Coraline (film)

Eleven-year-old Coraline Jones and her family move into an old house known as the Pink Palace Apartments. As her parents struggle to complete their gardening catalogue, Coraline is often left alone. She meets their new neighbors: Mr. Bobinsky, who is supposedly training a circus of mice; retired burlesque actresses Misses Spink and Forcible; Wyborne "Wybie" Lovat, the landlady's grandson; and a mysterious Black Cat. Wybie gives Coraline a button-eyed rag doll he discovered that eerily resembles her. The doll lures Coraline to 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, 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. After dinner, she goes to sleep and awakens in the real world the next morning. Wybie tells Coraline about his grandmother's twin sister who disappeared in the apartment as a child. Undeterred, Coraline visits the Other World the following two nights, entertained by the Other Bobinsky, Spink and Forcible, and meeting the mute Other Wybie. Coraline also encounters the Black Cat, who is able to 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 demands to return home. The Other Mother transforms into a menacing version of herself and imprisons Coraline. There, Coraline meets the ghosts of the Other Mother's previous child victims, including Wybie's grandmother's sister. The spirits reveal that the Other Mother, whom they call the "Beldam," used rag dolls like Coraline's 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 "consumed" their lives, trapping their souls. Coraline promises to free them by finding their eyes. The Other Wybie helps her escape back to the real world.

Coraline cannot find her parents. Eventually, she realizes they have been kidnapped by the Beldam. Miss Spink and Miss Forcible give Coraline an adder stone, meant for bad/lost things. Coraline returns to the Other World to rescue her parents, but the Beldam locks the door and swallows the key. Following the Cat's advice, Coraline proposes a game: 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.

Using the stone, Coraline finds the children's eyes; with each one she collects, part of the Other World disintegrates until only the living room is left. Coraline sees the Beldam in her skeletal, arachnid form. The ghost of Wybie's grandmother's sister warns her that even if she wins, the Beldam will never let her go. Thinking quickly, Coraline tricks the Beldam into unlocking the portal. While the Beldam is distracted, the Cat finds her parents trapped in a snow globe. Coraline throws the Cat at the Beldam's face; the Cat scratches her button eyes out. Blinded, the Beldam chases Coraline, but with help of the ghosts, she manages to close the door and lock it, 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 ghosts appear in a dream to thank Coraline for freeing them, but warn her that the Beldam will never stop looking for the key. Coraline decides to drop it down an old well, but before she does, the Beldam's severed hand attacks her. Wybie arrives and eventually smashes the hand with a rock. They throw the pieces of the hand and the key into the well and seal it shut.

The next day, Coraline and her parents, who have finally finished their catalogue, host a garden party for their neighbors. Wybie brings his grandmother, Mrs. Lovat. Coraline prepares to tell her about her sister's fate.

• 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 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, who doesn't appear in the novel, is a character 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, a former Chernobyl liquidator and one of Coraline's neighbors, who owns a jumping mice circus, and whose nickname is "Mr B."
• 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] Several students from The Art Institute of Portland were also involved in making the film.

The soundtrack for Coraline features songs 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 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.

The trailer for the movie was released on November 24, 2008 and was shown before films such as Bolt, Twist City, The Tale of Despereaux & Hotel for Dogs

• List of ghost films

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Coraline (film).

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• Official website
• Coraline on 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