafted world reminiscent of Michel Gondry's office. The puppet even share 9's zippered look. While I have no evidence to substantiate LPB as a direct influence of 9, I think it's clear that LBP should have a primary place in the origin story of the genre itself. 9 is essentially Sackboy wandering through Terminator's destroyed landscape, isn't it?


#4: Tim Burton's early work
Producer Tim Burton must have felt as though he had found a kindred spirit in Shane Acker. Burton has been stitching on screen since his directorial debut, the animated short Frankenweenie. Stitches, needles and scissors (and the darker side of handcrafting) are recurrent themes throughout Burton's work, and obviously influenced Acker's. For example, Burton's illustrations from The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy feature sackpuppet characters and sharp edges, like the Pin Cushion Queen.

#5: Burton's Catwoman
Believe it or not, we can also point to Burton's Batman Returns as a starting point of Stitchpunk. Remember Michelle's handmade Catwoman costume? Recall the needle-sharp claws? The costume perfectly blended sewing & punk, and for the first time in the character's long history, Catwoman was less sleekly assembled and more coming-apart-at-the-seams.

#6: Burton's Edward ScissorhandsFrom the opening strains of Danny Elfman's score, echoes of Burton's gothic fairytale are encountered at every turn in 9; the mad scientist who creates life, the desiccated Victorian house, the creation leaning over his fallen creator, and the dark sculpture garden. There are clear nods to Scissorhands even in the smallest character details, like 8 sitting on a statue's hand or 1's buckled leather straps. 6's hands, which he uses to express himself, are crafted from another utilitarian device; the nubs of fountain pens. Burton's work in general, and Edward Scissorhands in particular, will undoubtedly come to be seen as one of the major influences of the coming Stitchpunk movement.

#7 & #8: Coraline and The Nightmare Before Xmas
If 9's opening sequence looked and felt familiar, that's because we saw something very similar earlier this year; the opening credits of Henry Selick's Coraline. Needle hands play God while dismembering and stitching up a sackdoll, before sending it out into the world to make mischief. Coraline, with its handsewn look and button-up horror, can easily be seen as another Stitchpunk precursor.

There are also notable nods to the iconic Burton & Selick collaboration, The Nightmare Before Christmas. 8's shape and demeanor seems to come directly from Oogie Boogie, and Sally's stitched-up sex appeal and sewing skills seem obvious influences on Acker's characters of 7 and 5.

The ultimate conclusion is that Stitchpunk, like its visual aesthetic, is made up of many parts and ideas: sewing chic, dark and whimsical; stitches against machines; handmade horror; breathing life into the inanimate, and unraveling the mysteries.

Tedious, no? This is one of the bonus features on theCoraline DVD, out July 21st. But there's a lot more from director Henry Selick and even original creator Neil Gaiman on the disc. Plus both the Blu-ray and DVD will have the 2-D and 3-D versions of the film.

BONUS FEATURES EXCLUSIVE TO BLU-RAYTM HI-DEF:

• U-CONTROL ON 2-D FEATURE – Universal's exclusive signature feature allows viewers to delve into the making of the film with the click of the remote without ever leaving the movie. Through picture-in-picture, fans can enhance their understanding of how the movie was made by viewing tours of the sets, animatics and behind-the-scenes moments, including voiceover sessions.

• CREEPY CORALINE – Director and screenwriter Henry Selick and Coraline author Neil Gaiman take fans deeper into the darker intricacies of Coraline's alternative worlds.

• BD-LIVETM – Fans can access exclusive online and interactive features through their Internet connected Blu-rayTM player, including:

• MY SCENES SHARING – Show your BD-LiveTM friends your favorite scenes from the film.

• THE WORLD ACCORDING TO HENRY – In this feature, director Henry Selick discusses his approach to the film adaptation of the award-winning book and what he loves about Coraline.

BONUS FEATURES AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAYTM HI-DEF & THE 2-DISC COLLECTOR'S EDITION DVD:

• DELETED SCENES

• THE MAKING OF CORALINE – Director and screenwriter Henry Selick hosts this behind the scenes feature about how this hand-crafted, stop-motion animated film was made.

• VOICING THE CHARACTERS – Coraline's acclaimed cast and filmmaker Henry Selick talk about their experiences working on the film, including defining the perfect voice for their characters.

• DIGITAL COPY OF CORALINE – Transfer the included digital copy to your iPod, Mac or PC and experience Coraline anywhere, anytime!

