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That Coraline score was such an Elfman knock-off. If Selick wanted Elfman why didn’t he just hire him?
I haven’t seen the movie or heard the music, but Elfman ain’t cheap. (or available… he did four movies last year, and will do four this year).
I saw the movie yesterday and loved it. I loved everything BUT the music, it did have the Elfman vibe but I thought the movie was terribly underscored. It almost made the movie feel hollow and it just was very annoying in some parts. If a movie can survive a bad score like this one did, you know it’s a great one!
I just saw the excellent CORALINE today and I don’t hear any similarities in Bruno Coulais’ equally excellent score to anything Danny Elfman has done.
I concur Ryan, the score didn’t sound like an Elfman score at all. It was however, scored almost like an independent film, and was very subtle for the most part. I think that added to the eerie feeling of the movie, which kind of reminded me of a video game at times – it was atmospheric without being devoid of musicality. The times when music was allowed to fully take over, like the They Might Be Giants song, did stand out, but that’s only because what it depicted was supposed to be seen as hyper-reality in the “other” world. I think the creators of this film were very courageous to allow the images and story to play-out with a subtle score that’s not hitting you over the head. I enjoyed Coraline a lot and look forward to seeing it again when it comes out on DVD. Is it better than Nightmare Before Christmas… No, but, for me, the story was more compelling, and the artistry was a bit higher than previous stop-motion efforts.
Stay until the end credits and they show a scene animated with the armatures exposed that was really thrilling to see in 3D!
No youtube? Fine. You can listen to parts of the score at the website:
http://www.coraline.com/yeah… I just listened… At first it does sound like Elfman, but you come to realize the style is very different and the song writing technique is as well.. Elfman tends to use ostinato patters, whereas this composer is more straight forward. I know I can’t really judge a lot because I haven’t actually seen the movie(which I’m dying to see) but from the clips I’ve heard it is very different.. The only similarity is that they are both dark and creepy… I dunno.. maybe I’m wrong.
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From the clips I’ve heard it reminds me more of some of the music from Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s films, like “Delicetessen” or “City of Lost Children” , in tone more than melody.
I saw the movie last saturday, the score as a whole reminded me of Thomas Newman’s score for A Series of Unfortunate Events. Coraline however should have been called “a Series of Uninvolving Events”. I was very disappointed with the film.
Coulais’s score was very much his own. Of course there was an Elfman influence, use of the children’s choir, harmonic motion by half-step, and a general “spooky” sense of orchestration (hardly avoidable in a movie with a tone such as Coraline’s). But Coulasis’s score was far more modern than Elfman’s. Don’t get me wrong, I love Elfman’s stuff, but Coulasis’s use of extended technique in the strings, a more melodic treatment of the children’s choir, and I’d say generally a more tasteful use of orchestral color which he uses to contrast Coraline’s two worlds in a way that I felt to be very much in a more progressive style.
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