| Comic Con |
[Jul. 17th, 2009|01:39 pm] |
I want to go to Comic Con, goddammit! Neca's selling a limited edition Coraline doll dressed in her star sweater and kick-ass blue shoes. DO WANT.
AND Neil Gaiman and Henry Sellick will be there.
STUPID SAN DIEGO. Why do you have to be on the other side of the country? |
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| Undoing |
[May. 2nd, 2009|06:11 pm] |
"Undoing" - Coraline
She hated hated hated the stupid school uniform. From sixth grade all the way up to twelfth, everyone was wrapped up in the same gruel-colored sweaters and dull brown shoes. She hated the skirt, hated the pants even more, and despised with ever fiber of her being the collared blouses.
But she loved the boys' shirts.
Specifically, she loved Wybie's shirts.
Specifically, she loved unbuttoning Wybie's shirts.
When they were fifteen and her birthday was a teasing week away, she leaned over him, the old couch creaking under their weight, and slipped each button free of it buttonhole. They were off-white - not glossy black - but she still got a thrill from it, as much as she did from Wybie's warm skin and surprised-open mouth. And they were smaller - probably only an inch across - but she still could practically feel the Other World shiver, like Wybie did when she popped the last button out. And they had two holes - not four - but she still grinned in triumph.
When they were seventeen and her parents were gone to a writers convention, she made fists in his shirt and yanked, and the buttons went flying helter skelter across the room and clattered on the floor. She found two later, partially hidden by the rug's fringe, and crouched down to inspect them. For one horrible second, the buttons were big and black with thread jutting out of their four holes like fingers. She slammed her hand over them and when her heart slowly returned to its normal rhythm, she pealed her palm from the floor and exhaled a long breath; they were just ordinary, off-white, small, two holed buttons. She stood up and stuffed them in her pocket. Maybe she'd sew them back on Wybie's shirt for him.
Maybe.
(crossposted from my DW) |
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| making up a song about coraline |
[Apr. 25th, 2009|09:10 pm] |
This is definitely an OH MY FUCKING GOD moment: “There’s always a chance for a sequel,” Selick acknowledged in an exclusive interview with MTV News, “but I’d like to do something else with Neil.”
A Coraline sequel? Excuse me as I run madly around the apartment, squeeing and waving my hands. Coraline is one of my favorite characters - Girls need more tough, courageous, smart heroines like her. Oh man - What would is be about? Another journey into fairy land, this time to rescue Wybie, who's been captured by the Fairy Queen. Or exorcising the ghosts that still cling to the Pink Palace. Eeeeeeee! Of course the shipper in me wants to see teenage! Coraline and Wybie, but anything they create will be awesome.
Coraline was a success, so LAIKA will hopefully continue to make awesome stop-motion movies. I love that style of film; computer-generated movies just don't have the intrigue. Even if Selick decides to work on other Gaiman projects, it'll still be amazing.
Eeee Coraline was absolutely breath-taking. The character design was perfect, the scenery - like the house collapsing at the end - was gorgeous, the song/dance numbers were incredible. The more LAIKA, the better. |
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[Apr. 10th, 2009|01:21 pm] |
There is a strange phenomenon in the Coraline fandom: portraying Wybie as white. For those who didn't see it, Wybie, Coraline's friend and (possible) love interest, is black. I've seen at least three pieces of CoralinexWybie fanart where he's clearly white (white with red hair, no less) or he's tan.
I've been talking it over with my boyfriend (who saw the movie with me multiple times), and he thinks that it's not a purposeful change: Wybie's race didn't leave a big impression on him (or me either), but we have terrible memories and the second time we saw Coraline, it was actually like we were seeing it for the first time because we didn't remember, like, half the movie.
Here's the scene where they meet for the first time:
I think this is incredibly, incredibly interesting. Around the same time the movie was out, RaceFail was all over LJ, and I followed it through various journals. The observation about lack of minorities in fantasy made a big impact on me -- And it relates to this white-Wybie thing.
So there are two main things about white-Wybie: Are people being intentionally racist (in that Wybie should be white since he's being paired with [a white] Coraline)? Or does Wybie not act "black" enough and thus they don't notice that he's not white? (Do white and black Americans in the same economic sphere act that differently?) I'll agree with my boyfriend that it might not be immediately obvious that Wybie's black, but I find it hard to believe that someone drawing pictures of him would simply not notice it (I mean, if you didn't remember exactly what he looked like, you'd find a picture of him as reference, right?). His race isn't important to the story - there's no racism that he has to overcome, etc - but I think it was a deliberate choice of Henry Selick (who adapted and directed the film) to make him (and his grandmother and great-aunt [who appears as a child-ghost]) black. Gaiman wrote Coraline for his daughter and Selick said that Coraline was a "girls film" (here) -- This is just my assumption, but I can see them trying to engage a minority race, too.
For reference, some of the white/tan fanart are here, here, and here. |
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| eeee coraline eeee |
[Mar. 25th, 2009|09:50 pm] |
More Coraline! Eee I love this movie. Coraline and Wybie are just too cute.
