PARANORMAN

(August 2012)

"Oh, man, that [old graveyard] is baaad news. It’s like, total slasher movie vibe. Why’d [Norman] go up there?”

Laika, the studio owned by Nike co-founder and Chairman Phil Knight and run by his son, Travis, brought us Henry Selick’s excellent adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline in 2009.

Coraline was nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at the 2010 Oscars* and now, Laika’s second stop-motion feature, Paranorman, is also an Oscar nominee in the same category.

Not a bad Oscar batting average, if I may say so myself.

Written by Chris Butler (who worked on storyboards for Coraline and Corpse Bride), and co-directed by Butler with Sam Fell (director of Flushed Away and The Tale of Despereaux), Paranorman is a crazy-awesome ride that horror fans should get a massive kick out of.

“It’s not supposed to be [historically accurate]! It’s supposed to sell postcards and key chains.”

Norman Babcock (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is the town freak, which is bad enough.

But when you live in a town like Blithe Hollow (“A Great Place to Hang!”), where a tragic death that happened centuries ago has become the core of its economy and tourism, and you’re someone who can actually see and speak with the dead, then it’s so.

Much.

Worse.

Blithe Hollow is a town with establishments like The Lucky Witch Casino, Trick or Trim, Hung and Dried, and Witchy Wieners, and whose denizens, sadly, look strangely at the weird kid.

And it’s a town that Norman reluctantly finds himself needing to save when the fit hits the shan.

“Son! Step away from the zombies!”

With a brilliantly stylized, off-kilter look to its world and characters and a great voice cast which includes John Goodman, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and Casey Affleck, Paranorman is a funny and touching tale that is a warm, heartfelt love letter to horror fans and misfits everywhere.   

Thanx, Laika. Seriously.

This is putting all that Nike cash to awesome use.

“Perfect. Now the geeks are in charge.”

* Coraline was up against Wes Anderson’s brilliant Fantastic Mr. Fox, among others, but the 2010 Best Animated Feature Film Oscar was ultimately brought home by Pixar’s Up.

(Paranorman OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (83)
THE NEW KID ON THE ANIMATION BLOCK

A film that I’ve been waiting on for quite a while now has finally been scheduled. Hoorah!
I’ve been waiting for it since it was bringing together two terribly talented fellows, Neil Gaiman and Henry Selick.
That film, if you haven’t already guessed, is Coraline.
I mean, one of Gaiman’s darkest pieces disguised as book for all ages, adapted for the big screen by the man who directed not just The Nightmare Before Christmas, but also the underrated James and the Giant Peach and Monkeybone.
Where do I sign up?

Scheduled for an Oscar-qualifying run late this year, Coraline will get a wide theatrical release on February 6, 2009.
It will be the first feature for Laika, an animation studio based in Portland, Oregon, which specializes in both CG and stop-motion feature films.
Laika (for which Selick is supervising director) is backed by Nike founder Phil Knight, who is estimated to be a billionaire nearly eight times over.
That much green is fueling not just Coraline, but also a number of other potential titles, including Here Be Monsters!, based on the Alan Snow books; Paranorman, by Coraline story chief Chris Butler, whose logline involves, “…a small town under a secret curse. Only a 13-year-old boy can keep the town from being overrun by zombies, but no one will listen to him”; and another original story concerning the origins of Halloween, by Selick and Open Season writer/producer, John Carls.


According to Laika VP of development acquisitions, Fiona Kenshole, Laika’s position in the burgeoning field of animated features puts it “…to the left of Pixar and to the right of Nightmare Before Christmas.”
That sounds like just the shot in the arm animation needs with the frightening preponderance of CG cartoons featuring cutesy talking animals gamboling about in achingly familiar fish-out-of-water plots.
Best of luck, Laika!
May the Nike swoosh be with you…

Parting shot: Among the voice talents for Coraline are Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Ian McShane, and the brilliant Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French as Miss Forcible and Miss Spink.
I say again, “Hurrah!”

(Coraline OS’s courtesy of moviesbythebook.com and dakotafanning.free.fr.)

THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR (2)

TIM BURTON in
“THE BEST OF BURTON (In the Shadows of Mainstream Cinema)”

"Tim's kind of an interesting, eccentric sort-- although I don't know him too well as a person. He's the kind of guy you could talk to for three hours and still not know what he's all about. I think Tim is an intrinsically shy person, very closed, and won't open up to a stranger."
-- Bob Kane, creator of Batman (1992)

To a devoted film fanatic, the name "Tim Burton" evokes a very specific mood and atmosphere: the baroque finery of the gothic; the agony and ecstasy of the deviant; the elegance and beauty of the dark and sinister—all distilled through the mind of a Goth Peter Pan who happens to be an ex-Disney animator.
Taking a look at his body of work, it quickly becomes clear that the best of Burton's films display a strong underpinning of absurdist humor, which cohabits well with the often dark surroundings; a quirky sensibility that can be both ghoulishly macabre and hilarious at the same time. And though Burton stumbled with the lamentably horrid Planet of the Apes, he returned to the dark fairy tale whimsy of his earlier work with the moving Big Fish, which helped pave the way for his take on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the stop-motion animated feature, Corpse Bride (co-directed with Mike Johnson), and the upcoming (and long-long-long awaited) film adaptation of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

It is in the light of this latest collaboration with his cinematic alter-ego, Johnny Depp, that this article looks back to view, through a looking-glass darkly, the best of Tim Burton's ouvre.

1) Edward Scissorhands (1990): a loving, moving paean to the life of the outsider, Johnny Depp's unfinished, leather-clad Pinnochio is every single one of us, incomplete and fractured, merely looking for someplace where we can belong

2) Batman/Batman Returns (1989/1992): quite possibly the most subversive of all the superhero movies made thus far; in what is, ostensibly, PG-13 kiddie fare, Burton injects strains of insanity, disfigurement, child abuse and abduction, attempted infanticide, and duality. Aided and abetted by scripts filled to the brim with zingy one-liners and double entendres, Burton targets dead-on, what Batman is all about: sex and psychology

3) Ed Wood (1994): based on the true-to-life story of the man responsible for what is largely considered the worst film ever made (Plan 9 from Outer Space), Ed Wood is another moving tribute, this time, to the misunderstood artist, the low-brow visionary whose self-belief serves as armor against the banal mundanity of life and society; with an Oscar-recognized performance by Martin Landau (as washed-up horror icon Bela Lugosi)

4) Big Fish (2003): the winsome, Technicolor fantasia of this adaptation of the Daniel Wallace novel is a brilliant return to Burton’s brand of moving, magical film making; the often tumultuous relationship of fathers and sons is explored within the context of a tale about stories and storytellers, with the ultimate postmodern turn of the storyteller becoming his own story in the end

Truth to tell, nearly all of Burton's films are worth seeing (the exception being Planet of the Apes), though Sleepy Hollow is pure eye candy with a rather lame and predictable script topped by a Scooby Doo ending.
(And lest anyone go up in arms over my choices, The Nightmare Before Christmas was based on a story by Burton, and produced by him, but directed by Henry Selick, who went on to direct the equally interesting James and the Giant Peach, and the underappreciated Monkeybone, as well as providing stop motion animation for Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and who is currently wrapping up the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. Since Nightmare wasn't directed by Burton, it was ineligible for the list.)

So, for those of you who prefer walking the darker shadows of mainstream cinema, hearken to the works of Tim Burton, who, at his best, understands the universal truths that lie hidden in childhood bogeymen and fairy tales, and who, with a curious, innocent optimism, invites us to tread the twisted and tangled paths of the haunted forests of our own less-than-perfect existences.
And in so doing, in telling his quirky, fractured tales, he is, perhaps, opening up to millions of strangers worldwide, in the best way he knows how.

(The above article is a revised version of its identically-titled predecessor.)

(Tim Burton image courtesy of façade.com; Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, and Big Fish OS’s courtesy of impawards.com; Ed Wood DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)