The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick, 1993)
After they throw
another great Halloween, the people of Halloween town are convinced by Jack
Skellington to take the task of doing Christmas this year. After he visits the
world of Christmas and discovers many elements of the classic holiday. But you
can’t ask monsters and ghouls to celebrate Christmas without being frightening
and scary. On top of that, Jack falls in love with Sally the creation of the
mad scientist of the village.
Mixing classic Hollywood monsters and Tim Burton’s own vision of both holidays, Halloween and Christmas, The Nightmare Before Christmas becomes a
unique cult classic for the ages. Financed by Disney studios but released under
their Touchstone pictures because they thought it would be not suitable for
children, this is one of the most beautiful stop motion feature films of all time.
Also, it is the perfect link between the two holidays that
commercial and business have now put back to back in their marketing.
The songs and music by Danny
Elfman is superb and became a holiday classic in many homes. My wife and I
are fans of this film and we often make our Jack O Lantern with different
expressions of Jack Skellington. It’s
funny that Burton didn’t directed the picture and let it to Henry Selick. Mostly, because it was
sometimes presented as Tim Burton’s The
Nightmare Before Christmas but also because it was a personal project for
him. The drafts of the different characters and their puppets are directly
influenced by his own drawings and it was a project he had in mind for many
years since his first short Vincent
for Disney.
On the DVD version that I own I always rewatch the
documentary of the making of that makes this film even more remarkable. The art
of making those puppets move, dance and sing is outstanding and I believe that
few people can make this craft look great like this.
The mix of classic Horror, musicals, and the pun to the
classic tale of The Night Before
Christmas are some of the reasons why I have this movie at heart. I would
also boldly state that I prefer a thousand times better a stop motion animation
more than the too perfect CGI / 3D animation films of today. Making me sound
like the grinch of nostalgia but also expressing myself on how they don’t make
them like that anymore…
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