BONUS FEATURES AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAYTM HI-DEF, 2-DISC COLLECTOR'S EDITION DVD & SINGLE DISC DVD:

• FEATURE COMMENTARY WITH DIRECTOR HENRY SELICK & COMPOSER BRUNO COULAIS

We've told you about the musical before, but with the show's opening just over a week away, Variety talked to those involved about what audiences can expect from the show. For his part, Coraline creator Neil Gaiman is happy with the musical:

There were people who grumbled about how faithful or otherwise the film was... Now, I can point to the stage play and say, this is completely faithful to the book. On the other hand, you have to come to terms with a world in which Coraline is played by a 50-year-old lady.

That "50-year-old lady" is actually 56-year-old Jayne Houdyshell, who plays the nine-year-old eponymous star of the story beside David Greenspan, who adapted Gaiman's novel for the stage as well as starring as Coraline's Other Mother. Director Leigh Silverman isn't worried about the age difference in casting:

It's not that she's parodying a child, but that in a way she's not playing it as a child. She's just sort of playing a character who happens to be 9.

The unexpected casting, of course, is just the norm for a show dominated by pianos of different size, shapes and even purposes. Composer Stephin Merritt explains the show's use of "prepared piano":

Prepared piano was done by John Cage in the '40s and '50s... It consists of putting erasers and screws and playing cards in between the strings of the piano, and it converts the piano into an 88-key percussion orchestra. No two notes sound alike.

Currently in previews, Coraline officially opens at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York on June 1st.

'Coraline' musical comes to life [Variety]

It's pretty entertaining to see how all the delightfully eerie puppets from Coraline changed and grew from their original concept art, especially the Other Mother. The Character Design blog has a lovely interview with the artist Shannon Tindle, where he talks a little about working on the movie and how he's very happy with Mr. B's end result (and so are we).

Careful - one of these images has a naked Ms. Spink in it who is, NSFW (but she's still tiny in the picture itself). The artists they used on this movie were all pretty brilliant in their own right, and I'm incredibly happy that they teamed up to bring Neil Gaiman's work to life. Director Henry Selick really knows how to gather the best.

It was pretty much all good news for Coraline, which raked in an impressive average of $7,105 per screen. Henry Selick's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's book came in third for the weekend, better than expected, and much better, on a per-screen basis, than other stop-motion animation films like Wallace And Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit. (Here's a handy chart.) Also, more than 70 percent of the movie's take came from 3-D screens, proving that people were willing to go out of their way and pay extra to see it in the best format.

Push, meanwhile, had a "moderate" opening with $10.2 million, says Rotten Tomatoes. It came in sixth for the weekend, with a "decent" $4,410 per screen. Besides Blart, Coraline and He's Just Not That Into You, the movie lost out to Pink Panther 2 and Taken. Sci Fi Wire puts a braver face on the news, saying Push's opening exceeded expectations, which had put the gross in the $6 million to $8 million range. (EW calls Push's gross "good enough.")

As for the long-awaited Fanboys, it basically failed to register, making a total of only about $164,000.

This "be careful what you wish for" film follows a bright little blue-haired girl, Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning), into a mysterious new home with an overburdened family, who just can't seem to take a moment away from their work. The frustrated Coraline explores the old building, and discovers a secret door that leads to a perfect parallel universe.

On the other side is a mirror image of her life only everything is tailored to Coraline's liking. The "other" parents are happy and spend their days knitting her sweaters and building elaborate gardens in Coraline's honor. The only rub: nothing is what it seems, and Coraline discovers that the trade-off for this fantastic lifestyle is one pair of eyes. What happens next is a fight to return to her original life, and save her eyes from being buttoned over.

The audience is lured into the story, by a 3D puppet hand, with a gorgeous display of everyday wonders. Paper dragonflies welcome you, with sweet toddler-voiced "hellos," the delights of the perfect universe charms you into lowering your guard, while the spookiness slowly works its way up your spine. The next thing you know, the mesmerizing dancing circus mice have turned into a frightening horror show, and you're stuck outrunning a flock of winged undead dogs that swoop down from overhead. The eerie terror in Coraline is always there unassuming at first, but by the end you're clenching your fists, hoping everyone makes it out of the other dimension, eyes intact.

But while you watch Coraline dodge a seemingly inescapable doom you're being treated to some of the most gorgeous stop-motion animation being made today. Cult favorite director Henry Selick (of Nightmare Before Christmas fame) and his animators have put together a gorgeous 3D film. The fluid puppets practically hop right onto your lap. I dare you not to giggle when the Other Father John ("I'm A PC") Hodgman's takes you for a ride on a giant grasshopper or when his robot piano arms reach out and play an impromptu song on the piano (which was actually sung by John Linnell from They Might Be Giants). Even the hills surrounding the character's home invite the viewer to dive onto the miniature set. And although Coraline is a 3D film, not once did the director resort to cheesy 3D "comin' at cha" techniques. Side note: I read that some theaters were showing Coraline with out the 3D, this would be a huge mistake, see the flick in its full force.

