Rethink before referring to someone as “button-eyed.”
ShockTillYouDrop has a detailed article about a visit to the set of the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, along with an interview with the film’s director, Henry Selick.
I haven’t read Coraline and my usual default Neil Gaiman expert isn’t around, so here’s STYD’s summary of the novel:
Coraline is a young girl who comes across a doorway into another world that – though in many ways it looks just like her regular life – is inhabited by “Other” versions of people she knows. She has an Other Mother and an Other Father and – in this new world – they all have buttons for eyes.
The film is being done in stop-motion animation; no surprise, considering Selick is probably best-known still as the director of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. The voice cast includes the ubiquitous Dakota Fanning as Coraline; Teri Hatcher as her mother; John Hodgman as her father; and Keith David as the Cat. Legendary British comic duo Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French have supporting roles.
The STYD article has some very interesting descriptions of how the puppets are created (they hired a woman who is a specialist in miniature knitting to work on some of the costumes. MINIATURE KNITTING!!), not to mention Selick’s thoughts on his approach to adapting it. Even if you don’t know the book, it’s still a good read. Most of the sections are too long to paste in, so I’ll just advise you to read it yourself here.
