Comments for Blog Post 12

Constantinos

John Baber

Blog Post 12- Things to Tantalize Your Brain: The Visual Stylings of the Nightmare Before Christmas

I remember when The Nightmare Before Christmas first hit theaters back in '93, and even then I thought it was one of the coolest movies I'd ever seen (and that's a sentiment to which I still adhere). The story is quirky. For all their grotesque appearances, the cast is insanely engaging. And Danny Elfman's score lacks comparison. But on top of all this, I think what makes Nightmare such a stand-out is that there is nothing really like it out there. At the time its claim to fame was the fact that it was the first stop-motion animated feature. Looking at the film tonight (and after reapeated home-viewings) I think that part of why it is such a cogently made film has to do with its sense of style.

There are two fantasy worlds in The Nightmare Before Christmas: Halloween Town and Christmas Town, both of which have unique visual conceits that draw upon graphic elements world cinema and ultimately draw those elements into a cohesive whole. The land of Halloween, as far as its architecture is concerned, harks back to Geman films of the Weimar Republic (particularly the wild designs seen in Robert Weine's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) with their exaggerated, twisted, contorted, downright nightmarish forms; Expressionist cinema serves as a precursor to modern horror films where the visual motifs that defined this era of silent cinema became toned down over time, only to be re-realized in the cinema of Tim Burton. The range of color in this environment is kept to a bare minimum (blacks, grays, with accents of orange, red and sickly greens); the black-on-gray combination again calls to mind the look of silent film. Architecturally, it is an environment that compliments the intellectual nature of Jack's problem; the abstracted forms that compose the town lend the environment a cerebral quality, and as in German cinema, they generally hint towards a troubled, tortured inner-self.

Christmas Town also draws on another genre of film: the televised holiday cartoon. In conrast, the color palette is incredibly vivid with bright whites, reds, and greens. The way the characters are rendered, they are dumpy and squat, and lack the spider-like grace of personnages like Jack; they look, move and behave like the characters one is loath to encounter in standard Rankin/Bass Christmas fare. Architecturally, this environment is a mesh of Expressionist and Atomic age design; there is the gross exaggeration (i.e. the large looming houses) mixed with the plainer, though equally bold, line sensibilities seen in 1950's/early 1960s graphic design that are manifested in the Christmas specials produced during that period. So in this way, the two visual styles are subtly reconciled, and it isn't that visually jarring when Jack transitions from one environment to the next.

Comments for Blog Post 11

Lauren V

Gabrielle

Blog Post 11- Why'd He Go Down in History?

I just finished my annual viewing of the Rankin/Bass holiday classic: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. As a kid I have very fond recollections of this film, and how, whenever the Christmas season would roll around, I’d scan the television schedule to find out when my cartoon specials would come on, and it would make me insanely happy to plop down in front of the television screen soaking them in. Now I’m 20 (though still prone to behave like I’m 12) and it’s always interesting to look back on these films of my childhood that I held in rose-tinted regard. This film, by all rights, is horrible. The animation is jerky and unrefined. Lip synch is virtually nonexistent. The script has more holes than a major roadway in West Virginia. The characters are far from engaging (maybe with the exception of Sam the Snowman; c’mon, it’s Burl Ives… “Big Daddy” from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof… as a SNOWMAN!). So what in the hell keeps this cartoon coming into our living rooms every year for the past 40-odd years?

When it comes to American popular culture (particularly American popular culture from the 50s and 60s) I firmly believe that almost anything can be labeled as being one of two things: tacky, or kitsch. Tacky is flat out bad taste. Kitsch is the best of bad taste, something so bad that it’s wonderful, something created to the point that it is self-referentially deprecating (case in point: does anyone remember the Batman TV. series/movie with Adam West and Burt Ward?). I firmly believe that Rudolph is a piece of kitsch.

The visual design of the film is great, in keeping with the perception I have of atomic age aesthetics: lots of bold lines and bright colors so that, in light of its shortcomings in plot, Rudolph is an attractive film to watch. The characters look like they could have hopped off a Macy’s float or out of a storefront display (or the It’s a Small World “amusement” ride… which, had it been known to Dante, he would have made it its own circle of Hell). They’re simple, but they have a charm all their own. Additionally, I was surprised at the very strategic use of color. For instance, in scenes like Santa’s workshop, the predominating colors are blue and pink (seen in the clothes of the elves) juxtaposed predominantly grey interiors. Similarly, in the exterior shots, there’s a lot of white, the trees tend to be a green-grey color, the sky an intense blue. What this achieves is that, when Rudolph bounces on the screen, he really stands out; the character, in its entirety, looks RED. The color of his fur, though brown like his quadruped compatriots, has red highlights and, by grace of his color palette, draws the viewer’s eye to him whenever he’s onscreen.

