What, he gave up on Lisa Marie? I missed something indeed!

A most frustratingly good director, because lately he has gone through mostly odd missteps. Not QUITE a mass-market David Lynch or anything, though he has the knack of handling big budget projects more than Lynch does. Still, most everyone I know seems to have a Burton film they adore above all others and for me that's Ed Wood, which becomes my favorite film of the nineties the more time goes on...

Dud dud *DUD* for Planet of the Apes

It seems like he's the number one guy to call when you need someone to direct a "weird" film. Him or Terry Gilliam.

"Mars Attacks" was fun but ultimately terrible.

"Vincent" and "Frankenweenie" are both pretty neat, though.

I saw the trailer for Big Fish and it looks pretty good, like about a Billy Liar-esque character on his deathbed (also what makes me come back to Billy Liar is the obscene resemblance between Tom Courtenay and Ewan McGregor).

Classic: Pee-Wee, Edward Scissorhands, Nightmare before Christmas, Ed Wood, Batman, Beetlejuice

Not-so-classic: Sleepy hollow, James and the Giant Peach, Mars Attacks

Utter dud: Planet of the Apes. God. Make me gag.

oh come off it! batman is way better than 'ed wood'; and anyway -- eww with the hollywood romanticism! it's all bidness baby!

no, you're not: i always figured this was the general consensus (the "oh the early stuff is always best!" hipster trope notwithstanding)

Hitchcock and Herrmann might have something to say about that. Or Leone and Morricone. Or...

xpost

Dud or Mediocre: everything else

The Terry Gilliam comparison's pretty interesting: Gilliam worked his way back into being allowed to write his own material after directing Twelve Monkeys/The Fisher King, and then blew it in one film (Fear and Loathing), and became box office poison (Lost in La Mancha), though now he's directing The Brothers Grimm (Heath Ledger/Matt Damon!) and Good Omens, both for next year. I don't know why Tim Burton gets more breaks.

! Ed Wood never got a film/director Oscar Nomination?

Fucking NO. Martin Landau did pick up an Oscar for best supporting actor -- I think deserved, though Samuel Jackson (this was the year of Pulp Fiction, remember) admitted he was sorta bored by Ed Wood and wished he'd won! Can't blame him!

thus no oscars

As noted, one Oscar.

maybe there are rights complications that have prevented it from being released on dvd?

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!

ARAGAHDFASDFBAFA.

I think your duty is to ensure good people have access to this fine product.

Sleepy Hollow was shockingly bad, even from the design point of view, surprisingly.

If not, why not?

please don't let him fuck up Maleficent

Palmer/Gaiman would mop the street with Burton/Carter's asses.

please don't let him fuck up Maleficent

― you have to forgive me (surm), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 3:17 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark

please don't let Angelina Jolie fuck up Maleficent!

http://www.usmagazine.com/moviestvmusic/news/angelina-jolie-in-talks-to-play-wicked-godmother-in-sleeping-beauty-1970241

:(

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1343971/David-Cameron-Helena-Bonham-Carter-New-Year-Hill-climb.html

I only recently noticed that just about all of this guy's work has been remakes or reimaginings, all processed through the same kooky "Tim Burton, Auteur" filter. And I really, really want to say he's nothing but a big assembly-line hack, but then every few years he does something I like (Mars Attacks, Ed Wood, Sweeney Todd), which makes me think, huh, maybe this guy actually knows what he's doing. Which then in turn makes me think he's even more of a hack, for doing all the hacky stuff, when I know he's capable of better.

Two out of three of those were from scripts or source material he didn't write, which may explain something.

(And I realize yeah, remakes etc., but he seems to put a more 'personal' stamp on those versus something like Ed Wood in particular -- probably his most non-Burton film in the end. Also about the only one that doesn't have Danny Elfman doing the music; if it wasn't Depp as the star it would stand out even more, but I think it's also one of Depp's best performances, so.)

yeah I still think Sweeney is a mediocre take on a brilliant musical, any credit for that movie is Sondheim's imo

never saw the musical but the film was really good, and I was prepared to hate it, hating almost everything else burton does these days. but I still always give him a chance, because, like with Sweeney, he sometimes really delivers. but often he's just crap. frustrating. at least he finishes movies, unlike gilliam, though.

is this frankenweenie thing gon be stupid

well, it is called Frankenweenie

Pre-judge for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE10-Mforlo

It's like if Brad Bird decided to do a feature length remake of Family Dog.

