By Todd Garbarini

Frankenweenie (2012) is an animated big-screen expansion of Tim Burton's own 1984 live-action short film of the same name and utilizes the Frankenstein monster tale by Mary Shelley to tell a clever and ultimately moving story about a young boy, Victor Frankenstein, and how he copes with the loss of his beloved dog. This is a universal scenario that every child who grows up with a pet must face at some point. I have only seen a handful of films tackle this subject, and Don Coscarelli’s 1975 outing Kenny and Company is notable for its depiction of a young boy who must take his dog to the vet to be put to sleep.

Victor loves making 16mm movies with his dog, Sparky, in his hometown of New Holland, which is constructed to look like Everytown, USA. Sparky stars as the “Sparkysaurus.” After all, what young boy doesn't love dinosaurs? Mixing footage of Sparky with self-made animation, Victor's movie illustrates an imagination no doubt inspired by The Twilight Zone and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953). Victor, obviously an alter-ego for director Burton, is an awkward child who keeps a low profile from his classmates and his neighbor Mr. Burgermeister (a nice nod to Rankin and Bass) who brandishes a hedge clipper. During a baseball game, Victor hits a home run, but Sparky chases the ball into the street and is killed by a car. Devastated, Victor mopes through school until his science teacher, Mr. Rzykruski, a grotesque caricature of a man, shows the class how to use electricity to move a dead frog’s legs. Experiencing a “Eureka!” moment, Victor is filled with a new sense of purpose, and converts his parent’s attic into a makeshift laboratory. Following his teacher’s instructions, he reanimates Sparky with the help of lightning.

Victor does his best to keep Sparky’s reemergence a secret. A creepy, overzealous kid from the neighborhood, Edgar, wants to know how Victor did it. Word gets out about Sparky, and other children competing for a science project attempt similar experiments until things get out of control: a rat becomes a crazed monster; a turtle is made enormous and stomps among a town square carnival like a mixture of Godzilla and Gamera; sea monkeys run amok through the streets; a cute, next-door poodle who fancies Sparky is made to resemble Elsa Lanchester. (There are some cute inside jokes here: the name "Shelley" appears on a tombstone and Bambi is displayed on a local theatre marquee, perhaps as much a nod to the classic short film Bambi Meets Godzilla as it is an homage to the Disney film.) The climax is a loving homage to James Whale’s 1931 classic that started it all and fueled nightmares for years to come.

Thematically, Frankenweenie shares many similarities to Henry Selick's 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas (produced by Burton) in that a protagonist compelled to do a good deed ends up making a mess of things. Most of the characters, particularly the children, have predominantly large eyes, as if they stepped out of a Margaret Keane painting (it’s no wonder that she is the subject of the director’s next film, due for release later this year).

Filmed on Canon EOS 5D Mark II single lens reflux cameras and printed in black and white, Frankenweenie looks lovely and is easily one of the year’s best films. It should win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It would be nice to see black and white return to the screen as an art form as it truly looks beautiful. Danny Elfman provides yet another memorable score to a Tim Burton film.

There are a few nice extras included on the Blu-ray disc:

• · We get a short film starring Sparky called Captain Sparky vs. the Flying Saucers, the in-movie that appears at the start of the film and runs roughly two and a-half-minutes in length (no relation to Siskel and Ebert’s Sparky the Wonder Dog of PBS’s Sneak Previews from the early 1980s.).

• · Miniatures in Motion: Bringing Frankenweenie to Life is an excellent behind-the-scenes documentary featurette that runs about 23 minutes (I wish it was longer) and takes us to the massive 60,000 foot soundstage in London where the film was shot and contains comments from the many animators who worked on the individual scenes – they all averaged about two minutes per week of screen time! What is truly extraordinary about this piece is seeing the astonishing level of detail and attention that is made to even the smallest of items. You get a new appreciation of the film and all the hard work that went into making it. Absolutely nothing in this movie has been computer-generated. It was all designed, built, and manufactured for the film.

• · The Frankenweenie Touring Exhibit is enough to make one jealous if you don’t live in one of the cities that it comes to.

• · A music video

• · Tim Burton's original 1984 featurette, Frankenweenie, upon which this film is based. This wonderful live-action film was financed by Disney and the producers were reportedly shocked at how frightening it would be for children, so much so that they fired Burton and shelved the project. It runs 30 minutes and stars Barret Oliver (The Neverending Story) as Victor, the young son of Ben and Susan (Daniel Stern and Shelley Duvall). Sofia Coppola, inexplicably using the name Domino, appears as a friend of Victor’s.

It would have been nice to have a running commentary with Tim Burton or from the animators as I love commentaries and eagerly listen to them whenever they appear as extras. However, this is a minor quibble. The film looks absolutely amazing on Blu-ray and is a worthy addition to your collection.

Click here to order order 4 disc deluxe edition with DVD and digital copies included. 