While I had a few issues with the rushed pace of the storytelling, and felt that a few of the secrets behind the parallel world got fumbled in the translation, yet the beauty of teakettle steam made from hairspray and cotton would quickly make me forget a fumble. Also, the Selick added character Wybie, Coraline's counterpart and neighbor boy, did in fact help move the story forward as a film because as Selick said, he couldn't have Coraline talking to herself the entire time. Wybie was an added drop of perspective into the mix, but I enjoyed him mostly because of the horrible things the "other mother" inflicts on his poor mirror-world self.

Overall, it's a wonderful step back to the days when kid stories weren't afraid to scare you a little. The market is so overpopulated with loud CG characters that we've forgotten about the stories that really stick with us, which tend to be elaborate and ultimately scary. Gone our animations that dared to frighten us a la The Secret of NIMH, Nightmare, and Watership Down to name a few. Coraline brings back this delightful mix of fright and fun from the chill-inducing singing children soundtrack (check it out below) to the sawdust stuffed Other Mother spy dolls. Here's hoping Coraline ushers in a return to the goosebumps for the kiddies and the adults as well.

Selick, who has a cult following of his own with this past work on The Nightmare Before Christmas had a lot to share about the labor-intensive work on the stop-motion movie Coraline, but we believe it was worth every single second.

Everybody is really excited about the look for the movie, even the way you've gone about using stop motion has changed a bit. Could you talk a little bit about why you wanted to do stop motion as it is now as opposed to how it was in older days?

You know, I've kind of worked on all forms of animation I did a CG short right before this film, Moongirl, it's for little kids. I started out as a 2D animator, I did cut-out, I did stop motion on my own, in some of my personal films, and stop motion is what I keep coming back to, that's what I like the most. It's much for what the audience gets from it which is I think a sense of handmade art, you know the thing exists, and you might not know how big a character is or how exactly it's brought to life but there's a sense that this exists. It's almost like when you're a kid and you want your toys to be alive. So traditionally stop motion, it's simply you know a puppet like this, on the film Coraline, or clay and make a puppet, or even a Barbie doll, or a G.I. Joe. You know, you pose the character, take a frame, pose it repose it repose it. Stop motion from day one, still very much the essence of the performance you see, the characters in coralline it's an animator performing through the puppet. But we use a lot of science. We do face replacement, like Jack Skellington was. It's a bunch of ping pong ball heads with slightly different mouth shapes and we change his entire head to make him talk or move his eyes. But that wasn't going work for Coraline so we developed a system to create in-between shapes so that we put a big split across her face, which you don't see in the finished film ([whispers] although I wanted it), but we can change her upper face, her brows, the eyes separately from her mouth. We needed to make her very expressive so you know use technology to help expand that range, starting with drawings and sculptures and getting into computers to help in-between shapes. But everything no the screen, ultimately, it was still hard shapes. We just had like a box of faces and you figure out which ones you're gonna use to say a line and then you're popping those on and off.

The hair as well, correct? We saw individually moving strands of hair in a lot of places, how did you achieve that, one by one?

In some cases the hair comes off, when we change the face. I wanted to be able to go in for extreme close-ups, much more so than in older animation, and the illusion not fall apart. So there's wigs, and strands were one at a time, time-placed with little bits of wire or metal. Coralline has three or four sorts of wigs, action wigs, upside down wigs, it all gets moved by hand, but it's incredibly intricate in its design.

Coraline really felt alive in this movie, more so than we've seen before. Maybe it was the 3D or the detail.

A third of our crew were veterans from The Nightmare Before Christmas and they're some of the best animators - Anthony Scott, Eric Leighton, art directors who had been set people and I moved up to directors Lee, Bo Henry and Tom Proost. We all were interested in not repeating ourselves. So in addition to more expressive animation, I didn't want it to be too cartoonish I didn't want it to be live action, somewhere between Nightmare which is a classic, but it was a little more cartoonish. These are a little more real. I wanted you to think of them as real, as flesh and blood. Plus the sets were huge. For example in the orchard, Coraline thinks something is chasing her in the beginning of the film and goes running. That set was 50-feet long we never built miniature sets that big. The scale of our sets the house, her house and the rooms, the variation in the scale was much larger than anything done before.

