Tag: Nightmare Before Christmas

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Christmas Aisle in Costco - in early OctoberChristmas strikes deeper into Halloween’s territory, continuing a relentless campaign that began decades ago in response to a 1993 incursion from Halloween Town.

In recent years, Halloween has shored up its position by moving into previously unclaimed parts of the calendar in early October and September, itself running roughshod over tentative efforts by Oktoberfest to establish a foothold. Growth of adult Halloween parties with free-flowing alcohol have ensured that Oktoberfest can only offer one advantage over Halloween: Lederhosen. And you can wear those on Halloween too.

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Listening to “Nightmare Revisited.” All-American Rejects were not the best choice for “Jack’s Lament”

Amazingly, “What’s This” is worse. A song all about the thrill of discovery with NO ENERGY. Are they thinking about what they’re singing?

Korn is knocking “Kidnap the Sandy Claws” out of the park. *whew*

OK, this album is definitely improving.

Amy Lee + “Sally’s Song” = win.

Nightmare Revisited

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This weekend we went out to see The Prestige, which was quite good. The next theater over was running The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D, and we figured, what the heck? After the first movie, we got tickets for another.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of my favorite movies, but for some reason the 3D release didn’t really interest me when I first heard about it. It felt too gimmicky, like when they project a regular movie on an IMAX screen even though the movie itself isn’t really made for that format.

I got a little more interested when I read an article about how they did it. ILM essentially re-did the entire movie as a computer-animated film, matching each frame exactly, then shifted the virtual camera over a bit. One eye gets the original film, and the other eye gets the CGI copy.

I was astonished at how seamlessly they matched. I couldn’t remember which eye got the original, and I honestly couldn’t tell. Most CGI-animated films have a cartoony, sort of vinyl look to them, which would not blend at all, but ILM is used to matching their CGI to photographed actors and sets, which I suppose makes them the ideal animation studio for this sort of thing. It had to be the most effective reformatting of a film that I’ve ever seen—compare it to colorizing movies, or the Star Wars special editions (which were done by the same effects house, but with older technology)—because it didn’t detract (or distract) from what was there in the first place.

Of course, it wasn’t long before I stopped looking at the technical merits and just settled into watching the movie.

Having re-watched it, I’m now very interested to see what director Henry Selick does with the movie adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book, Coraline

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There are two books I picked up recently that demonstrate how not to tell a story with pictures: Teen Titans #27 and the manga of The Nightmare Before Christmas.

First, Teen Titans #27, first half of a two parter by fill-in team of Gail Simone and Rob Liefeld. I’d planned on writing a more thorough review, but Comics Should Be Good beat me to it. And yeah, reviewing Liefeld’s art feels like a cheap shot, but sometimes ya just gotta go for it. Simone’s story isn’t bad, but it’s hard to follow. In particular, there are too many places where the art isn’t about story or action, it’s about showing the heroes or villains in dramatic poses. And yeah, you want the occasional dramatic pose, because you want to show off the costumes. That’s part of the genre. But you need to convey what’s actually happening. As dramatic as the last two pages were, I couldn’t figure out just what Kestrel was doing without looking at the “Next issue” blurb!

And then there are the places Liefeld left out dramatic poses that should have been there. The issue introduces a quartet of teen villains, but only one of them gets a full-body dramatic view, two get only action shots, and one—well, let me put it this way. I had to flip back to the beginning to be sure that there really were four of them and not just three. He’s in two panels with only his head and shoulders visible in the entire book. He’s not named, there’s no sign of powers or special skills, and he’s wearing a shirt and tie. I have to wonder whether Liefeld just didn’t get around to designing a costume since the character gets eliminated halfway through the book.

Anyway, onto The Nightmare Before Christmas. Continue reading →

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Driving to work this morning, we passed a Halloween display (the same people also do huge Christmas and Easter displays) that had recently added some Halloween-themed yellow caution tape. (Something like “Caution: Enter if you dare!”) Now I’ve only been out of bed for about a half hour at this point, and I was up way too late last night, and my mind starts making strange connections, and comes up with the following exchange between a child and parent:

(little kid voice): “If Iraq is in a no-fly zone, how does Santa get there?”

(parent): “Most people in Iraq don’t believe in Christmas, honey.”

Okay, so far this is just logical – as far as I know, Islam doesn’t notice Christmas any more than Christianity notices Ramadan. At this point Katie says it’s a better answer than “No-fly zones don’t apply to reindeer,” and I’m reminded of the anti-aircraft guns targeting Jack’s sleigh in The Nightmare Before Christmas. Then my mind takes it a step further:

“But what about the ones that do?”

“Santa has to Fed-Ex them their presents.”

Hey, it made sense at the time.