Holly and Coraline

MUSIC

Holly Cole's self-titled 2007 album (released as This House Is Haunted in some corners of the world) is sheer joy. I've long enjoyed her relaxed, sensual but not cheesy readings of both standards and less-known material. On this album she stays close to lounge/club jazz but somehow makes it sound fresh and exciting. Good stuff for those long dark candlelit nights here way up north...





FILM

Finally caught Henry Selick's animated film version of Neil Gaiman's Coraline. Not an easy book to convert to film by any standards, but Selick and his team do a stunning job with both the screen adaptation and the technical side of things. The gloominess and sense of paranoia of the novel are livened up a bit to keep things going for 97 minutes, but not at the expense of Gaiman's essential ideas or storyline.

There is some CGI animation but mostly Coraline is done in painstaking stop-motion, and it's by far the best I have ever seen in the genre. Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride were masterful, but this is mind-blowing stuff. The almost psychedelic, mock-Disney colorful moments (ie. The Other Dad's magical garden) are made even more effective by the minute details and washed realism of the everyday, real-life environments (for example, a medium close-up of a laptop, featuring the weirdest context for product placement as far as I can recall).

And if that was not enough, the (somehow very French) score by Bruno Coulais sprinkles a different kind of pixie dust over the proceedings! I love the contemporary score masters, but oh how refreshing to do without a Zimmer, Horner, Elfman, or even a Newman, for that matter, for a change. Marvelous stuff!