Weekly poll article for April 10th, 2010. Looks like Jack and Sally took the lead in this week’s poll race.

By popular vote, The Nightmare Before Christmas is the all time favorite movie by film director/producer/writer and artist Tim Burton. Although this week’s poll ran a little long, we still only got 9 votes… so I apologize if it isn’t entirely accurate. Next week you will all have to get involved and speak up! Until then, please enjoy the poll article of the week.

The Nightmare Before Christmas came out in 1993 and used stop motion claymation as its art style. It follows the story of Jack Skellington who lives in Halloweentown with his loyal ghost-dog Zero. Jack is the leader of Halloweentown via popularity and everyone looks up to him. Growing weary of his usual responsibilities and questioning his direction in life, he ventures out pondering his destiny. He stumbles upon a circular grove of trees with different holiday symbols on each tree trunk and falls into Christmastown… where he quickly decides he has found his destiny in a new profession as a makeshift Santa. Basically things go downhill from there, and Sally, a Frankenstein-like creation of a girl saves Jack and finds love in the process.

While he was working as a Disney animator, Burton wrote a poem that later inspired the movie. While the film has always been owned by Disney, they originally decided to release the film under their Touchtone Pictures banner because they thought that “Nightmare” would be too dark for children. Since then, Disney has changed their minds and reissued the film under the Disney banner (smart decision!).

Although Burton passed the directorship to Henry Selick for his story The Nightmare Before Christmas, Burton’s touch was not lost in the film. The creation of Sally, a gentle girl literally falling apart at the seams, was visually interpreted by Selick after Burton told him: “Sally in The Nightmare Before Christmas is stitched together because these are symbols of the way I feel. Being loosely stitched together and constantly trying to pull yourself together, so to speak, is just a strong feeling for me. In a great fairytale you always get these weird images that are symbolic of something else.” I would have to agree with Burton on that notion and love the fairytales he tells.

If its been awhile since you saw The Nightmare Before Christmas, you might want to freshen up on it! It’s such a sweet and timeless tale that no one should go without watching it every now and again. You can pick up a copy on DVD, or on Blu-Ray if you have the appropriate player. I happen to have the special edition Blu-Ray and I love it!

Tim Burton was born in Burbank California, not particularly good in school, and found the most joy in painting, drawing and watching movies. One of his heroes was actor Vincent Price. Burton would make short films in his back yard using stop motion or 8mm film without sound. After High School he studied character animation at the California Institute of the Arts. His early films include Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, and Batman. Later he went on to do films such as Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Sleepy Hollow. In the 2000’s he has done Big Fish, Corpse Bride, 9, and Sweeny Todd just to name a few. Now that 2010 has started a new decade, he has taken charge with a new adaptation of Alice in Wonderland which has just recently appeared in theaters with great success.

Tim Burton most often works with actors Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter (who is also his wife) and composer Danny Elfman. These frequent collaborations have helped in keeping his signature style prominent and also help with easy work flow as these people all work exceedingly well with Burton.

Fun Fact: Danny Elfman actually provided the singing voice for Jack Skellington, along with some other minor characters in the film.

Interview with Danny Elfman

Just for fun I thought I would include this makeup tutorial video by Michelle Phan (Ricebunny on Twitter) that just so happens to be “The Tim Burton Look”. I loved this video and thought it really captured the look well. Hope you enjoy it too! Click on her photo below to launch the video!

So that’s this week’s poll article and I hope you all had a good read. Stay tuned for next week’s article and know that your input is of the utmost importance!