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Friday, May 14, 2010

Coraline (2009)*


During my stay in Manila, my siblings and I watched movies a lot. Most of the time it was too hot to play outside, that's Manila for you, and second, my sister does not have cable. Yes, you read correctly, my sister does not have cable, I really don't know how she does it, she keeps herself entertained by watching Twilight over and over on her iPod and she doesn't even like Twilight! LOL!gelakguling Poor little sis, she had to endure Rob Patz and Kristen Stewart's awkward acting in their first movie together. LOL!gelakguling

So anyway, we watched a lot of movies and cartoons while we were there, like a lot. This is one of them.

Coraline is a novel by British author Neil Gaiman. It's supposedly a fantasy/horror novel. I have not read the book, but after seeing the film, I definitely want to read the book, the books are always 10x better than film.

The cartoon movie was kind of awesome in a way. I thought for sure that it was a Tim Burton cartoon movie, but it turns out that it's not. However, the director who directed this was also the director of Tim Burton's film, The Nightmare Before Christmas, its director is Henry Selick, also the director of James and the Giant Peach.

Coraline isn't your average kid cartoon movie, like what the book suggested, it was a bit creepy and if I were a kid, it would freak me out. Okay, it freaked me out a little and I'm a mom, shameful, I know, but it was so creepy!jelir


Meet the voices of the characters:

Dakota Fanning as Coraline Jones


Terri Hatcher as Mel Jones/The Other Mother


John Hodgman as Charlie Jones/Other Father


Robert Bailey, Jr. as Wybie


Keith David as the Cat


Ian McShane as Mr. Sergei Alexander Bobinsky/Other Bobinsky


Jennifer Saunders as Miss April Spink/Other Spink


Dawn French as Miss Miriam Forcible/Other Forcible


Check out the Creepy trailer!



WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!!!

My version of Coraline:

The movie starts with a doll being unraveled by a creepy set of hands made of needles, then it begins to make another doll from what it just unraveled and then sends it out into the window at night.

Then we see Coraline and her parents in front of their new house, which was a pink Victorian house, called the Pink Palace, in which 3 other tenants live, Ms. Forcible and Ms. Spink and Mr. Bobinsky, but you won't get to meet them until later. So anyway, Coraline and her parents get settled a bit then her parents start on their respective works and she finds herself bored, so she decides to take a tour of the place with a dousing rod looking for a well of some sort she comes across a boy named Wybie and his cat. She finds both annoying, Wybie tells her that his grandmother grew up in the house she now lived in, then runs off as his grandmother calls his name, he then tells her that her dousing rod was made of poison oak.

When she got home, a doll and a note was waiting for her, it was from Wybie, turns out he found a doll in her grandmother's chest that looked exactly like her. Intrigued but bored, she sets off with her "new" old doll and looks around the house as his father suggests when she disturbs him unintentionally by her presence. She found a little door in one of the rooms and asks her mom to open it for her. In frustration, her mom searches for a key, oddly enough she finds a key with a button on it and opens the door, only to find it covered with brick.

Later that night, Coraline hears something, she sees a mice and follows it to the living room where the little door was, she opens the little door and instead of a brick wall covering it, she finds a passageway. She goes through the tunnel and finds herself in exactly the same room, only cozier looking and definitely not her own living room. She then smells something wonderful and follows the smell in the kitchen. There in the kitchen, she sees her mother, well, kinda, this one has buttons for eyes, and she's different than her real mom because she can cook. She tells Coraline that she's her "other mother". She asks Coraline to call her "other father" down to dinner. Intriguingly enough, this father has yellow monkey slippers, he's dressed in a fancy robe and instead of being a writer, he composes music, except his piano plays him. So his piano and him plays a song for Coraline about Coraline. They went down to dinner and she thought it was the best meal she has had in a long time. She tells them she has to go back to her other other mother, they offer to tuck her in and she said okay. They took her to her fully furnished and pretty looking room where everything is animated, her toys even the picture of her friends on the bedside table. Totally different from her other room which was still bare. Before she fell asleep, her "other mother" put mud on her hand which hurt due to the poison oak. She falls asleep and when she wakes up, she is in her old room, but her hand is much better, so she figured it must have all been real. She then runs to check the door, but oddly enough, it was still blocked by a brick wall.

Again she has no way of entertaining herself so her mother suggested that she should acquaint herself better with their neighbors. As she went out, she saw a bunch of mail, stinky mail addressed to Mr. Bobinsky who lived upstairs. Mr. Bobinsky turns out to be Russian trapeze artist who is training mice for his circus, which explains his stinky mail, it turns out to be cheese. He then tells her that the mice told him to tell her to not go through the small door because if she does, then she'll be in grave danger. She doesn't know what to make of it but now she's sure that it wasn't a dream. So next she went to visit Ms. Spink and Ms. Forcible, they were old ladies who used to be actresses. When she came inside their house, they offered her tea and a hundred year old taffy. She sees stuffed dogs standing in a row and dressed in white gowns with angel's wings and halo, it turns out those stuffed dogs were pets that have already passed away but they were too attached to part with it so they have it stuffed. Ms. April Spink offers to read her fortune using the tea leaves on her tea and she says she sees danger in her future and she sees a claw, Ms. Miriam Forcible sees a giraffe. In the end they managed to confuse her and make her think they were absolute nuts.

