Perhaps it's the head that I found in the lake
The Nightmare Before Christmas (in 3d!) (1993), Henry Selick. October 23, 7:30pm. View count: Five?
It had been a while since I'd last seen this, and certainly a while since (I think) I watched it on the big screen, when it came out in theaters originally. It's a little funny seeing it again, what with the smothering merchandising embrace of all the toys and t-shirts that have somehow pervaded the youthy culture in the time after Japan noticed the movie. (I could maybe form a theory about Japan feeling approximately the same about christmas and halloween, both being weird semi-imported holidays, and so combining them wasn't so obtuse. I'm sure the kimokawaii charming/alarming combination of the characters did not hurt either.) Regardless, it's what most people think of when they think of Tim Burton now, I suppose.
Chmmr and I were discussing the workings of the universe of the movie last night (if you don't care, and I won't blame you if you don't, you can tune out now), and he brought to my attention that, somehow, I had never really comprehended that the citizens of Halloween Town went out into the human world on halloween, where they Did Halloweeny Things like drain blood (?) and presumably terrify children more harmlessly. Somehow this hadn't really gotten across to me, probably because for everyone but Santa and Jack, the town is such a bubble (no one else ever leaves while we're watching or indeed seems to want to). Presumably, though, they do go out there; the 'This is Halloween' song implies to me that somehow the citizens are out scaring kids whenever necessary. How can you be 'Mister Unlucky' to a guy who sees you once a year? And yet the citizens are perhaps unduly concerned with Halloween as an event, to the extent that the day immediately after it is supposed to the first day of preparations for the next. I suppose it's just their biggest event.
The mausoleum door in the human cemetery that leads back to Halloween Town maybe implies that regular traversing is done, so, really, maybe the Halloween Citizens really lucked out by being members of the only holiday whose effects aren't confined to a week or so. You can be scared by things at any given time. They also benefit from being fairly diverse in their composition and range; Halloween is a fairly rich holiday. I mean, seriously, Thanksgiving Town? One can only imagine the depressing third-grade-level Pilgrims and Indians universe in there.
Arguably, none of the Normal Townspeople in any Tim Burton universe is really quite sentient. They require intervention by the Free-Thinking Freak to show them how to really think for themselves. In Nightmare, this never really happens with the townspeople (and, weirdly, the Free-Thinking-Freak sort of realises that he shouldn't try so hard to be different?), and Sally could already think for herself before Jack got there. The other citizens are generally pretty much animals, really limited in their thinking and scope. They're like elemental spirits or something.
Below them in the intelligence hierarchy are the ambient ghosts and small animals that seem to be nearly everywhere. It's unclear whether those ghosts were ever anything alive, insofar as 'alive' has meaning. I'm definitely unclear on the level of mortality that anyone in the universe has; presumably they're perpetual entities of some sort, but death is (obviously) a concept for them, and it seems that they accept that they and others can die and not return ('The King of Halloween has been blown to smithereens'). Dr. Finkelstein can create life, the Lumpling child may or may not be able to grow into an adult, the vampires may or may not be able to make more vampires. It's really almost none of it covered in the movie, but it's not like that stops me wondering.
Presentation-wise, the 3d-translation was not terribly noticeable. The stupid previews did more with depth perception than Nightmare did, but that's to be expected, probably, given its origins as Not A 3d Film.
The environments were especially gorgeous on the big screen, though. Really amazing work on the sets. IMDB says that some unspecified thing was invented that "enabled a puppeteer to seamlessly switch to a replacement puppet if a puppet broke during a shot." So... a video feed? I don't know what they could mean, really. There were surprisingly few animators on the project, for such a large production. It's impressive.
I also noticed for the first time that the head in the bass belonging to one of the musicians is probably a caricature of Danny Elfman.
It had been a while since I'd last seen this, and certainly a while since (I think) I watched it on the big screen, when it came out in theaters originally. It's a little funny seeing it again, what with the smothering merchandising embrace of all the toys and t-shirts that have somehow pervaded the youthy culture in the time after Japan noticed the movie. (I could maybe form a theory about Japan feeling approximately the same about christmas and halloween, both being weird semi-imported holidays, and so combining them wasn't so obtuse. I'm sure the kimokawaii charming/alarming combination of the characters did not hurt either.) Regardless, it's what most people think of when they think of Tim Burton now, I suppose.
Chmmr and I were discussing the workings of the universe of the movie last night (if you don't care, and I won't blame you if you don't, you can tune out now), and he brought to my attention that, somehow, I had never really comprehended that the citizens of Halloween Town went out into the human world on halloween, where they Did Halloweeny Things like drain blood (?) and presumably terrify children more harmlessly. Somehow this hadn't really gotten across to me, probably because for everyone but Santa and Jack, the town is such a bubble (no one else ever leaves while we're watching or indeed seems to want to). Presumably, though, they do go out there; the 'This is Halloween' song implies to me that somehow the citizens are out scaring kids whenever necessary. How can you be 'Mister Unlucky' to a guy who sees you once a year? And yet the citizens are perhaps unduly concerned with Halloween as an event, to the extent that the day immediately after it is supposed to the first day of preparations for the next. I suppose it's just their biggest event.
The mausoleum door in the human cemetery that leads back to Halloween Town maybe implies that regular traversing is done, so, really, maybe the Halloween Citizens really lucked out by being members of the only holiday whose effects aren't confined to a week or so. You can be scared by things at any given time. They also benefit from being fairly diverse in their composition and range; Halloween is a fairly rich holiday. I mean, seriously, Thanksgiving Town? One can only imagine the depressing third-grade-level Pilgrims and Indians universe in there.
Arguably, none of the Normal Townspeople in any Tim Burton universe is really quite sentient. They require intervention by the Free-Thinking Freak to show them how to really think for themselves. In Nightmare, this never really happens with the townspeople (and, weirdly, the Free-Thinking-Freak sort of realises that he shouldn't try so hard to be different?), and Sally could already think for herself before Jack got there. The other citizens are generally pretty much animals, really limited in their thinking and scope. They're like elemental spirits or something.
Below them in the intelligence hierarchy are the ambient ghosts and small animals that seem to be nearly everywhere. It's unclear whether those ghosts were ever anything alive, insofar as 'alive' has meaning. I'm definitely unclear on the level of mortality that anyone in the universe has; presumably they're perpetual entities of some sort, but death is (obviously) a concept for them, and it seems that they accept that they and others can die and not return ('The King of Halloween has been blown to smithereens'). Dr. Finkelstein can create life, the Lumpling child may or may not be able to grow into an adult, the vampires may or may not be able to make more vampires. It's really almost none of it covered in the movie, but it's not like that stops me wondering.
Presentation-wise, the 3d-translation was not terribly noticeable. The stupid previews did more with depth perception than Nightmare did, but that's to be expected, probably, given its origins as Not A 3d Film.
The environments were especially gorgeous on the big screen, though. Really amazing work on the sets. IMDB says that some unspecified thing was invented that "enabled a puppeteer to seamlessly switch to a replacement puppet if a puppet broke during a shot." So... a video feed? I don't know what they could mean, really. There were surprisingly few animators on the project, for such a large production. It's impressive.
I also noticed for the first time that the head in the bass belonging to one of the musicians is probably a caricature of Danny Elfman.