LOOOOL

frankenweenie was great, most enjoyable burton thing I've seen in years.

It was the most enjoyable Burton thing I've seen in years (decades), and it's not great.

He peaked at Peewee's Big Adventure.

It really is hilarious that after a string of so many adaptations and remakes, he finally got around to remaking his own film. Be even funnier if someone had independently rewritten the script, got it to Burton, and he was all "that's it! this idea is genius! finally, an original property to remind people why they liked me to begin with!"

Rewriting "Beetlejuice" right now, btw. Hoping to land Burton as director.

Took kids to Frankenweenie at the dollar theater yesterday (which is actually a $2.50 theater now, but anyway) -- it was fun, well made. Not a patch on, say, Coraline, but we all enjoyed it. My older kid (8) was actually sort of freaked out by some parts, but the younger one (4) happily munched popcorn straight through and was talking about it for hours afterward.

man i caught 30 minutes of edward scissorhands on tv last night while cooking/waiting for dinner for the first time in probably 20 years and jesus it was interminable.

more than any other director i can't square how this guy could make a couple of my favorite movies of all time and then a whole shit ton of pure skin-crawling dreck using the same basic aesthetic.

I caught Scissorhands for the first time in 20 years recently too and it was overwhelmingly slight, I thought. Burton is one of those directors whose aesthetic -- the idea of a Tim Burton film -- is better than any of his actual films that I recall.

In the early 90s/late 80s, Robert Smith-style gothiness + John Waters + Disney hit all the right buttons culturally.

I haven't seen Ed Wood since it came out, but based on what I remember of it I'd still defend it as Burton's best (w/possible exception of Pee-Wee, but I give Paul Reubens more credit for that).

I've seen Ed Wood a number of times and I agree that it's his best.

"Alice In Wonderland" is on TV later on. I'm kinda interested in seeing it tbh.

ymmv, but it felt like a true artistic nadir for Burton the one time I saw it. Worse, even, than his take on Charlie&tCC. I occasionally watch the clip of Depp doing the "Futterwacken" dance on YT if I'm in a bleak mood, just to remind myself that things could always be worse.

pee-wee > ed wood > beetlejuice > mars attacks > everything else

Looking back it's just so odd that this is who DC handed the first Batman film since the 60s - the allegedly first "serious" one - to. And that they gave him another! Not that I'm complaining about either.

I think he's had mistakes before and since, but Big Fish was the one that I remember watching and thinking "Wow, there's nothing in this".

tbf i haven't seen anything he's done in full since charlie and the chocolate factory, but then do i really need to?

Big Fish was pretty bad

Burton's reputation would be preposterous and invincible if he had stopped making films in the 90s and was only now making a comeback. A friend put it another way: "tim burton could have won best picture for big fish if he had taken about ten years off before making it"

I stopped seeing his movies about 10 years ago but he's still useful to me as a commissioner of new Danny Elfman scores (for some reason Elfman still brings his A game for Burton's films even though the films themselves do nothing of the sort.) I never plan on going near the Alice film but Elfman's music for it was maybe the best film score of that year.

(There's a similar dynamic with M Night Shyamalan and James Newton Howard-- JNH invariably writes his most inspired music for these misbegotten films)

I think he's had mistakes before and since, but Big Fish was the one that I remember watching and thinking "Wow, there's nothing in this".

