A Weekend with Coraline

Magic Garden, originally uploaded by Musings and Wanderings.

I saw Coraline on Saturday with my little brother and was amazed! Not only was the story pretty unique, the movie was so intricate and beautiful to look at. It was even more exciting to see my old elementary/middle/high school friend’s name in the credits.

The following day, I went to the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco to look at the special Art of Coraline exhibit. Here’s a couple of interesting factoids about the movie:

• The gray sweater that Coraline wears (the one covered in glow in the dark stars) was hand knitted using tiny needles, that looked like they were the size of sewing needles.
• The cherry blossoms in the magic garden were made of popcorn.

If you haven’t seen this movie, you should. Just be advised, this is not a movie for young children, especially if they are easily frighten…..

Visiting the Charles M. Shultz Museum

A few weeks ago, I made a trip up to Santa Rosa with my cousin and my little brother as part of my unemployment travel program (i.e. being able to travel around locally on weekdays since I don’t need to go to work). Being a life-long fan of the Peanuts comic strip, I decided to make my first visit to the Charles M. Schultz Museum and Research Center.

UPDATE:So when I originally started to write this post, I was simultaneously watching “Meet The Spartans” (…don’t Ask….) and so I was a bit distracted….then 4th July and the eating fest that rivaled Thankgiving happened…so let’s just say that I am only now starting to catch up on my blogging. So to finish up this post, here’s what I also intended to include:

The Great Hall
Once you go inside the museum, the first room that you enter is “The Great Hall.” Directly facing you, is an enormousmural of the Charlie Brown and Lucy with a football, as shown above. This 17×22 feet mural was created by Yoshiteru Otani, who pieced together a LOT of 2×8 inch ceramic tiles (3,588 tiles to be exact) with classic Peanuts comic strips imprinted on them. On one interesting note, Otani was also the Peanuts fan who designed the Snoopy Town theme park in Osaka along with a number of Snoopy Town shops around Japan.

The Kite-Eating Tree
In addition to some unique artwork based on the Peanuts characters along with memorabilia from Charles M. Shultz’s life and work, the museum also featured a rare kite-eating tree the the small garden outside the museum.

Pictures with Snoopy and Woodstock
Kindly note that when you visit the Charles M. Shultz Museum that photographs are not permitted except in the Great Hall and outside. Hence, all of our images were taken in the Great Hall and with the Peanuts statues outside.