Coraline

5. DRAMA, RDE, 14/II/09

CORALINE (sic on spelling). Henry Selick, dir., script. Neil Gaiman, book. USA: Laika Entertainment, Pandemonium (prod.) / Focus Features, UIP, UPI, Universal (dist.), 2009.

Animation fantasy (3-D). See for sewing imagery generally, with mechanical suggestions as the film darkens; note skeletal hand of villainous Other Mother combining imagery of sewing-machine needles and a spider (with the spider imagery developed with a web). See scholarship of Frederick Bourne and Katherine Durack (cited under Background) for importance of sewing machines for modernization and mechanization. Note spider imagery as a variation on the theme of insectoid machines.