No Bones About It

Saw Corpse Bride tonight. If you're a fan of Tim Burton's macabre style and you liked Nightmare Before Christmas (tho, in full disclosure, I never saw it), then this movie's right up your alley. The animation — stop-motion, as opposed to CGI — is cool, the songs are fun, voice work is good, and it's real short, too (about 80 minutes). In particular, I really liked how the land of the living was a dull, drab black and white, but the land of the dead was full of color and (ahem) life. I give the film a B+.

Outside the auditorium, there were these little two-sided, newsletter-style booklets. One side had "Land of the Dead" and the other said "Land of the Living." Essentially, one half was about — well, you can probably figure it out. But what was particularly funny was that in the "Living" section, there was an obituary for the "recently departed" and in the "Dead" section, there was an announcement of the "recently arrived." And in the middle of the two sections were the lyrics to the "Corpse Bride" song that is the showstopping number of the movie. Good stuff.

Anyway, Corpse Bride opens next week (Sept. 23). Go see it.