Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: Was Nightmare Before Christmas clay animation?
The film initially received positive reviews from critics; it has since gone on to receive widespread critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 95%, based on 88 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The site's consensus reads, ""The Nightmare Before Christmas" is a stunningly original and visually delightful work of stop-motion animation." On Metacritic the film has a score of 82 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
According to Clive Barker, as the writing of the "Hellraiser" script took place during the height of the "A Nightmare on Elm Street", "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween" film series, his intended portrayal of Pinhead as an articulate and intelligent character was initially not well received by the producers: some suggested that Pinhead should act more like Freddy Krueger and crack jokes, while others suggested that he be a silent character like Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers. Barker insisted that Pinhead's personality be more evocative of Christopher Lee's portrayal of Count Dracula: "Part of the chill of Dracula surely lies in the fact that he is very clearly and articulately aware of what he is doing – you feel that this is a penetrating intelligence – and I don't find dumb things terribly scary – I find intelligence scary, particularly twisted intelligence; it's one of the reasons why Hannibal Lecter is scary, isn't it? It's because you always feel that he's going to be three jumps ahead of you."
Teaming up with producer Steven Spielberg, Bluth's next project was "An American Tail" (1986), which at the time of its release became the highest grossing non-Disney animated film of all time, grossing $45 million in the United States and over $84 million worldwide. The second Spielberg-Bluth collaboration "The Land Before Time" (1988) did even better in theaters and both found a successful life on home video. The main character in "An American Tail" (Fievel Mouskewitz) became the mascot for Amblimation while "The Land Before Time" was followed by thirteen direct-to-video sequels.
The Secret of NIMH is a 1982 American animated dark fantasy adventure film directed by Don Bluth in his directorial debut. It is an adaptation of Robert C. O'Brien's 1971 children's novel "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH". The film was produced by Aurora Productions and released by MGM/UA Entertainment Company for United Artists and features the voices of Elizabeth Hartman, Dom DeLuise, Arthur Malet, Derek Jacobi, Hermione Baddeley, John Carradine, Peter Strauss, and Paul Shenar. The "Mrs. Frisby" name in the novel had to be changed to "Mrs. Brisby" during production due to trademark concerns with Frisbee discs. It was followed in 1998 by a direct-to-video sequel called "", which was made without Bluth's involvement or input. In 2015, a CGI/live action remake was reported to be in the works.
After the completion of "Banjo", the studio moved out of Bluth's house and into a two-story facility in nearby Studio City. The studio's first commission was to produce a two-minute animated sequence for the song “Don't Walk Away” in the live-action musical "Xanadu". The brief sequence might ordinarily have taken four or five months to produce; Bluth's studio completed it in under three. The studio then started work on its first feature film, an adaptation of the Newbery Medal-winning children's book "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH". Backed by Aurora Productions, "The Secret of NIMH" started production in 1980 and was completed in 1982. Though generally well received by critics, who praised the richness and fluidity of the animation, some found the narrative unsatisfying. "The Secret of NIMH" returned only a modest box office performance, which was blamed on distributor MGM/UA's poor promotion, regionally staggered releases and competition from "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial", which had been released the previous month (which most likely brought "NIMH" nearly into obscurity). Between this and an industry-wide animators strike in 1982, the studio found itself in financial trouble and filed for bankruptcy.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is a 1987 American slasher film directed by Chuck Russell. The story was developed by Wes Craven and Bruce Wagner. It is the third installment in the "Nightmare on Elm Street" series and stars Heather Langenkamp, Patricia Arquette, Larry Fishburne, Priscilla Pointer, Craig Wasson, and Robert Englund. The plot centers around the antagonist, Freddy Krueger, who seeks to murder the remaining children of the parents who burned him to death. The kids are committed to a mental hospital where Nancy Thompson, whose parents helped to kill Krueger, works. Freddy does not know that Nancy is training the kids to control their dreams in order to fight him. The film was followed by another sequel, "", a year later.
In 1983, Nolan Bushnell founded a new computer-guided animation studio called Kadabrascope as a subsidiary of his Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatres company (PTT), which was founded in 1977. Only one major project was made out of the new studio, an animated Christmas movie for NBC starring Chuck E. Cheese and other PTT mascots. The animation movement would be made using tweening instead of traditional cel animation. After the North American Video Game Crash of 1983, Bushnell started selling some subsidiaries of PTT to keep the business afloat. Sente Technologies (another division, was founded to have games distributed in PTT stores) was sold to Bally Games and Kadabrascope was sold to Lucasfilm. The Kadabrascope assets were combined with the Computer Division of Lucasfilm. Coincidentally, one of Steve Jobs' first jobs was under Bushnell in 1973 as a technician at his other company Atari, which Bushnell sold to Warner Communications in 1976 to focus on PTT. PTT would later go bankrupt in 1985 and be acquired by ShowBiz Pizza Place.
