In honor of the 10th anniversary of The Matrix, a group of fans recreated nearly 900 frames of the film. The entire sequence is animated "in camera," with no wire removal, no Photoshop, and no special effects other than what can be created with the Lego blocks themselves. The entire project took 440 hours, and you can see videos of the laborious process on the project website.

You can also see a side-by-side comparison of the Lego version with the original:

[Lego Matrix via Cinematical]

Titan Maximum, which will premiere on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim on September 27, follows Titan Force Five, a once-proud team of pilots who defend Saturn's moon Titan. Military budget cuts force the team to disband, and one of the pilots, Gibson "Gibbs" Giberstein (voiced by Seth Green), takes the news especially hard, vowing to destroy his former teammates and the whole of Titan.

Advance word on the show is that it's a send-up of classic science fiction, with a Robot Chicken twist. In other words, we can expect plenty of sex jokes and bathroom humor sprinkled in with our mecha-powered space battles.

[Sci Fi Wire]

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.

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'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.

Based on Gaiman’s book, Coraline centers on a young girl (voiced by Dakota Fanning) who is bored with her life and frustrated by her well-meaning, but neglectful, parents (voiced by Teri Hatcher and John “I’m a PC” Hodgman). One day, she discovers a doorway to an alternate version of her world where things and people seem, at first, much more interesting and likable than in her own dimension (for example: her father turns into a one-man They Might Be Giants cover band).

Animation studio Laika is using physical models and figurines to film Coraline in stop-motion, creating a much richer experience than most computer animation studios have been able to accomplish. The featurettes introduce us to the main characters and show the stark contrast between Coraline’s real world and the more magical, but sinister world she enters:

Coraline comes to theaters in February 2009 and will be available in 3D.

[via The Animation Blog]

Arpin follows in the tradition of the great Arch Hall, Sr., director of caveman drive-in flick Eegah! by casting his son in the film. Though Arpin's kid doesn't get the starring role like Arch Hall, Jr. In fact, Arpin says of son Joseph:

To my surprise and delight, he did a great job and memorized his lines quickly and efficiently.

My point is: It's dinosaurs — in space! And I want it now — on DVD!

Galactic Raiders [official site] (Thanks, excellent giant monster fan averyguerra!)

What is it with kids and dimension-hopping portals? The kids in C.S. Lewis' books couldn't stay out of the damn wardrobe that wormholed them to Narnia, and if you haven't read Julie Andrews' The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles about kids who are trained by a professor to flip their minds into an alternate universe, then you're missing out. And of course Lyra in The Golden Compass is on her way to meet her dad — and go with him to another dimension.

It may be jumping on the dimension-hopping bandwagon, but Coraline looks gorgeous, though. We've grown so tired of seeing everything turned into CGI explosion-fests that a film featuring stop-motion animation is a welcome throwback. Henry Selick, who did such a great job with The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach handles the directing, based on Gaiman's novel.