A Sneak Peek At Coraline

After getting some drinky drink and checking out the puppets, we headed into the theater to watch the footage in Real 3-D. A nice introduction by  Henry Selick and we were whisked away to the real and other worlds of Coraline.

The thirty minutes of footage we saw looked jaw dropping. We saw the scene with Coraline first meeting upstairs tenant and mouse circus trainer Mr. Bobinsky (voiced by Deadwood's Ian McShane).


We also saw scenes with Coraline and her real mother and father (Teri hatcher and John Hodgman, who also voice Other Mother and Other Father). Coraline then meets aging stage actresses Miss Forcible and Miss Spink in an amusing scene.


We're also introduced to the newest character of the story, Wybie, who was put into the movie so Coraline had someone her age to interact with. Wybie is a strange kid who has a pet cat that becomes a helpful adviser to Coraline later in the story.


We next saw more footage of Coraline when she finally crawls through the hidden door into the Other World. Here she meets the other versions of the people she knows, all with buttons for eyes. Other Mother wants to make Coraline a permanent addition to this twisted family, but you'll have to read the book to see how that plays out. Because once that gets going, the story starts to really kick the creepy factor into high gear.

We watched footage of Coraline and Other Wybie in Mr. Bobinsky's apartment where the circus mice put on a spectacular show for their new audience members. Coraline and Wybie then go into a theater, filled with nothing by Scottish Terriers, to watch younger and healthier versions of Miss Forcible and Miss Spink on stage. This was an amazing sequence to watch and according to Henry took four months to shoot because there were so many complex movements involved. But it wasn't just that scene that was time consuming, so it's a good thing they had the animated talents of Eric Leighton, Travis Knight, Phil Dale and others to make a story like Coraline come to life.




My favorite scene was when Coraline and the cat are walking outside the boundaries of the Other World and into nothingness. The transition was fantastic to watch and they did a wonderful job with that scene. The garden scene where Coraline and Other Father have a chat, was also really amazing to look at. The footage stopped at the point where Coraline is held captive by Other Mother and in the book, is about to be introduced to the Angel Children. The footage we saw in 3-D looked absolutely amazing and I was disappointed I couldn't watch more.