Coraline (film)

Coraline
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Henry Selick
Screenplay by	Henry Selick
Produced by	Bill Mechanic Claire Jennings Henry Selick Mary Sandell
Starring	Template:Planlist
Cinematography	Pete Kozachik
Edited by	Christopher Murrie Ronald Sanders
Music by	Bruno Coulais
Production companies	Laika Pandemonium Films
Distributed by	Focus Features
Release dates	February 5, 2009 (2009-02-05) (PIFF) February 6, 2009 (2009-02-06) (United States)
Running time	100 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$60 million
Box office	$124.6 million

Coraline is a 2009 American 3D stop-motion animated dark fantasy horror film based on Neil Gaiman's 2002 novel of the same name. It is the first feature film produced by Laika, and is 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 alternative world contains a dark and sinister secret. Written and directed by Henry Selick, the film was made with Gaiman's approval and co-operation.

The film was released in United States theaters on February 6, 2009, 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. 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 Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Animated Feature.

Plot

Coraline Jones and her parents move from Pontiac, Michigan, to their new home in Ashland, Oregon, the dilapidated Pink Palace Apartments. Her eccentric new neighbors include Mr. Bobinsky, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible. Due to her parents constantly working, Coraline frequently explores the area. Whilst exploring, she meets a black cat and Wyborne "Wybie" Lovat, the grandson of the landlady, whose twin sister mysteriously disappeared years ago. Wybie gives Coraline a button-eyed ragdoll that resembles her. The doll then lures her to a small door in the living room, which is bricked up and can only be unlocked by a button key.

That night, a mouse guides her through the door, where the bricks have been replaced by a corridor to the Other World, inhabited by button-eyed doppelgängers of people from her world. Coraline meets the Other Mother and Other Father, who are much more attentive and entertaining than her real parents. After dinner, she goes to sleep in her Other Bedroom, but awakes in her real bedroom. Despite cryptic warnings from her neighbors, Coraline visits the Other World three times, where she meets the Other Mr. Bobinsky, who performs a mice circus, the Other Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, who perform a never-ending burlesque act and the Other Wybie, who is mute. Despite having no Other World counterpart, the black cat is able to speak in the Other World.

The Other Mother invites Coraline to stay forever, under the condition that a pair of buttons will be sewn over her eyes. Terrified, Coraline attempts to flee, but the Other Mother sees through her plan and blocks all the exits to the real world. The cat reappears and reveals to her the sinister truth about the Other World and the Other Mother. The Other Mother, appearing taller, thinner and more grotesque, then "disciplines" Coraline by imprisoning her behind a mirror. There, Coraline meets the ghosts of previous victims, including the missing twin sister of Wybie's grandmother. They reveal that the Other Mother, whom they refer to as the Beldam, created and sent button-eyed rag dolls that resembled them in order to spy on their lives. With the promise of a better life, she lured them into the Other World, where she sewed buttons over their eyes and consumed their lives. To free their souls, their real eyes need to be found. Coraline promises to help.

Coraline is suddenly rescued from the mirror by the Other Wybie, whose mouth has been stitched by the Beldam. He helps her escape back to the real world, but Coraline discovers that her parents are missing. She eventually deduces that they have been kidnapped by the Beldam and returns to the Other World, but not before Spink and Forcible grant her a stone with a hole in it. The cat advises Coraline to propose a "game". Coraline proposes a game to the Beldam: if Coraline cannot find her parents and the ghosts' eyes, she will let buttons be sewn over her eyes, but if she can, they will all be set free. The Beldam reluctantly agrees.

Using the stone, Coraline finds the ghosts' eyes in the Other World, now turned into nightmarish, from its monstrous, freakish, deranged inhabitants. As she does, the Other Pink Palace Apartments' surroundings gradually disintegrate until only the living room is left. Inside, Coraline sees the Beldam in her skeletal-arachnoid form. Warned that the Beldam will never accept Coraline's victory, she tricks her into unlocking the door. While the Beldam is distracted, Coraline finds her parents trapped in a snow globe, grabs it, and throws the cat at the Beldam's face, ripping her button eyes out. The Beldam furiously converts the floor into a spiderweb but Coraline and the cat manage to climb out of it, slam and lock the door shut on the Beldam's hand, severing it.

