After The Nightmare Before Christmas, I had high hopes for the career of its director, Henry Selick. But while producer Tim Burton has continued to be one of Hollywood’s most distinctive and bankable filmmakers, Selick’s career has foundered, producing only two features since then- 1996’s middling James and the Giant Peach and the 2001 flop Monkeybone. Finally, with Coraline, his first new feature in eight years, Selick appears to be back in track. Basing his project on Neil Gaiman’s beloved fantasy book surely helps, supplying the creative backbone for the film in a way that not even James, itself based on a children’s book, did. Yet it’s Selick’s bravura stop-motion animation that comes through most clearly in this trailer, with bravura flights of fancy that surely needed computer assistance but which nonetheless look to be fully integrated into the old-school effects. Plus, it’s hard not to love a family movie in which Ian McShane and John Hodgman provide voices. All in all, this should be one of the more satisfying movies of early 2009.