Coraline Movie Review

Dakota Fanning standing next
 a miniature figurine of Coraline 

     Coraline is an animated film that was based on a book, written by Neil Gailman, and produced by Claire Jennings, Harry Linden, Bill Mechanic, Mary Sandell.Henry Selick, and Michael Zoumas in 2009. This movie is rated PG because it contains scary images, has suggestive humor, some inappropriate language, and has thematic elements. The stars of this movie are Dakota Fanning, who voices the main character Coraline, Teri Hatcher, who voices Coraline's mother, and John Hodgman, who voices Coraline's father. In this movie, the main character Coraline, is a little girl who is very adventurous and finds another world that she wishes she lived in but she soon finds out that their are many secrets in this "perfect" world.

Pink Palace

     At the beginning of the movie, we find out that a young girl by the name of Coraline has just moved into a new home with her parents and it is called "The Pink Palace". We find out fairly quickly that she feels alone because she has just moved away from all of her friends, she is an only child, and and her parents are to involved in their work that they don't really pay attention to her. Coraline ends up finding a secret door that leads to a whole other world. This world is the world that she imagines how her life should be. When she enters this new world, she finds herself in a better version of her home with her mother singing and cooking a wholesome meal in the kitchen. This is something that she had always wished her real mother had done. She found her father up in the spare room playing the piano. in the real world, this room is actually his office where he would normally be working on writing his books for work. In this other world, Coraline thinks that this is a perfect life and everything is great, but after a few visits, she comes to realize that it is quite the opposite. Her other parents are not really who she thinks they are, the beautiful garden in the backyard is actually evil, and her interesting neighbors are not really amazing and talented as she thought they were. After many obsticles and challenges, she finally returns home and realizes that her life isn't actually as bad as she thought it was.

Teri Hatcher standing next
to the miniature figurine
of Coraline's mother

     Throughout this movie there were many different elements that the stage crew and director had to work with. This was not filmed like a regular movie where there are actors that are filmed and thats the end. This movie did not have actors or actresses but figurines playing the roles of the characters. This made it very difficult to film because each scene in the movie was taken frame by frame and put together to make it seem like things in the movie were actually moving. The set and characters all had to be proportionate to one another so that the movie seemed somewhat like real life. The clothes were very difficult to make because they had to fit each character the right way and there were many different characters that all had numerous wardrobe changes. This meant that the crew had to make hundreds of different costumes for all the characters. Also, there were many different facial expressions for each person and each expression had to be designed by specialists. This also took many hours and hundreds of different faces for all of the characters.

John Hodgman standing standing
 next to the miniature figurine
 of Coraline's father

     I can see that a lot of hard work and dedication went into this movie and I really enjoyed seeing how it all came together in the end.  The characters, voices overs, and scenes were fantastic. the filming and acting were good, the only thing a didn't really like about the movie was the story line. I did not like that a poor little girl who is sad and alone at home enters a world that she only dreamed about and then has all of her dreams destroyed. It broke my hear to see that this sweet girl was neglected by her parents and she had moved away from all of her friends. When she found the other world, I was finally excite that Coraline was happy and could enjoy her life. Then it turned out that the world she thought was perfect ended up all being a lie. She wasn't happy in real life and she wasn't happy in the other world either. I feel very disturbed that this young girl has so many issue's and i don't really understand the meaning behind this movie.

Lost Then Found

Switched at Birth

     Switched at Birth is a drama TV series that first premiered on June 6, 2011. It returned back to ABC Family with its second season on September 3, 2012. This show is about two girls who were accidently switched at birth in the hospital. The girls grew up in two completely different worlds.

Cast

Brief Overview

     The main characters are Bay Kennish (Vanessa Marano from Gilmore Girls) and Daphne Vasquez (Katie Leclerc). Bay grew up in a wealthy family with two parents and an older brother. While Bay was living the high life, Daphne was growing up with a single mother and her grandma who struggled to make ends meet in a lower class neighborhood. Daphne also had a hard time growing up because she lost her hearing at the young age of 3 due to a bad case of meningitis. When the two families finally discovered that their children were switched at birth, the Kennish family welcomed the Vasquez’s into their home so that they could all get to know each other and try to make up for lost time.

Katie Leclerc

Recap of Last Season

            The last episode of season 1 left off where Bay found out that her boyfriend, Emmett Bledsoe (Sean Berdy from Sandlot 2) cheated on her with her brothers girlfriend, Simone (Maiara Walsh).

            Bay’s biological father, Angelo Sorento (Gilles Marini) just received word that he may be deported back to Italy because he is currently an illegal immigrant in America.

Premier of 2nd Season

            This stimulating show makes an astounding come back with new drama, relationship shockers, and makes me want to continue watching the rest of the upcoming shows!

           

This episode starts off with Bay returning from her trip to the Galapagos Islands. The surprising thing about her return home was that she brought back a new boyfriend, Alex. Her family was taken aback when they found out about him because Bay had just recently broken up with Emmett.  When Emmett found out about Alex he was devastated because he still wants to be with Bay. Throughout the episode he tries to prove himself worthy and win Bay’s respect back. Cheating is not an easy thing to forgive and Emmett is trying his best do the right thing. I think that he is doing the right thing to try and do his best to apologize to Bay but I completely understand why Bay wouldn’t want to forgive him.

Vanessa Marano

            While Bay and Emmett were working on their relationship problems, Daphne was desperately searching for a job at a restaurant. She was having trouble finding one because no one wanted to hire her after they found out that she is deaf. As much as she hated asking for help, she reluctantly went to her biological mother, Kathryn Kennish (Lea Thompson from Back to the Future and Caroline in the City) to see if somehow she could get her a job. Kathryn happened to know someone and was able to get Daphne a job as a cook at a restaurant. She tried her very best to prove to the chef that she is worthy of cooking in his kitchen but ended up preparing the wrong vegetable and bumped into another cook and made a mess all over the floor. The chef overreacted and demoted her to dish washer. This has made it ten times harder to prove to the chef what she can actually do and what her talents in the kitchen are.

            Daphne tries to get as many hours as she can at work so that she will not have to be at home with all of the madness that is going on. Her dad/ Bay’s biological father, Angelo, went to court and was denied citizenship in the U.S. and was told that he had to be deported to Italy. The girls’ mother, Regina Vasquez (Constance Marie from George Lopez) thought the only way to keep Angelo in America was to marry him; so they did. Regina and Angelo tied the knot and got married so that he could stay and be involved in the girls’ lives. This was hard on Daphne because when she was young, Angelo left her and her mother and had never been involved in her life when she was growing up and she never forgave him. Now since her mother and Angelo are married, he is moving into her home and she is having a hard time coping with this new change. I believe that Daphne should forgive him for what he did in the past and start a new chapter in her life with him.

 

            Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this premier and it left me wanting to watch more.  I can’t wait to find out what happens next! I recommend watching this show if you don’t already. I give two thumbs up to the writer of the show, Lizzy Weiss.