Her parents reappear in the real world, with no memory of what happened. That night, the ghosts warn her to get rid of the button key to prevent the Beldam from accessing the real world. As Coraline prepares to drop it down the well, the severed hand attacks her and tries to drag her back to the Other World. Wybie smashes it with a rock, then throws the remains and the key into the well and seals it shut to prevent anyone else from entering the Other World. The next day, Coraline and her parents, who have finally finished their work, host a garden party for the neighbors. Coraline also prepares to tell Mrs. Lovat the truth about her twin sister whilst the cat disappears behind the pink palace welcome sign.

Cast

• Dakota Fanning as Coraline Jones, a curious 11-year-old girl with dark blue hair
• Teri Hatcher as Mel Jones, Coraline's mother, and the Beldam / Other Mother, the ruler of the Other World
• Jennifer Saunders as April Spink, a retired burlesque actress
• Dawn French as Miriam Forcible, a retired burlesque actress
• 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."
• John Hodgman as Charlie Jones, Coraline's father and the Other Father
  • John Linnell as Other Father's singing voice
• Robert Bailey Jr. as Wyborne "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".)
• 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
• Caroline Crawford as Mrs. Lovat, Wybie's grandmother and the owner of the Pink Palace Apartments
• Aankha Neal as Sweet Ghost Girl, Mrs. Lovat's 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.

Production

"Coraline [was] a huge risk. But these days in animation, the safest bet is to take a risk."

–Henry Selick

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 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 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. 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 (13,000 m²) 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 (12.8 m) 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 (computer-aided design) 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 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.

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 (DDG), 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

• "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

Release

Coraline was theatrically released on February 6, 2009.

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 Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, 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 262 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

Awards and nominations

Award	Category	Recipient(s)	Result
Academy Awards	Best Animated Feature	Henry Selick	Nominated
American Film Institute Awards	Best 10 Movies		Won
Annie Awards
	Best Animated Feature		Nominated
	Best Directing in an Animated Feature Production	Henry Selick	Nominated
	Best Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production	Dawn French	Nominated
	Best Music in an Animated Feature Production	Bruno Coulais	Won
	Best Character Animation in an Animated Feature Production	Travis Knight	Nominated
	Best Character Design in an Animated Feature Production	Shane Prigmore; Shannon Tindle	Won
	Best Production Design in an Animated Feature Production	Christopher Appelhans; Tadahiro Uesugi	Won
	Best Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production	Chris Butler	Nominated
Annecy International Animated Film Festival	Best Feature – Tied		Won
Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards	Best Animated Feature		Nominated
BAFTA Awards	Best Animated Film		Nominated
BAFTA Children's Award	Best Feature Film		Won
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards	Best Animated Feature		Nominated
Cinema Audio Society Awards
	Lifetime Achievement	Henry Selick	Won
	Career Achievement (sound designer/re-recording mixer)	Randy Thom	Won
EDA [Alliance of Women Film Journalists] Award
	Best Animated Female ([the character of] Coraline)		Won
	Best Animated Film		Nominated
Golden Globe Awards	Best Animated Feature Film		Nominated
Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel Awards	Best Sound Editing: Sound Effects, Foley, Music, Dialogue and ADR Animation in a Feature Film		Nominated
Online Film Critics Society Awards	Best Animated Film		Nominated
People's Choice Awards	Best Animated 3D Movie of 2009		Nominated
Producers Guild of America Awards	Producer of the Year in Animated Motion Picture		Nominated
San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards	Best Animated Feature		Won
St. Louis Film Critics Awards	Best Animated Film		Nominated
Visual Effects Society Awards
	Outstanding Animation in an Animated Feature Motion Picture	Claire Jennings, Henry Selick	Nominated
	Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion Picture	Coraline – Lead Animators Travis Knight and Trey Thomas	Nominated
	Outstanding Effects Animation in an Animated Feature Motion Picture	John Allan Armstrong, Richard Kent Burton, Craig Dowsett	Nominated
	Outstanding Models and Miniatures in a Feature Motion Picture	Deborah Cook, Matthew DeLeu, Paul Mack, Martin Meunier	Nominated
Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association	Best Animated Film		Nominated

See also

• List of ghost films

External links

• Official website
• Coraline at IMDb
• Template:Bcdb title
• Coraline at AllMovie
• Coraline at Rotten Tomatoes
• Coraline at Metacritic
• Coraline at Box Office Mojo
• Coraline script at the Internet Movie Script Database