Tim Burton has fashioned nothing particularly new, but he has managed to make a sweet little whimsical fairy tale, with a pretty nifty love story thrown in, too.
It's good to see Burton carrying on the rich tradition of musical cartoons with songs and dances at every turn, as well as carrying on the tradition of stop-motion animation, which pretty much died out when CGI took over. (In a small tribute to one of the most-famous and best-loved stop-motion animators in pictures, Ray Harryhausen, Burton prominently labeled the piano in his film not a Steinway or a Bosendorfer, but a "Harryhausen.") Sure, the whole movie could have been created on computers, but it would probably have cost twice as much to do so and not looked any better.
In "Corpse Bride" Tim Burton has fashioned nothing particularly new, but he has managed to make a sweet little whimsical fairy tale, with a pretty nifty love story thrown in, too. It's hard to find anything wrong with that.
Video:
Most of the film's theatrical-release dimensions of 1.85:1 are again reproduced in the 16x9 HD-DVD transfer, and the reproduction is as good as it gets. As before, I have to caution not to be alarmed by the opening scenes in the land of the living, which are intentionally drained of color, coming up mainly in dull blues and greys. Interestingly, these initial scenes of near black-and-white show off HD's sharpness of detail and delineation even better than most of the later color sequences in the land of the dead, making the contrast between the upstairs and downstairs worlds even more amusing. Where in the standard-definition edition I saw some very small line wavers and a thin veneer of grain, I noticed no such things about the HD version. The fact is, the HD-DVD couldn't be sharper or clearer on my television, the images so crystalline, they are practically three dimensional.
Audio:
I did not find the regular Dolby Digital 5.1 audio on the standard-definition disc in any way spectacular. It ably supported the movie and the music but never drew attention to itself. I did not find a lot of energy in the frequency extremes, bass or treble, either, nor did I hear very much activity in the surrounds. The midbass-to-midtreble range was well-balanced and clean, though, and the dynamics were fine.
So, what's different about the Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 EX audio on the HD-DVD? Compared side-by-side to the regular DD 5.1 track, the DD+ EX is smoother overall, with a better-distributed front-channel spread and more noticeable surround effects. By contrast, the regular DD 5.1 track seems more center-channel heavy and a touch brighter. The new DD+ is a welcome, if not a startlingly huge improvement.
Extras:
Warner Bros. took the extras on the HD-DVD directly from the standard-definition edition, and they are again in 480 resolution, so don't expect anything new here. The bonuses consist primarily of a series of short featurettes that explore various aspects of the filmmaking. The first is "Inside the Two Worlds," four minutes with the filmmakers describing the worlds of the living and the dead in the movie and explaining why the land of the dead needed to be so much more colorful. Next is "Danny Elfman Interprets the Two Worlds," five minutes with the movie's musical composer. Then, there's "The Animators: The Breath of Life," six minutes on the stop-motion animation used in the film. After that are "Tim Burton: Dark vs. Light," three minutes about the director through the eyes of the actors and filmmakers he worked with; "Voices from the Underworld," six more minutes with the actors involved in the production; and "Making Puppets Tick," six minutes that seem a bit redundant after the earlier "Animators" segment, but still fascinating stuff. The featurettes conclude with "The Voices Behind the Voice," seven minutes of scene-by-scene comparisons of the actors performing their voice characterizations next to the finished shots in the film; and "The Corpse Bride Preproduction Galleries," thirteen minutes on developing the design of the assorted puppets involved.
In addition, there is a music-only track in Dolby Digital Plus 5.1, if you ever want to hear some seventy-eight minutes of background music; twenty-four scene selections but no chapter insert; and a widescreen theatrical trailer. The spoken languages and subtitles come in English, French, and Spanish, with English captions for the hearing impaired. As usual, WB also include pop-up menus, a pan-and-zoom feature, an indicator of elapsed time, and a cute, little Elite Red HD case.
