“Coraline” – The not so childish cartoon.

"Coraline" (2009) / Media credit: Dreadcentral.com

“Coraline,” Henry Selick’s  newest movie has been a box office hit. Originally a novel by Neil Gaiman, it was published in 2002 and has been created into a cartoon.

Henry Selick, the producer of movies such as “Nightmare Before Christmas” does not aim to shelter children but rather shock them into understanding. The movies mantra, “Be careful what you wish for” takes on a life of its own in this movie as the plot unravels. While Selick claimed to aim this movie at a children around 8 years of age, that is certainly debatable.

The movie starts off introducing us to the main character, Coraline Jones, voiced by Dakota Fanning. We are greeted with a somber setting and a fairly ugly, pink Victorian-style house. We quickly learn that Coraline is not pleased at having moved to this boring place, and despite her attempts to engage her parents, she is shooed away for pestering them with their very stressful stay at home jobs.

Coraline then finds a tiny door hidden behind wallpaper that she coerses her mother into letting her open in exchange for some peace and quiet. This is when things take a turn for the creepy.

As advertised in spoilers, Coraline starts visiting this other realm that she finds behind this small door. While at first the other world was everything that she had wanted, she quickly starts to see the holes developing in this perfect facade.

The cartoon is extremely visually stimulating, filled with vibrant scenes that will have you blinking to refocus your eyes once you have left the theater.

Coraline quickly watches her fantasy world turn into her personal nightmare. Here is where my dilemma with calling this a children’s cartoon comes into play. Certainly a movie that a family can watch together, “Coraline” is also the kind of movie that can and most likely will give a sensitive child nightmares.

The name of Coraline’s only friend in her new home, “Wibi,” short for “Why Born” is the kind of thing that a child may not understand in this movie. Throughout the movie, when Coraline is angry with Wibi, she calls him by his full name, “Why were you born,” a not so quiet insult that may startle a younger audience. The sometimes jolting actions of the characters and the lengths to which Coraline goes to protect her real family and her real life may be more than you bargained for if you take your sibling or child to see this.

On the other hand, as a movie to see with friends, I have only endless praise for this somewhat trippy, original and inventive flick. Availabe for a limited time in 3-D, “Coraline” is a movie with both a moral compass and a taste for the extraordinary.

If you happen to be in the mood for a movie that will let you relax while catching your full interest, all of your attention and giving you a reason to be excited, you should definetly pop in for “Coraline.”

It was well worth the 11 bucks.

Filed under: A&E Beat

A&E Beat: Utada. March 24. Mark the date.

If there’s anything I’m following closely nowadays it’s Hikaru Utada’s trek through the jungle that is the American music industry.  Who is Hikaru Utada, you say?  Well… Utada (her U.S. stage name) is one of the best-selling artists in Japan.  And to put that into perspective, her debut Japanese album, First Love, is the biggest-selling album in Japan to date, with over seven million physical sales.  She also holds the number four (this album, Distance, sold three million copies in the first week) and number eight spot on that Top 10 list.

26-year-old Hikaru Utada. Image courtesy of Island Records.

With her gargantuan success in the Japanese music world, I thought, “Why release in America?”  But the answer’s clear to me now.  She wants to keep things fresh.  Here’s what she said in a press release.

“It’s true that I could have stuck to my throne and taken the easy way, but I felt that my creativity, my humanity would be endangered by staying in that position. I don’t want to just be this crazy artist who lives in la-la land, I want to be in touch with the real world and stay humble. And I like it when something feels scary—I see fear as a guiding light.”

Don’t jump to any conclusions about Utada before listening to her music and really checking her out.  She’s really unlike what many people expect popular musicians to be.  She can be a little shy, rarely dresses up unless it’s for an important occasion, went to Columbia University in New York, the city where she was born, and speaks both English and Japanese fluently. And she’s a pretty formidable tetris player, I hear.

But as far as her journey here in the States, she’s releasing her first single, “Come Back To Me,” on Feb. 9, and I think it has a chance in the mainstream world.  The music is nothing too complex, but her vocals are impressive, as usual.  It’s catchy and has a story to it, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it will fare.

Filed under: A&E Beat , Bradley, hikaru utada, Music, utada