Coraline and Nine

Last night I saw Coraline, which was exciting. The Nightmare Before Christmas played an important part in fascinating me as a child while kind of spooking the living shit out of me at the same time. Plus, Laika studios is in Portland, so hometown pride abounds (except the kid in the film pronounced it "Ore-gahn" not "Ore-gun" which is distinctly wrong).

The visuals were amazing, but, is it just me or is Neil Gaiman not really that great? I only know a little bit about his stuff, but what I have experienced seems to me to be mish-mashes of other ideas and themes into wholes that don't necessarily become original. Now don't get me wrong, a lot of the children's movies I enjoyed growing up like A Troll in Central Park or The Last Unicorn weren't bastions of originality either, but still, that's not an excuse really... While watching Coraline I couldn't help but feel that it was a collage of themes and imagery I'd seen in a myriad of other places with little original substance of its own. It's the same way I felt about Stardust, Mirrormask and Gaiman's adaptation of Beowulf. I guess to make that claim I should have some solid evidence, which I don't, but did anyone else just find themselves recalling things like Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, James and the Giant Peach, etc. and not really appreciating the movie as something on its own?

I saw it in 3D, too, which was cool but exhausting. I guess it's a neat technology and it's sure improved since the red/green glasses days, but I don't miss "2D." For one thing, putting things on different planes but keeping them at the same level of focus isn't always realistic - sometimes it's just weird. Also, I felt like my eyes could never rest - they're still burning a little.

In other news, all my dad's tools are gone and most of the books are packed up. I helped Larry, Moe and Curly move a bunch of stuff into a storage unit out in Bumfuck Nowhere, Oregon yesterday (which is an unincorporated part of Salem). Now I'm counting down the days that I have left in my childhood home. It's really hard to pack everything you own when a) you hate cleaning b) you hate packing and c) you hate getting rid of things.