Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas Blu-ray Review

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas

Blu-ray Review
Disney Studios Home Entertainment
Released: August 26, 2008

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas has finally received a release on the Blu-ray format from Disney, and wow is it impressive!

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas tells the story of a figure named Jack Skellington, voiced by Chris Sarandon and Danny Elfman.

The character Jack lives in a town called Halloween Town, which is a very imaginative place to say the least once you see it with your own two eyes. One day, he wanders off to discover a door to a place known as Christmas Town, and the story begins.

Jack gathers up a group of people from Halloween Town, with hopes of changing things. He wants to kidnap Santa Claus, and deliver presents to everyone around the world. Things do not go as planned though, as Jack runs into problems with the villain, Oogie Boogie, and many others.

The cast, including voice talents such as Ken Page, Catherine O’Hara, Paul Reubens, and others do a great job throughout.

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas is a fantastic film for kids and adults, and is not one to miss.

The video quality for this release is top-notch, presented in 1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a BD-50. The way in which the film was done was with stop motion animation, and has managed to transfer over well to Blu-ray.

The film quality is top-notch with extremely rich and vibrant colors, as well as great black levels throughout. The differences between Halloween Town and Christmas Town are highly-noticeable the first time you see the two. You are going to be very impressed as this is a must-see on the Blu-ray format. Everything pops off the screen in a stellar restoration.

The audio is presented in Dolby TrueHD 7.1, as well as Dolby Digital 5.1 The dialogue here takes center stage throughout, as it resides on the center channel and is perfest throughout. The musical aspects of the film do a great job of using the surround channels to truly engross you in everything going on. The audio mix is dynamic, and is clearly something you could use to demo your home theater, awesome!

Disney has gone all out with the extras for this Blu-ray release, as there is a ton of stuff here!

To start things off, you get a Disney File, or a digital copy of the film that can be used on portable devices. This comes in a extra DVD disc and adds a lot of value!

Beyond that, you get a Blu-ray exclusive introduction from Tim Burton himself, as well as a a feature called “What’s This? Jack’s Haunted Mansion Holiday Tour. This is presented in HD, and allows you to look at the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland in a whole new way.

Moving forward, you also get the original Tim Burton poem that inspired ita ll, narrated by Christopher Lee.

For those who love audio commentaries, you get an all new one from producer and writer Tim Burton, director Henry Selick, and composer Danny Elfman.

There are some other minor features which I will talk about briefly before moving on as well. These include deleted storyboards, animated sequences, as well as comparisons from how things went from the storyboard, to the film.

Other minor included things are the Tim Burton short film Vincent, as well as the original theatrical posters.

Ok, now that we have gotten that out of the way, back to the juicy stuff.

You get some nice lengthy features here, starting with a 25-minute making-of feature which shows how the stop motion animated movie was made.

There is also a 45-minute feature which lets you see how the world of The Nightmare Before Christmas was made, and the imagination that went into it.

A uncut version of the 1984 short-film Tim Burton did for Disney, Frankenwenni, is also included and runs for 30-minutes.

Needless to say, Disney has gone over the top with Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas on Blu-ray. The film is stellar, the audio and video quality are perfect, and the extras will blow you away. Stop reading, and go buy this Blu-ray now! A must-own!

Film: 9.2 A fantastic imaginative film for all ages!

Video: 9.5 The video transfer looks absolutely incredible, a great restoration job by Disney!

Audio: 10 Nothing wrong with the audio mix at all, demo quality!

Extras: 10 The included digital copy, as well as the load of extras will keep you occupied for hours!

Final Score: 9.8

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