Pack Rat is like a good tumble down the rabbit hole, if you know what I mean, wink wink

photo copyright LAIKA Inc./Focus Features

When times get tough, for better or worse the first things to go are what we deem “luxuries” and extravagances, also known as just about anything entertaining. Which can have a silver lining as it often forces us to dust off our imaginations and make our own fun. But some days you don’t feel like playing kick the can anymore any you just have to get out. The challenge then becomes getting the most fun for the least amount of money. Therefore it may seem utterly insane that I’m recommending a $14 movie. But I figure that you might spend just as much or more at the bar, club, restaurant, or whatever after dark shenanigans you may get into. And the movie Coraline, unlike yet another sushi dinner, will be a totally fresh experience.

Cartoon nerds and Neil Gaiman dorks probably won’t need to be convinced of this movie’s merits (I know I didn’t need to be), but for the rest of you out there, lets do the ol’ pros and cons bit. I’m gonna be straight with you right up front. If you don’t fall in the 8 - 11 year old range, or if you’re not a “child at heart” then this story probably isn’t going to do much for you. It’s another worn out retelling of Alice in Wonderland and, even more yawn inducing, a blatant re-purposing of another Neil Gaiman movie plot, Mirror Mask. The man can write comics, but apparently when it comes to film (or books that are adapted into film) he’s only got one story up his sleeve, and it goes like this: young pre-teen girl (in this case, Coraline) has a rough time at home fitting in with her family. She especially locks horns with her equally headstrong mother. Through a series of events, the girl finds herself in a topsy turvey world with elaborate strange creatures, including one that strongly resembles her mother. After enjoying a carefree romp in this new world, she declares that she prefers it to her old one and decides to stay. Once her mind has been made up, the maternal clone in the new world starts to reveal sinister intentions. It isn’t too long before the girl realizes that nothing can replace her real mother. She has to go on a mini quest and retrieve some trinkets in order to make her way home, yadda yadda yadda, happy ending.

But you know what? In some ways story is overrated. There, I said it.  If I’m going to pay big bucks to see something on a big ass screen, I want to SEE something. I mean, the gritty reality of Slumdog Millionaire might make an emotional story, but you really wouldn’t miss anything if you waited until you could rent it for $4.99 and watch it at home. Coraline, on the other hand, is truly a wondrous eyeful. Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick (ah ha ha. You thought it was Tim Burton, didn’t you? Yeah that’s what they wanted you to think. Burton had writer and producer credits) takes two cinematic antiquities, stop-motion animation and 3-D, does a little three card Monte shuffle with them, and boom! Transforms them into a movie going experience light years ahead of anything else in theaters.

The opening animation sequence of the film is like the safety instructions they give you on an airplane. As you don your glasses (cool, Corey Hart looking frames now, no longer those cheesy cardboard red and blue numbers), you see a spidery hand systematically dismantle a stuffed doll, which in and of itself is innocuous enough. But as seams are ripped, stuffing emptied and sutures re-sewn into the doll’s joints, a dark, creepy sensation begins to crawl up you leg, and as needle and thread come out of the screen and into your lap, it’s a tacit explanation that you better be sure you know where the nearest exits are. Which is not to say that the movie is unnecessarily jumpy or jerky. Unlike Nightmare, which was revamped for 3D theaters a few years ago, because Coraline was created with the original intention of being shown in 3D, it has none of Nightmare’s flat moments where the 3D just seems to fade away, nor does it have any of the spinning vertigo/head ache inducing numbers.

Instead, what Coraline has is a wonderful symmetry of two thrilling media that combined produce  one of the most otherworldly sensory experiences available. The stop motion animation that Selick employs gives a startling realism, a sense of texture, of depth, of shadow, and a general tactile quality that the recently omnipresent computer graphic imaging process has a hard time capturing. As Selick said in a recent interview with  NPR’s All Things Considered, “Stop-motion is sort of twitchy; you feel the life in it.” He believes the beauty of stop-motion is in the traces that remain of an animator’s hand. And 3D filming, in this case, wasn’t for shock value. Selick uses it as a piece to his story telling. He says he was looking for something to give the film the same feel as the Wizard of Oz, when the picture changed from black and white, to color.

So what if the story he is telling is a little drab. The world Selick creates is anything but. Working in tandem with the standard digital surround sound, Coraline becomes a multi-sensory immersion into this fantasy land. Coraline walks through a garden and technicolor flowers pop open, their swollen red petals and yellow pollen vibrant and dazzling. She enters a darkened room and one by one, life-sized beetles begin to glow at different depths; you feel as though the closest is sitting right in front of you. A night sky bursts into a fractal swirl, and it is magic.