I wanted there to be a lot of atmosphere. I didn't want anything to look heavy like it was blocky or there were wires in it holding it. I wanted things to transmit light. Like the leaves in the trees, the blades of grass, dead leaves on the ground, fog. We animated everything. When there was a storm we put wires in all the trees and hand animated them so they felt like they were moving in the wind. We had leaves tumbling around the ground on little stick pins. And blades of grass, when Wybie shoots the ground or mud flies up I wanted to get atmosphere. Moving clouds, rain.

On the windshield when Coraline and her mom are driving home from their uniform shopping trip, there is bits of clear resin moving along the windshield that we put on by hand. So it was a huge amount of extra work. But it's the atmosphere in addition to other things that make it feel that way. Like there is growth.

Do you feel like this type of movie is a hard sell? With all the Pixar movies and CG movies that are riding the popularity wave right now, is there a place for stop motion?

I don't know. I think people are always looking for something different. If all the fans of Nightmare, many who have grown up with that film, if just the fans of Nightmare come it will be a success. So I'm counting on the fans of Nightmare but also there's been a lot of CG so people know that look. Obviously it can serve a great story well, the Pixar films are brilliant same with Dreamworks. So we're kind of off to the side. And we hope that people notice and are interested in it.

I know the story is very different in some areas, you added new characters. Did Neil have any input on the things that were changed? Was he protective of his story in any way?

Neil was great. The first screenplay was too much like the book. I was really in awe, because he's such a great writer. The first draft didin't have the soul of a movie. I showed it to him and our first producer wasn't happy. So I told Neil, "I can't talk to you anymore" because I was checking in with him too much. I think it took me almost a year, I didn't work the whole time, but a year to turn it into a movie. I showed it to a few people and I was terrified to show it to Neil, but I had to. And he loved it. Neil, he hasn't been a constant collaborator but at the important times I would show him new drafts of the script, I would show him character designs, he came out to the studio a few times and he always have two, possibly three notes for me.

Like what for instance?

He was always right, and it was always something I could do. Something real simple like when Coraline's parents are trapped behind the mirror and they write "help us." I thought I should write it forward so that little kids could read it and he said, "it has to be backwards, it only takes a few seconds for people to read it." So it was a small thing. It was those sorts of things.

There was a little controversy over Miss Forcible and her reenactment of the "Birth of Venus" in the downstairs theater. Some people thought "oh she's in that skimpy outfit," and Neil said, switch lines with Coraline where she says 'Oh my god' and 'she's practically naked. Have Miss. Spink say 'she's practically naked' and 'oh my god' for Forcible and it immediately calmed down that nervousness of mainly middle aged men.

What about your idea behind the character Wybie and other things you added on or just seeing it live when Neil saw the final cut of the film?

I think he was very happy. I showed him just about two weeks ago, I decided to take the film to him, since he had come to the studio so many times, and I showed it to him and his family and friends and his doctor. The Neil posse in Saint Paul Minnesota. It was like 5 degrees in the middle of the day. But yeah I think he's really happy. When Neil really likes something he says less. His first reaction was, "it was lovely," I think he's pretty pleased.

What's next for you besides Paranorman?

The next film for me will be based off the Philip Pullman novel Count Karlstein it's a little bit like the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It's this legendary hunter who comes down from the sky and chases down anyone out in the forrest. It's fun and it's scary, I like doing scary stuff with charming things.

Selick, who's famous for his fantastic eye for all things stop-motion and has a brilliant pop-cult sensibility, is ready to dive into another stop-motion feature.

There's not a lot of word out there about Paranorman, besides the fact that Selick is attached, but we got him to spill a few details about Chris Butler's sweet zombie tale.

Our head story artist Chris Butler, for Coraline, he's a really good writer, he has an original script called Paranorman, so I'm going to be a creative producer on that. He's writing the second draft. We're putting together the character designs. That's something that I want to get going.

It's a kid Norman, who...it's a sweet zombie comedy. It's great. The zombies, I can't tell too much about it, it's different it's something never quite done before in animation. It has a lot of heart about differences. There's elements of witchcraft, communicating with the dead, and an army of zombies.

So Henry Selick is going to be a creative producer to a movie that deals with a stop-motion army of zombies? Um, where do I send my check? This will be amazing. I cannot wait for the character designs to come out. Thank you, Selick, for keeping the art of stop-motion animation alive and creepy.

But until then, you'll have to check out Selick's work in Coraline — in theaters this Friday.

Holy crap — I didn't know I could be so afraid of Neil Gaiman. In these two minutes, Gaiman perfectly explains the eerie undertones that are prevalent in the 3-D stop-motion movie adaptation of his book Coraline.

The story follows a little girl as she discovers a wonderous parallel universe where everything in her life is perfect, even her family. But as we all know, when something is too good to be true, it usually is.

