The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Nightmare Revisited

A couple of years ago, Disney released a new soundtrack to The Nightmare Before Christmas. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed in the 2006 Nightmare Before Christmas re-release. At the time, I felt the key selling point to that cd was the five songs that Marilyn Manson, Fall Out Boy, Fiona Apple, She Wants Revenge and Panic! At The Disco covered. Of those, the She Wants Revenge track was almost unlistenable and the Panic! At The Disco track as merely ok. What I really wished they had done was a whole album of remakes. The five songs was pretty cool and the Danny Elfman demo tracks were nice but really, only a die hard fan was going to find those interesting.

Which brings us to the just released Nightmare Revisited. Billed as "performances inspired by Danny Elfman's music from The Nightmare Before Christmas", the disc consists of 20 total tracks, two of which are the original opening and closing monologues to the film as done by Elfman and one duplicate song from the 2006 release, (Manson's This Is Halloween). For those of you with bad math skill's, that amounts to 17 new tracks.
I'll cut right to the chase. If you are a Nightmare fan, this collection is awesome and I highly recommend it. Even if you aren't a Nightmare fan, I still recommend it.Some really good music is here and a few real gems!

The Good: Marilyn Manson doing This Is Halloween, Korn's version of Kidnap The Sandy Claws and Shiny Toy Guns doing the Finale/Reprise are a few of my favorites. Like a good remake should, these and most of the new versions on this album retain the feeling of the original but add a little something new to the mix as well. Many times a remake will either push to far, sounding so different from the source material that it becomes un-listenable. Either that or it stays so close to the original that you think, "Why did you even bother. I'll just listen to the original."

Much like the 2006 release, Sally's Song is the standout on this disc. Amy Lee, of the band Evanescence, pours so much emotion into the song that it's almost heartbreaking. The music arrangement is outstanding, again, adding so much to the song without making it unrecognizable.

Danny Elfman reciting the original Closing monologue gives us a glimpse into what the future might have held for Jack and Sally along with a friendship between Jack and Santa.

Finally, the packaging. It's simple but very well done. The case features pictures of Jack, Sally, Zero and Lock, Shock and Barrel. The artwork isn't credited but I believe they are all production sketches by Tim Burton. If they aren't, they are at least done in the Tim Burton style.

The Bad: While I enjoyed the disc overall, there are a few tunes that took a while before I could appreciate them. Among those were the Overture by DeVotchKa, (something about polka and Nightmare Before Christmas doesn't seem to want to fit in my brain and yet upon repeated listens, it totally works for me now.) and Jack's Obsession done by Sparkelhorse, (It's a bit too whiny).

I really love the Marilyn Manson This is Halloween but I also really hate that this was a re-release from the 2006 album. I wish they would have given somebody else a crack at the song. Thankfully, this is the only song repeated from 2006 and you won't have to endure repeated listenings of She Wants Revenge doing a horrible version of Kidnap The Sandy Claws.

If you are an iTunes person, there is a bonus song by Tiger Army when you download the album. They do Oogie Boogie's Song. How is it? I wish I could tell you. I didn't find out about the bonus song till after I bought the cd. Grrrrr!
(Update. You can now download the song on it's own but it still peeves me that even if I downloaded the song I will always feel like my cd is incomplete. Damn my collectors sensibilities! DAMN YOU TO HELL!!!)

The song that upsets me most is Flyleaf doing What's This?. It isn't that they do a horrible version of the song. It's actually ok. My problem is the tone of the song. What should be the most joyous song on the album is reduced to a somewhat mournful sounding song. I appreciate the artistic choice the band made in trying to do something different but I just don't think it works. Part of the problem is the original is SO perfect in it's enthusiasm that any deviation from that energy it is going to come up lacking. Fall Out Boy did the 2006 version of the song and while I don't think that version is spectacular, it at least tried to capture the wonder and awe of discovering Christmas for the first time. Lacey Mosley, Flyleaf's lead singer, almost sounds bored in Flyleaf's rendition. "What's this? Oh. Christmas. *yawn*"

The Ugly: Rjd2's Christmas Eve Montage and Datarock doing To The Rescue. Remember Meco's Star Wars from the 70's? That's what these electronica version's remind me of.
*shudder*
(Don't even try and convince me that Meco Star Wars was good in a kitchy kind of way. It's a perfect example of why disco has a bad name)

The Bottom Line: It's good stuff. I recommend buying it from Amazon or downloading from iTunes.

