The Nightmare Before Christmas gets a digital makeover for a new DVD and BluRay Collector's Edition (Disney)

Tim Burton, the darkly demented and wickedly inspired creator of Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice, began his career in the unlikely setting of Walt Disney's bright and sunny G rated studios. And their improbable alliance continued when Disney's Touchstone Pictures produced the animated adaptation of Tim Burton's children's book The Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993. Once again, Burton displayed a delightfully sick and twisted perspective that's not often seen in adult films let alone children's pictures. This past Tuesday, Walt Disney Home Entertainment re-issued The Nightmare Before Christmas in a digitally restored version for DVD and BluRay.

View this you must if a fan you call yourself... Yoda in the new Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Warner Brothers)

Depending on how you look at it, George Lucas is either expanding his Star War franchise to please a rabid fan base or he's milking his one good idea yet again to exploit its popularity. The latest entry is the animated feature Star Wars: The Clone Wars (opening August 15 throughout San Diego), which -- in the SW chronology -- takes place somewhere between Episodes II and III, and continues the timeline of the short interstitial animations that ran on Cartoon Network back in 2003 that were known as Star Wars: Clone Wars ("The" has been added to "Clone Wars" for the theatrical release). An animated series of Star Wars: The Clone Wars is set to follow.

WALL-E and cockroach buddy. (Disney/Pixar)

If you are planning some family time this 4th of July weekend, there's actually a film that might make everyone happy - the latest Pixar/Disney venture WALL-E (opened June 27 throughout San Diego). The story is simple and sweet enough to keep the youngest family members happy yet the animation and storytelling is sophisticated enough to impress the adults. And, if I'm to go by what the KPBS Teen Critics have to say, WALL-E serves up a love story that teenage girls AND boys can both embrace. Now that's no easy feat.

WALL-E (Pixar/Disney)

By Raymond Mai

I'll honestly say that I walked into WALL-E (opened June 27 throughout San Diego) not knowing what to expect. I looked at the trailer and I read a little about the movie, but not even that provided much information. So I sat in my seat at the preview only knowing that this movie was really hyped up. But after 103 minutes, I applauded along with the rest of the audience.

Pixar's WALL-E starts off in a New York-like city on a deserted earth. You figure out soon enough that a company called Buy 'n Large has developed WALL-E machines to clean up the earth while all the humans have flown off in a giant spaceship called the Axiom to escape the mess. Sadly, you'll also figure out that there is only one functional WALL-E (voiced by Ben Burtt) and he goes through a daily routine of collecting unique items and stacking cubes of trash until they become, well, a skyscraper. One day, a spaceship enters the trash filled atmosphere of earth and lands not far from the city. A robot comes out of the machine by the name of EVE (Elissa Knight), though Wall-E pronounces it EVA. A series of events happen and EVE fires her cannon at WALL-E while he tries to get closer to her. This stubborn robot never gives up and eventually he makes friends with EVE. This leads to WALL-E showing her a plant he has found. Because it's her directive to find plant life, she stores the plant and then shuts down. WALL-E goes out of his way to protect EVE yet she doesn't come out of this state. Soon the same spaceship from earlier comes to pick her up and WALL-E grabs hold of the spaceship and follows her back to the Axiom. There, you find out what has happened to the people of earth 700 years later and how their body mass has increased dramatically. The captain (Jeff Garlin) is soon faced with the decision to stay with the original plan of coming back to earth or follow the override orders and stay on the spaceship. He is soon attacked by AUTO (A Mac Speech Recognition Voice) and it's up to WALL-E, EVE, the captain, and the people of earth to get back to earth.

While WALL-E was on earth, I literally whispered to my brother, "The graphics are pretty nice." Though it kind of let up when you are in the spaceship sequence, the animation was done well. As you might have realized from my past reviews, I'm a sucker for character development. I like to see the personalities of all the characters develop. This movie does exactly that and I even fell for how WALL-E was so innocent and lovestruck yet he gets himself caught up in an adventure. The love story was a great addition to the movie. It stuck in my mind -- I wondered if WALL-E would ever get EVE as they tried to save the people of earth. I also liked seeing EVE express no interest in WALL-E, but as he goes out of his way to be with EVE she starts to fall for him as well. I also had a lot of good laughs in the movie. To top it off, this movie had a good message to send to the people of earth. Basically, it says, "If you keep up screwing with the earth by dumping trash everywhere, the earth will turn on you and become uninhabitable." Along with that, "you will live on a spaceship for the rest of your life, gain 300 pounds, and your bones will start to shrink." I have no problem with this movie though some people might not like the fact that there is not much dialogue. Out of all the movies I've seen this year, WALL-E (rated G for all audiences) is definitely my favorite one. This very entertaining movie deserves a 5 out of 5 stars from me.