Coraline is a candystore filled with treats in bright, shiny packaging. It’s not enough to make a meal, but by God it is a satisfying indulgence.

Coraline the book, photo copyright by HarperCollins

Pack Rat pledges allegiance to the United States of Craft

If you have been reading this blog, or have in any other way been clued in to the arena of indie craft, then you’ve probably heard the buzz surrounding Handmade Nation, an independent film directed by the co-owner of Paper Boat Boutique & Gallery , Faythe Levine, with Michaela O’Herlihy as the director of photography. I was fortunate enough (and for once in my life, on the ball) to see the New York Premier last Thursday, February 12th. And what an exciting event it was!

The premier was hosted by the Museum of Arts and Design in their new Columbus Circle digs. The show was sold out, but the viewing space was on the small side which made the atmosphere cozy and intimate. Around the room, it was a veritable who’s who of people in the D.I.Y./craft world. I spotted Andrew Wagner (Editor in chief for American Craft magazine) right away, looking stylish as always in a navy fleece and the only accessory a man ever needs: his handle bar mustache. And I just about fell out of my seat when I realized that I was only a seat and an aisle away from THE Debbie Stoller of BUST magazine fame.

But obviously, I didn’t come to rub elbows with celebrities (well…maybe just a little). What I really came for was to see the film that takes a loving look at a subject near and dear to me, new wave craft. As first time film makers, Levine and O’Herlihy did an excellent job. They cover a large swath of creators in the field, interviewing a bevy of people who use the whole spectrum of materials. From Nikki McClure’s paper cuttings, to Jenny Hart’s famous embroidery, to Deb Dormody’s book making, the range of talent that Levine taps is huge; not to mention the personalities. The guys who run the ubiquitous buyolympia.com, the original online source for quality indie crafts, are pretty hilarious as they describe what it was like to  package shipments while standing up for nine hours at a clip, for four months before they could afford to get chairs. And the down to earth, straight talk about the nature of the relationship between the artist and consumer from Andrew Scott and Breezy Culbertson, of the San Francisco shop Needles and Pens, is insightful and a bit edgy (in a refreshing way).

Levine and O’Herlihy are wise in opening up the forum of D.I.Y. discussion to not only those people who make the precious and precocious trinkets that we all devour, but also to the purveyors (those who love and believe in the artists enough to hock their goods but aren’t necessarily part of the creative process themselves), as well as magazine editors, presidents of organizations, and an assortment of other people who exist on the periphery of this cultural movement. It’s heartening to have everyone’s suspicions confirmed; that this new era in crafts is being driven by socially conscious creators and consumers alike, who turn to indie craft for complicated reasons, not just for a cute owl emblem. Certain themes keep resurfacing with everyone Levine speaks to. The idea of anti-mass production, of a one of a kind sensibility; the concept of reused materials, re-purposed items, and provisions used completely; and a freedom/expansion from the claustrophobic world of  “fine art” are repeating motifs.

In the end, however, the film left me wanting more. There is such a massive consensus among everyone involved about what the movement means and why it’s occurring, that there doesn’t seem to be any narrative tension to move the film along. The aforementioned ideas reappear over and over again, almost to the person. I kept asking myself as I viewed Handmade Nation, “if I was a complete neophyte, with little to no interest in this subject, how would I feel about this movie?” And I found myself wishing for something more inviting, more compelling for outsiders. Levine takes a democratic approach, inviting all of her guests to have equal screen time. Which is exactly what a good friend should do…but maybe not a director. Interviewees with real screen presence, insightful points of view, and captivating stories are dutifully left behind in favor of some elaborate, yet drab discussions of favorite pieces, fun craft shows, etc.

And while the truth is that in indie craft, you end up seeing a lot of the same images over and over again, (someone in the film commented that the concern is always, how many bird and apple printed things can people buy?) as someone pretty familiar with the topic, I was hoping for more innovation, for more surprises. Although there is still plenty to be said for the pieces featured in Handmade Nation. I especially fell in love with the segment on Knitta, the guerrilla group of urban knit “taggers.” And Mandy Greer’s crochet installation pieces are so dramatic and enchanting that you feel like your stepping through the rabbit hole while you’re looking at them. (Side note: Greer was on a discussion panel after the film. While explaining what place her crochet has in her life, she mentioned that while she is creating a piece, she carries it everywhere with her, working on it in little increments all day long until it is done. And in this way, her life gets woven into the larger picture of what she is creating. I thought that was such a wonderful idea.)

