Coraline (film)

Coraline
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Henry Selick
Produced by	Henry Selick Claire Jennings Bill Mechanic Mary Sandell
Screenplay by	Henry Selick
Based on	Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Starring	Dakota Fanning Teri Hatcher Jennifer Saunders Dawn French John Hodgman Ian McShane
Music by	Bruno Coulais
Cinematography	Pete Kozachik
Edited by	Christopher Murrie
Production company	Laika Pandemonium
Distributed by	Focus Features
Release dates	February 5, 2009 (2009-02-05) (PIFF)[1] February 6, 2009 (2009-02-06) (United States)
Running time	100 minutes[2]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$60 million[3]
Box office	$124.6 million[3]

Coraline is a 2009 American stop-motion animation fantasy horror film based on Neil Gaiman's 2002 novel of the same name. It was produced by Laika and distributed by Focus Features. The film depicts an adventurous girl finding an idealized parallel world behind a secret door in her new home, unaware that the alternate world contains a dark and sinister secret. Written and directed by Henry Selick, the film was made with Gaiman's approval and cooperation.^[4]

The film was released widely in United States theaters on February 6, 2009, after a world premiere at the Portland International Film Festival,^[5] and received critical acclaim. The film made $16.85 million during opening weekend, ranking third at the box office.^[6] At the end of its box office run, the film had grossed over $124.5 million worldwide. Coraline won Annie Awards for best music, character design, production design and received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Animated Feature.

Plot

In the opening credits, hands made of sewing needles are seen recreating a button-eyed doll to resemble a girl before sending it out into a void. The girl is revealed to be Coraline Jones, an adventurous 11-year old who moved with her family from Pontiac to Ashland into the Pink Palace Apartments, a divided mansion. The other occupants include retired actresses Ms. Spink and Ms. Forcible, as well as eccentric Russian acrobat Mr. Bobinsky; who live in the basement and attic respectively.

Coraline finds the house boring and her parents hardly pay any attention to her adventures, as always seemingly busy working on a garden catalogue. Coraline meets Wyborn "Wybie" Lovat, the grandson of the landlady, Mrs. Lovat, who had a missing twin sister and also meets a black cat that follows him. While exploring, she is given a doll that eerily resembles her by Wybie and finds a small brick-sealed door unlocked only by a small black key with a button handle. That night, Coraline follows a mouse through the door, where she discovers the bricks have been replaced by a long corridor. Coraline goes through and finds herself in the Other World, which is a parallel universe; its inhabitants have buttons for eyes. Her Other Mother and Father are more warm and attentive than her real parents, and they have dinner together before tucking her in in her Other Bedroom. To her dismay, Coraline wakes up in her real bedroom and is unable to convince her parents that she visited the Other World.

Despite warnings from one of her neighbors, Coraline frequents the Other World. During her visits, she sees the garden that resembles her face from a bird's-eye view, and meets the mute Other Wybie, the Other Mr. Bobinsky, who ringmasters a jumping mouse circus; and the Other Miss Spink and Forcible, who are young and perform theatrical acts. The Cat also goes into the Other World and is able to disappear behind objects and talk.

On the third visit, the Other Mother invites Coraline to stay in the Other World forever, under the condition that a pair of buttons will be sewn over her eyes like everyone else. Horrified, Coraline attempts escape but fails. The Cat reveals to Coraline the true sinister colours of the Other Mother and the Other World, which is revealed to be surrounded by a blank void. Coraline demands the Other Mother let her return to the real world, but she transforms into a grotesque version of herself and imprisons Coraline in a dark chamber behind a mirror. Inside, she meets the ghosts of the Other Mother's previous victims, one of them being Mrs. Lovat's missing twin sister. They explain to Coraline that the doll was sent to them to show the Other Mother what was wrong with their lives, lured them into the Other World, where the Other Mother eventually sewed buttons over their eyes and imprisoned their souls behind the mirror, "eating up their lives". In order to pass onto the afterlife, they need their real eyes, which the Other Mother has hidden. Coraline promises to find the eyes. She is suddenly pulled out by the Other Wybie, whose mouth has been horrifically stitched into a smile by the Other Mother, as he frowned instead of smiling, but he nevertheless helps her escape. In the real world, the Cat shows Coraline her parents trapped behind a mirror writing "HELP US" on the reflection and she also discovers a button eyed doll resembling them, indicating that the Other Mother has kidnapped them. She later burns the doll out of anger.

Coraline returns to the Other World to play a "game" with the Other Mother: to find her parents and the children's eyes. If she cannot, she will stay forever. Coraline manages to retrieve the children's eyes from the various "wonders" and the twisted inhabitants that the Other Mother made for her. She then confronts the Other Mother, who has reverted into her true form, an arachnoid witch with sewing needle-finger hands. One of the ghost children warns her that the Other Mother will never let her go, even if she wins. Coraline finds and frees her real parents from a snow globe and manages to cleverly distract the Other Mother as she proceeds to throw the Cat onto her face, who promptly rips her button eyes out. Coraline manages to escape as she slams the door onto the Other Mother's hand, severing it, and locks it as the Other Mother tries to violently break down the door. Her parents later return home with no memory of the events that recently occurred.