― Andrew Farrell, Wednesday, December 26, 2012 9:38 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

planet of the apes was the beginning of the end for me. what a big nothing. what gets to me is how ugly his films are now. its all digital chintziness with no character

The best thing for him at this point would be some of jobwork. Like, having to direct someone else's baby. But he has too much clout to be constrained in that way.

weird thing to say right after someone brings up planet of the apes

ha. point taken.

h4a otm - Alice, Dark Shadows, all this new stuff has a very plastic deadness about it. all gloss, no depth

TB would be fine if he stuck to animated stuff -- like, a stop-motion burton 'alice' would probably have been awesome. it's amazing that a guy who did something as good as 'ed wood' churns out as much soulless dreck as he does now.

the single worst thing about 'alice in wonderland' was its not being alice in wonderland, rather a silly sort of lotr-lite fanfic

yeah how the hell do you manage to make Alice in Wonderland boring ffs

exactly. I do not know what grade of numpty picks up one of the english language's best regarded works and goes 'hey I can do a better one'.

hee hee numpty, i love that word

'the picture of dorian gray: lost in new york'

yknow I really love little women but let's lose all the women and the whole family thing, it's pretty on the nose

'the wind in the willows', in which toad wears a black suit with spiralled coat tails and battles an undead womble army

would probably see that

yknow I really love little women but let's lose all the women and the whole family thing, it's pretty on the nose

can't wait to see helena bonham-carter as a goth meg

'the wind in the willows', in which toad wears a black suit with spiralled coat tails and battles an undead womble army

i can see him doing this for real

beetlejuice 2: beetlejuice goes hawaiian

would probably watch that too

dug up this quote from an old alice thread:

"Every other version I've ever seen, I've never really connected to because it's always just a series of weird events," Burton said. "She's passively wandering through, meeting this weird character, that weird character. It's fine in the books, but the movies always felt like there wasn't anything underneath them. That's what we tried to do. Instead of the Hatter just being weird, [we wanted to] get some kind of character underneath him. That's the goal, is to give the 'Alice' material a little more weight to it."

wow thank god you were there to 'give a little more weight' to one of the greatest books ever, you doofus.

that TB quote right there is pretty much why I hate screenwriters in a nutshell.

weirdy mcweirdson of weirdsville decided his source material was too weird xp

giving the Hatter character = dancing like a nit

"yes but who ARE the flying monkeys"

can you imagine if he made 'pee wee' now? it'd start out with a flashback to 10-year-old pee wee getting hit by a bike.

I liked the back story he gave Willy Wonka in that Charlie Chocolate Factory movie but at the same time, in typical Burton fashion is underlined the motivations of the original story way too much (ie original was a sad treatise on spoiled children and horrible parents masquerading as a fun adventure)

he just can't help to make everything bummertown USA

in typical burton fashion *he, not is

I really really liked his version of charlie, especially the whole michaely-jacksony parallel xp

i liked a lot of it, but there was something about the disco-y ness of it that really annoyed the shit out of me at the same time

depp did a nice carol channing, I thought :)

oh yeah, the pop culture oompah-loompah sons were shithouse

*songs

bahahaha carol channing

i got really really tired of deep roy after a while

making wonka into a sad victimized dude just messes too much with the whole dynamic of the story. the original film's take, where wonka remains mysterious, genuinely unpredictable, and even vaguely malevolent throughout the whole story, seems much more in line with dahl's intentions. plus wilder's thinly veiled delight in the kids' fates is way 'darker' than anything in burton's film.

yeah that's what I mean -- burton can't resist telegraphing all of that dark backstory, when you really didn't need it
it was a nice creative detour though

christopher lee as scary dentist dad was perfect casting

yeah, that's very true (xp to j.d.)

but at least burton told the story that was the actual title of the actual film

as opposed to, you know, 'the battle for wondergarth'

lol

sadly absent of wombles

can you imagine if he made 'pee wee' now? it'd start out with a flashback to 10-year-old pee wee getting hit by a bike.

genuine lols. sad but true

his idea of character develeopment is just to have a flashback sequence of his dad being mean to him and not understanding his art maaaaaaan

his schtick is now as one-note and lame as gilliam's on that level

I finally watched Frankenweenie today (well, I caught the 2nd half) --- I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. I laughed out loud in lots of places and got quite a kick out of all the movie references. Will definitely seek it out and watch the whole thing. I think had gotten so Burton-shy I wasn't sure if he had completely lost his touch, but animation is definitely still his bag. And really quite beautifully executed with all black and white imo, it had quite a nice warmth to it somehow. idk. it looked pretty is what I'm saying.

