Coraline (film)


Coraline is a 2009 American stop-motion animated dark fantasy horror film directed and written for the screen by Henry Selick based on the 2002 novella of the same name by Neil Gaiman. Produced by Laika as its first feature film, Coraline stars the voices of Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Keith David, John Hodgman, Robert Bailey Jr., and Ian McShane. The film depicts an adventurous girl named Coraline finding an idealized parallel world behind a secret door in her new home, unaware that the alternative world contains a dark and sinister secret.
The film was released in United States theaters on February 6, 2009 by Focus Features after a world premiere at the Portland International Film Festival, and received critical acclaim. The film made $16.85 million during opening weekend, ranking third at the box office, and by the end of its run had grossed over $124 million worldwide, making it the third highest-grossing stop-motion film of all time after and Chicken Run. Coraline won Annie Awards for Best Music in an Animated Feature Production, Best Character Design in an Animated Feature Production and Best Production Design in an Animated Feature Production, and received nominations for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and a Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film.

Plot

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, who performs a mouse circus, and Other Spink and Forcible, who perform a never-ending vaudeville cabaret show, and also 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. That night, Coraline discover that her parents trapped in the mirror, she 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 travels to a dark, nightmarish version of the Other World, to find 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 true form, a metallic skeletal-arachnid demon with needle-like hands. 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.

Voice cast

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. 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."
Coraline was staged in a 140,000-square-foot warehouse in Hillsboro, Oregon. The stage was divided into 50 lots, which played host to nearly 150 sets. Among the sets were three miniature Victorian mansions, a 42-foot apple orchard, and a model of Ashland, Oregon, including tiny details such as banners for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. More than 28 animators worked at a time on rehearsing or shooting scenes, producing 90–100 seconds of finished animation each week. To add the stereoscopy for the 3D release, the animators shot each frame from two slightly apart camera positions.
Every object on screen was made for the film. 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 drawings into high-quality 3D models. The puppets had separate parts for the upper and lower parts of the head that could be exchanged for different facial expressions, and the characters of Coraline could potentially exhibit over 208,000 facial expressions.
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.
At its peak, the film involved the efforts of 450 people, including from 30 to 35 animators and digital designers in the Digital Design Group, directed by Dan Casey, and more than 250 technicians and designers. 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. The clothes also simulated wear using paint and a file. Several students from The Art Institute of Portland were also involved in making the film.

Soundtrack

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. Selick mentions that the main soloist, "a young girl you hear singing in several parts of the film," is coincidentally named Coraline. Coraline won Coulais the 2009 Annie Award for best score for an animated feature.
; Soundtrack list
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

Home media

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United States 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 on DVD and Blu-ray in the United Kingdom 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. 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. 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. 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 , which had grossed $16 million its opening weekend and ended up making more than $192 million worldwide; prior to the film's release, Dergarabedian thought Laika Studios "should be really pleased" were Coraline to make $10 million in its opening weekend. In its US opening weekend, the film grossed $16.85 million, ranking third at the box office. It made $15 million during its second weekend, bringing its U.S. total up to $35.6 million, $25.5 million of which came from 3D presentations. As of November 2009, the film has grossed $75,286,229 in the United States and Canada and $49,310,169 in other territories, for a total of $124,596,398 worldwide.

Critical response

On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 267 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "With its vivid stop-motion animation combined with Neil Gaiman's imaginative story, Coraline is a film that's both visually stunning and wondrously entertaining." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
David Edelstein said the film is "a bona fide fairy tale" that needed a "touch less entrancement and a touch more ... story." 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."

Accolades

AwardCategoryRecipientResult
Academy AwardsBest Animated FeatureHenry Selick
American Film Institute AwardsBest 10 Movies
Annie Awards---
Annie AwardsBest Animated Feature
Annie AwardsBest Directing in an Animated Feature ProductionHenry Selick
Annie AwardsBest Voice Acting in an Animated Feature ProductionDawn French
Annie AwardsBest Music in an Animated Feature ProductionBruno Coulais
Annie AwardsBest Character Animation in an Animated Feature ProductionTravis Knight
Annie AwardsBest Character Design in an Animated Feature ProductionShane Prigmore; Shannon Tindle
Annie AwardsBest Production Design in an Animated Feature ProductionChristopher Appelhans; Tadahiro Uesugi
Annie AwardsBest Storyboarding in an Animated Feature ProductionChris Butler
Annecy International Animated Film FestivalBest Feature – Tied
Broadcast Film Critics Association AwardsBest Animated Feature
BAFTA AwardsBest Animated Film
BAFTA Children's AwardBest Feature Film
Chicago Film Critics Association AwardsBest Animated Feature
Cinema Audio Society Awards---
Cinema Audio Society AwardsLifetime AchievementHenry Selick
Cinema Audio Society AwardsCareer Achievement Randy Thom
EDA Award---
EDA AwardBest Animated Female
EDA AwardBest Animated Film
Golden Globe AwardsBest Animated Feature Film
Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel AwardsBest Sound Editing: Sound Effects, Foley, Music, Dialogue and ADR Animation in a Feature Film
Online Film Critics Society AwardsBest Animated Film
People's Choice AwardsBest Animated 3D Movie of 2009
Producers Guild of America AwardsProducer of the Year in Animated Motion Picture
San Francisco Film Critics Circle AwardsBest Animated Feature
St. Louis Film Critics AwardsBest Animated Film
Visual Effects Society Awards---
Visual Effects Society AwardsOutstanding Animation in an Animated Feature Motion PictureClaire Jennings, Henry Selick
Visual Effects Society AwardsOutstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion PictureCoraline – Lead Animators Travis Knight and Trey Thomas
Visual Effects Society AwardsOutstanding Effects Animation in an Animated Feature Motion PictureJohn Allan Armstrong, Richard Kent Burton, Craig Dowsett
Visual Effects Society AwardsOutstanding Models and Miniatures in a Feature Motion PictureDeborah Cook, Matthew DeLeu, Paul Mack, Martin Meunier
Washington D.C. Area Film Critics AssociationBest Animated Film