Coraline (film)

Eleven-year-old Coraline Jones and her parents, Mel and Charlie, move into an old mansion that has been divided up and is now known as the Pink Palace Apartments. Due to her parents struggling to complete their gardening catalog, Coraline is often ignored. Coraline meets the landlady's grandson, Wyborne "Wybie" Lovat, and the Stray Black Cat who follows him around. Wybie later leaves Coraline a button-eyed rag doll he discovered in his grandmother's trunk that eerily resembles her. Soon after, Coraline discovers a small door in the living room that is bricked up and can only be unlocked by a button-shaped key.

That night, a mouse guides Coraline through the door, now a portal to a seemingly more colorful and cheerful version of her real home. Coraline meets her Other Mother and Other Father, button-eyed doppelgängers of her parents that appear more attentive and caring. Coraline later goes to bed and awakens back in the real world.

Wybie tells Coraline about his grandmother's twin sister who disappeared in the house as a child. Coraline's neighbors, Mr. Bobinsky, an eccentric Russian gymnast who supposedly runs a mouse circus, and retired burlesque actresses Misses Spink and Forcible, cryptically warn her about the door and of imminent danger.

Coraline visits the Other World for a second and third time; where, accompanied by the Other Wybie, she is entertained by the Other Bobinsky and his mouse circus, and the Other Spink and Forcible. Coraline also encounters the Black Cat, who is able to traverse the two worlds and speak in the Other World. The Other Mother invites Coraline to stay in the Other World forever, on the condition she have buttons sewn over her eyes. Horrified, Coraline goes to bed, but finds, when she wakes up, she is still in the Other World. When Coraline demands to return home, the Other Mother transforms into a more menacing version of herself and imprisons Coraline in a mirror. There, Coraline meets the ghosts of the Other Mother's previous child victims, including Wybie's great aunt. The spirits reveal that the Other Mother, whom they call the "Beldam," used the same doll Coraline had (each time disguised as the child in question) to spy on them, taking advantage of their unhappiness and luring them into the Other World. After they agreed to let her sew buttons on their eyes, the Beldam "ate up" their lives, trapping their souls. Coraline promises to free them by finding their eyes. The Other Wybie frees her from the mirror and helps her escape back to the real world.

Coraline finds her parents missing, eventually realizing they have been kidnapped by the Beldam. Miss Spink and Miss Forcible give Coraline an adder stone for bad/lost things. That night, Coraline returns to the Other World accompanied by the Cat, where she proposes a game to the Beldam: if she can find the ghosts' eyes and her parents, they will all go free; if not, she will remain in the Other World and let the Beldam sew buttons over her eyes.

Coraline ventures into the now-hostile Other World, using the stone to find the children's eyes; with each eye she collects, part of the Other World disintegrates until only the living room is left. Coraline sees the Beldam in her true form, a metallic skeletal-humanoid arachnid creature with needle-like hands. She is warned that even if she wins, the Beldam will never let her go. Coraline tricks the Beldam into unlocking the portal and finds her parents trapped in a snow globe. Coraline throws the Cat at the Beldam; the Cat claws out her button eyes, blinding her. Coraline narrowly escapes through the door and manages to close and lock it with the help of the ghosts, severing the Beldam's right hand in the process.

Coraline's parents reappear in the real world with no memory of what happened to them. That night, the ghost children appear in Coraline's dream to thank her for freeing them, but warn her that the Beldam, as long as she is alive, will never stop looking for the key. Coraline decides to drop it down an old well near her home, but before she does, the Beldam's severed hand attacks her. Wybie arrives and, after a struggle, smashes the hand with a stone. Coraline and Wybie throw the key and shattered hand into the well and seal it shut.

Soon after, Coraline and her parents, who have finally finished their catalog, host a garden party for their neighbors. Wybie introduces his grandmother Mrs. Lovat, and Coraline prepares to tell her story. The Black Cat walks behind the Pink Palace signpost and disappears before the screen fades to black.