yeah i totally loved it. nothing surprising at all but all the usual burton riffs -- frankenstein, rankin-bass references -- felt comfortably familiar and sweet and nice to see again. it felt like the real burton, not the hollywood hack who's taken his place for like a decade.

otm

which kind of makes me slightly mad - if he could do THAT why is he insisting on doing all of this other garbage ffs

him and Gore Verbinski and Johnnny Depp need to be forced by court order to stop making movies together, like a 20 year moratorium
hang out in a fucking bar if you like each other so much, ffs

depp's career is pretty sad too -- he was awesome until he did the pirates movies and suddenly turned into this guy:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/johnny-depp-now-physically-unable-to-walk-unless-w,32942/

yep

which kind of makes me slightly mad - if he could do THAT why is he insisting on doing all of this other garbage ffs

is that how he funds his pet projects? idk

i feel like there haven't really been many of those in a while -- every now and then he does a stop-motion thing but i feel like there'd be an audience for those no matter what.

the way hollywood works now (a small number of blockbusters at us$200m a time) he'd be hard pressed convincing the suits that his stop motion fantasy would rake in what alice in wonderland made

i don't know anything about its development so maybe i'm wrong but i figured dark shadows was a pet project. i mean who else cares. and i didn't see it but it looked better than alice. although so is... everything.

otm, alice was so very horrible

yeah they're all pet projects, it's just he keeps putting the same people in and it's like episodes in the same terrible tv series

burton: "WHAT i have to cast my wife AGAIN"
exec: "we can always look at one of these…"
burton: "oh all right then, i'll bring helen in tomorrow"
exec: "you don't have to…"
burton: "I SAID IT'S FINE"
exec: "but it…"
burton: "SHUT UP"

hahahaha

the real crime of Burton's latter career is how thoroughly he has made Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter seem incapable of acting

YES

Big Eyes looks like a real departure in terms of casting. I imagine it looking like Big Fish but I dint think there is a trailer. It's a biopic of one of his favourite artists.

Huh. The guys who wrote Ed Wood and yeah, a total shift from his usual rep players. This will be make or break for me, a sort of control to see if he knows how to make a movie anymore minus his usual crutches.

This will also be the first film Tim Burton directed since Edward Scissorhands to not have Chris Lebenzon involved with the editing, due to him having other commitments with Maleficent.

Hmm. Lots of changes. Good luck, Tim Burton!

I'm intrigued

is tim burton aspies y/n

Looking at the cast again (seemingly no people from older Burton films) Krysten Ritter seems ideal. Danny Elfman the only major recurring collaborator here?

I wished that Crispin Glover was in a better Burton film.

He and H Bonham Carter have broken up after 13 years.

Anyone amped to see Big Eyes?

Amped? No. Curious? Yes.

weird, I was just wondering yesterday whether they were still together.

I'm hoping this is good. The trailer dampened my enthusiasm slightly but most trailers do.

yeah, i'm curious, to the extent that it seems like he's revisiting aspects of "ed wood," which is one of his best films (by common consensus?).

I'm hoping this is good.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, December 23, 2014 2:44 PM (4 weeks ago)

it is not

Do go on...

^

We were thinking of going to see this but it isn't showing at our local cinema

i kept seeing that poster and going "christoph waltz!! amy adams!! and ahhhnnnhhfuckit tim burton."

its funny--it doesn't feel like 'tim burton classic or dud' was a question people were asking within ilx's lifetime

poll his worst, sure

I was hoping for something along the lines of Ed Wood, an off-kilter portrait of a cult celebrity. Margaret Keane's real-life story seemed as though it might mesh well with Burton's pop-addled enthusiasms, but all he brings to it is a taste for candy-colored superficiality. A decent and rather naive young divorcée marries an irredeemably Bad Man who takes credit for her ghastly (yet heartfelt!) paintings. Heartbreak and courtroom drama ensue. Everything about the film is both bloodlessly formulaic and utterly unconvincing. Burton deserves the lion's share of the blame, of course, but Christophe Waltz is wincingly bad as the villainous Walter Keane. We're never allowed to see the sense in which Walter's cartooninshly overplayed sliminess might seduce the unwary, and his third act unraveling lacks both menace and poignancy.

