Watchmen: I really liked it. Never read the graphic novel so I dunno how it compares. Michelle and I drove home from our friends' place doing our best Rorschach imitation. "Rorschach's Journal, October 12th 1985." Cough cough.
Slumdog Millionaire: I really liked it a lot. My brother-in-law told me what the last question was and I still got it wrong. At least the slumdog didn't.
Gran Torino: I really really liked it a lot. Clint Eastwood at nearly 80 is still way more badass than you or me.
Coraline: I loved this movie. Just beautiful and scary and creepy and funny. Pure Neil Gaiman, even though they changed the book somewhat. Not that much, really. Coraline was the first book I ever read aloud to Michelle, so we really wanted them to get this one right. Our expectations were a little low since there has been a long string of book-to-movie adaptations of books we love that have been terrible. Actually, not terrible, just boring. And really, isn't that worse? Golden Compass- boring. Spiderwick Chronicles- boring. A Series of Unfortunate Events was pretty bad, come to think of it, though the soundtrack is one of the best ever. Don't even get me started on most of the CG movies the past few years (Pixar excepted though I didn't like Cars at all). Most of them we shut off halfway through they were so unwatchable.
So why did Coraline succeed? And why did it fail at the box office? Coraline only made $75 million domestically, and another 40 internationally. So it recouped just a little under double its cost. Not too bad I guess. But Madagascar, a movie that was (to me) so terrible I couldn't even sit through it made a half billion dollars worldwide, not to mention its sequels and DVD sales. Sales ain't everything, of course, but they determine what kind of movies keep getting made. Banal and insanely profitable wins over whimsical and mildly profitable in the eyes of most Hollywood executives.
Thank god for Pixar and Tim Burton, who is doing his part as always- 9 is coming out in a couple of months and then Alice in Wonderland. Who knows, maybe he'll make a movie of The Graveyard Book.
