Category: Tim Burton

Married & Buried.

Citizens of Halloweentown and other devotees of stop-motion divertissement: you’ll be frightfully happy to hear that the trailer for Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride is now online (even if it does look quite a bit like Sleepy Hollow II.)

Gallifrey Needs Little People.

By way of Quiddity, the BBC’s Dr. Who revival runs into trouble trying to cast actors of diminuitive stature — they’re all busy being Oompa Loompas and Gringotts goblins for Willy Wonka and Harry Potter IV respectively. Somewhere, Jack Purvis is smiling.

Don’t Eat the Chocolate.

Would you let your kids near this man? The all-new, all-creepy trailer for Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory just popped up on the grid, and it seems Johnny Depp is playing it more Ed Wood and Hunter Thompson than he is Gene Wilder. I like it.

A Nightmare in November.

I also found this grisly pic of Angry Cheney on Looka (and Eschaton), and it reminded me of something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But, while walking Berkeley this evening, it came to me. In fact, I think I might just have figured out the inspiration behind Karl Rove’s whole two-faced strategy:



And, just to round out the meme…


(Pics via HalloweenTown. And a similar take on the Zellout can be found here, also via Eschaton.) Update: The Zellout also brought to mind this, but I ultimately thought it was a disservice to poor Bilbo. He wasn’t that far gone in Rivendell.

Gasping for Air.


Well, having seen Big Fish the other night, I can safely say it’s better than 2001’s Planet of the Apes, and I enjoyed it more than 1999’s Sleepy Hollow. Still, I expected more from this most recent outing by Tim Burton. You’d think Burton would be the perfect guy to construct a tale of fantastical, overgrown whoppers, but half the time I was wondering, “Where’s the beef?”

It’s not the cast’s fault, really. Ewan McGregor is charming as ever in the lead (even if he and Jude Law seem to be in a dead heat as to which son of the Isles can strike the goofiest Southern accent this Christmas), Albert Finney is fine, Billy Crudup does what he can in a thankless role, and most if not all of the supporting players are solid.

But the writing…I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know how close it adheres to the original stories. But I thought the film was hit-or-miss and, well, episodic. Some of the fish tales, like Ed Bloom’s mission to Korea or his tear through his small town, are pretty funny and enjoyable. Others, like his sojourn in Spectre, go on for far too long. And others, like the secret in Danny DeVito’s trailer, never really get off the ground and seem throwaway.

Of course, the larger problem here is the saccharine nature of the whole project, which is particularly surprising given Burton’s normal talent for subversiveness. He’s always been good at creating dark, edgy, temperamental worlds (Beetlejuice, Nightmare before Christmas, Batmans 1&2), but somehow this sickly-sweet, frothy, straightforward story turned Tim Burton into Chris Columbus. Sure, the denouement of the film is moving in its own way, but only because Burton hits you over the head with hospital bed tearfulness and graveside eulogizing…I’m surprised he didn’t kill a puppy while he was at it.

In sum, the movie seems to be missing that imaginative spark I once expected from Burton. What could have been an imaginative Ed Wood-like fusion of the mainstream and the perverse ended up coming across as a rather bland and staid studio project (As Buck Henry might put it, “On Golden Pond meets O Brother Where Art Thou.”) The thing about Big Fish is, I didn’t dislike it in the end. I just ended up feeling rather ambivalent about it. Hopefully, Burton will bring more of his trademark minor-key mischievousness to the table in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Avast!

For those of you desiring more creaky ships and cannon broadsides in the wake of Pirates of the Caribbean, the trailer for Master and Commander is now online. Speaking of Pirates, its success has helped make Johnny Depp the frontrunner for Tim Burton’s Willy Wonka remake. (Michael Keaton, another Burton favorite, had been previously rumored as the lead.) I say, if you’re going to do it, Depp’s the best bet.

Oompa Loompa Doompadee do.

Tim Burton is tapped for the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remake. I’m not sure if a remake is really necessary, but, if you’re going to do one, I suppose Burton is the man to helm it. And in other directing news, Darren “Requiem for a Dream” Aronofsky wil be helming Lone Wolf and Cub. Does this mean Batman: Year One is dead?