Danny Claus

Rating: Null/10 (2 October 2008)

I really appreciated the effort made to produce such a film as this one. This is remarkable, a film made in a moment of change, when digital mediums start to invade the animation (and not only animation). So in a way, this is a kind of a milestone, and the end of a decade. It's probably the biggest effort (and money) put into producing a stop-motion animation. It's world class work, the characters have levels of expression which probably are close to its limits in a kind of animation like this one (if you check the making of you'll see the number of heads with different expressions for each character).
But what make this a rather unique and superior experience is the presence Burton and Elfman, a common mixture, but which here has a special flavour, maybe because Burton is 'only' in the production. The visual mood is, of course, Burton's, but here i felt a little bit more freedom by Elfman to work freely with the music. He's one the best current film composer's, because he can carry the movie through the songs, which last long after the film is finished. So he leads the moves here (he even sings the lead voice), and in the way he creates a soundtrack which dominates the movie, unlike what happens in films directed by Burton (including his musicals).
Visually, my only complaint is in the lack of contrast between the Halloween world and that of Christmas, could have been more marked. Except for that it's delicious, probably less gore than what Burton probably would have done if was fully in control of the operations.
This is top class work, and once more the writer Tim Burton takes a relatively common Christmas theme (the being who tries to destroy it) and switches something on that common subject and creates a new mood out of it, familiar, yet novel (the pumpkin king who tries to improve Christmas and in the way ends up almost ruining it).
The Oogie Boogie musical acts are memorable.
My opinion: 4/5 worth watching http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com