The basis for the original "Nightmare on Elm Street" has been said to have been inspired by several newspaper articles printed in the "LA Times" in the 1970s on a group of Khmer refugees, who, after fleeing to America from the Khmer Rouge Genocide in Cambodia, were suffering disturbing nightmares after which they refused to sleep. Some of the men died in their sleep soon after. Medical authorities called the phenomenon "Asian Death Syndrome". The condition itself afflicted only men between the ages of 19-57 and is believed to be sudden unexplained death syndrome and/or Brugada syndrome. The 1970s pop song "Dream Weaver" by Gary Wright sealed the story for Craven, giving him not only an artistic setting to "jump off" from, but a synthesizer riff from the "Elm Street" soundtrack as well. It has also been stated that he drew some inspiration after studying eastern religions.
Pixar () is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio is best known for its CGI-animated feature films created with PhotoRealistic RenderMan, its own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface used to generate high-quality images. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the computer division of Lucasfilm before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986 with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became its majority shareholder. Pixar and Disney had a seven feature agreement that allowed Disney to distribute the films with Disney owing the character rights. With the success of "Toy Story 2" in 1999, then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs began to disagree on how Pixar should be run and the terms of their continued relationship. Eisner claimed that Toy Story 2 would not count towards the "original" film count of the agreement. Jobs announced in January 2004 that Pixar would not renew their agreement with Disney and would seek out other distributors for releases starting in 2006. In 2004, Disney Circle 7 Animation was formed as a CG animation studio to create sequels to the Disney-owned Pixar properties. In Late January 2006, new Disney CEO Bob Iger and Jobs agreed to have Disney purchase Pixar which led to Disney closing Circle 7.
"A Boy and His Blob" was officially licensed by Nintendo in the summer of 1989. Though standard NES games took six to eight months to develop, Imagineering completed "A Boy and His Blob" in a mere six weeks. Crane himself rented a room in a flophouse near his office and put in several 16- to 20-hour days of the work on the project. After going without sleep for 48 hours in its last two days of earnest development, Crane flew to the CES in Chicago for trade demonstrations, then spent nights at his hotel fixing bugs. The game was released just prior to Christmas in 1989 as Absolute's first game on the NES. Crane recalled the development process for Absolute's early games to be enjoyable, but explained that "under the rule of Nintendo, the publishing side of the game business was really tough", emphasizing how frequently game publishers went out of business in those years. The team was originally in talks with a writer-producer of the "Transformers" animated features to simultaneously launch the "A Boy and His Blob" video game with a tie-in toy and a film. However, the plans never came to fruition due to deadlines and difficulty in dividing production resources three ways between a game, toy, and movie. When "A Boy and His Blob" was released in Japan by Jaleco in November 1990, it was retitled .
The script for "Scream" (1996), then known as "Scary Movie" was released for sale on a Friday and by 8 a.m. the following Monday had become involved in a significant bidding war from several studios, including Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures and Morgan Creek, with producer Cathy Konrad bringing it to the attention of Bob Weinstein. The bidding eventually rose to an amount that the choice ultimately came down to Oliver Stone, who was at the time working with Cinergi Pictures, and Weinstein under Miramax. Williamson agreed to terms with Miramax for $400,000 plus a contract for two sequels and a third, unrelated film, believing their label, Dimension Films, would produce "Scream" immediately and without significant restriction. Wes Craven was approached early on to helm the film but he was occupied with remaking "The Haunting" and so other directors including Robert Rodriguez, Danny Boyle, George Romero and Sam Raimi were approached. Concerns were raised by Williamson and Weinstein when many of the approached directors, having read the script, believed the film to be a comedy, making them reluctant to hire those particular directors, believing they "didn't get it". Craven was approached and passed on the film several times, wanting to move away from the genre, but was enticed once Drew Barrymore became involved, reasoning that it may be different from his previous works if an actress of her recognition was involved. Ultimately the production of "The Haunting", at that time, fell through and Craven was able to take over directing duties on the film. Close to the end of the film's production, the Weinstein brothers had the film's title changed from "Scary Movie" to "Scream" inspired by the Michael Jackson song of the same name as Bob Weinstein felt "Scary Movie" was not suitable when the film also contained elements of satire and comedy. The change was immediately disliked by both Williamson and Craven who considered it "stupid" but would later remark that it was a positive change.
