(no subject)
Right at this very moment, I'm luxuriating in that feeling you have just after you've read a good book, when you may not be actively thinking about it, but somewhere your mind is digesting it, and you still feel a little altered from reading it.
Also I saw Coraline today and liked it very much indeed. My thoughts are under the cut, with a few spoilers
I couldn't quite understand why some people thought it best to take babies to it; I found it unsettlingly scary at some points (what is it about dolls?). I liked the smattering of Shakespearean references, mostly supplied by Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, who are sort of aging bawdy revue artists; in fact while trapezing about the place, they quote word for word Hamlet's speech in Act II, Scene II, the bit where he says "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!".
He had trouble with his mother too of course :)
Then there's how the Other Mother gets called beldam- either the dictionary reference or an ugly old woman or witch, but it made me think of the Keatsian Belle Dame Sans Merci.
And no one seems to know that you can see fairies through a stone with a hole bored through it (naturally, by water). I thought that was a bit of folklore that was commonly known, but apparently it's just for us myth geeks.
It had a few flaws- for instance, the annoyingly on the nose dialogue of the ghost children and the ending which seemed like it could have done with more of a satisfying finish. Coraline was endearing, but not the Coraline of the book who is a little more mature, and a little more attuned to how adults tell us the world is, and how it is really. But then I think it's the longest stop-motion animation ever made, and consider how much of a labour of love it was, with some spine-tinglingly wonderful visual imagery (I especially love the Other Father's garden) I can forgive them for it. I will say that the feminist critique of Wybie didn't really occur to me; some people seem a little het up that she's 'rescued' by a boy. I don't think that necessarily she's a damsel in distress at that point. I think just like the cat, he's a friend, and he helps her out. In the Other House, she prefers Wybie without a mouth, then realised later the cruelty of making someone be who they're not to suit you. She goes from being satisfied with an unequal realationship with a friend, to the real world, where he helps her in a dire situation. Or at least that's how I saw it.
And next week I go to see Wolverine. I am aware that it is dire, but I've had a minor crush on Gambit since I was a kid (the Cajun accent: officially the sleaziest accent in the world). Lets see if Tim Riggins can do him justice