An interview with Coraline director Henry Selick

Coraline, a fantasy book by Neil Gaiman, has recently been made into a stop-motion animation by director Henry Selick (Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach). Cinema Blend were lucky enough to host an interview with Selick in which his answers are full and excellent. It makes for a very enjoyable read; below is an extract from the interview, there is a link further below to read the interview in full.

“Nobody liked the first draft, including Neil, even though it was incredibly faithful. [When I decided to add the character of Wybie] I realized that Coraline needed someone in her real world to talk to. Another kid seemed the most simple way to go. I set it in the U.S.. I kept a few characters British. Everyone was British in the novel. I wasn’t comfortable rewriting dialogue and trying to hold on to that. And there’s other details. The rhythms of a film are always different than a novel. You always have three acts. In the book she goes to this other world, and it’s very much a real place. I needed to have her go back and forth several times to build up. It’s multiple trips, and I decided to make it seem like a dream.”

Henry Selick interview on Cinema Blend

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Posted: February 16th, 2009
Author: Lee
Categories: Neil Gaiman

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Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill
Some doors are better left closed . . . In Barrington House, an upmarket block in London, there is an empty apartment. No one goes in, no one comes out. And it’s been that way for fifty years. Until the night watchman hears a disturbance after midnight and investigates. What he experiences is enough to change his life forever.

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Graham Hancock is the author of The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, Keeper of Genesis, Heaven's Mirror, Supernatural and other bestselling investigations of historical mysteries. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages and have sold over five million copies worldwide. Written with the same page-turning appeal that has made his non-fiction so popular, Entangled is his first work of fiction. We have five signed copies of Entangled to give away as prizes. Email us the answer to the following question and the lucky winner, chosen at random, will receive a copy of the book, signed by the author.

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Lewis Carroll, the elusive author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, has been the subject of enduring fascination for the past hundred years. The destruction of many major documents about his personal life by his descendants has only magnified the mystery. Jenny Woolf's biography, published to coincide with the release of the new Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland film, lays waste to the myths and suspicions that have obscured Carroll's reputation by placing him firmly in the context of his own time.

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