BOONE, NC – The final screening on the wildly-popular Cinema Classic Halloween Film Series at the Appalachian Theatre of the High Country is Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” on Sunday, October 30. Audience members are strongly encouraged to come to the App Theatre in Halloween costume. This special showing starts at 2 p.m. in the afternoon with a general admission ticket price of just $5 per person.
“The Nightmare Before Christmas” is a 1993 American stop-motion animated musical dark fantasy film directed by Henry Selick (in his feature directorial debut) and produced and conceived by Tim Burton. Danny Elfman wrote the songs and score and provided the singing voice of Jack. The principal voice cast also includes Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, William Hickey, Ken Page, Paul Reubens, Glenn Shadix, and Ed Ivory.
The film originated as a poem written by Burton in 1982 while he was working as an animator at Walt Disney Productions. With the success of “Vincent” in the same year, Burton began to consider developing “The Nightmare Before Christmas” as either a short film or a half-hour television special… to no avail. Over the years, Burton’s thoughts regularly returned to the project and in 1990, he made a development deal with Walt Disney Studios. Production started in July 1991 in San Francisco; Disney initially released the film through Touchstone Pictures because the studio believed the film would be “too dark and scary for kids.”
Halloween Town is a fantasy world populated by various monsters and beings associated with the holiday. Jack Skellington, respected by the citizens as the “Pumpkin King,” leads them in organizing the annual Halloween celebrations. However, this year, Jack has grown tired of the same annual routine and wants something new. Wandering in the woods the next morning, he encounters six trees containing doors leading to other holiday-themed worlds and stumbles into the one leading to Christmas Town.
Awed by the unfamiliar holiday, Jack returns home to show his friends and neighbors his findings, but unaware of the idea of Christmas, they compare everything to their ideas of Halloween. However, they do relate to one Christmas Town character: its ruler, Santa Claus, or “Sandy Claws” as Jack mistakenly calls him. Jack sequesters himself in his house to study Christmas further and find a way to rationally explain it. After studying and experimentation accomplish nothing, Jack ultimately decides that Christmas should be improved rather than understood and announces that Halloween Town will take over Christmas this year.
“The Nightmare Before Christmas” met with both critical and commercial success, earning praise for its animation (particularly the innovation of the stop-motion art form), characters, songs, and score. It has grossed $91.5 million worldwide since its initial release and garnered a cult following. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, a first for an animated film, but lost to “Jurassic Park.” The film has since been reissued by Walt Disney Pictures and was re-released annually in Disney Digital 3-D from 2006 until 2010.
Sponsored by Lost Province Brewing Company, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and the other selections on the Cinema Classic Halloween Film Series were chosen from hundreds of suggestions made by audience members and the general public. The film runs one hour and 16 minutes in duration. PLEASE NOTE that films @TheApp are shown without trailers, so please arrive a few minutes before the listed start time to secure tickets and purchase concessions.
While the App Theatre’s online ticketing system is accessible 24/7, customers can avoid the online service fees by visiting the lobby box office between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. from Tuesday through Friday, or one hour prior to showtime for each film. For a complete performance schedule of all upcoming events, or to sign up for the theatre’s e-blast distribution list, visit the organization’s website at www.apptheatre.org
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