The trailers for Coraline (thus far) have excellently showcased the painstaking work that went into each frame of this film. You should have no doubt by now that Henry Selick's Coraline is truly a thing of beauty; from each individually lit flower to the characters themselves. But what Gaiman does here is explain to those who haven't read his work Coraline just how frightening this story really is, in a sweetly ominous, button-dropping manner. It will give you chills, and if you weren't originally afraid of buttons, Gaiman will make you shiver every time you put on your winter coat.

[Borders Media]

This film follows a brave girl as she leaves her depressed little family for a parallel universe that seems too good to be true. In the "other" world, her parents are happy and lavish her with attention, there's a theater in the basement, dinner is delicious, the flowers light up and her toys come alive. But of course, nothing is as it seems. The 3D stop-motion picture, based on Neil Gaiman's book, will be out in theaters on February 6th.

Big Man Japan
A nobody who moonlights as a giant superhero has to battle all sorts of beasties but also has to deal with a growing mob of superhero haters, and an Alzheimer’s-stricken grandfather. BMJ will be out in March.

Pandorum

The amazing, astounding, fantastic Ben Foster is stranded on a spacecraft with his coworker Dennis Quaid — and there's something aboard that wants them dead. Release date is September 4.

The Princess and the Frog

Hooray for old timey animation! Disney returns to the princess animations with a New Orleans set Princess in the Frog fairytale out December 25.

Push

It's like Heroes, the movie. Everyone has a brain power in Push, be they Movers or Sniffers (sadly, no Shakers) The powered film comes out February 6.

Crank: High Voltage

Wow Crank 2 just got a whole lot more insane. Will they be stop motion animating Jason Statham, but huge? God, I hope so. Crank 2 is out April 17.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

Kristin Kreuk masters the high-kicks, in her own Chun-Li Street Fighter origins story, due out February 27.

17 Again


Matthew Perry gets shrunk back down to the age of 17, and injected into his own teen's high school, to try and "fix" his crumbling family. That's in theaters April 17.

Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian


Bill Hader and Amy Adams join the museum cast as General Custer and Amelia Earhart (or rather, the wax figures of these historical figures that come to life after the museum closes). Museum 2 is out on May 22.

Fanboys


A group of serious fans try and break into George Lucas' Skywalker ranch, and mayhem ensues, on February 6.

Coraline


Neil Gaiman's story about a young girl who visits an alternate world comes to life in breathtaking 3D stop-motion animation, out February 6.

2012


John Cusack cools his heels while the wold ends around him, in one terrible natural disaster after another, in 2012. It's out on July 10.

Knowing


Nicolas Cage uncovers a time capsule that details in numbers when everything awful will happen on Earth. Knowing will be released on March 20.

They Came From Upstairs


Ashley Tisdale and her family have an awesome spring break, before an alien invasion happens. Or maybe after, it's hard to tell. Either way, we'll find out on July 31.

Race to Witch Mountain


Dang teens and their alien abilities to move things with their minds. This reboot of a an old Disney classic is released on March 13.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince


The magic boys and girls are back in school, and ready for the fight to end all fights, yet again. Harry is out on July 17.

Cirque du Freak


John C. Reilly is a vampire who runs a circus with Salma Hayek, and your chances of seeing Hayek do something sexy are pretty much guaranteed. There is no release date yet.

More pics at the link. [L.A. Times]

The Coraline site is now offering a very detailed tour of Coarline's home, which will take you all over the Other Mother dimension and allow you to sew button eyes over your own pictures (I did Wolverine).

The entire house is a veritable treasure trove of goodies, but I was most excited about the gorgeous posters of Coraline wallpaper and button collection offered in Coraline's room.

If you journey down the well in Coraline's world, there is an extensive collection of behind the scenes footage. Besides the previous behind the scene footage, I think these pics truly demonstrate the incredibly detailed and nit picky job creating Coraline must have been. But a job well done because so far it looks absolutely stunning, especially the cherry blossom field made of popcorn.

Check out the site and watch her Other Dad get played by his piano for and download instructions on how to knit your own starry Coraline sweater.

Also it turns out that Coraline is getting her own signature Nike Dunks — now this is a girl after my own heart. So this girl gets a secret world with cooler parents (sorta) and dancing mice, and now she gets her own line of Nikes? Maybe this whole button eye-replacement thing isn't as bad as it sounds. They are a limited collection (of course), so thanks — now I have to spend the next five days tracking these down. Here is the only tiny picture I could find of them so far.

Coraline, which is based on the story by Neil Gaiman will be in theaters on February 6th.

[Coraline]