The Nightmare Before Christmas [Blu-ray] + Digital Copy

Buy This Item The Nightmare Before Christmas [Blu-ray] + Digital Copy by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment  Available from Amazon  $39.99  on 11-15-2008     Yes, it's dark Halloween chocolate wrapped around sweet Christmas peanut butter. Or something like that. <br /> <br />The Nightmare Before Christmas isn't your typical Christmas confection, but it is the kind of Christmas movie you might expect from Tim Burton (Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands): macabre, sort-of-but-not-too-scary, and ultimately good-humored and good-natured. It's also quite a feat of animation, the first feature-length stop-action film. And it's a musical! <br /> <br />The story takes place in a world where the magical side of each major holiday is run by a specialized, hidden holiday town, like Santa's North Pole headquarters. One year, the restless Jack Skellington of Halloween Town discovers Christmas Town, is very impressed, and decides Halloween Town should expand its horizons and take over Christmas that year. Unfortunately, he and the other residents of his town don't understand Christmas as well as they do Halloween, and their basically well-intentioned efforts threaten to ruin Christmas altogether. <br /> <br />The animation is highly imaginative and particularly well suited to the Halloween connections, as we would expect from a Burton-produced project. The songs, by Danny Elfman, are catchy and fun, partly because of twisted but good-hearted subject matter. There are scares, adventures, a romance, lessons learned, and a good Christmassy outcome. Most kids and adults will be delighted, though parents may wish to consider the scary stuff for very young kids who don't like being scared. <br /> <br />The Nightmare Before Christmas is coming out in serveral new editions, all with new special features. Besides the Blu-ray on this page, there will also be a new 2-Disc Collector's Edition on standard DVD (here) and, for true fanatics (with the funds), a limited Ultimate Collector's Edition with a numbered, hand-painted bust of Jack Skellington with his Sandy Claws hat and beard and a sound chip that plays quotes from the movie. That's listed for preorder at Amazon (here) at roughly a hundred bucks more than this edition. It isn't clear from the announcement whether the Ultimate Edition will be available in both SD and Blu-ray or only SD, as it presently appears. <br /> <br />I see Mr. Liddell has helpfully posted the press release. I digested it and added a few comments on the features for another review, so I may as well include that here, with apologies for the redundancy. The new special features are these: <br /> <br />-- audio commentary with producer/writer Tim Burton, director Henry Selick and composer Danny Elfman (who also sings in the movie) <br />-- Burton's original "The Nightmare Before Christmas" poem read by legendary horror actor Christopher Lee <br />-- new intro by Burton for Frankenweenie (see below) <br />-- a digital copy of the movie <br />-- exclusive Blu-ray introduction by Burton <br />-- "What's This? Jack's Haunted Mansion Holiday Tour," a two-part promo for the Disneyland theme park attraction <br /> <br />Features carried over from the 2000 Special Edition: <br /> <br />-- "The Making of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas" (about 25 minutes on the Special Edition) <br />-- "The Worlds of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas" (the worlds being Halloween Town, Christmas Town, and "The Real World") <br />-- deleted scenes (scenes that didn't get past the storyboards and cut animated scenes) <br />-- storyboard to film comparison <br />-- theatrical trailers and posters <br />-- Burton's early short stop-action film Vincent, about a boy who dreams of being Vincent Price, who narrates (5:50) <br />-- uncut version of Frankenweenie, Burton's early short live-action film wherein the basic events of Frankenstein are played out in suburban America, with a young boy in the place of Dr. Frankenstein and a pet dog in the place of the monster (29:50) <br /> <br />There's no mention in the press release of the old commentary with Selick and director of photography Pete Kozachik, which went into detail about the technical aspects of the animation. <br /> <br />The video will be the original 1.66:1 aspect ratio in 1080p, but the sound specs haven't been announced yet. There was a teaser for the Blu-ray on the National Treasure 2 Blu-ray DVD. I haven't seen it, but it reportedly looks great, even better than the excellent old standard DVD. Reader Reviews Only Tim Burton could produce a holiday musical about Halloween's grotesqueries taking over Christmas. And in fact he did. Burton wrote and produced a charming stop-motion musical called "The Nightmare Before Christmas," which is as close as we'll ever get to a Burton Christmas film. And there's rarely a dull moment in this town called Halloween -- from start to finish, it's a quirky, macabre, vintage-flavoured ride through the darker side of everybody's favorite holidays. In Halloween Town, the undead Jack Skellington is king, and each Halloween the residents try to make their celebration even more horrible than the year before. But this year, something is missing for Jack, and he starts wondering if scaring people is all his life has. He ends up wandering into a sort of holiday junction, and finds a portal to Christmas Town -- it's full of snow, lights, presents and innocent fun. Jack is instantly enamoured of Christmas, and decides that for this year, the residents of Halloween Town are going to celebrate Christmas. He manages to convince the other Halloween residents -- except the sweet rag-doll Sally -- to go along with his plan. So Halloween Town is redecorated and filled with presents (in a suitably ghastly style) and "Sandy Claws" is abducted so Jack can take his place. But are the people of Halloween Town just not suited to innocent merriment, and can the Pumpkin King fill the capacious red suit when Christmas Eve rolls around? The idea of Halloween ghouls and spooks deciding to take over Christmas sounds terribly twee in concept, like a gimmicky children's book. Fortunately Tim Burton's darkly humorous sense of humor and delightfully gothic designs -- as well as Henry Selick's brilliant direction -- end up turning the movie into something that is more than just another kid's movie. Think a Burtonesque "Princess Bride." Much of its charm comes from the richness of Burton's visuals -- his Halloween Town is saturated in spiky iron fences, ghost dogs, insects, mad scientists, and a spooky cloudy night that never ends. And though the inhabitants of Halloween Town are devoted to being grotesque and spooky, there's a lighthearted benevolence in their actions at all times. It almost makes Christmas Town look... dull. But it's also an incredibly funny, sweet little movie, with plenty of heart. There's an adorable little love story between Jack and Sally ("My dearest friend, if you don't mind..."), despite Jack's total cluelessness. And Burton weaves in lots of solid musical numbers ("There's children throwing snowballs/instead of throwing heads/they're busy building toys/and absolutely no one's dead!"). But the crown jewel is Burton's macabre sense of humor. Hardly a scene goes by without a creepy gag (one child's present is a shrunken head) or clever dialogue ("Jack, please, I'm only an elected official here. I can't make decisions by myself!"). But the best humor comes from the Halloween-town's residents eagerly trying to be festive, and only making Christmas even creepier than Halloween ever could be. For a skeleton puppet, Jack Skellington is a pretty adorable hero -- he's earnest, generous, but suffers from a bit of ennui from the same old performance every year. His meditative songs about Halloween and his attempts at Christmas add an introspective note to him as well. And he's backed by a bunch of lovable characters, with Sally and the ghost dog Zero at the forefront. Fortunately after a long wait, they're finally giving "Nightmare Before Christmas" the loving treatment it desperately needs. You get a wealth of storyboards, trailers, deleted scenes, information on Tim Burton, short films, behind-the-scenes stuff, and plenty of other stuff that give further insight into this brilliant movie. About time, too. "Nightmare Before Christmas" is a macabre, wildly adorable little movie that reminds us why we love Halloween (besides the candy). Sometimes the dark and fun go hand in hand.

The Nightmare Before Christmas [Blu-ray] + Digital Copy Available from Amazon Price: $39.99 Updated on 11-15-2008.

SPONSORED LINKS