Coraline

I don't usually buy a soundtrack before seeing the movie it belongs to, but I had to make an exception for the Coraline. To the point that I bought it at quarter after midnight on Feb. 2 then settled in for some serious listening. My first impression was that The soundtrack sounded more or less the way I'd imagined it would. Meaning highly atmospheric and slightly well, more then slightly excentric. Bruno Coulais seems to have made a deliberate effort to create music that is not easily defined. I have to say in my opinion he succeeded. The music for Coraline to me most resembles somthing like an auditory jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't seem like the should fit together but somhow they do beautifully. Admittedly it took a few listens to fully grasp what Coulais intended, and the more I listend the more I got it, and I realized the genius of it. At first I was a little put off by the lack of clearly defined themes and motifs found in more tradtional film scores. You can't really...Read more

In the two days since I purchased the Coraline soundtrack, several of its tunes have found their way to my heart like a lullaby from the Other world. But, for now, we need not even discuss the movie these tracks were written for. Context aside, let us simply discuss Bruno Coulais' superb album that only happens to be called "Coraline Original Motion Picture Soundtrack."

Let's get this out of the way first: movie scores by design are primarily ambient and Coraline is no exception. Typically all I can salvage from a soundtrack are two or three cues that carry the film's main themes. So it's a rare and happy day when I can enjoy all of, most of, or even much of a film's score. A robust collection, Coulais' Coraline measures in impressively at just over 1:3 excellence to ambience. For sheer value this allows me to recommend it as a quality soundtrack. But it's the brilliance of these tracks that propels the collection into my toppest of tops.

Apart from the...Read more

Coraline is the latest film from Henry Selick, the man who actually directed Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. Like its illustrious predecessor, Coraline is a stop-motion animation, several years in the making, and is based on a story by acclaimed fantasy author Neil Gaiman.

Following his Oscar nomination for his work on Les Choristes (The Choir) in 2003, I had expected Bruno Coulais to become a more familiar musical voice in Hollywood. He's certainly proved he has a great deal of talent and versatility throughout his career, tackling everything from action thrillers (Les Rivières Pourpres/The Crimson Rivers) to wildlife documentaries (Microcosmos, Winged Migration), but for whatever reason it never quite happened. Coraline is actually Coulais' first Hollywood studio picture, but whether it will provide that breakthrough remains to be seen; it's possibly the oddest mainstream score I have heard in quite some times, and I really can't make up my mind...Read more