Coraline

Coraline on Saturday, and one of the most pleasurable trips at the cinema I've had this term (not that I've had many). The film is great, but it has many flaws, and one of the most interesting is that which badly harms the last third of the film: the narration plays out like a video game.
Coraline is set a task, to find three eyes, hidden in three places visited previously in the film; she sets about doing exactly that, and finds them one after the other, with only marginal excitement thrown in; after that, she confronts the villain. It has the same feel as the tasks in Pan's Labyrinth: the episodic structure weakens the dramatic impact completely; one could take away any one of the three "eye" scenes without it affecting the way Coraline sets about doing the other two in the slightest.
That the same fault should appear in two films that happen on the frontier between reality and a little girl's imagination is quite interesting, I'm at a loss to explain it. Considering Del Toro's film's success (I need to revisit it, was underwhelmed when I saw it), it might be a case of influence, but even then, there is definitely a case of contamination of video game structures into cinema. One day, someone will write an in-depth study of video game video sequences, but what that will leave out is the overriding way of organizing narrative progression: levels, portals. Maybe even save games (could they be the logical consequence of the cliff-hangers of TV series?)?
What is interesting is that as much as the origin in both cases seems to be video games, upon further thought the structure is also reminiscent of exactly what Pan's Labyrinth wanted to be: fairy tales. The princess is given three nuts in which she finds three dresses which... The tailor is given three nights in which to find out why the seven princesses' shoes are worn out every morning... Pan succeeds in bringing up this image better than Coraline, but it's there.

Otherwise, the film is delightful. I haven't been following animation as closely as I would like (despite thinking it shameful that it is so often neglected), but this seems to me one of the best western animated films in a long time. The reason I say western is that Amazing Life of the Fast Food Grifters, Paprika or especially Spirited Away belong to the list of the best films of the decade, not the best animated films...
And, alas, eastern European animation, not to mention middle eastern, remains criminally unknown...
Which makes me think that uncovering this bountiful treasure should be one of the possibilities offered by internet. Here's a good place to start, I think.