Tuesday Throwdown: Coraline vs. Paranorman

It's a double-header, ladies and gentlemen! For my inaugural post I thought I'd do movies that I know inside and out, both formidable films in their own right:

CORALINE (2008) vs. PARANORMAN (2012)

Before we get into the real meat of the showdown here, a little bit of backstory on our contenders:

CORALINE: Based on the Neil Gaiman book of the same name, wherein a  bored little girl moves to a drippy new town and a drippier apartment building with her drippy botanist parents and some weird, obnoxious neighbors, and discovers a door in one room of her building that leads to a fantastical alternate version of her life and all the people in it, where everything is made just for her and everyone wants to entertain and love her, and everything is orchestrated by the chipper and mysterious Other Mother. This can't possibly go wrong.


PARANORMAN: A lonely little boy who can talk to ghosts discovers that he might be the only one who can keep an evil witch's 300-year-old curse from obliterating his tourist-trap town (which, incidentally, is famous for the colonial-era hanging of the same witch), and discovers some ugly secrets about human nature.

Even outside of the obvious (both psychedelic stop-motion features produced by Laika), they're pretty similar, as

• they're both about kids who feel pretty lonely and neglected, who have this other kinda sweet well-meaning kid following them around all the time trying to be pals
• they both have well-written, well-designed villains that are ACTUALLY SCARY
• they both have a compelling cast of secondary and tertiary characters, several of which (on both counts) do not actually exist
• I saw both of them at least four times in theaters (6 for Paranorman), and bought both of them the day they were released on DVD
• they're both NOT movies to take your small children to (seriously, every time I saw either at the theater, there were harried parents scrambling out of the theater clutching their screaming toddlers. PARENTS: "ANIMATED" DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MEAN "KID'S MOVIE". DO SOME RESEARCH IF YOU WANT YOUR KIDS TO STAY NIGHTMARE-FREE. JESUS.)
• They're both completely gorgeous. Feasts for the eyes. 

But, even with this pretty long list of similarities, the movies themselves are wholly different animals, and they're raring to get this fight started, so without further ado, LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE!

This TUESDAY THROWDOWN will consist of THREE ROUNDS:
ROUND 1: THE HEROES
ROUND 2: THE VILLAINS
ROUND 3: SUPPORTING CAST
and the FINAL SHOWDOWN, where the scores will be tallied, other factors taken into consideration, and a WINNER decided!

ROUND 1: THE HEROES

CORALINE's titular character, Coraline Jones, is. . . well, kind of a shit, at least for most of the movie. Which is sort of great, because as we all know, kids around her age (I think she's around 11, the same age as Norman? It's never stated in-movie) are typically pretty self-absorbed, and she's being thrown into a whole new place, with new people she doesn't like and this weird slug-hugging kid who won't leave her alone, and her parents can't seem to be bothered with her. On the other hand, she's pretty unnecessarily mean to Wybie (whose full name, which he seems pretty embarrassed about, is "Wyborn"; she uses this to mock him just moments after meeting him, sneering, "Oh, I definitely heard someone calling you, Why-Were-You-Born"), and the refreshing novelty of seeing a realistically bratty kid in the role of protagonist doesn't really stop you from wanting to smack her, or cringing because you personally remember acting like that and it's something you'd really rather not think about.

She does get better, though, once she starts wising up (surprisingly fast) to the Other Mother's schemes, and she steps up when her parents are taken. Turns out when Coraline isn't putting all of her energy into raising her parents' blood pressure and making the neighborhood kids cry, she's actually pretty smart (dare I say wily?), and in the end she outwits the Other Mother, gets her parents back, sets free all the souls of previous kids taken in by the OthMoth (the souls, by the way, being the first indicator that this wasn't a kid's movie, with permanently horrified faces etched in a silent scream and of course the buttons for eyes), AND gets a new cat out of the deal while learning a pretty standard lesson about Appreciating What You Have and Being Careful What You Wish For. 

