Directed by: Henry Selick; Produced by Tim Burton
Studio: Walt Disney Home Entertainment
Video: 1.66:1 Enhanced for 16:9 Widescreen; 1080p HD
Audio: English 7.1 Dolby TrueHD Surround; English, French, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround; Portuguese Dolby 2.0 Surround
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese
Supplements: Audio commentary with Producer Tim Burton, Director Henry Selick and Music Composer Danny Elfman; Tim Burton movie introduction; “What’s This? Jack’s Haunted Mansion Holiday Tour”; Tim Burton’s Original Poem narrated by Christopher Lee; ‘Frankenweenie’ short film; ‘Vincent’ short film; “The Making of Tim Burton’s ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’” documentary; “The Worlds of Tim Burton’s ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’” featurette; deleted storyboards; deleted animated sequences; storyboard-to-film comparisons; D-BOX Motion code; original theatrical trailers and posters; previews; Disney File digital copy (2 discs)
Length: 76 minutes
Movie Rating: ****1/2 Video Rating: ****1/2
Audio Rating: **** D-BOX Rating: ***1/2
‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ is a stop-motion animation film sprung from the creative mind of Tim Burton. The movie tells the tale of Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town. Despite his unparalleled success as the master of all things creepy and frightening, Jack has grown bored with his life and wants something more. After wandering off and discovering the distinctly different and very cheerful village of Christmas Town, Jack becomes inspired and hatches a plan to have Santa Claus kidnapped and sent on vacation. With Santa out of the picture, Jack assumes the job of delivering gifts to the children of the world. However, when his plan backfires, Jack must rescue Santa in order to save Christmas. ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ is a holiday classic for both fans of Halloween and Christmas. It wonderfully blends high technical achievement with an imaginative storyline, captivating music and dark humor. With a generous amount of supplements and significantly improved audio/video compared with the previous home video releases, this Blu-ray DVD of ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ is a must-own.
The high definition video quality of this Blu-ray DVD is excellent. Images are crisp with fine detail. Blacks are consistently dark throughout the movie. Colors are vibrant and robust with fully-saturated hues. Picture defect mastering is commendable with no major flaws or compression artifacts other than some occasional film grain. The overall audio quality is very good on the English Dolby Digital 5.1 track. The soundtrack does an effective job of incorporating all of the discrete channels into its mix. Dialogue is intelligible and firmly rooted in the center channel. The surround channels are moderately utilized for both the sound effects (which include several split rear effects), and Danny Elfman’s fantastic musical score. The low frequency effects channel plays a limited role but is smooth.
‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ is compatible with the “D-BOX” Motion Code™ System, meaning that if you have the necessary D-BOX equipment, your movie viewing experience will be enhanced by adding both motion and vibration to your chosen seating. Approximately half of this movie has motion effects and/or vibration present. Most of the motion effects simulate flying or floating in air as you take in the wonderful scenery of Halloween Town and Christmas Town. My favorite D-BOX motion scene takes place when Jack is flying his sleigh through Christmas Town and delivering ‘presents’ to the children. Jack’s sleigh is shot down out of the sky and I felt the rumble of the ammunition explosions around the sleigh as well as the impact of the sleigh crashing to the ground below. Overall, I would rate the D-BOX motion/vibration quality for ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ as good.
— Calvin Harding, Jr.