• Dakota Fanning as Coraline Jones, a curious 11-year-old[7][8] girl with blue hair
• Teri Hatcher as Mel Jones, Coraline's mother, and the Beldam/Other Mother, an evil witch that rules the Other World
• Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French as April Spink and Miriam Forcible, respectively, a pair of retired burlesque actresses
• Keith David as The Cat, a sarcastic, mysterious, nameless black cat from Coraline's world who appears and disappears at will and has the ability to speak in the Other World
• John Hodgman as Charlie Jones, Coraline's father, and as the Other Father.
  • John Linnell as the Other Father's singing voice
• Robert Bailey Jr. as Wyborne "Wybie" Lovat, the geeky, nervous 11-year-old grandson of Coraline's landlady Mrs. Lovat. Wybie does not appear in the novel; his character was created for the film adaptation so that the viewer "wouldn't have a girl walking around, occasionally talking to herself".[9]
• Ian McShane as Sergei Alexander Bobinsky, nicknamed "Mr. B," a former Chernobyl liquidator and one of Coraline's neighbors, who owns a jumping mice circus.
• Carolyn Crawford as Mrs. Lovat, Wybie's grandmother and the owner of the Pink Palace Apartments
• Aankha Neal as Sweet Ghost Girl, Mrs. Lovat's missing twin sister, Wybie's great-aunt and the most recent victim of Beldam.
• George Selick as Ghost Boy, the second and only male victim of Beldam.
• Hannah Kaiser as Tall Ghost Girl, the first victim of Beldam interpreted by her Midwestern clothing.
• Marina Budovsky as Photo Friend #1, a friend of Coraline's back home in Michigan.
• Harry Selick as Photo Friend #2, a friend of Coraline's back home in Michigan.

Director Henry Selick met author Neil Gaiman just as Gaiman was finishing the novel Coraline, and given that Gaiman was a fan of Selick's The Nightmare Before Christmas, he invited him to make a possible film adaptation. As Selick thought a direct adaptation would lead to "maybe a 47-minute movie", his screenplay had some expansions, such as the creation of Wybie. When looking for a design away from that of most animation, Selick discovered the work of Japanese illustrator Tadahiro Uesugi and invited him to become the concept artist. One of Uesugi's biggest influences was on the color palette, which was muted in reality and more colorful in the Other World, similar to the film The Wizard of Oz.[9] Uesugi declared that "at the beginning, it was supposed to be a small project over a few weeks to simply create characters; however, I ended up working on the project for over a year, eventually designing sets and backgrounds, on top of drawing the basic images for the story to be built upon."[11]

Coraline was staged in a 140,000-square-foot (13,000 m²) warehouse in Hillsboro, Oregon.[10][12] The stage was divided into 50 lots,[13] which played host to nearly 150 sets.[10] Among the sets were three miniature Victorian mansions, a 42-foot (12.8 m) apple orchard, and a model of Ashland, Oregon, including tiny details such as banners for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.[12] More than 28 animators worked at a time on rehearsing or shooting scenes, producing 90–100 seconds of finished animation each week.[14] To add the stereoscopy for the 3D release, the animators shot each frame from two slightly apart camera positions.[9]

Every object on screen was made for the film.[9] The crew used three 3D printing systems from Objet in the development and production of the film. Thousands of high-quality 3D models, ranging from facial expressions to doorknobs, were printed in 3D using the Polyjet matrix systems, which enable the fast transformation of CAD (computer-aided design) drawings into high-quality 3D models.[15] The puppets had separate parts for the upper and lower parts of the head that could be exchanged for different facial expressions,[9] and the characters of Coraline could potentially exhibit over 208,000 facial expressions.[15] Computer artists composited separately-shot elements together, or added elements of their own, which had to look handcrafted instead of computer-generated – for instance, the flames were done with traditional animation and painted digitally, and the fog was dry ice.[9]

At its peak, the film involved the efforts of 450 people,[10] including from 30[12] to 35[10] animators and digital designers in the Digital Design Group (DDG), directed by Dan Casey, and more than 250 technicians and designers.[12] One crew member, Althea Crome, was hired specifically to knit miniature sweaters and other clothing for the puppet characters, sometimes using knitting needles as thin as human hair.[10] The clothes also simulated wear using paint and a file.[9]

The soundtrack for Coraline features songs in French composer Bruno Coulais, with one, "Other Father Song", by They Might Be Giants. The Other Father's singing voice is provided by John Linnell, one of the singers from the band. They had initially written 10 songs for the film; when a melancholy tone was decided, all but one were cut. Coulais' score was performed by the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra and features choral pieces sung by the Children's Choir of Nice in a nonsense language.[16] Selick mentions that the main soloist, "a young girl you hear singing in several parts of the film," is coincidentally named Coraline.[16] Coraline won Coulais the 2009 Annie Award for best score for an animated feature.

Soundtrack list

• "Sirens of the Sea" – Performed by Michele Mariana
• "Other Father Song" – Written and performed by John Linnell
• "Nellie Jean" – Performed by Kent Melton
• "Dreaming" – Performed by Bruno Coulais, The Children's Choir of Nice, and Teri Hatcher

Coraline was theatrically released on February 6, 2009.

• List of ghost films

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Coraline (film).

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• Official website
• Coraline at IMDb
• Coraline at The Big Cartoon DataBase
• Coraline at AllMovie
• Coraline at Rotten Tomatoes
• Coraline at Metacritic
• Coraline at Box Office Mojo
• Coraline script at the Internet Movie Script Database