The ghosts appear to Coraline in a dream to warn her that she is still in danger and that she must get rid of the key. As Coraline prepares to drop the key into a well, she is attacked by the Other Mother's severed hand, but is saved by Wybie, who crushes it with a rock. Coraline throws the key and the pieces of the hand down the well. The next day, Coraline hosts a garden party for her neighbors and prepares to tell Mrs. Lovat about her adventures.

Cast

• Dakota Fanning as Coraline Jones, a brave, clever, curious 11-year-old^[7][8] girl with dark blue hair.
• Teri Hatcher as Mel Jones, Coraline's busy mother, and the Other Mother. Hatcher describes Other Mother as the seemingly "perfect mom, because she's a perfect cook and has the perfect answer to every question, and later on she becomes quite monstrous."
• Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French as Miss April Spink and Miss Miriam Forcible respectively, a pair of retired burlesque actresses
• John Hodgman as Charlie Jones, Coraline's father, and the Other Father. Hodgman described him as "the kind of guy who walks around a banana peel and falls into a manhole."
  • John Linnell as Other Father's singing voice
• Ian McShane as Mr. Bobinsky (his full name is Sergei Alexander Bobinsky, and friends call him Mr. B.), one of Coraline's neighbors
• 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
• Robert Bailey, Jr. as Wybourne "Wybie" Lovat, the geeky, nervous 11-year-old grandson of Coraline's landlady. Wybie is a character introduced for the film adaptation so that the viewer "wouldn't have a girl walking around, occasionally talking to herself."^[9]
• Caroline Crawford as Mrs. Lovat, Wybie's grandmother and the owner of the Pink Palace Apartments

Production

Director Henry Selick met author Neil Gaiman just as he was finishing the novel Coraline, and given that Gaiman was a fan of Selick's The Nightmare Before Christmas, he invited him to a possible adaptation of the film. 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 the style seen in 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.^[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] The characters of Coraline could potentially exhibit over 208,000 facial expressions.^[15] Computer artists composited separatedly-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 would also simulate wear using paint and a file.^[9] Several students from The Art Institute of Portland were also involved in making the film.

The soundtrack for Coraline features songs composed by 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 wrote 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

Soundtrack list

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

Release

Home media

The film was released in the United States on DVD and Blu-ray on July 21, 2009, by Universal Studios Home Entertainment. A 3-D version comes with four sets of 3-D glasses—specifically the green-magenta anaglyph image. Coraline was released in the United Kingdom on DVD and Blu-ray on October 12, 2009. A 3-D version of the film was also released on a 2-Disc Collector's Edition. The DVD opened to first week sales of 1,036,845 and over $19 million in revenue. Total sales stand at over 2.6 million units and over $45 million in revenue.^[17] A two-disc Blu-ray 3D set which includes a stereoscopic 3D on the first disc and an anaglyph 3D image was released in 2011.

Other media

The website for Coraline involves an interactive exploration game where the player can scroll through Coraline's world. It won the 2009 Webby Award for "Best Use of Animation or Motion Graphics," both by the people and the Webby organization. It was also nominated for the Webby "Movie and Film" category.^[18] On June 16, 2008, D3 Publisher announced the release of a video game based on the film. It was developed by Papaya Studio for the Wii and PlayStation 2 and by Art Co. for Nintendo DS. It was released on January 27, 2009, close to the film's theatrical release.^[19] The soundtrack was released digitally February 3, 2009, by E1 Music, and in stores on February 24, 2009.

Reception

Box office

According to Paul Dergarabedian, a film business analyst with Media by Numbers, for the film to succeed it needed a box office comparable to Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which grossed $16 million its opening weekend and ended up making more than $192 million worldwide; prior to the film's release, Dergarabedian thought Laika "should be really pleased" if it made close to $10 million on its opening weekend.^[12] In its US opening weekend, the film made $16.85 million, ranking third at the box office.^[6] It made $15 million on its second weekend, bringing its U.S. total up to $35.6 million, $25.5 million of which coming from 3D presentations.^[20] As of November 2009, the film had grossed $75,286,229 in the United States and Canada and $49,310,169 in other territories, making a total of $124,596,398 worldwide.^[3]

Critical response

Coraline received critical acclaim. As of April 2012, the film has a 90% "Certified Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes,^[21] and an 80 out of 100 at Metacritic, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[22] David Edelstein said the film is "a bona fide fairy tale" that needed a "touch less entrancement and a touch more ... story".^[23] A. O. Scott of The New York Times called the film "exquisitely realized" with a "slower pace and a more contemplative tone than the novel. It is certainly exciting, but rather than race through ever noisier set pieces toward a hectic climax in the manner of so much animation aimed at kids, Coraline lingers in an atmosphere that is creepy, wonderfully strange and full of feeling."^[24]

Accolades

Awards and nominations

See also

• List of ghost films

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Coraline (film).

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Coraline

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