Ultimately, however, these small issues do little to mar the whole. Handmade Nation is an exhilarating portrait of a movement propelling forward,  seeming to gain in power as our country wakes up to the realization that the gold cow of consumerism is a crappy false idol. Hopefully Levine and O’Herlihy can help introduce a new path.

Pack Rat is sitting in the club car, drinking rum and Karma-Kola

Hmmm. Seems I am really into videos recently. This post makes three in a row. I hate getting stuck in a rut, but I just saw the music video that goes along with Oren Lavie’s song “Her Morning Elegance,” and I felt compelled to talk it up. On one hand, if you want to be a negative Nelly, like SOME people, you might take a look at this stop-motion animation, co-directed by Yuval & Merav Nathan and Lavie, and comment, “That’s a total Peter Gabriel rip-off.” But, while Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer video, directed by Stephen R. Johnson in the late 80s was all about the flashing neon lights and the hyper jerky surrealism of stop-motion animation, all orchestrated in such a way as to make the viewer slightly discomforted, the video for “Her Morning Elegance,” is meant to charm. A young woman has the sleep walk of her life as she floats and flutters through a whole world caught up in her bed. The stuttering images inherent to the medium mirror the rhythm of the train in Lavie’s song, while his sweet vocals (more like Nick Drake than Peter Gabriel) provide the same sort of soothing comfort as a rocking train car. There’s something magical about the superimposed two-dimensional reality of this woman’s bed world, the way that it trumps the more mundane third-dimensional reality gives the whole piece an illustrated children’s book-type quality. And the directors were smart enough to give the piece five acts, so the concept never gets too cutesy or stale. And my favorite part is the scarf jelly fish.

Pack Rat’s favorite noise is snikkt!

In the words of the priest who blessed the cow pasture, HOLY SHIT. Have you people seen the trailer for the new X-Men movie, X-Men Origins: Wolverine? This is like if Awesome and Hot Damn got drunk and fooled around one night, woke up the next morning and promised that it wouldn’t change their friendship, only to find out Hot Damn was pregnant. Pregnant with this movie.

O.K. I admit a little bit of skepticism and perspective are in order here. As anyone who has ever picked up an X-Men comic book before the year 2000 will tell you, the X-Men trilogy of movies was God awful. Or, maybe not so much bad as sacrilegious. And I had such high hopes, too. After growing up with these characters, to finally see them on the big screen was so exciting…until I actually saw them on the big screen. And realized that what I was getting was the watered down, Reader’s Digest condensed version of forty years of story telling. Plus, Rogue sucked in the movies and if there’s one thing Rogue doesn’t do in the comics, it’s suck.

So realistically, since they managed to botch not one, but three movies about the X-Men, I probably shouldn’t get my hopes up about Wolverine. It’ll probably be too much action, not enough character development. They’ll probably miss-cast all of the characters in an effort to get “it,” name brand stars (although I have to say that I just about peed myself when I saw Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights as Gambit). They’ll probably do a hack job editing Wolverine and Sabretooth’s back story (oh, I also almost soiled myself when I saw Ryan Reynolds was Dead Pool). And even though I love Hugh Jackman (plus, Hugh Jackman’s in this movie!!), I do have to admit that seeing him with steroid bulging, veiny muscles is kind of a turn off. If the past has dictated anything, then the odds are stacked squarely against this movie.

But have you see the part in the trailer when Wolverine is being chased by a Jeep and then all of a sudden the Jeep blows up, rolling ass over tea kettle, a huge gasoline plume of fire shooting out it’s ass, a helicopter hovering over head and all you see is this little dot flying through the air toward the helicopter? THAT DOT IS WOLVERINE!! The dot flying in the air and landing on the helicopter is freaking Wolverine. Sign me up. I am on board. May 1, 2009 son!

Pack Rat Magazine, now with 300 horsepower.

So, I think that maybe this is a leak, and we aren’t suppose to be able to see it without buying the March issue of Vanity Fair, but I came across a spread in their most recent issue that I just had to share with you. Based on Alfred Hitchcock’s most beloved thrillers, Vanity Fair has reshot some of the most iconic moments from his films with the leading ladies and gentlemen of today’s Hollywood. I just love it. Even though I’ve seen it here, I also bought a copy so I can pour over the glossies. Just lovely. Here are my favorites below.