According to Burton, Margaret Keane just isn't a terribly interesting person. She's a good mother, a nice person and a talented craftsman. That's about all we get. The yearning vacuity of her waif paintings is the only shadow cast on Amy Adams' trademark gloss of cheerfully optimistic innocence. The story of Keane's struggle for autonomy and acknowledgment seems well suited to cynical satire (surprised Burton didn't go this route) or weepy melodrama, but Burton can't locate any thematic or emotional resonance. Absent that, it becomes a dull procession of dull events, a Disnefied View-Master reel of The Artist's Life. This might be appropriate, given the period and subject, but it isn't something you want to be stuck watching for two hours.

(no e in "christoph")

You've successfully killed my interest.

What's odd is that I had listened to an interesting Burton interview in which he defended Walter Keane a little bit and made the situation seem more complex and interesting than what the film seems to be.

whyyyyyy

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-tim-burton-to-direct-live-action-dumbo-remake-for-disney-20150310-story.html

even before I click on it, I'm assuming Johnny Depp to play motion-capture Dumbo and HBC to play the mouse that rides in his hat?

the obvious answer is so he can butcher the pink elephants sequence

xp

that sequence will last 45 mins here

can't what to see what a racially sensitive fella like Burton does with the crows

When the CGI remake of Secret of NIMH was announced the other day, I almost made a comment about it being as pointless a remake as something like Dumbo.

Fucksake.

script by Ehren Kruger, a writer on the last three "Transformers" movies.

guuuuuhhhhhhh

"Ed Wood" was one my favourite movies in the 90s, who would've guessed this guy's thing would eventually turn out to be making crappy remakes of beloved classics?

Johnny Depp as the mouse
next wife as the stork
Deep Roy as every crow

Ehren Kruger is a bad writer, even outside of terrible series.

When the CGI remake of Secret of NIMH was announced the other day
....!?? nooo! Wtf is going on.

Also, I didn't realize his Alice in Wonderland was such an enormous hit. No wonder the studies keep letting him do horrible shit like that.

god that alice in wonderland was awful in every way.

Not quite EVERY way. The elfman score was magnificent. But every other way.

I think Depp's makeup design was good, it would have scared me if I were a kid.

futterwacken ffs

Clearly Depp will be the circus ringleader.

Burton's been futterwacken it throughout the past decade of his career.

this feels a lot worse than any of the other remakes. there have been a thousand versions of alice, some prob even worse than the burton one, but dumbo is a walt era classic that no one's ever messed with before. they supposedly had one of those direct-to-dvd sequels in the works a while back before someone thought better of it and shut it down. so congrats, tim burton, on being less classy and respectful than the fuckin' disney corporation.

Also, I didn't realize his Alice in Wonderland was such an enormous hit. No wonder the studies keep letting him do horrible shit like that.

burton isn't really the one instigating these remakes. this is part of disney's large-scale corporate effort to keep their major franchises in the public mind. aside from "alice" and now "dumbo," there's "maleficent" attempts to (ahem) reboot "sleeping beauty," and of course "saving mr. banks," a feature-length advertisement for "mary poppins."

burton is just the hired hand here, although naturally its dispiriting that he is playing along. the fact that his talent has mostly dried up (demonstrated, i think, by the fact that "big eyes," while much better than the other films he's made recently, was still several notches below something like "ed wood") is actually reassuring -- at least it's not going to waste!

though in a weird way, "ed wood" kind of lays the ground for all this by being a kind of disneyfication of ed wood and his films. (literally and figuratively; it was a touchstone release, i believe.)

just be glad that david lynch (maker of one disney film, after all) didn't get roped into this.

disney used to just do theatrical rereleases of their classics every 10 years or so. i saw a ton of them that way when i was a kid -- snow white, peter pan, 101 dalmatians. maybe they assume dvds and bigger home screens have made that redundant.

I find it truly astonishing that there's still people who care that Walt Disney himself does not have a good reputation.

