Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride

I'm eagerly anticipating Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride, due to open at the end of this month. It's been a long time since James and the Giant Peach and The Nightmare Before Christmas... in fact when the latter came out I recall wondering whether I could spare the RM13.50 (and believe it or not, it was an increase in price) out of pocket money, for the cassette tape soundtrack.

Recently I've been recharmed by seeing both stop-motion films on TV, and having no results in trying to order in the soundtrack CDs, I've bought several Disney collection recordings just to obtain them track by track. Danny Elfman and Tim Burton were truly champions in these productions and I can only hope that their version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was something they came up with after too many vodkas and joints (it did, nevertheless, make me spend RM20 on various selections of chocolate after that... whereas a friend told me that after the show all he could think about was cabbage soup - and I thought I was the violist).

In both previous productions, there was something remarkable about the nature of stop-motion – not only in the motion picture production aspect of having to photograph each and every frame, but in a sense of liveliness and of presence. Which is somewhat ironic, considering the CGI-based Finding Nemo and Toy Story productions, so popular in TV shops for clarity and definition, still seemed so much more artificial than plaster. Perhaps it brings out some memories of playing with dough, paper mache, or playing in mud that makes it somewhat personal almost. Or perhaps it’s the imperfections, the wrinkles and nudges and rough edges, that brings it closer to the texture of our reality.