Raymond Mai is a soon to be sophomore at Mount Miguel High School where he's on the football and baseball team. When he is not studying or playing a sport, he loves to have fun, whether it's watching movies or just kicking it behind the TV with his Nintendo Wii. He enjoys the opportunity to voice his opinions about movies.

Another Teen Critic falls for WALL-E (Pixar/Disney)

By Candace Kavanagh

For the past month I along with others have used the trailer of WALL-E to cheer us up. With his cute robot eyes and his cute incoherent voice he has cheered us up and made us feel a certain anticipation for the day the film would come out. I know I've been waiting to see WALL-E for a while and that feeling strengthened when I knew this movie was going to be tale of romance. But I didn't know what was going to happen in between. So I was mildly surprised when this movie offered a comment on our society.

Yes as WALL-E begins his journey to see the rest of the human race (that has escaped earth and it's toxic, unlivable environment), he notices that people have lost interest in anything that is not two inches in front of their faces. This results from their whole lives being controlled by computers. Every time someone needs to send a text or someone needs to play their video game, instead of being with an actual person and using their own hands, a computer does all teh work for them. It seems that we get closer to this reality all the time. When I got back home from watching the film I saw almost my whole family practicing this lifestyle right now. Now this theme may be slightly adult for a movie that was advertised as a robotic and romantic version of E.T., a movie that had no real social content.

But fortunately for all of us WALL-E lovers the cuteness of this movie is not smothered by its social satire. Instead WALL-E's ultra cute stunts, and the beautiful animation used during the film give the children in the audience something to drool over as adults begin to swallow the more serious comments on our society -- or just ignore them. Of course I spent my time enjoying WALL-E's sweetness and sincerity as he simply wishes to hold the girl robot and share with her something he hasn't been able to share with anyone before -- his favorite song in Hello Dolly.

So WALL-E (rated G for all audiences) is a great movie to watch with your kids or your friends. I might even call it a date movie. Just as long you don't mind watching a movie where you can't understand what most of the characters in the movie are saying. Kind of like watching an episode of Pokemon.

-- Candace Kavanagh just graduated from Mount Miguel High School. She spends her life absorbing celluloid images. She loves every type of film from so-called "chick flicks" such as My Fair Lady and Legally Blonde, to mind bending thrillers like Mulholland Drive and Hard Candy -- with every zombie movie, action flick, musical, and comedy in between.

Pixar scores another hit with WALL-E says our KPBS Teen Critic (Walt Disney)

By Vikram Bhoyrul

Over the last couple years Pixar has delivered some fantastic animated movies such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille. All of these films were entertaining for all age groups and were definitely re-watchable. So it goes without saying that WALL-E (opening June 27 throughout San Diego) had a lot to live up to. I was skeptical at first. The trailer wasn't anything spectacular and all in all it just seemed very childish. Now after watching WALL-E, I can honestly say that Pixar has given us another fantastic animated movie. It may have even topped its predecessors.

WALL-E is far more entertaining and deep than the trailer lets on. What looks like a good kid's movie full of slapstick humor is in fact a phenomenal movie with a love story slipped in. When you feel happy for a two-foot, trash collecting robot you know that there is something special about the movie. WALL-E starts off hundreds of years in the future when mankind has finally exhausted all of Earth's natural resources and filled the world up with too much junk, making Earth unsustainable for life. Conditions have become so bad that all of the humans have left Earth to live on luxury space cruises where their every need is catered to by robots. They become so dependent on technology that they do absolutely nothing and after 700 years have become morbidly obese. I saw this as a nice commentary on man's current mistreatment of the environment and the obesity epidemic that has hit America.

After all the humans leave Earth, all that is left behind are clean-up robots that pile trash thousands of feet high in order to clean up the planet. The last of the robots left is the main character WALL-E. WALL-E suffers from loneliness and although he has the world literally to himself all he wants is someone to hold his hand. Although the movie may have started off a little slow by the time the female robot was introduced into the story, things really picked up and so began WALL-E's incredible adventure through the final frontier in his search for love.