I really hope Marvel doesn't make a film about Stan Lee several decades after his death about how he never did anything wrong.

tbh walt disney mainly has a "bad" reputation among ppl who do not actually know very much about him

Yeah, Walt himself basically strikes me as a big, flighty kid with little-to-no actual business acumen. He wasn't really responsible for many of the criticisms that are generally leveled at the Corporation, if that's what you're getting at.

the original walt disney company was insanely small compared to "disney" today. they didn't even start distributing their own films until the late '50s; i rewatched the original alice a few weeks ago and was surprised to remember it opens with an RKO logo.

If you want to blame anyone from that era for what Disney became, blame Roy. Without him, Walt would've probably cranked out some shorts and moved on to some other endeavor altogether after his money ran out.

I've heard credible defences for Walt Disney (that he was far more progressive in who he hired than the other animation studios) but I still don't know if he hated Jews, abused his wife or didn't allow any of his staff to have facial hair. Was he blameless in the Mary Poppins adaptation process?

i dunno, there are some pretty good, well-regarded, scholarly biographies of disney that you might look at. neal gabler's book is first-rate. michael barrier's is excellent but you have to put up with his cranky opinions (he doesn't seem to like any disney movies without qualms apart from, oddly enough, dumbo).

there is basically no evidence that disney "hated jews." i think we can blame family guy for keeping this one alive. "abused his wife" is a new one on me. "no facial hair" was just a long-standing disneyland rule afaik, prob added to discourage the beatniks.

by many accounts walt was kind of a cranky bastard in some ways, and fairly conservative, but like old lunch says, most of the things ppl complain about when they complain about "disney" were not really things you can associate with the walt era.

this is part of disney's large-scale corporate effort to keep their major franchises in the public mind. aside from "alice" and now "dumbo," there's "maleficent" attempts to (ahem) reboot "sleeping beauty," and of course "saving mr. banks," a feature-length advertisement for "mary poppins."

also a Branagh directed Cinderella this year + Jon Favreau doing The Jungle Book and Bill Condon's Beauty and the Beast in 2016

right, i only mentioned a few. it's amazing how systematic they are going about this!

walt disney was very anti-labor, but not in a way particular unusual for a capitalist of his day and age.

there's "maleficent" attempts to (ahem) reboot "sleeping beauty"

This was actually a pretty great and remarkably feminist-oriented reinterpretation of the story. But that was probably just a fluke, I can't imagine any of these other movies being particularly good.

i wasn't arguing that the films were bad, just that they are part of a concerted corporate plan to revive disney's legacy properties

there's no way Maleficent is good tho

Was Enchanted any good?

It's alright. The idea of it is more fun than the execution

was enchanted a "reboot" of any particular franchise or just kind of a "very disney" property?

As creatively bankrupt as this particular plan seems (Cinderella doesn't look bad but it does look pretty much like a carbon copy of the existing Cinderella film which Disney owns the rights to and presumably still profits heavily from), it's ever-so-slightly less creatively bankrupt than their plan from the previous decade (which is still ongoing, somehow) to adapt theme park attractions into films.

Enchanted was all-original, as far as I know, though obviously the characters were inspired by Disney fairy tale movies. It was okay, I agree, some good gags, but the concept didn't manage to carry it all the way through.

What I liked about Maleficent is that it didn't have any clever postmodern winks that contemporary reinterpretations of fairy tales often tend to have. It just took the basic story and did a perspective flip on it, turning it into genuinely moving tragedy.

enchanted is great it loses a bit of oomf at the big showdown but the cast is excellent jokes work songs are funny and good and Amy Adams is just extraordinary in it

maleficent was ok. no way enchanted doesnt hold its face down in a puddle and rub mud in its hair

amy adams definitely improves any movie

Dmac would u say enchanted knocks maleficent's dick in the dirt?

totes

Weird as fuck: there is a sequel to Alice In Wonderland with most of the same cast plus additional actors but it's directed by the comedy writer/director James Bobin (Muppets, Ali G, Flight Of The Conchords). I'd bet it's going to be better than the Burton one.

i thought burton himself was attached to the sequel

it's weird how for critics and people who, um, care about cinema i guess, tim burton is obviously a spent force, long since on the decline, but his actual movies are more popular than ever. i bet his cult is huge, too, just among a younger and possibly more international set.

by actual movies i mean his /new/ movies. alice in wonderland made a billion dollars (literally!)

i projected big eyes last night (and did other stuff for it all last weekend) and people seem to love it. waltz is grotesque.

a few critics i respect liked it, but most seemed pretty lukewarm. my SO thought it was just OK, a little bloodless. i'll rent it on video, i suppose.

it's an ultraconventional inspirational courtroom drama with some grotesqueries. jason schwartzmann struck me as terrible? idk. viewed from one, poss several, angles, waltz is terrible too. from others tho he's trippy.

