Monday 31 October 2011

Halloween and all that - Mourir Auprès De Toi (To Die By Your Side)

I'm sorry to be a humbug but I can't abide Halloween. At least, not in its current form. To me, Halloween should be about parties for kids (not adults, are you listening?), doing apple-bobbing, listening to ghost stories and, if there's any dressing up involved, it should be limited to cutting out triangles of white cardboard to stick under your top lip and, at a push, making a cape out of one of your mum's or big sister's old skirts. That's it. That's what kids do. What it definitely shouldn't be is supermarkets having whole aisles of costumes to buy. Nor should it be anything to do with trick or treating. I blame Spielberg for introducing that over here.

But since today is All Hallow's Eve, I suppose I could share this with you. It's a beautiful little stop-motion short film from Spike Jonze, entitled Mourir Auprès De Toi. Smiths fans will be delighted to learn that this translates as "to die by your side". It's not scary, but it does have an otherworldly feel, dead characters, many literary references and a cracking piece of music to soundtrack the credits. Above all that though, it's lovely to watch... even if you're a Halloween humbug like me.

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