WALL-E (rated G for all audiences) was very entertaining and is a great movie for all ages.

Vikram Bhoyrul is a senior at The Bishop's School in La Jolla. For years film has been a passion of his. Besides Star Wars, his favorite movies are Children of Men, Cinderella Man. Life of Brian, and without question The Lion King. He would also like to become a journalist when he grows up. His goal is to become an influential network anchor. In his free time he likes running, singing, watching Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and cooking. At high school, he is the editor of his own school newspaper, and in college he wishes to major in journalism.

The once and future king... The Sword in the Stone (Walt Disney)

Although Disney tends to incur more wrath than praise from me these days, I have always had fond memories of its animated film The Sword in the Stone (1963). I think it was the last animated film from the studio that I fully embraced. I had always been interested in the legend of King Arthur so the film was immediately appealing to me as a child. Today (June 17) a new 45th anniversary DVD and Blu Ray Disc come out and they are well worth picking up. Artist, writer and longtime Disney employee Bill Peet found inspiration for the film in the 1938 T.H. White novel The Once and Future King. White's book provided all the necessary ingredients for a classic children's tale - a young hero, knights, magic, and the stuff of legends. Peet could have stayed a little truer to White's book to deliver a richer tale, but Peet's adaptation is appealing nonetheless.

The story focuses on Arthur before he becomes king, when he was a scrawny lad known only as Wart. As the story begins, England is without a king, and is living in a dark age. The prophecy promises that whoever can pull a sword that has been embedded in an anvil will become the next king. But so far no one has been able to do it. Then along comes Wart, and Merlin, a magician, senses that he is destined for greatness. So Merlin takes it upon himself to educate the boy and his lessons make up much of the film.

I know that people have complained about the animation style of The Sword in the Stone, and while it may not be as lush as such early Disney films as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves or Fantasia, it has a charm all its own. Earlier Disney animated features were made either by multiple directors or by a team of sequence directors working under a supervising director but The Sword in the Stone was helmed by one man, veteran animator Wolfgang Reitherman (one of Disney's famed "Nine Old Men"). The animation style of this 1963 feature reveals some of the cost-cutting techniques that were now being implemented after the 1959 Sleeping Beauty failed to deliver the kind of box office returns the studio was hoping for. The characters in The Sword in the Stone are rather angular and there's not a lot of detail in the frame, plus Merlin is animated in a more comic manner than one might have liked for this great wizard -- yet despite all this, I enjoy the film and the character of young Wart. I love the way Wart is allowed to be such a kid but not in a smartalecky or cute way. He's curious, a bit goofy, a good but sometimes reluctant student, and visually his youthfulness is emphasized by clothes that leave the lad swimming in the excess space. But the clothes that are too big also foreshadow what Wart will eventually grow up to be, a King.

I've never been a fan of the musical interludes in the Disney films (live action or animated) but at least the songs here are minimal and not too annoying. You can, if you choose, watch with the lyrics on screen -- if you feel the need to sing-a-long. Surprisingly, a bonus feature about the song-writing brothers Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman proves quite interesting. Their discussion of how they approached writing the songs and the inclusion of two songs that were cut from the final film is well worth checking out. One of the deleted songs is called Magic Key and has Merlin explaining how knowledge is the key, now there's a lesson people could still learn from.

Most of the other bonus features are unimpressive. A gallery of sketches and concept art is enjoyable to scan through but the "All-New Merlin's Magical Academy Game" is pretty lame as it tries to be fun, educational and not to labor intensive for the studio to have produced. There are a pair of shorts included: the so-so Knight for a Day with Goofy and the delightful Brave Little Tailor with Mickey facing a giant (I love the sign at the beginning that warns "Giant at large").

The Sword in the Stone 45th Anniversary Edition (rated G for all audiences) remains a charmer and I'm glad to replace my old VHS with this new edition.