Growing Up
They were both twelve and Coraline was the best friend ever. One time at the waterfall she found a crayfish that was probably a mutant or something because it was the biggest thing ever and she caught it with her bare hands after chasing it all around the stream. Then she chased him around and the crayfish had these claws that could chop someone's head off, but then she tripped in the water and dropped it, and it pinched her nose in vengeance before returning to the depths from whence it came. That night they lit a bunch of fireworks and it was like the Fourth of July and Chinese New Year all in one.
They were both thirteen and Coraline was still the best friend ever. Ever Saturday they rode to the thousand-year-old cinema in town to catch the sci-fi double feature and demolish one of the massive tubs of popcorn that was really more butter than popcorn. If they didn't feel like throwing up by the end of the show, they'd go to the playground in the park and spin on the old merry-go-round until they fell/flew off.
They were both fourteen and they still went to the movies sometimes, but Wybie spent most of the three+ hours trying to accidentally brush hands with her when they reached for the popcorn. They played basketball a lot since she made it onto the school's team, and she beat him in every game even though he was finally taller than her. She taught him how to spin the ball on one finger and he showed her how to change an oil filter. The first time she tried to do it by herself she got old oil all over everything, and when he laughed at her she left a black hand-print right on the front of his shirt, which he actually didn't mind at all. |
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| Coraline + Freud = OTP! |
[Mar. 13th, 2009|11:25 am] |
I take back everything I said about Wybie - He's turned into one of my favorite characters! I saw Coraline twice more this weekend (take that, bank account!), and I highly HIGHLY recommend it. I actually went by myself on Friday because it's so amazing.
I dug up my copy of Freud's Uncanny from college and was reading it and his other essays in preparation, so Friday night at 1 in the morning when I couldn't sleep, I came up with fun pseudo-Freudian interpretations of Coraline's experience.
( Minor spoilers and lots of lol wtf symbolism and Freud. )
lolololololol! Gotta write about Other Father, the mice, the cat, and the buttons next. |
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| of being a superheo |
[Mar. 11th, 2009|12:38 pm] |
Coming up with a good superhero name was the hardest part. She though The Beldamnation! was pretty good, but Wybie pointed out that the only ones who'd understand was him, Cat, and some ghost-angel-kids who were totally dead anyway. Next was The Crushinator, which probably the coolest superhero name in existence. When Wybie said that it sounded like a monster truck, she crushinated him. His sidekick name was easier to think up: Slugzilla Boy, with the power of a dozen slugs! They both wanted to be able to fly and that was definitely share-able. He wanted superspeed, but slugs were totally slow (duh, sluggish?), but she graciously allowed him to have superslime. She got superstrength and superintellect, and also a pair of giant pruners to trim the branches of evil from the tree that is society. He got laser swords that she could use if she asked nicely, and his new bike that he just finished that morning with a seat big enough to fit both of them was their official supermobile. SuperAWESOMEmobile.
Evil nemeses included but were not limited to the vile Homework Enforcer, the mutant twins Lady Naked and Lady Nude, that big tree-stump-thing that looked like a giant lobster from certain angles, and the VW Beetle OF DOOM!. They stood at the fairy circle at the well, wondering if the needle-hand was still swimming, still searching for the key, or if it was climbing out with it… And Coraline could still see her – see it – if she closed her eyes, and she started thinking about the Other Wybie and how she hadn't been the hero he needed… So they agreed, with a handshake that went on for a long time until it was basically just handholding until ew, why would she ever hold holds with Wybie, to leave the Beldam and/or any of her parts out of the game.
So: The newly dubbed The Crushinator and Slugzilla Boy's first mission was to get to the moldy old cinema in town to see Space Squids 2: The Bloodbath or all life as they knew it would come to a violent and explosion-y demise. The Crushinator said Slugzilla Boy should sit in the back because who ever heard of sidekicks getting to drive? But Slugzilla Boy said that it was his bike and he made it and besides, who ever heard of driving a bike? So then The Crushinator said that was just semantics anyway and Slugzilla Boy said no one who wasn't crazy said things like semantics.
Deceit and treason among the ranks! The Crushinator knew that her faithful sidekick had fallen to the dark side and it was up to her to save the day. So she chased him around the Pink Palace until he tripped over Cat, and she climbed up onto the wall to laugh the laugh of justice but then jumped down to hoist Slugzilla Boy back to his feet. The Crushinator graciously announced that she'd ride in the back and Slugzilla Boy could drive, but that meant that he had to buy the popcorn. |
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[Mar. 2nd, 2009|11:15 am] |
The first breath of air hurt like fire; she gasped and spat out a mouthful of the foul water, then twisted around, hooking her hands under Wybie's arms. "C'mon, c'mon! Geez, when you'd get so heavy?"
A yank and a kick and she heaved herself out of the water and into the mud, dragging Wybie behind her. She lay on her back for a moment, still wheezing, then raised herself onto her elbows. "Damn damn damn damn!" Somehow she'd knocked over two more mushrooms - Great, just great. Of the original fairy circle of nine mushrooms, there were only five standing. "Less than half," she said, talking to keep eerie silence at bay. "See that, Wybie? Less than half. C'mon, say something, will ya? C'mon!" |
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