Coraline

A few years back Phil Knight bought out Will Vinton studios, an animation house famous for their stop motion work - think California Raisin's commercial. They changed the name to Laika and started developing motion picture ideas. On February 6th, their first full length movie will be released. Based on a critically acclaimed book by Neil Gaiman, Coraline is the story of a young girl who "goes through the looking glass." After leaving her friends behind to move to a new town and being ignored by her parents, Coraline's boredom leads her to explore the old house she has moved into. She finds a secret door that at first seems to lead to nothing but a bricked up wall. When she returns to the door, she finds it is a portal the "other" world where everything is just like her real world, only better. Her "other" parents pay a lot of attention to her, make great food and seem perfect except they have buttons for eyes. When they suggest Coraline apply her own buttons, we start to understand that the "other" world is not as perfect as we first thought. What follows is a spine tingling adventure as Coraline has to escape the other world, rescue her parents and get back to the real world.

This movie has something for everyone. It's scary, exciting and in the end has a good message, so kids and parents will like it. It has amazing stop motion animation in 3D, so if you are into movie craft you will love it. Finally if you are a Neil Gaiman or Henry Selick fan (director of Nightmare before Christmas), this is the best work done on one of his books so far. But this is not just a movie review. Wieden+Kennedy has been involved in the marketing of this movie and it has been one of the funnest projects I have worked on in a long time. I also think it is some of the best work we have done in a long time. You can get a great overview of the movie and see a lot of the great work we did by visiting the website www.coraline.com. After the trailer runs, make sure you click on the "More" button and watch some of the behind the scenes stuff.