The Los Angeles Times Calendar section has its annual Fall Sneak Peaks issue out today. Among many other film-related items, there are two articles about stop-motion films: One is a general look at the min-revival the process is seeing (with two feature films scheduled this fall); the other is more specifically about the making of Tim Curton's CORPSE BRIDE.

"There's no stopping this old-school style," by Chris Lee, includes quotes from Nick Park and Peter Lord (whose WALLACE AND GROMIT MEET THE WERE-RABBIT is due this season), Tim Burton and Henry Selick (who previously collaborated on A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS), and Mike Johnson (who co-directed CORPSE BRIDE with Burton).

The basic jist of the piece is that stop-motion was considered more or less dead a few years ago. The process was never popular in Hollywood because it is so slow and painstaking. Enthusiasts continued to chamption it, because it could provide results impossible to achieve any other way -- until Computer-Gererated Imagery came along and became Hollywood's new toy. Fortunately for fans, there are still some practitioners who love the technique, and the blockbuster success of Aardman Animations' CHICKEN RUN (the company behind WERE-RABBIT) proved that stop-motion films could still pull in an audience, even in the era of TOY STORY.

The article is pretty good, but there are a few annoying errors. Lee reports that stop-motion films had died out by the mid-1970s. Apparently, he's forgotten stop-motion master Ray Harrhausen's star-studded 1981 film CLASH OF THE TITANS, not to mention the stop-motion effects in 1980s EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and 1983 RETURN OF THE JEDIA.

"A Manual labor of love" takes a reasonably in-depth look at the making of CORPSE BRIDE. If you're looking forward to the film, it's a must-read.