Coraline Movie Review

    The movie Coraline is the first stop-motion feature shot in stereoscopic 3D. Which, simply put, means it was the first movie in 3D where in every scene the animators had to stop and very carefully move the dolls. The movie was based off of a book by Neil Gaiman called Coraline as well. The movie is about a young girl who finds a fantasy world where everyone loves her until she finds out about it's dark secret.  It takes place at the Pink Palace Apartments, a fictional place where Coraline and her family moved to in Oregon. Dakota Fanning plays the main character, Coraline Jones. Terri Hatcher (of Desperate Housewives) plays Mel Jones (the real mother) and Other Mother and John Hodgman plays Charlie Jones (the real father) and Other Father.

    The movie is about a young girl who feels neglected by everyone at her new home until she finds a secret magic door that takes her to another world. In this "Other World" she is loved and cared for by everyone until she discovers the truth and this new world becomes hostile and tries to keep her there forever so Coraline uses her bravery and resourcefulness to escape.

    Since Coraline used such amazing 3D imagery, they had to use thousands of different angles for all the shots that they took so that they could have such a high quality production. They also had to use make 24 different scenes in real life with the dolls they used for every second that was used in the movie which amounted to over 8 million shots taken. Fortunately, they used a special camera that was mounted on a sliding pedestal that automatically slid into the next shot that had to be taken and all the animators had to do was move the dolls and take the picture. Everything in the movie wasn't special effects, though. In fact, everything that you see in the movie was all made by hand from the characters, their clothes, the apartment to even the fog.

    The character voices were done spectacularly, especially the accent that Coraline used. Since Coraline was from the Michigan, Dakota Fanning did a wonderful job of giving her a Midwestern accent that sounded very believable and the other actors did very well also. They gave the movie a sense that you weren't just watching a movie but a real play-by-play depiction of this young girl's life.

    The movie overall was spectacular especially for seeming like such a young-hearted, childish movie. I did think that the movie might have deserved a PG-13 rating for some violence and more suggestive clothing options of the characters so I definitely would recommend watching the movie before letting a child under the age of ten or so seeing it. On the other hand, I would also highly recommend that every person should see this movie because it has now become one of my all time favorites.
  

The New Normal...?

           “The New Normal” is about a homosexual couple that wants to adopt a baby.  But, they can’t find the right donor until they meet this young, possibly pregnant mother named Goldie.  She is very desperate for money so she agrees to be their host parent.  However, the mother of the young woman doesn’t want her next granddaughter to go to this gay couple, so she is trying everything she can to stop it.  

In the beginning of the pilot, it comes in with Goldie Clemmons (Georgia King) walking in on her husband having an affair with another woman. She then decides to leave the comfort of her mother’s, (Ellen Barkin) money and care and drives to California with her daughter, Shania (Bebe Woods), to pursue her dream of being a lawyer.  Then, we see David (Justin Bartha) and Bryan (Andrew Rannels), the homosexual couple, talking about getting older and wanting a baby.  So, they go and interview surrogate mothers and find none of them appealing to what they’re looking for until they meet Goldie.  They talk and she tells them about her cheating husband and how she left her mother, who had been taking care of her and her daughter, and the couple fall in love with her and her daughter and she agrees to be the surrogate mother for them. Afterwards, David and Bryan go to a gay bar to try and recapture some of their youth, with no prevail as a young man tries and fails to hit on them.  Later at their house they all wait around the bathroom for Goldie to come out and reveal her pregnancy test results as they all crowd around the pilot ends.

Overall a very comedic show with Bryan and David acting as a regular man-and-wife type of couple and the stereotypical yet no less funny phrases of Jane Forrest that will be soon to catch on. Although the acting of Georgia King seemed a bit awkward as if her only emotion is a smiling, cheerful mother, the rest of the cast’s acting is solid and writing is phenomenal.  I cannot wait until the next episode comes and see what else is in store for this brand new show.