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Fred Hembeck



Last Updated: 11/26/2009

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Gender: Male
Status: Married
Age: 56
Sign: Aquarius

City: Upstate
State: NEW YORK
Country: US
Signup Date: 4/23/2006

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Jim Salicrup (1)
Wednesday, April 22, 2009 
Last night, Lynn and I saw (in regular ol' 2-D) "Coraline", the stop-motion, computer-enhanced, animated adaptation of Neil Gaiman's award-winning children's novel. What follows is less a review than a confession...

It almost put me to sleep!!

Literally. After about fifteen minutes in, it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. As faithful readers of this blog are well aware, over the last 13 months or so, me and the missus have been taking in pretty much a movie a week, and in all that time, a similar, inexplicable bout of grogginess occurred only one other time.

When? While watching "Wall-E".

Not during the extended, mostly silent opening sequence, but once the story shifted over to that spaceship with all the computer generated humans milling about? THAT'S when I found myself continually fighting to keep my eyelids in the upright and locked position!! At the time, I figured my reaction was just one of those things--"Wall-E' was among the flicks I never quite got around to blogging about, so I never mentioned my curious reaction here. And y'know, I liked it well enough--though obviously couldn't work up the type of enthusiasm for it that a fair amount of folks who considered it an instant classic did.

But now there seems to be case building for me to admit--first to myself, and then to you--that, geez, I simply can't become viscerally engaged with computer animated feature films! This newly discovered personal blind spot may explain my past less than delighted reactions to beloved fan-favorites such as "The Incredibles" and "Finding Nemo", both of which I originally viewed on the small screen. (And no, I've never seen "The Nightmare Before Christmas", "James and The Giant Peach", or "The Corpse Bride", though I had always wanted too. Maybe not so much anymore...). Still, rather inexplicably, I distinctly recall being totally enchanted by both of the "Toy Story" films, and easily managed to stay awake for "Shrek" 1 and 3 (missed 2), so perhaps there's still hope for me. Guess we'll find out when "Monsters vs. Aliens" comes to our local theater in a few weeks).

Y'know, I have no problem with hand drawn animated films (or ones that LOOK hand-drawn anyway). When Julie was younger, the whole family enjoyed the likes of "The Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast", "Pocahontas", "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", and "Aladdin", to name just a few--even if they began to seem pretty formulaic eventually. And I certainly loved the big-screen escapades of SpongeBob and The Simpsons! But apparently, there's something about computer generated cartoon images that just don't click for me (or puppets either--I've never harbored the least bit of affection for The Muppets, truth to tell). Because, c'mon--I'm nodding off during the sumptuous visual fest that is "Coraline" and yet I'm sitting in rapt attention on my couch, never missing a single beat of that less than remarkable JLA teleflick? I'll be the first to admit it, friends--clearly, there's something WRONG with me!!

So pay me no mind--go see "Coraline". If you're a fairly normal person, you're likely to enjoy it (even if the storyline isn't nearly as full of stunning surprises as I was led to believe from reports posted elsewhere. If you've actually read a Gaiman comic or two--and back when I kept up, I polished off the entire SANDMAN run--the shocks will be few).

Just gotta remember the NoDoz next time!...
9:38 PM
 
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Jim Salicrup
Jim Salicrup

 
Interesting! I've encountered the same phenomenon, but not with computer generated images, but with certain hand-drawn features. Certain anime films and more "realistically" drawn cartoons, for example, the animated Black Freighter film (that's on DVD), just lull me sleep. It's not the story content-- but the animation itself. It's as if it triggers a physical response (sleep), and there's little I can do about it.

I enjoyed Coraline, by the way. The story was slim, but I loved the look of the film, especially in 3-D.

Of course, it could just be that... (shudder) we're getting old.

 
 
Posted by Jim Salicrup on Thursday, April 23, 2009 - 8:40 PM
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