Yikes! Still more Halloween at Disney pictures!

I was chastised for not actually putting any of the Disney Halloween Party photos up, so here they are.

The whole clan on Paradise Pier


Jenna and the Princesses


A cool pumpkin Mickey light


The kids show no fear of what happens to candy pirates!


Cinderella's evil step mother and step sisters


Not actually a picture from the party but a favorite.

More Disneyland Halloween

Continuing from yesterday's post, here is some more from my trip to Disneyland.


Woody's Roundup in Adventureland became Woody's Halloween Roundup. It was pretty cool. They had a guy there that was carving pumpkins that were pretty amazing. The day after I took the Sally picture, he had done a Jack Skellington that was really neat.
In all the years I've been going to Disneyland, I don't remember them ever having a petting zoo and with all that Disneyland has to offer, you would think the kids would find a petting zoo pretty lame but they LOVED it! Since it isn't something that Disney usually does, I thought it was kinda neat also.





Anthony just started potty training before we left and we were a bit concerned that he would balk at having to use a "strange" toilet. No such problem. I can't wait till he's dating and I can bring this one out. "Oh, isn't that sweet! Anthony, remember when you took a dump at Disneyland?"



They had a neat Día de los Muertos set up near Big Thunder Mountain. They did free facepainting for the kids. Anything free at Disneyland is worth noting!




The entryway for California Adventures became Candy Corn Acres and at various points in the day, Farmer Mickey and Farmer Minnie would come out for pictures.





Strangely, Anthony had no problems taking a picture with Jack Sparrow but would not go on Pirates of the Caribbean nor would he dress as a pirate for Halloween, which is what he had picked to be!



Finally, a picture of me with Anthony and his namesake, who's 40th we were there to celebrate.



Just some various pictures. (Yes, I was thinking the same thing about good ole' Tink. ;-)


I have tons of other pictures but really, I'm amazed you slogged through all these! I hope everyone had a great Halloween. We certainly did.

Halloween at Disneyland!

The family and I went to California last week to help celebrate the 40th of one of my oldest and dearest friends The party was held at Disneyland but, of course, we didn't tell the kids that was where we were going! I love torturing my kids! :)
The ride from the airport to the hotel was not the most exciting trip in the world:


But then Jenna saw the signs for Disneyland:



Disneyland was great. It was decked out in Halloween stuff, (well, as deck out as Disneyland could be for a holiday like Halloween). Here are some pictures.




The weather was beautiful if not a bit on the hot side. The kids got a little soaked in Flick's Fun Park:



All the rides were great but my favorite has always been The Haunted Mansion. I got to see it done up with The Nightmare Before Christmas treatment last year and this year it was just as fun:



More pictures tomorrow.

"The Force Unleashed" indeed!

The Emperor commands that you caption this photo!

The Greatest Green Lantern of them all! Wait. What? .... oh. Nevermind.

I stole this from Random Happenstance. You'll never read Kingdom Come in the same light again!

It's a man, baby!

I'm not a big fan of "reality" television. As a matter of fact, I downright hate it. But I am all for anything that helps promote tolerance and so I applaud the decision by America's Top Model to include a trans gender woman as one of the contestants. And for those that think a "he/she" hasn't got a chance with "real" women, I challenge you to pick her out.

Top row, from left to right: Nikeysha, Sheena. 2nd row: Marjorie, McKey. 3rd row: Samantha, ShaRaun, 4th row: Hannah, Isis, 5th row: Joslyn, Lauren, 6th row: Annaleigh, Clark, 7th row: Elina, Brittany.











































































Now, don't cheat and look it up on the net! See if you can figure it out and post here. I'll post who it is tomorrow. For the record, I did not choose the right woman.