By Todd Garbarini

It's hard to believe that Pixar Animation Studios’ Finding Nemo, which was released on Friday, May 30, 2003, is now ten years-old. One of the most popular animated films of all time, Finding Nemo is a delightful excursion into the world of undersea life with plenty of colorful characters to go around. Employing the voice talents of some of Hollywood's best-known and most respected performers, Finding Nemo aims to not only entertain us but educate us, as well. It succeeds extraordinarily well in doing both.

Despite the years of science that I've accumulated under my belt by way of elementary, intermediate, and high school, I must plead ignorance and admit to never having heard of a clownfish (scientifically known as Amphiprion ocellaris) prior to Finding Nemo. Director Andrew Stanton reportedly saw these water dwellers in an aquarium in Florida and their vibrant look helped provide inspiration for the film. The aptly-named Marlin and Coral are two such fish, parents just starting a family. Unfortunately, a barracuda attack leaves Marlin alone except for one remaining fish egg out of roughly one hundred which he decides to name Nemo, a name that his wife Coral liked prior to her untimely demise. As a result of this attack, Nemo suffers from a malformed right fin, making him the runt of the litter, so to speak. Due to this perceived limitation, Marlin becomes just a tad overprotective and overbearing and follows Nemo wherever he goes, looking out for him. When Nemo goes off to school to learn the ways of underwater sea life, his father finds it very difficult to let him go off on his own. This frustration leads Nemo to rush off into unchartered waters where he is swooped up by humans, possibly to never see his father again. Marlin sets out to rescue him, and is befriended by Dory, a well-intentioned regal blue tang who suffers from short-term memory loss. They join forces to locate Nemo after a clue that reveals he is in Sydney, Australia. Along the way they encounter some crazy characters, such as a shark who is swearing off eating fish; a group of jellyfish; a group of sea turtles caught up in the East Australian Current; and a pelican who is trying to help Nemo. Added to this mix are a few human characters, specifically a dentist whose fish tank is home to a motley crew of sea life all trying to help Nemo (who is now a prisoner in the tank) get home. One of his patients is his niece, Darla, a pre-prepubescent nightmare sporting metal braces and is the film’s answer to Toy Story’s Sid, the kid down the block who loves to destroy toys.

The film is beautifully animated. Pixar has certainly come a long way from its early days; more money, of course, means better technology and the underwater world of Finding Nemo really comes to life here in a way that 1989’s The Little Mermaid only hinted at. The nuances in the plant life are exquisite, and the banter between the characters is laugh-out-loud funny. The underrated Albert Brooks, whom I liked so much in Taxi Driver (1976), Broadcast News (1987), and Drive (2011), voices Marlin with a fatherly exuberance and concern. Ellen DeGeneres is his equal as Dory, the forgetful fish. Also on hand are Willem Dafoe, Allison Janney, Austin Pendleton, Geoffrey Rush, and Elizabeth Perkins. In the same way that Jaws (1975) made oceanographers and marine biologists out of wide-eyed children in the audience fascinated by the Carcharodon carcharias, Finding Nemo his more than likely inspired more than a few future Jacques Cousteaus.

As to be expected, the Blu-ray is a revelation, and Finding Nemo has never looked better on home video. There is a clarity, sharpness and depth that truly amazing to see. The film comes in two flavors on disc: a three-disc set and a five-disc set (this contains a 3D version of the film). The first Blu-ray disc extras contains the following extras in high definition: a cute, three and-a-half minute short from 1989 called Knick Knack; a five-minute loop called “Aquarium” that allows you to run continuously on the monitor; “CineExplore,” a feature that allows you to view the complete film while hearing comments from the filmmakers with superimposed storyboards on the screen; “Finding Nemo: A Roundtable Discussion” is a seventeen-minute discussion among the filmmakers reminiscing ten years after the film’s release; “Reinventing the Submarine Voyage” at Disneyland, runs roughly fifteen minutes and looks at the underwater sea rides; alternate opening (three minutes); and “A Lesson in Flashbacks” which runs eight minutes wherein the director recalls how the film was originally conceived. The second Blu-ray contains the following extras all ported over from the original 2004 DVD release, which are all in standard definition with the exception of “Aquariums” and “Art Review” (an eight-minute discussion of concept design); “Making Nemo” is a 25-minute documentary on the making of the film; “Exploring the Reef” is exactly what the title entails; “Studio Tour” which takes the audience behind the doors of Pixar for five minutes; several outtakes, deleted scenes, and publicity pieces; and “Mr. Ray’s Enclyclopedia.”

It is interesting to note that Pixar was more focused on The Incredibles (2004) during the making Finding Nemo, believing that the former would be the huge hit and the latter would do minimal business. Universal Pictures did the same thing in 1974 when they were making The Hindenburg and gave the green light to Jaws, thinking that the star-studded disaster film by Robert Wise Allen would be the box office champ while the film about a Great White Shark was their “little picture.”

Finding Nemo is a big picture of the little clownfish that could.

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