Posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 by David Chen
In this episode of the /Filmcast, David Chen, Devindra Hardawar and Adam Quigley share reflections from New York Comic-Con, evaluate the merits of Andrew Niccol’s directorial/writing career, and contemplate a future full of board-game-to-movie adaptations. Special guest Steve Weintraub (AKA Frosty) from Collider joins us this evening.
Tune in next Monday night to Slashfilm’s live page at 9 PM EST / 6 PM PST as we review Tom Tykwer’s The International.
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Coraline director Henry Selick tells cinecon that at one point Disney had been considering making a sequel to his 1993 stop-motion animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas, but they wanted to make it using computer animation.
“A few years back, Disney spoke to me and the sad thing was at the time, they said, ‘If we do a sequel, it will have to be CG.’ I was really disappointed. I asked why and they didn’t think stop-motion was a viable way to make movies. I don’t think they would say that now and I don’t think Tim would allow a CG sequel. There’s been a few stories proposed and a few discussion but that’s really Tim [Burton]‘s decision. John Lassiter, from Pixar, is heading up all Disney animation and he goes way back with Tim. He might possibly persuade Tim to do it. But I kind of think not.”
A CG Nightmare Before Christmas sequel? I can’t even imagine what such a movie would look like. And I agree with Selick, Burton would have never allowed it to happen.
Editor’s Note: This is the debut post by Kevin Kelly, who will be offering his expertise in geekdom in a new /Film daily blog feature called GeekBomb. Welcome Kevin to /Film!
Neil Gaiman’s Coraline opens this weekend, and it’s directed by Henry Selick, one of the few modern masters of stop-motion animation. Although he was trained as a traditional animator, he really came to fame with stop-motion, having directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Monkeybone. In the day and age of everything being whipped up in CGI, it’s really a testament to see people work in a medium that requires hours of tedious work on films that can take an extremely long time to produce. Which is why the Sundance opening night film Mary & Max was such a treat.
Whenever someone mentions stop-motion, most people tend to think of one of the above movies, or the equally excellent Chicken Run or Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, both co-directed by the amazing Nick Park. And just to be clear, I’m not calling Monkeybone excellent… but the stop-motion moments are pretty damned awesome. You just have to love a naughty monkey sometimes. Even though most of those films are fairly recent, stop-motion animation has been around in one form or another for more than one hundred years. Click through for the highlights and milestones of this under appreciated art form.
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/Film reader Jerry K sent us photos from SIGGRAPH of miniatures on display from Henry Selick‘s adaptation of Neil Gaiman‘s Coraline. As always, click to enlarge.
Rotten Tomatoes got their hands on a behind the scenes featurette for Henry Selick‘s big screen 3D adaptation of Coraline.
Based on Neil Gaiman‘s short children’s novel of the same name, Coraline is a young bored girl who discovers that bricked-up wall behind a door in her house leads to another dimension, where she has a different mother, and different father. A stop-motion film produced in stereoscopic 3-D from director Henry Selick, the guy behind The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Monkeybone.
