Coraline (film)

Coraline Jones and her family move from Pontiac, Michigan, to Ashland, Oregon's Pink Palace Apartments. As her parents struggle to complete their gardening catalogue, Coraline is often left alone and meets their new neighbors, including Mr. Sergei Alexander Bobinsky, a Russian circus mouse trainer, Misses April Spink and Miriam Forcible, two once-famous and retired actresses, Wyborne "Wybie" Lovat, the talkative grandson of Pink Palace's landlady, 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 apartment 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 an “Other World” more colorful and cheerful than 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, Coraline goes to sleep in her Other Bedroom, only to awaken in her real bedroom the next morning. After meeting neighbors Mr Bobinsky and Miss Spink and Forcible, Wybie tells her about his grandmother's twin sister who disappeared in the apartment as a child. Undeterred, Coraline visits the Other World the following two nights, meeting the button-eyed Other Mr Bobinsky, the Other Misses Spink and Forcible, and the Other Wybie, who is mute. On her third visit, the black cat follows her and is able to speak in the Other World.

The Other Mother invites Coraline to stay in the Other World forever, on the condition she has buttons sewn over her eyes. Horrified, Coraline attempts to flee but fails. After questioning the Other Father, Coraline has a conversation with the cat as they walk into the empty part of the world the Other Mother created. After breaking the handles of the locked door which leads to the room where the portal is, the Other Mother has blocked the portal, transforms into a menacing version of herself and imprisons Coraline behind a mirror. There, Coraline meets the ghosts of the Other Mother's previous child victims, including the sister of Wybie's grandmother. The spirits reveal that the Other Mother, whom they call the “Beldam,” is actually an evil witch that used rag dolls like Coraline's to spy on them, taking advantage of their unhappy lives and luring them into the Other World with happier and joyful lives. After they agreed to let her sew buttons on their eyes to let them stay, the Beldam locked them in the mirror and "consumed" their lives, leaving their souls trapped. To free their souls, Coraline promises to find the children's real eyes.

Coraline is rescued by the Other Wybie, whose mouth has been sewn into a permanent smile. She removes the clips that force him to smile and attempts to convince him to come with her, but he declines, pulling off his glove and revealing a hand that appears to be made out of dust or sand. The Other Wybie blows on his hand, which disintegrates, revealing that he is dying. The Other Wybie shoves Coraline into the passage back to the real world, and Coraline escapes, leaving the Other Wybie to an uncertain fate.

After Coraline returns to the real world, she discovers her parents are missing, and realizes they have been kidnapped by the Beldam. Miss Spink and Miss Forcible give Coraline an adder stone, telling her that it finds lost things. And she returns to the Other World but falls into a trap. The Beldam locks the door to the portal and swallows its key, but Coraline, following the black cat's advice, proposes a game: if Coraline cannot find her parents and the ghosts' eyes, she will allow her to sew buttons over her own eyes, but if she succeeds, the children's souls will be freed and she can have her real parents back. The Beldam reluctantly agrees and disappears after giving her a clue: "In each of three wonders I've made for you, a ghost's eyes is lost in plain sight."[7]

Using the adder stone, Coraline finds the children's eyes and discovers that the Other Wybie was destroyed by the Beldam for helping Coraline escape, finding his coat, gloves, and boots hanging on a pole on the roof of the Other House. As Coraline finds the eyes, the Other World gradually disintegrates until only her family's living room is left. Coraline sees the Beldam in her true skeletal, arachnid form, with a cracked, mask-like face and hands made from sewing needles. After showing the Beldam the ghost's eyes, she reminds Coraline that she still has to find her real parents. The ghosts warn her that even if Coraline wins the games, the Beldam will never let her go. Coraline, knowing what to do, tricks the Beldam into unlocking the portal. While the Beldam is distracted, the cat finds her parents trapped in a snow globe, Coraline then throws the cat at the Beldam's face, ripping her button eyes out. Blinded, the Beldam furiously listens for Coraline and almost manages to get her. But Coraline, with help of the ghosts, manages to close the door and lock it but severing the Beldam's left hand.

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 their souls and also warn her that the Beldam will never stop looking for the key to the door. Coraline realizes what she has to do and makes her way to the old well, But unbeknownst to her, the beldam's severed hand manages to squeeze through the door and pursues Coraline. As Coraline prepares to drop the key down an old well, the severed hand tries to drag her back to the Other World. Wybie arrives on his bike and manages to grab the hand with a pair of tongs, but it breaks free, causing him to almost fall into the well. As the hand tries to loosen Wybie's grip for survival, Coraline wraps it in her towel, but it breaks free and it is about to attack her when Wybie smashes it with a rock. They throw the remains of the hand, the key, and the rock into the well and seal it shut.

The next day, Coraline and her parents, who have finally finished their catalog, host a garden party for their neighbors. Wybie arrives to the party along with his grandmother, Mrs Lovat. Coraline is happy to meet her and greets her kindly. The camera zooms out from the garden revealing its design, which resembles The Beldam's face. The camera keeps zooming out to the front of the Pink Palace. The Cat is seen lying on a wooden sign when he stands up and walks into the side vanishing mysteriously.

• Dakota Fanning as Coraline Jones, a curious 11-year-old[8][9] 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".[10]
• 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.[10] 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."[12]

Coraline was staged in a 140,000-square-foot (13,000 m²) warehouse in Hillsboro, Oregon.[11][13] The stage was divided into 50 lots,[14] which played host to nearly 150 sets.[11] 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.[13] More than 28 animators worked at a time on rehearsing or shooting scenes, producing 90–100 seconds of finished animation each week.[15] To add the stereoscopy for the 3D release, the animators shot each frame from two slightly apart camera positions.[10]

Every object on screen was made for the film.[10] 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.[16] The puppets had separate parts for the upper and lower parts of the head that could be exchanged for different facial expressions,[10] and the characters of Coraline could potentially exhibit over 208,000 facial expressions.[16] 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.[10]

At its peak, the film involved the efforts of 450 people,[11] including from 30[13] to 35[11] animators and digital designers in the Digital Design Group (DDG), directed by Dan Casey, and more than 250 technicians and designers.[13] 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.[11] The clothes also simulated wear using paint and a file.[10] 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.[17] Selick mentions that the main soloist, "a young girl you hear singing in several parts of the film," is coincidentally named Coraline.[17] 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 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