Donald Virgil Bluth (; born September 13, 1937) is an American animator, film director, producer, writer, production designer, video game designer, and animation instructor. He is known for directing animated films, including "The Secret of NIMH" (1982), "An American Tail" (1986), "The Land Before Time" (1988), "All Dogs Go to Heaven" (1989), and "Anastasia" (1997), and for his involvement in the LaserDisc game "Dragon's Lair" (1983). He is also known for competing with former employer Walt Disney Productions during the years leading up to the films that would make up the Disney Renaissance. He is the older brother of illustrator Toby Bluth.
Kleiser directed several television movies in the mid-1970s, including 1975's "" and 1976's "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble", which starred John Travolta. Kleiser was then tapped to direct his first feature film, the 1978 film "Grease", in large part because of Travolta's recommendation based on their work together on "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble". Kleiser would go on to direct several more feature films, including "The Blue Lagoon" (1980) with Brooke Shields, "Summer Lovers" (1982) with Daryl Hannah, "Grandview, U.S.A." (1984) with Jamie Lee Curtis, "Flight of the Navigator" (1986), featuring the first use of digital morphing in a film, "Big Top Pee-wee" (1988), "White Fang" (1991) and "Honey, I Blew Up the Kid" (1992).
"Clannad" is a visual novel developed by Key and published by VisualArt's in 2004. The story follows Tomoya Okazaki, a discontented high school student whose life changes when he meets a girl one year older than him named Nagisa Furukawa. It was adapted by Toei Animation into an animated film in 2007 directed by Osamu Dezaki with music direction by Yoshichika Inomata. Kyoto Animation also adapted it into two anime television series consisting of 49 episodes broadcast between 2007 and 2009, including two original video animation episodes released in 2008 and 2009, directed by Tatsuya Ishihara with music direction by Shinji Orito. The discography of "Clannad" and its anime adaptations consists of two studio albums, four singles, two soundtracks, and four remix albums.
Prior to creating "Nausicaä", Miyazaki had worked as an animator for Toei Animation and Tokyo Movie Shinsha (TMS), the latter for whom he had directed his feature film debut, "Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro" (1979). After working on an aborted adaptation of Richard Corben's "Rowlf" for TMS and the publishing firm Tokuma Shoten, he agreed to create a manga series for Tokuma's monthly magazine "Animage", initially on the condition that it would not be adapted into a film. "Nausicaä" was influenced by the Japanese folk tale "The Princess who Loved Insects", a similarly-named character from Homer's "Odyssey", the Minamata Bay mercury pollution, and various works of science fiction and fantasy by Western writers, among other sources. The manga was serialized intermittently in "Animage" from 1982 to 1994 and the individual chapters were collected and published by Tokuma Shoten in seven "tankōbon" volumes. It was serialized with an English translation in North America by Viz Media from 1988 to 1996 as a series of 27 comic book issues and has been published in collected form multiple times.
Pixar Animation Studios, commonly referred to as Pixar (), is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California, that is a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, owned by the Walt Disney Company. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the Lucasfilm computer division, before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986, with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became the majority shareholder. Disney purchased Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion by converting each share of Pixar stock to 2.3 shares of Disney stock, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney's largest single shareholder at the time. Pixar is best known for CGI-animated feature films created with RenderMan, Pixar's own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface, used to generate high-quality images.
Daydream Software is a defunct Swedish video game developer founded in 1994. They released four games (with another in the works) before closing in 2003.
Naomi Clark was initially developed by the series' original show-runner, Rob Thomas, who was succeeded by Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah prior to the premiere. Early press releases described the character as a privileged, attractive, and popular teenager, prompting the media to draw comparisons to Kelly Taylor of "Beverly Hills, 90210", the first series of the franchise which launched "90210". As production of the spin-off began, the part would become more defined, with actress AnnaLynne McCord, who received the role, labeling Naomi an intelligent girl who possessed both manipulative and sensitive sides. She further described the character as "kind of a chameleon", stating that "she'll be someone with the principal and then someone else with her mother and then someone else with her friend."
