A thrilling, fun and suspenseful adventure, Coraline features an all-star voice cast including Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French and Ian McShane. This must-see animated family film is released in stunning high-definition on stereoscopic 3D Blu-ray for the first time on 11 April 2011, courtesy of Universal Pictures UK.

Coraline Jones (Fanning; New Moon, The Secret Life of Bees, War of the Worlds) is a girl aged 11 who is feisty, curious, and adventurous beyond her years. She and her parents (Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman) have just relocated from Michigan to Oregon. Missing her friends and finding her parents to be distracted by their work, Coraline tries to find some excitement in her new environment. She is befriended – or, as she sees it, is annoyed – by a local boy close to her age, Wybie Lovat (Robert Bailey Jr.); and visits her older neighbours, eccentric British actresses Miss Spink and Forcible (Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French) as well as the arguably even more eccentric Russian Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane).

After these encounters, Coraline seriously doubts that her new home can provide anything truly intriguing to her but it does; she uncovers a secret door in the house. Walking through the door and then venturing through an eerie passageway, she discovers an alternate version of her life and existence. On the surface, this parallel reality is similar to her real life – only much better. The adults, including the solicitous Other Mother (also voiced by Teri Hatcher), seem much more welcoming to her. Coraline is more the center of attention there – even from the mysterious Cat (Keith David). She begins to think that this Other World might be where she belongs. But when her wondrously off-kilter, fantastical visit turns dangerous and Other Mother schemes to keep her there, Coraline musters all of her resourcefulness, determination, and bravery to get back home – and save her family.

A visually stunning and frightfully magical treat for all the family, the 3D Blu-ray is compatible with the latest 3D TVs and comes complete with 2D Blu-ray and DVD versions of the film. Packed with special features including deleted scenes, an audio commentary, and three fantastical featurettes, don’t miss out on the chance to experience Coraline in stereoscopic 3D high definition this Easter!

To be in with a chance of winning Coraline 3D on Blu-ray (this will work in standard Blu-ray players also), simply become a fan of HeyUGuys official facebook page and answer the following question using the form below:

Question: Who directed the movie Coraline?

COMPETITION NOW CLOSED

The small print:

• Open to UK residents only
• Only one entry per household will be counted
• The competition will close 12th April 23.59 GMT
• The winner will be picked at random from entries received

The usual T&Cs can be found here. Good Luck!

It’s not everyday that you find a sci-fi/fantasy author that translates so well to the big screen.  I mean, how many Stephen King movies have you seen that have completely lost their sense of reality and just been pushed to the point of being silly?  Neil Gaiman does not seem to have this problem.

To date he can lift his head with pride and take credit for two awesome features (Mirrormask and Coraline), a wonderful BBC miniseries (Neverwhere), as well as the commercially successful hit Stardust.  Now it seems that we can anticipate yet another Gaiman infused outing with the announcement that the rights to Gaiman’s book American God’s have now been sold.

Neil appears to be guarding a lot of the details with an expected level of secrecy, but the main question everybody wants to know is ‘Who will to be taking the helm as director?’.  Neil makes a reference to a ‘genius’ cinematographer and director who has ‘many many Oscars’, but the problem is, that no director or cinematographer to date has ‘many many’ Oscars.  John Toll and Janusz Kamiński only have two each, and they’re some of the best in the industry.

The only thing that would seem to make sense, is that he may have been alluding to the idea that perhaps other projects this  ‘genius’ has worked on, have garnered many awards in the Makeup or SFX categories.  We must also be prepared for the possibility that the ‘many Oscars’ quip, was perhaps just a joke from a man with a very very dry sense of humor!

Looks like we’re just going to have to sit tight and wait for the execs in L.A. to make the announcement themselves.  With such a clean track record, there is little doubt that Neil will have held out for just the right crew.  However, with no apparent time frame for the announcement, you can still expect a large amount of anxious anticipation on this blogger’s part.

In an interview with ShockTillYouDrop to promote Let Me In, Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road) dropped some hints about his next film:

I’m doing an animated film next called Paranorman. I play a boy named Norman who can see ghosts and he saves the world from a zombie invasion.

Paranorman is a stop-motion animation by writer/director Chris Butler and is set for release sometime in 2013.

Laika Entertainment – who were responsible for Coraline and The Corpse Bride – will produce.

Smit-McPhee will next be seen in Let Me In, Matt Reeves’ adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s acclaimed vampire fiction novel, which is due to open in the UK on November 5.

Last week HeyUGuys were invited to Air Studios in North London to witness the launch of the new Panasonic Full HD 3D TV and Blu-ray players, and while I can’t claim any immense technical knowledge I do know that when I left I was certain that 3D TV will play a major part in the future of home cinema.

Speakers from Panasonic (both product managers and R&D), Sky Movies, Pearl & Dean among others came on stage to wax lyrical about the shiny new dimension we’ll all be enjoying and much hyperbole was bought forth pertaining to 3D being the next logical step forward for home entertainment, much as colour had superseded black & white and HD is looking to overturn standard definition. And part of the problem will be convincing people to upgrade their recently purchased HDTV to these new TVs.

While broadcasters and DVD producers will have to catch up with this new technological frontier, as without content these new screens and players are nothing,  Ubisoft and Sky chimed in on their plans for 3D games and TV broadcasting respectively. Clearly excited by the prospect of a new wave of content there will of course be some recent content which will be available on launch. More details on this later.

The Panasonic 3D Viera sets were designed to lead the way to inroduce Full HD 3D TV and when the lights dimmed and we were shown the goods I briefly glimpsed the future through the 3D glasses. Panasonic collected footage specifically for their new HD 3D TV during the Beijing Olympics and it was truly stunning. The thousands of drummers moving in unison was crystal clear and the depth perception was totally immersive.

This was the 3DTV moment I was waiting for, when the potential of the medium was realised, and I have to be honest, I wasn’t convinced of the need to preview 3D TV in pubs using high profile sporting events but this is exactly the right arena to get people used to the technology, glasses and all.

For movie fans the big question is – Will 3D TV be the next big thing for your home cinema? This was highlighted by the majority of the speakers, using the ubiquitous Avatar as the shining example of embedding 3D  in the public consciousness, and the key to getting people to invest in these TVs will be in the 3D Blu-rays which will be released and I was pleased to see that pre-orders of the new TVs/3D Blu-ray will get a free copy of Ice Age 3 (fair enough – the Blu-ray looked pretty good) and Henry Selick’s Coraline. That is brilliant marketing on Panasonic’s part and that would easily entice me to put the TV/Blu-ray player on my wish list as Coraline, apart from being a brilliant film, makes great use of 3D.

With new content shot in 3D, and with Panasonic pushing these new TVs to play the HD 2D content as perfectly as possible, I can see a future which involves switching from 2D to 3D on the fly – something the guys were keen to point out that these TVs were made to do – and I can attest that while the 3D looked stunning in Full HD, there’s so much more than Match of the Day to look forward to. Avatar will clearly be the first high profile 3D Blu-ray, though Coraline does the job for me, and it’s an interesting time for TV companies as they try to push the boundaries of home entertainment.

The 37th annual Annie awards were held last night with Pixar’s Up taking the prize for the Best Animated feature, adding weight to the expectation that it will walk away with the Oscar for Best Animated Feature when the awards are handed out on March the 7th.

The International Animated Film Society also honoured Up’s director Pete Docter with the award for Directing in a Feature Production, while Disney’s triumphant return to hand-drawn animation, The Princess and the Frog, walked away with Animated Effects, Character Animation and Voice Acting for Jen Cody’s ebullient craziness as the spoiled Charlotte.