Then there’s the music. Spawned from the song immortalized by Gene Autry, we are presented with a holiday special that has given us some tunes that most radio stations will spin come the month of December. Christmas isn’t Christmas without hearing Ives belt out “Holly Jolly Christmas” or “Silver and Gold”; they’re flat out fun to listen to. The rest belongs in the kitsch category. Tunes like “We’re A Couple of Misfits”, “Jingle Jingle Jingle”, “There’s Always Tomorrow”,and the anthem of the Island of Misfit Toys are another matter. As with any piece of musical theater, the story rarely mounts a natural segue into these musical numbers (and the fact that a populous of rejected playthings are joyously singing about their plight is, well, odd). But, like the plot, they’re so bad they’ll make you laugh. Though you’re laughing at things that the creators probably didn’t want you to view with mirth, it’s an indication that something has entertainment value. Isn’t that worth something?

As lacking and bumbling as Rudolph may be on the whole, it is not without entertainment value. Yes, the bulk of the events therein are plodding and pointless and you spend a solid fifty minutes of your evening waiting for the final five where our beloved reindeer takes his famous flight. But why not take pleasure in laughing at narrative shortcomings, the blatant stock characters and the clichéd situations they find themselves in, the unconvincing antagonistic abominable snowman, woodland creatures who will randomly burst into song and decorate Christmas trees with ornaments that came from who knows where? So, for one night, forego any pretensions or erudite airs, and plop down in front of the television for some bad good fun.

Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey

See the Sock Monkey.
See the Sock Monkey run.
Run, Sock Monkey, run!




Sorry 'bout the size; PhotoBucket refused to cooperate and automatically resized my image.

Comments for Blog Post 10

Zeke

Lauren V.

Blog Post 10- The Snowman

"[T]he whole point of illustration is that it is literary. If it is not, it remains a drawing only"

-Raymond Briggs

It's that time of year again. It's well before Thanksgiving, the American populous is being inundated with a smorgasborg of Chrsitmas ephemera, and a season of animated holiday entertainment is nigh. There are classics such as the Rankin/Bass niblets of pure, unadulterated kitsch that have become the canoncial Christmas cartoons (Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman, Little Drummer Boy, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, etc. etc.). There are the delightful old standbys like A Charlie Brown Christmas and the Garfield Christmas special. And there are those that will appear for a year or two and then slip off the radar; Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas Celebration is an INCREDIBLE peice of animation, particularly the visualization of "Joy to the World" (and has ANYBODY seen A Wish For Wings That Work, the TOKEN cartoon centered around the seminal 1980s comic stip, Bloom County?; it's supposed to be sharply written). However, in my opinion, one of the best offerings of holiday fare is Raymond Briggs' 1982 cartoon, The Snowman. It is a nontraditional cartoon for this time of year and it impacts its audience as powerfully as it does because it is expertly done in pantomime with a beautiful score to supplement the visuals.

Briggs had a background in painting in typography before he ultimately decided to write and illustrate children's books. He turned out several titles in the 1960s before coming into his distinctive style and format with the publication of Father Christmas in 1973 (which was also turned into another great animated short); the book resembled a comic strip in that there were individual frames communicating the story's action. After several Father Christmas sequels, another holiday story, The Snowman, appeared in 1982. Like its predecessors, the story was delivered via small illustrated panels and without any accompanying text.

The lack of dialogue was retained when the story was tranlated to film, and engages the audience like few films can; you are forced to use a little bit of intuition to decipher what is taking place onscreen. Additionally, what makes silence such a powerful device in this film, is that the range of emotions experienced by the characters is not pinned down by language; when you see the Snowman dance, lounge in a freezer, or fly through the air, those actions can mean different things to different viewers and you are not looking to the "everyman" character, James, to tell you what to think and feel, and hope that his sentiments reflect your own.

The story centers around a young boy, James, who constructs a Snowman that comes to life and together they have a series of adventures on Chrismas Eve, culminating in a flight to the Arctic Circle where the pair get to meet Santa Claus. Christmas Day the child goes out in his front yard, hoping his snowy friend is still there, only to find out that the Snowman has melted away. What is also intruiging about this cartoon is that it is a holiday story but it is not centered around Christmas; the season is simply a backdrop for the mise en scene. And, what's even more interesting is the sombre tone of the film, where most animations seen during this time of year are, by and large, odes to joy. The film plays off of a solemnity to the Christmas season that is often avoided. With Chritmas comes the death of the year, the earth is in remission, and there is an overall absence of life. The character of the Snowman represents the life cycle that draws to a close during that season; he is created, he lives, then dies.

Among it's other merits, The Snowman is beautifully animated, more than ably recreating the colored pencil drawings of the children's book. On top of that, there's Howard Blake's music, which is phenominal (and for some reason isn't available on CD in the US) and engages the audience's emotions just as much as the visuals.

The Snowman is one of the few films where I'll admit to tearing up a bit, and if you're looking for an incredible peice of animation that's different from the old Christmas sandbys in a million and one wonderful ways, I strongly suggest this.

Works Cited

http://www.thesnowman.co.uk/home.htm