Parting Thoughts:
Burton tells us on one of the featurettes that the original idea for "Corpse Bride" was nothing more than a couple of paragraphs, and he developed the story from there. The movie is brief at little more than an hour and a quarter, but it still feels inflated. Sixty minutes might have been a better length, but, then, moviegoers expect more than that. Nonetheless, "Corpse Bride" is one of the better animations of 2005 and reflects the director's typically peculiar sense of humor. It may not add much to what Burton has already given us, but it's not an unpleasant way to idle away a few whimsical moments, and there is no doubt the near-perfect HD-DVD picture and sound are entertaining on the eye and ear.
In "Corpse Bride" Tim Burton has fashioned nothing particularly new, but he has managed to make a sweet little whimsical fairy tale, with a pretty nifty love story thrown in, too. It's hard to find anything wrong with that.
Video:
Most of the film's theatrical-release dimensions of 1.85:1 are again reproduced in the 16x9 HD-DVD transfer, and the reproduction is as good as it gets. As before, I have to caution not to be alarmed by the opening scenes in the land of the living, which are intentionally drained of color, coming up mainly in dull blues and greys. Interestingly, these initial scenes of near black-and-white show off HD's sharpness of detail and delineation even better than most of the later color sequences in the land of the dead, making the contrast between the upstairs and downstairs worlds even more amusing. Where in the standard-definition edition I saw some very small line wavers and a thin veneer of grain, I noticed no such things about the HD version. The fact is, the HD-DVD couldn't be sharper or clearer on my television, the images so crystalline, they are practically three dimensional.
Audio:
I did not find the regular Dolby Digital 5.1 audio on the standard-definition disc in any way spectacular. It ably supported the movie and the music but never drew attention to itself. I did not find a lot of energy in the frequency extremes, bass or treble, either, nor did I hear very much activity in the surrounds. The midbass-to-midtreble range was well-balanced and clean, though, and the dynamics were fine.
So, what's different about the Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 EX audio on the HD-DVD? Compared side-by-side to the regular DD 5.1 track, the DD+ EX is smoother overall, with a better-distributed front-channel spread and more noticeable surround effects. By contrast, the regular DD 5.1 track seems more center-channel heavy and a touch brighter. The new DD+ is a welcome, if not a startlingly huge improvement.
Extras:
Warner Bros. took the extras on the HD-DVD directly from the standard-definition edition, and they are again in 480 resolution, so don't expect anything new here. The bonuses consist primarily of a series of short featurettes that explore various aspects of the filmmaking. The first is "Inside the Two Worlds," four minutes with the filmmakers describing the worlds of the living and the dead in the movie and explaining why the land of the dead needed to be so much more colorful. Next is "Danny Elfman Interprets the Two Worlds," five minutes with the movie's musical composer. Then, there's "The Animators: The Breath of Life," six minutes on the stop-motion animation used in the film. After that are "Tim Burton: Dark vs. Light," three minutes about the director through the eyes of the actors and filmmakers he worked with; "Voices from the Underworld," six more minutes with the actors involved in the production; and "Making Puppets Tick," six minutes that seem a bit redundant after the earlier "Animators" segment, but still fascinating stuff. The featurettes conclude with "The Voices Behind the Voice," seven minutes of scene-by-scene comparisons of the actors performing their voice characterizations next to the finished shots in the film; and "The Corpse Bride Preproduction Galleries," thirteen minutes on developing the design of the assorted puppets involved.
In addition, there is a music-only track in Dolby Digital Plus 5.1, if you ever want to hear some seventy-eight minutes of background music; twenty-four scene selections but no chapter insert; and a widescreen theatrical trailer. The spoken languages and subtitles come in English, French, and Spanish, with English captions for the hearing impaired. As usual, WB also include pop-up menus, a pan-and-zoom feature, an indicator of elapsed time, and a cute, little Elite Red HD case.
Parting Thoughts:
Burton tells us on one of the featurettes that the original idea for "Corpse Bride" was nothing more than a couple of paragraphs, and he developed the story from there. The movie is brief at little more than an hour and a quarter, but it still feels inflated. Sixty minutes might have been a better length, but, then, moviegoers expect more than that. Nonetheless, "Corpse Bride" is one of the better animations of 2005 and reflects the director's typically peculiar sense of humor. It may not add much to what Burton has already given us, but it's not an unpleasant way to idle away a few whimsical moments, and there is no doubt the near-perfect HD-DVD picture and sound are entertaining on the eye and ear.
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