After her visit with the retired actresses, she runs into Wybie again and his cat. Wybie tells her about his grandma growing up in the house and how she lost her twin sister and how he has never been to the Pink Palace before, then they hear his grandma calling him and he leaves with his cat trailing behind.

That night, she is determined to go back through the small door, so she leaves some cheese by her door. Sure enough, a mice came, she followed the mice and found that the tunnel was there behind the small door once again. She goes through it and goes to the garden to meet his other father. She was surprised that the garden looked like her face from the sky, and of course completely amazed. After dinner, she was then introduced to the "other Wybie". This Wybie doesn't speak, at all. The other mother asked them to visit their neighbors and so she and Wybie set off to see the other Mr. Bobinsky first. The other Mr. Bobinsky has already trained the mice for his circus and puts on a show for them, which they found very awesome and at the very end, the mice spelled her name. After the show at the other Mr. Bobinsky's place, her other parents and Wybie tucks her into bed, when she woke up she was back in her real world.

Coraline and her mother goes shopping for uniforms because she will be starting in a new school. She gets upset when her mom refused to buy her a pair of gloves that she was hoping to wear along with her uniform to make her stand out from the rest. They get into an argument. Then her mother leaves for the grocery. In her anger, Coraline looks for the key with the button, she finds it, opens the door and goes through the tunnel. When she gets there, her other parents weren't home, but she found some snacks prepared out for her, new clothes and a note from her other mother. She sees Wybie's cat outside the other world but he can talk in that world. The cat warns her about the other mother. The other Wybie and Coraline set off to meet with the other Ms. Spink and the other Ms. Forcible. They put on a show for Coraline and Wybie that she absolutely loved.

When she got back to her other parents' house, they were waiting for her. They asked if she wanted to stay there for good and she said yes, but then the other mother told her she needed to sew buttons in her eyes. She freaked out and asked that she went to bed right away, before dinner. So she runs up to her room, locks the door and forces herself to sleep, however when she woke up, she was still in the other world. She tries to escape through the little door but it was locked, so she decides to go outside and try to escape from there. She meets Wybie's cat, they walk until everything turns blank and then they come back to the house where they started. The cat told her that she only created the area specifically for her and that it only appears how she wants it to appear, obviously referring to the other mother.

So anyway, she tries to escape through the little door again but she can't because a giant beetle was guarding it, then the other mother was there and trying to convince Coraline to stay. She got angry at Coraline and threw her into a mirror. In the mirror, Coraline meets 3 ghosts of children and they told her of what happened to them, and asked for her help. All she needed to do was look for their eyes and they will be set free. She gets out of the mirror and she runs into the other Wybie whose mouth was stapled into a smile, she helps the other Wybie and they try to escape, she escapes but the other Wybie didn't. She locks the small door behind her and never wants to come back. That night her real parents didn't come home and she slept on her parents' bed alone and scared.

The following day, she found dolls that looked like her parents, similar to what she had that Wybie gave her, and she figured the other mother must have her real parents, so she decides to go back and rescue them. She went back, the other mother was waiting for her but she proposes to play a game, if she finds the ghost's eyes and her parents then she's free to go, if not then she will sew buttons on her eyes. So, she looked for the ghost's eyes with the help of a seeing stone the real Ms. Spink and Ms. Forcible gave her. She found the first ghost's eye in the garden and then one in the other Mr. Bobinsky's house and she found the third one in the other Ms. Spink and the other Ms. Forcible's house. As she found the eyes, the locations disappear and the ghosts released.

She knew where her parents were (they were in a snow globe) but then the other mother didn't want to let her go, they fight, she managed to escape through the door, but the creepy needle hand managed to follow her, Coraline ran outside with the key to the small door, and the creepy needle hand following her, she felt trapped as the hand tried to push her in the well, but then Wybie came, he helped Coraline escape the clutches of the needle hand, they smashed it with a rock, wrapped it with a hanky, tied a rock to it and threw it in the well, with the key.

Coraline thanked Wybie and hurries home, minutes after she came home, her parents walked through the door, and her mom had the gloves she wanted for her and everything ended well.



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Outlined Text Generator at TextSpace.net

ANE Thanks her First Commenter with linky love
Thank You for gracing me with your presence!

'WOAFS'

7 comments:

Mariuca said...

:-D :-D :-D :-D

Mariuca said...

LOL @ ur sis Ane ha ha.. oh me too no likey Twllight ..ooops... =-X =-X :-[ :-[ :-[ :-[

Mariuca said...

I haven't been watching movies but I am currently hooked on Dexter, gonna finish up Season 3 tonight woo hoo! :* :* :* :* :*

gagay said...

;) ;) ;) ;)

gagay said...

OMG!am not a twilight fan!hehehe!but great post here te ane! ;) ;) ;) ;)

billjone said...

watching this movies for free streaiming
at http://billjonesforcongress.com/

nik said...

kosmara.com, great novie

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