Companion viewing: Excalibur, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Camelot, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Bleach: Memories of Nobody plays June 11 and 12 in select theaters (Viz Media)

Seiji Horibuchi founded Viz Media to introduce Japanese manga (comic books) to American audiences. Now more than two decades later, the company has become a leading distributor of both manga and anime here in the U.S. The company's latest innovation is to bring anime movies to mall theaters for two-day engagements that allow fans to see their favorite anime characters on the big screen. The first Naruto movie, Ninja Clash in the Land of the Snow, effectively employed this strategy, and now the first Bleach movie, Memories of Nobody, opens in more than three hundred theaters nationwide on June 11 and 12 at 7:30pm (in San Diego it will play at AMC Mission Valley 20 Theaters, Horton Plaza Theaters and Edwards Mira Mesa). The film is designed more for fans than for newcomers to anime but for $1.99 you can download (legally) the first episode and have the basics to enjoy the first film.

Fun for all in Kung Fu Panda (Dreamworks)

By Vikram Bhoyrul

If I had a quarter for every time a panda has entertained me so much than I would have exactly 25 cents. Kung Fu Panda (opened June 6 throughout San Diego) is unique and incredibly entertaining, making for a great family movie. It has a well-known cast consisting of people like Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, and the panda himself, Jack Black. For the younger crowd there is an abundance of slapstick humor accompanied by Jack Black's lovable personality. For the rest of us, the movie actually contains some deeper messages.

In the tradition of most Disney classics, this Dreamworks animation promotes this whole "if you believe than you can achieve" idea and although clichéd, it is tastefully done in Kung Fu Panda. The message that I found to be the most interesting is that there are no accidents. The wise turtle kung fu master constantly repeats this message. He stresses that there is a reason for everything happening the way it does, and with time we are all destined to blossom. Similar to Batman or even Ironman, Kung Fu Panda emphasizes that no matter who you are, you don't need supernatural abilities to make a difference. You need determination and courage and the rest will fall into place.

True to Jack Black, the panda finds the strength to do the impossible through food. This gives the message that we are all fine the way we are and it is with our imperfections that we are in fact perfect. Kung Fu Panda was also nice in that it had some memorable lines and scenes that could be talked about afterwards such as "skidoosh" or "don't tell monkey!"

Overall Kung Fu Panda (rated PG for scenes of martial arts action) was clearly targeted towards the younger audience but with its underlying messages and Jack Black's humor, Kung Fu Panda is a good time for all ages.

Vikram Bhoyrul is a senior at The Bishop's School in La Jolla. For years film has been a passion of his. Besides Star Wars, his favorite movies are Children of Men, Cinderella Man. Life of Brian, and without question The Lion King. He would also like to become a journalist when he grows up. His goal is to become an influential network anchor. In his free time he likes running, singing, watching Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and cooking. At high school, he is the editor of his own school newspaper, and in college he wishes to major in journalism.

Master Shifu teaches Po a lesson in Kung Fu Panda (Dreamworks)

This week I am pleased to introduce two new KPBS Teen Critics, Raymond Mai and Vikram Bhoyrul. They both had reviews up this week (of Kung Fu Panda and You Don't Mess with the Zohan,respectively) and I hope you check them out. Raymond is someone I've known since he was in elementary school with my son and he's always had very strong opinions about movies, so I'm thrilled to have him aboard. Vikram, on the other hand, I just met. I was introduced to his father at an Indian film screening and his dad explained how Vikram had started his own paper at Bishop's. Now that's initiative. Anyway, I hope you check out their reviews. But I wanted to throw my two cents in about Kung Fu Panda and You Don't Mess with the Zohan (both opened June 6 throughout San Diego). Also, being a martial arts fan I thought it was worth mentioning that three films that opened on Friday - Kung Fu Panda, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, and Foot Fist Way - contained martial arts to varying degrees.

First let me start with Kung Fu Panda, an American animated martial arts film about a panda with big dreams. The film seems in part to tap into the fact that all eyes are on China as it prepares to host the summer Olympics. The film starts with a strikingly animated prologue that turns out to be a dream. Po (voiced by Jack Black) is an eager, out of shape panda that wants nothing more than to be like the heroes that he worships (and has a full set of action figures of). This open got my interest up because the animation style recalled the Emmy-winning Cartoon Network show Samurai Jack. Unfortunately, when the dream ends, so does the innovative visual style and we're back to the standard 3-D computer animation that everyone is using. I know it's state of the art and I should appreciate how the hair looks so real... but all right already. Kudos to the technicians and animators. But this style of animation seems to place more emphasis on the technology than the artistry, and I've begun to grow weary of it.