Points Breakdown:
+1 for realism (bratty, smart, but also not afraid to admit when she's scared)
+2 for smarts
+3 for buckling down and getting shit done when she needed to
+1 for being from PONTIAC MICHIGAN REPRESENT
-1 because oh my God Coraline the kid hates his name and you don't even know him what is your PROBLEM
Coraline's Score: 7

PARANORMAN's titular character, Norman Babcock, is a kid you really just want to hug. He's a sweet kid and a good kid, but not so impossibly good as to practically be a saint like most child protagonists. Which is, can I say? SO NICE. With a family that's well past the point of tactfulness about his "gifts" (the bit at the beginning where his dad, upon being told that Grandma wants the heat turned up, screams "HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO TELL YOU, NORMAN? YOUR GRANDMOTHER IS DEAD!" in his son's face comes to mind), a dedicated school bully and a nonexistent social life, you'd expect him to be written as kind of an insufferable little asshole. But he isn't! He's lonely and mopey, sure, but he's also smart, and he cares about people's feelings, and he'd honestly rather not have this whole seeing-dead-people-and-also-animals thing to deal with if it's going to get him shit and cause everybody around him trouble.

When we meet Norman he's starting to see some weird stuff around town and at school (objectively weirder than the stuff he usually sees), and this creepy uncle he hasn't ever been allowed to see following him around and then dying and showing up as a ghost in the boys' room at school, yelling about destinies and the witch's curse and how Norman's the only one who can stop it, and any other kid would probably freak out and run, but Norman figures, hey, makes as much sense as anything else in my life, and he decides to go with it. He's terrified, but he doesn't ask for help, or expect it. He just gets shit done. And at the end he teaches himself a really nice (and pretty different from most "kids' movie" lessons) lesson about how it's okay, and easy, to be angry and hate people for treating you like crap, but there are good people and good things in the world too, and it's important to remember that.

Also, did I mention you just want to hug him? Because really.

Points Breakdown:
+1 for realism (sarcastic, mopey, but smart and endearing, and also not afraid to admit when he's scared)
+2 for not letting being scared stop him from doing what knows he has to do
+1 for being a sweetie
+3 for not only sympathizing with the big bad, but teaching her and himself a huge lesson
+1 for dealing with all the crap heaped on him and still being a well-adjusted, pretty optimistic individual
Norman's Score: 8

ROUND 2: THE VILLAINS

(Let it be known that I am a sucker for a sympathetic villain and good character design, and that both of these movies fully deliver.)

CORALINE: The "Other Mother" (or, the Beldam)
The Other Mother, unlike PARANORMAN's Agatha, is straight-up evil. Sure, you maybe feel a little bad for her, but that kinda gets balanced out by her being cunning, manipulative, and overall downright terrifying (and by that scene about 2/3s of the way through where you see the remains of her other victims, mentioned above). You're not sure where she comes from, who she is, if she's ever really existed, or if she even really exists now. Throughout the movie she warps from a spot-on replica of Coraline's sweet (if snippy) Real Mother, to a cracked, hunched, furious Black Widow; all of her illusions and affections are a means to an end (ie, Coraline coming to stay with the Other Mother forever, symbolized by sewing the iconic buttons into her eyes), and when her schemes begin unraveling, her ugly starts coming out. Not used to the competition, she flails farther and farther out in an attempt to win Coraline one way or the other.

Points Breakdown:
+3 for being legit terrifying
+1 for ambiguity (you're never sure if she wants Coraline as a companion or as, say, dinner)
+1 for being a formidable female villain with smarts and cunning
+2 for excellent character design/theme
Other Mother's Score: 7

PARANORMAN: Agatha Prenderghast (Aggie for short, or, The Witch)
I am also a sucker for a well done kid villain, and Aggie is probably my favorite movie villain ever. She's just so good. She gets a full origin story in the span of about thirty seconds, is sympathetic, and is also pretty damn scary. This is the first time in 300 years that she's gotten to wreak the mayhem and vengeance she promised her small town when they hanged her for "consorting with the dead" (oh, by the way? Agatha is related to Norman through his mom's side of the family, and shares aforementioned creepy uncle's last name), and she isn't going back in the ground without a fight. She spends most of the movie in the sky, as a swirling green-and-purple cloud in the shape of a stereotypical witch's face, but in the climax of the movie, she is a commanding presence: snarling, feral, hurling lightning at Norman and throwing him into trees, cracking the ground open and rearranging the world, splitting in twos and threes as she tries not to listen to him. Aggie, though only eleven, is a formidable villain in her own right. And even better, she gets redeemed at the end.

Points Breakdown:
+3 for, again, legit scary
+3 for impeccable character design
+1 for being a commanding female villain with smarts and cunning (plus a bonus point for only being eleven years old)
+2 for good backstory
+2 for kicking everybody's asses all over the place and actually making her aggressors the villains (the zombies, not discussed)
+1 for character redemption/moral
Aggie's Score: 13

ROUND THREE: SUPPORTING CAST

(The supporting casts are fairly big on both counts and this is already a pretty long post, so this section will be [relatively] shorter.)

CORALINE: Supporting Cast

WYBIE: To be frank, Real Wybie kinda sucks. He's super into slugs and thinks Coraline is a witch when he first meets her (immediately after running her down on his motorbike while wearing an awful skull mask in the rain), and also doesn't believe Coraline when she tells him about the Other Mother and that whole business. Other Wybie is pretty cool though, as he talks a lot less (read: not at all) and tries to save her despite being created, and slowly destroyed, by the Other Mother.
CORALINE'S PARENTS: Coraline's Real Parents are pretty boring, at least by kid standards, but they are realistic parents. Her mom's moods range from "a little stressed but trying to compromise" to "oh my God I'm going to throw this kid out the window", and her dad is pretty chill. You find yourself liking them a lot. And it doesn't hurt that Coraline's dad is the guy from They Might Be Giants.
MS. SPINK and MS. FORCIBLE: SO COOL! Both versions! Real Spink and Forcible are retired actresses with a thing for Scottish terriers (living and dead) and showing each other up; Other Spink and Other Forcible are sassy young performers quoting Shakespeare as they leap through the air. Not much development, but they're fun. At least, until they turn into big screeching piles of saltwater taffy. Still! Fun!
MR. BOBINSKY: For a retired circus performer who spends his days teaching mice to play the TV, Mr B is surprisingly creepy! (/sarcasm) Other Mr. B is also creepy but at least wears a suit instead of a dirty singlet. He would get a pass if he didn't turn into an actual pile of rats later. (Not a kid's movie!)
THE CAT: Sarcastic cryptic cat voiced by Keith David! What else can I say. A+.

8 points for the supporting cast of CORALINE, some of whom suck but most of whom are great, or at least interesting to look at!

PARANORMAN: Supporting Cast

NEIL: Neil is great. He gets beat up probably just as much about Norman, but it doesn't really bug him. He sticks up for Norman a couple times, and stands by him when no one else will! He's a remarkably secure little boy who's pretty happy with his place in life; there's a scene where Norman is asking Neil why people pick on him so much, and Neil responds matter-of-factly, almost happily, with, "Because I'm fat, and my allergies make my eyes leak, and I sweat when I walk too fast, and I have a lunchbox with a kitten on it. Oh! And I have irritable bowl syndrome. I guess there's a whole bunch of stuff!" Neil is great.
MITCH and COURTNEY: Neil's older brother Mitch might be stupid, but he's sweet, and he's probably the only movie brother I've ever seen who is a jock AND treats his uncool little brother well. He's also gay, and not defined by it, so that's cool! Norman's older sister Courtney is, unfortunately, a dick, but she does love her little brother and steps up when it's needed.
NORMAN'S PARENTS: I like Mr. and Mrs. Babcock. They're stereotypically different (Norman's dad is kind of a "just your average guy" "man's man" kinda dad, while his mom is flaky and a vague sort of hippie) but it's believable, and while they both want the best for their kid, they want different things, and they're both kind of at their wit's end as to what to do about it.
NORMAN'S GRANDMA: The first ghost Norman talks to in the movie, Norman's paternal grandmother doesn't resent Norman for keeping her from the afterlife because he needs her. She gives him strength! And she's voiced by the lovely Elaine Stritch, queen of my heart.

10 points for the supporting cast of PARANORMAN, all of whom are great with no exceptions.

THE FINAL SHOWDOWN

Score So Far: CORALINE, 22; PARANORMAN, 31

BOTH MOVIES RECEIVE:
1 point for being visually stunning
2 points for not underestimating kids, and for treating them like real people
1 point for having rich casts of characters

CORALINE GETS:
2 points for inventing Wybie, who was not in the book, and receiving Neil Gaiman's blessing
-1 point for making up bad Michigander slang

PARANORMAN GETS:
1 point for a breakdancing bully
1 point for John Goodman (Norman's creepy uncle)
1 point for a lightning-themed villain
1 point because I just love this movie so so so much

FINAL TALLY: CORALINE, 27; PARANORMAN, 38
Paranorman obviously wins, but don't let that stop you from seeing Coraline if you haven't already! They're both great movies, and both totally worth seeing.




I hope you all enjoyed my first post as an official movie blogger! I'll see you all Friday, when I break down Pretty In Pink from the perspective of James Spader.

An Exciting and Extremely Important Announcement

Hello readers!

First off, I'd like to apologize for the sad state of my blog for the last, oh, two years. I've run out of stories, can't use my tablet until I get my own computer again, and just haven't really felt like I've had anything terribly interesting to say in general.

However that is all about to change, kind of, as I've decided to turn B&S into a MOVIE [/pop culturey things when it suits] BLOG!

(I mean it was like 70% of the way there before anyway, but now it's official.)

I want to keep writing, and the one big topic I find I never run out of things to say about is pop culture. This is good news because it means that:

-I will be updating more! Starting next week, I will be updating Tuesdays and Fridays. If I get into the swing of it soon enough I'll add a third day and probably some specials.
-I will never run out of topics, as my thirst for pop culture is as vast and boundless as the black reaches of space

So readers, if there are still any of you left, I will see you on Tuesday with a fresh new review (and possibly a new blog title and layout WE SHALL SEE).

Sleep well and DON'T BREATHE UNTILNEXT TUESDAY!

HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS (or, Bodices Do Not Qualify As Activewear)

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD! (sort of? I mean like 70% of the plot is in the title)

HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS was, as I put it to Steve and Jon while we walked out of the theater, "a delightfully stupid romp". It's a silly mindless action flick that isn't terribly period- or region-faithful, but let's be honest here, you didn't buy a ticket for HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS because you wanted a movie for the ages. No, you wanted to watch Hawkeye shoot witches in the face with a comically oversized gun, wear leather pants, and say the word "fuck" a lot; because someone told you there was surprise!nudity; and because you want to watch Jean Grey (Famke Janssen, also of Abusive Ghost Husbands fame) explode heads with magic. Which are all fine, fine things, to be sure, and perfectly acceptable reasons to go see a movie.

There were a lot of things I liked about HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS. I liked that everyone at least attempted some sort of general European accent, except for the title characters. I liked that Hansel's entire weakness is that he has diabetes, and has to stop kicking ass every couple hours to give himself a shot. I liked the costume design, and that the witches all looked very unique, but not silly or cartoony. I liked the overwhelming Tarantino-ness (although let it be said that I am not a Tarantino fan) of all the kills (because apparently zapping someone with magic isn't ridiculous enough on its own, people need to actually explode like water balloons filled with red corn syrup). I liked the sheer cheesiness and half-assedness of the obligatory romantic plotline. For most of the movie I was barking out laughter and flapping my hands incredulously like a child. Generally speaking, I enjoyed this movie to the point of screamy, breathless giggles.

The only thing I didn't like, funnily enough, was Gretel. Or, you know, approximately 50% of HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS.

Okay, so I wasn't exactly expecting anything thoughtful or progressive from this movie, and I wasn't expecting to see "FEMINISM!" spelled out in fireworks in every frame. This is a movie that is ENTIRELY ABOUT SHOOTING WITCHES WITH A BIG STUPID GUN UNTIL THEY LITERALLY EXPLODE, it's not exactly a thinking man's film. I mean, the director didn't even care enough to give the role of Hansel to Jensen Ackles (Dean Winchester on Supernatural, who no offense to Jeremy Renner would have done way better and had way more fun with it).

He's still pretty upset about it.

But I at least expected Gretel to be able to hold her own. Apparently I was asking too much.

The first half hour (or so) gives you the standard fairytale; Hansel and Gretel get left in the woods (for some reason), come across a candy house, eat the candy house (because they're stupid kids who have never been told about paedophiles), get trapped by a witch, and commit their first witchicide by shoving the witch into her own oven. Then we get a very stylish and speedy montage explaining that HANSEL AND GRETEL have been totally bad-ass WITCH HUNTERS ever since.

We are then introduced to a nice little village full of Fachwerkhausen (which I squealed at, because I love Fachwerkhausen). The mayor of said village announces that he has hired HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS to hunt witches and bring back kidnapped children, not necessarily in that order. The sheriff, understandably, takes issue with this, and Gretel asserts her dominance.

 With her face.

Basically, we are given to understand that it's HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS, and not, say, HANSEL AND HIS LOVELY ASSISTANT GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS, or even perhaps HANSEL: WITCH HUNTER AND HIS ANNOYING KID SISTER GRETEL, ISN'T SHE ADORABLE. It's the two of them, it's always been the two of them, and we are assured that Gretel is perfectly self-sufficient and just as adept at this whole witch-hunting business as her brother.

Which turns out to be almost entirely untrue when you actually see Gretel fighting a witch. For having spent a full quarter (and then some) of the movie assuring you that she's more than qualified to handle herself, Gretel sure gets her ass handed to her a lot, by nearly every adversary she faces.

Let's take inventory here:

-She spends most of the movie either on the ground, screaming "HANSEL", getting hit/kicked in the face, unconscious, being held against her will, being choked, or some combination of the above.

-She lets herself get captured and thrown into a cage, which, aside from being total rookie mistakes for a seasoned witch hunter, puts her on the same vulnerability level as the frightened children in the other cages.

-Rather than try to escape, she just. . . stays in the cage. And cries.

-When a troll grabs her (and she has mentioned killing trolls before) and takes her somewhere, she just goes with him. And does what he asks. And doesn't try to escape.

-The whole reason Gretel even matters in this story is an accident of birth. She has something, that she can't control, which is necessary to the plot. That's it.

-When she gets attacked by a group of perfectly mortal men, she barely fights back.

-For the climax of the movie, she is chained to a rock (which she, AGAIN, LETS HAPPEN) shouting "HANSEL, HANSEL" until someone comes and unlocks one of her cuffs, and then she just kind of stands there, swings weakly, and gets punched a lot.

There's also this lovely little scene where Gretel gets knocked out, and a teenage boy takes her unconscious body to his room, and not only draws quite detailed pictures of her, but also gropes her chest. HAHA! HOW CHARMINGLY AWKWARD AND RELATABLE AND NOT AT ALL DISTURBING! TEENAGE BOYS, AM I RIGHT? And she CATCHES HIM DOING IT, and for some reason, he's still alive at the end of the movie. Whatever.

I don't get it. Why waste all this time assuring us what a capable, fiery powerhouse this chick is, if you're just going to immediately undo all of it? Why even bother? If you want to make a stupid action movie, what sense does it even make to turn your heroine into one of your weakest characters? Why not just leave her as she is? How does that make your movie any better? I really just don't get it.

Not to mention, IT'S BORING. The whole rescue-the-princess, feisty-girl-who-still-needs-a-man's-help-to-get-out-of-every-jam thing? It's been done to death, AND IT'S NOT EVEN RELEVANT ANYMORE! Even Disney knows better. It's OLD. We want something BETTER, something NEW, something we can ACTUALLY RELATE TO.

(Although, to be perfectly honest, I knew there was going to be a problem as soon as I saw she was wearing a leather bodice. Guess what? Bodices, particularly LEATHER ones, are not comfortable. You can't run in them, you can't fight in them, you certainly can't climb trees in them. In fact, you really can't do much of anything in them except sit quietly somewhere and try not to think about how much you resemble a tube steak.

You know who wouldn't wear a restricting leather bodice? Gretel. Who is also wearing pants (which was generally frowned upon at the time), and therefore obviously going with function over acceptable style, but apparently draws the line at a full range of torso motion. Meanwhile, Hansel's over here wearing chaps and a sleeveless vest so he can shoot better and he's still a lousy shot, what's the deal with that.

Male costume designers and directors of period action movies, take a note: BODICES AND CORSETS ARE NOT ACTIVEWEAR. Do not put your heroine in pants and also a bodice. I don't care if their boobs look better, just don't do it. Put them in a regular shirt. If you put your heroine in a bodice, you better put some petticoats and an overdress on her and call that girl a carriage, because she is not running anywhere anytime soon.)

I wanted to love Gretel. I was so excited that we were gonna finally have a sexy, bad-ass, don't-take-shit-from-anyone firecracker heroine who handled her business and didn't need a man to save her. Instead, what we got was the same tired old weepy, wimpy damsel-in-distress, who couldn't even break out of a cage without help from her beefy male counterpart. And I cannot help but feel personally insulted. I feel like I was tricked out of half of the movie, as well as ridiculed.

Look, okay, bottom line: if you want a silly action movie that doesn't have much plot, that doesn't make you any more thoughtful or any better of a person, but is still fun to watch with friends, I enthusiastically endorse this movie! It's good campy fun. Famke Janssen is great, Jeremy Renner is unintentionally hilarious. It's minimally scary, and the gore quotient is so unrealistic as to be laughable. This is just a fun movie, and I did really enjoy it. So if you haven't seen it yet, and it sounds like your thing, you really should.

Just don't expect to root for Gretel. At the end of the day, it would have been better as just HANSEL: WITCH HUNTER.