the nightmare before Christmas

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to today's pop culture pedical advent calendar, and today's
pick is The Nightmare Before Christmas. The Nightmare Before Christmas
follows Jack Skeleton, the pumpkin King of Halloween Town, who
stumbles into Christmas Town and is enthralled by the joy
and the color of Christmas, and he decides to put
his own spooky spin on the festive season by kidnapping

(00:23):
Santa after deciding that he wants to take on the
role with the help of his ghost dog. But Jack
feels at being Santa and chaos breaks out. It becomes
clear to him that he made a mistake and now
must put things right and save the Day and Santa
from oogie Boogie. Now. I absolutely love stop motion movies,
and this one is done to perfection with the creepy
stylized characters from Tim Burton's Warped Mind. And that's not

(00:46):
an insult. I loved Tim Burton's work. I think the
way that Burton dreamt up this elongated body for Jack
Skeleton is delightful. I love the way that he is
animated throughout, with his big, wide steps and his many
different expressions. And currently they used over four hundred heads
in the stop motion process, and the character as Sally
is absolutely beautiful and horrifying at the same time, especially

(01:08):
when she loses a limo to and she actually reminds
me of a few other Burton characters, like the Corpse Bride, Catwoman,
and the wife of Beetlejuice. It's clear that Burton likes
his portrayal of these stitched up women. But believe me,
there's so many other creepy looking characters in this movie,
especially the big bad guy Oogie Boogie, a sack filled
creature bursting with bugs and all sorts of other grossness.

(01:31):
But every character in this movie have their own disturbing
charm with disgusting designs that I kind of get a
kick out of. And I've got to say, even the
characters in Christmas Land look kind of creepy too, and
I love it. And there was over four hundred creepy
characters in total, and they all looked amazing. Of course,
the now iconic music is composed by Danny Elfman, and

(01:52):
he also does a voice of Jack Skeleton, but only
the singing voice. I love all the songs in this movie,
like This is Halloween, but I think think the standout
song for me is What's this? And that's the song
that plays when Jack discovers Christmas Land. It's just so
catchy and upbeatn just such an enjoyable song. As soon
as you hear it, you fall in love with it.

(02:12):
What's this? There's kind of it everywhere? What's this? There's
white things in New And this movie is a visual treat.
With all the crisp white snow, the vibrant colors, candy canes,
Christmas lights, it's beautiful and it's a great contrast with
the Halloween scenery that is very dark and very eerie
and very spooky. In fact, I believe that this movie

(02:33):
works as both a Christmas movie and a Halloween movie.
You can watch it in October, and you can watch
it in December and get the same kind of enjoyment
out of it. Heck, you can watch it all year
round if you like. Like I said, this movie just
has some pretty great visuals. I love the scene where
Jack is shot from the sky and falls into the
arms of a statue. It's just a really cool, eerie

(02:53):
shot and it's just framed so perfectly. It's just perfection
right there on your TV score. And then, of course
there's a scene where Jack walks up the hill that
actually unwinds underneath him with the moon backlighting him. It's
just iconic. I think the Christmas message in this movie
is to embrace who you are and what you do,
rather than trying to be someone else. Also, there's a

(03:14):
love story going on between Jack and Sally, and like
I've said in past reviews, Christmas and love just go
and in hand. And of course by the end of
the movie we get the redemption when Jack embraces who
he is, and he also appreciates Christmas and Santa forgives
him because he's Santa, and he allows it to snow
in Halloweenland, which gives it this great contrast. It's great
seeing the snow fall down on this dark, eerie setting

(03:38):
a lot like Batman Returns. Actually, this film has just
got so much Christmas cheer and it's I must watch
every single year. Fanks for joining him today. He'd be
sure to join me Tomorrow's We Open Another Door. On
the next episode of Pop Culture Pedical's advt calendar,