Wednesday, the middle of the week. I havent been out since the start of this week. Just rotting in front of my pc everyday. I have also been catching up on lots of stuff, practising my guitar and reading as well. Not to mention, staying online just to set up this blog. I learnt more HTML today and even got a tag-board for myself. I must say, HTML is really interesting. Haha.

So everyone knows im a big fan of Tim Burton and have been looking forward to Tim Burton's Corpse Bride which is actually opening around here in some cinemas today. But i havent been able to have the chance to catch it today so i guess im gonna have to settle for tomorrow instead. The next big thing. I really cant wait.
I brought over an article from my previous Friendster blog and its a really nice article i came across while randoming visiting online pages one afternoon. I have been so excited about Mr. Tim Burton's new work. I tell you, Corpse Bride is sure gonna be great. Having seen the trailer and heard the sound clips, i thought i might wanna share this article again. Like i said, its a clever insight to what the author thinks of Corpse Bride. Enjoy, and meanwhile check out www.corpsebridemovie.com. :)

Tim Burton's Gorgeous Nightmares.

By David Edelstein

Tim Burton's fetishes are entertainingly consistent. He's just gaga for ghoul chicks. He's probably scared of being consumed by them, too - which must only make them more desirable. He used to photograph his spooky Addams Family ex-girlfriend Lisa Marie [she played Vampira in Ed Wood] covered in spider webs, and he likes to work amid skeletal Day of the Dead figurines. Is there anyone who keeps alive - even cultivates - his adolescent morbidity the way Burton does?

Now he's with another scary dark woman, Helena Bonham Carter [the ghoul of his dreams in Fight Club, I'll bet], and has made her a wedding present of the title vocal part in the stop-motion-animated semi-operetta Tim Burton's Corpse Bride [Warner Bros.].

The movie is so Burtonesque that it verges on self-parody - but it's fun and stunningly beautiful anyway. The co-director is Mike Johnson, who's probably responsible [along with cinematographer Peter Kozachik, designer Alex McDowell, editors Jonathan Lucas and Chris Lebenzon, and an army of stop-motion animators] for how limpid it feels, the smooth camera bringing out everything in those Grand Guignol/Gothic sets and characters.

You get ravens, forests like boneyards, and lair upon sarcophagal lair. The characters are elongated figures with their ping-pong-ball eyes, along with the festering living dead who were so gruesomely endearing in Burton's Beetlejuice. You can tell the villains here because they have grotesque chins, while the hero, heroine, and plaintive corpse bride have little ones upstaged by their huge eyes. What's with the chin thing?

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride is a fairy tale about a snooty, aristocratic family marrying off its sweet but mousy daughter [voiced by Emily Watson] to the bumbling son [Johnny Depp] of a nouveau riche couple. Depp is delightful—and even more delightful is the manner in which the animators have captured the gung-ho way that he throws himself into a role. You can see him in this character.

The Corpse Bride, dead of heartbreak after being abandoned by her fiancé, rises from the ground when the young man practices his wedding vows on a dead tree—whereupon he finds himself betrothed to her. She's a lovely corpse with pursed, pink, kissable lips, but there is that maggot with the voice of Peter Lorre in her eye socket and the hole in her cheek that exposes her upper molars. Anyway, she's dead, and the hero loves a live one.

The film is a mite poky even at its 75 minutes, but that might be a comment on the video-game pacing of so much modern animation. Corpse Bride unfolds more like a light opera. Danny Elfman's songs recall Gilbert and Sullivan, [Mr. Oompah] Lionel Bart, and even Kurt Weill, while the score is his own "Danse Macabre." I'd like to hear the music a few more times: It's lush and hammy, and magnificently orchestrated, but maybe a tad short on good tunes.

The voices are a joy, especially Joanna Lumley as the ogreish aristocrat matriarch, Richard E. Grant as a scheming fortune hunter, and hoary Christopher Lee—booming and rolling his r's as the irritable local pastor. The final image is maybe the most gorgeous and lyrical I've seen in an American animated film. Will the kiddies go for it? I'm not sure, but the Burtonish adolescents will. The movie asks: "Can the living marry the dead?" If they could, Burton would be deep underground with all the dancing skeletons.

David Edelstein is Slate's film critic. You can read his reviews in "Reel Time" and in "Movies." He can be contacted at slatemovies@slate.com.

Still © 2005 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.