Showing posts with label Tim Burton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tim Burton. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1993)

Jack Skellington is the most popular, the most handsome and the tallest citizen of Halloween Town.  Notice I didn’t say smartest.  Cuz dat motherfucker is dmub!  One day, Halloween, to be exact, Jack is super sad and goes for a stroll in the woods.  Being a simpleton, Jack gets lost and comes across some strange looking trees.  Each one has a differently decorated door on it.  Jack investigates the tree decorated with the image of a decorated tree on it.  Soon, Jack is in Christmas Town and totally losing his shit over the snow and bright colours.  Back in Halloween Town, he devises a plan to bring the joy of Christmas Town to Halloween Town…by kidnapping Sandy Claws.  I told you he was an idiot.

The story might be silly, but the presentation of the story is fucking amazing!  I love the unholy reindeer baby mice out of this movie and have seen it around 14 million times.  Probably doesn’t hurt that I identify as Goth and I love the fuck out of Oingo Boingo.  And Tim Burton and Catherine O’Hara and Halloween and Chris Sarandon and Musicals and stop-motion animation.  Fuuuuck, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS is awesome.  The only legitimate complaint I have about it, is it’s too short.  76 minutes just isn’t long enough.

My two favorite songs are "What's This?" and "This Is Halloween".

Thursday, December 6, 2012

DARK SHADOWS (2012)

Johnny Depp plays a dude who back in 1760-something ran afoul of a witch (because he loved another woman) so she killed the woman, turned him into a vampire and locked him in a coffin.  Fast-forward 200 years and the witch is now running a fish cannery in the same town.  Some construction workers come across Depp's coffin.  He promptly kills them all then heads to his family home.  They still live there, so he moves in and sets to restoring his family to their former glory.  But before he can do that he first has to deal with the psychotic witch that is still in love with him.

I've never seen the TV show, so I have no idea what purists think, but the movie was alright.  On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd give it a solid 5.  The first half of the film is kind of funny in a fish-out-of-water/ AUSTIN POWERS kind of way, but then in the last act everything gets too serious.  Is this suppose to be comedy or a serious movie with comedy elements?  I have no idea.  There's funny stuff, but then innocent people get murdered and a dad leaves his son and a house gets burned down.  Then suddenly out of nowhere one of the characters turns into a half-werewolf for no reason at all.  What the fuck?  

Attractive females all over the joint, Alice Cooper cameo, Carpenters "Top of the World" montage, 70's humor, coffin jokes, Burton stylized sets and visuals, I wanted to like DARK SHADOWS and I did like pieces of it, but as a whole it's too unfocused.  Worth a one time watch, but that's it.