My own favorite of last year, Henry Selick’s sublime adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, took home both Character and Production Design and Bruno Coulais’ wonderfully haunting score was honoured with Music in a Feature Production. Coraline excelled in each of these areas and Henry Selick’s design for the film captured perfectly the strange world of Coraline Jones and the marvelous and sinister Other world.

Each of these films have a wealth of talent behind them, and while I thought Up petered out before the end, whereas Coraline for my money held the story far better, making for a more satisfying conclusion overall, the awards underline the great work being done in the field of animation.

TheWrap have the full list of awards here.

The latest movie sent over for us to review on our iPod Touch so kindly given to us by NBC Universal is Coraline. I have to admit to not knowing too much about this movie before I watched it. I’d heard something about buttons for eyes and that it was a bit twisted but other than that I was pretty clueless.

The movie stars Dakota Fanning as Coraline, Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman, Ian McShane, Keith David and is directed by Henry Selick who previously brought us A Nightmare Before Christmas. Once you see Coraline, that will make perfect sense.  I think that I had the misconception that this was a kids movie but now that I’ve seen it, it’s so much more than that and will definitely appeal both to adults and children. That said, it’s quite a freaky film with a few bits that made me, a now 29 year old man jump! It is however rated PG so I’m probably just a wimp!

Coraline tells the story of a young girl who has recently moved into an old house with her workaholic parents, dead set on finishing their book. Coraline is an only child and quickly becomes bored of sitting in this big old house with nothing to do. Tasked with counting windows by her father, desperate to get rid of her, she quickly starts causing mischief by exploring both the house and the grounds surrounding it. On her travels, she meets a scraggy old cat (voiced later by Keith David) and a quirky boy called Wybie (voiced by Robert Bailey Jr.), which is short for ‘Why Born’….. See how this is starting to get a bit odd?!

Anyway, Coraline falls asleep one night to be awoken by some mice running into the door which was previously bricked up. When she opens the door, a tunnel appears with mystic colour drawing her in. After crawling through the ‘Being John Malkovich’ style tunnel, she finds herself in an alternate world where everything that she dislikes in the ‘real world’ is reversed. Her parents have all the time in the world for her and life revolves around her rather than around a book. The only thing is that all the people in this alternate world have buttons for eyes. This scares Coraline at first but their love for her masks the buttons and she loves every second of it. When night falls in this alternate world, her ‘other mother’ will put her to bed and when she awakes, she finds herself back in the ‘real world’. To find out what happens next, you’ll have to buy the download through iTunes or the DVD / Blu Ray (either in 2D or 3D) as telling you more would spoil the movie.

Coraline is one of those films where I was blown away by the complexity of it from the second it began to the moment it ended. When I say complexity, I’m mainly talking about the animation. The physics behind how it all works together is astounding. There are parts in the movie where the animation itself becomes a character, where you see the wire-frame makeup of the story in the alternate world which stitches together to create what Coraline sees. The way in which this was envisaged by both the director and graphic artists is simply astounding and so cleverly put together.

Coraline was a movie that I could watch over and over again. The style of animation was different to anything I’ve seen before – with maybe the exception of A Nightmare Before Christmas. The story wasn’t 100% original as it’s that sort of a ‘Lion, Witch, Wardrobe’ style of ‘what’s behind the magic door’ but the creativity and lengths Selick has gone to, to make this his own is excellent .

The characters they’ve made were also brilliant with a few which you’re a bit worried might be a bit too adult for young children but actually, i think they’d just find it funny. Dakota Fanning does a good job as Coraline, ably supported by Hatcher and the rest of the cast,  but this movie is really all about the animation and my hat (if i was wearing one!) goes off to the animators and production team. It’s animation but not like you’ve seen before,

Coraline gets a massive 9/10 from me!

Coraline is available to buy the download through iTunes or the DVD / Blu Ray (either in 2D or 3D) NOW!

Images © 2009 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.