A "reimagining" of "Silent Hill", titled "", was developed by Climax Studios and published by Konami Digital Entertainment. The game was released on December 8, 2009, for the Wii and on January 19, 2010, for the PlayStation 2 and the PlayStation Portable, to mostly positive reviews. Although it retains the premise of a man's search for his missing daughter, "Shattered Memories" branches off into a different plot with altered characters. It features psychological profiling which alters various in-game elements depending on the player's response to questions in therapy, lacks the combat of "Silent Hill", and replaces the "Otherworld" with a series of chase sequences through an alternate frozen version of the town.
Each week "Freddy's Nightmares" told a different story of a dark rooted and/or grim nature that took place in the fictitious town of Springwood, Ohio, and in particular, on Elm Street; the same setting as the "A Nightmare on Elm Street" films. Though the Freddy Krueger character would occasionally play a part in the plot, most of the stories did not involve him (it was, however, often hinted that Krueger indirectly influenced the desolate nature of the plotlines).
Daydream Software was put through liquidation in February 2003 before closing in 2004. Most employees moving on to form a new development company: Resolution Interactive, which focused on iPhone games. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2012.
As writer Tim Burton's upbringing in Burbank, California was associated with the feeling of solitude, the filmmaker was largely fascinated by holidays during his childhood. "Anytime there was Christmas or Halloween, […] it was great. It gave you some sort of texture all of a sudden that wasn't there before", Burton would later recall. After completing his short film "Vincent" in 1982, Burton, who was then employed at Walt Disney Feature Animation, wrote a three-page poem titled "The Nightmare Before Christmas", drawing inspiration from television specials of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" and the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas". Burton intended to adapt the poem into a television special with the narration spoken by his favorite actor, Vincent Price, but also considered other options such as a children's book. He created concept art and storyboards for the project in collaboration with Rick Heinrichs, who also sculpted character models; Burton later showed his and Heinrichs' works-in-progress to Henry Selick, also a Disney animator at the time. After the success of "Vincent" in 1982, Disney started to consider developing "The Nightmare Before Christmas" as either a short film or 30-minute holiday television special. However, the project's development eventually stalled, as its tone seemed "too weird" to the company. As Disney was unable to "offer his nocturnal loners enough scope", Burton was fired from the studio in 1984, and went on to direct the commercially successful films, "Beetlejuice" and "Batman".
Over the years, Burton regularly thought about the project. In 1990, Burton found out that Disney still owned the film rights. He and Selick committed to produce a full-length film with the latter as director. Burton's own success in live-action films piqued the interest of Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, who saw the film as an opportunity of continuing the studio's streak of recent success in feature animation. Disney was looking forward to "Nightmare" "to show capabilities of technical and storytelling achievements that were present in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"." Walt Disney Pictures president David Hoberman, believed the film would prove to be a creative achievement for Disney's image, elaborating "we can think outside the envelope. We can do different and unusual things."
Oddly enough, Jim Edwards actually contends that "Tim Burton's animated movie "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is really a movie about the marketing business. The movie's lead character, Jack Skellington, the chief marketing officer (CMO) for a successful company decides that his success is boring and he wants the company to have a different business plan. Some have wondered which real-life company failure the movie is based on: Sergio Zyman's New Coke or Merck's launch and subsequent withdrawal of Vioxx."
Nightmare Revisited is a cover album of songs and score from the 1993 Disney animated film "The Nightmare Before Christmas". It was released on September 30, 2008 by Walt Disney Records to commemorate the film's 15th anniversary of its theatrical release. In addition to the album's eighteen covers are two re-recordings by original composer Danny Elfman, of the "Opening" and "Closing" tracks. One song featured on the album, Marilyn Manson's "This Is Halloween", was previously released nearly two years earlier, on the 2006 reissue of the film's original soundtrack which, featuring five covers of songs from the film, acted as a precursor to "Nightmare Revisited". The album also features Korn — in their last collaboration before their hiatus — covering "Kidnap the Sandy Claws" which is also their first recording to feature Ray Luzier on drums. Enhanced content on the disc features the trailer of "The Nightmare Before Christmas", as well.
Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" called it a restoration of "originality and daring to the Halloween genre. This dazzling mix of fun and fright also explodes the notion that animation is kid stuff. … It's 74 minutes of timeless movie magic." James Berardinelli stated ""The Nightmare Before Christmas" has something to offer just about everyone. For the kids, it's a fantasy celebrating two holidays. For the adults, it's an opportunity to experience some light entertainment while marveling at how adept Hollywood has become at these techniques. There are songs, laughs, and a little romance. In short, "The Nightmare Before Christmas" does what it intends to: entertain." Desson Thomson of "The Washington Post" enjoyed stylistic features in common with Oscar Wilde, German Expressionism, the Brothers Grimm and "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari".