GeekReads

Coraline movie poster

What is it about the name “Neil” that nobody seems to spell it the same way twice? So far on GeekReads, we’ve had Neal Stephenson, Neill Blomkamp, and now Neil Gaiman. Coraline is based on a novel by Gaiman, about a young girl who moves into a creepy old house. Her boredom and curiosity lead her to a hidden door, through which she discovers an parallel universe that is more interesting than her dreary reality.

Directed by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas), the movie is presented in claymation style, and like Nightmare, looks deceptively similar to other animated fairy-tales but contains elements of horror. This has caused more than a few parents to regret making the mistake of bringing their young kids. The richness and creepiness of the story comes from the unsettling way in which it turns everything upside down: what’s usually safe and comforting (dolls, cute little mice, and bright colourful flowers) turns out to be evil, and what’s usually evil (mangy cats, circus freaks, and scary old ladies) ends up being comforting and safe.

We watched it in 3D and the graphics were fantastic, with lots of attention to detail. But other than the opening sequence, the movie wasn’t really designed to “wow” you with 3D effects so I ended up forgotting about it after a while. The voice acting was unremarkable, except in some parts when Dakota Fanning sounded like she was reading the script out loud. I can’t understand why animated-movie makers cram celebrities into the cast, especially when the art and animation don’t seem to be influenced by the voice acting at all (compare with Jim Carrey in the Disney animated remake of Scrooge that they showed in the trailers before the movie).

Gaiman is a master of the modern, adult fairy tale, and Coraline provides a rich, entertaining and engrossing story. Just don’t take your kids.

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Buy Coraline, by Neil Gaiman.

Most were put off by the heft of it...

Book club meeting earlier today. My wife and her friends started it ages ago, and it’s been around long enough to have had more than one name; they started out as the “Acid Free’s” and now it’s know as “Everything But The Book” – ‘coz that’s what we tend to talk about.

So far, so very ungeeky right? Well since joining I’ve been trying to get them to read more sci-fi and fantasy, but my first recommendation, a Neal Stephenson book, was not well received as I mentioned in a previous post. Ironically, my next successful recommendation happened at a meeting that I didn’t even go to; I’d stopped going because I already had a pretty long reading list of my own, but bless ‘em, the clubbers decided to pick something from my list.

We talked about Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke, which I already reviewed over on my personal blog (this is before I started GeekReads). Most of the guys didn’t actually get through it, daunted by the sheer size of it. Becky, was smart and got the trilogy edition which was spread out over 3 volumes. She was also one of the ones to have gotten the furthest along.

So there didn’t end up being much discussion about the book (in keeping with the name of the club), but it was generally agreed amongst the 3 who finished it (me, my wife Jenny and Leanne) that it was good mostly towards the end, but the first part was a slog¹. Leanne’s comment was something like that “it would have been twice as good if it was half as long” – i.e. Clarke would probably have benefited from a better editor.

At least they didn’t hate it, even though they haven’t read it :-) My quest to enlighten them to the wonders of our preferred genres continues…

The next book is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

^{1 And the footnotes were really annoying.}