Thought Big Eyes was fairly enjoyable but Waltz was a bit too much.

New film looks like a gothier X-Men. I've seen the book always on the horror shelves but not a peep about it from the online horror reader community.

I know it'll probably be a letdown, but I'm hoping Beetlejuice 2 is going to miraculously be good. I generally don't care about the films that kids my age love but I love Beetlejuice and I think it seems like one of the few things that a sequel seems an interesting idea because you can imagine a million different things happening in that world. It's understandable people wanting Winona back but it seems more likely to hold the story back and studio wanting rehashing of what she did in the original plot.
I'd imagine they're abandoning the beach plot.

surprised to learn the court-supervised paint-off scene in big eyes is m/l factual it just seemed so movie device invented but it also is like pretty sensible tbh

agree w ppl critiquing/disliking waltz idk he is sortof exhausting

weird that this guy now has made movies called big fish & big eyes

Pee Wee's Big Adventure

Big Wood

Edward Biggersands.

Bigglejuice

Bigman Returns

Don't forget the first one! I think it was called Bigman. It was kind of a big deal.

Biglice In Wonderbig

Stop making movies you Big cunt

I'm still interested in what will happen with the two films he still wants to make after two decades: the Vincent Price film (is this a documentary or biopic?) and Mai The Psychic Girl (original Sparks soundtrack)

encouraging?

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/miss-peregrines-home-for-peculiar-children

I was not a big fan of the book, but the trailers looked sharper than Burton by numbers. Or at least a return to grim "Sweeney," and not human cartoons.

two days ago, i almost posted something snarky in this thread to the effect of 'hey, any black people in this film who aren't villains/broad caricatures'? but then i thought, no, quit it with the cynicism

should've: https://www.bustle.com/articles/186641-tim-burton-explains-why-miss-peregrines-home-for-peculiar-children-features-a-predominantly-white-cast

is there a "Big Eyes" thread? search still doesn't work for me.

i saw this last night. it was really good. quite an amazing story. very well shot and acted. the actors looked very much like the real people. it is truly an incredible story, this single mother being this unknown artist, locked in the studio and forced to paint while her abuser takes the credit in order to get rich and famous and justify his absurd hackneyed backstory about being an artist. Amy Adams did a tremendous job and this tortured woman persevering through her love for her daughter, her love for her art, and her love for God! this movie paints a pretty sympathetic picture of Jehova's Witnesses. Margaret Keane had a cameo in the movie and later commented that it was all very accurate, it was a very emotional thing for her to relive, but she is glad her story is told. apparently the trial went exactly as they depict in the movie, but it was even crazier.

Did Margaret Keane really reveal the truth during a radio interview?
Yes. Margaret revealed the truth during an October 1970 interview with a San Francisco radio talk show (not a Hawaiian radio show). This was more than five years after she and Walter had separated. She intended to discuss her art show at the Cory Art Gallery in San Francisco, but she ended up coming clean after the host began to ask about her ex-husband Walter. -UPI

In November of 1970, Margaret challenged Walter to a paint-off in Union Square in San Francisco, but Walter never showed. Instead, he countered her invitation by saying she was a "boozing, sex-starved psychopath." -LIFE Magazine

Did Walter actually cross-examine himself during the 1986 trial?
Yes. "Walter actually did that in the trial," says Big Eyes screenwriter Larry Karaszewski. "He actually did cross-examine himself. He was his own lawyer. He did so much that we actually had to pull back a bit. A judge threatened to put duct tape over his mouth" (Big Eyes Featurette). It should be noted that the trial in the movie happens closer to when the Keanes were still in the limelight. In real life, the trial took place in 1986 when Margaret and Walter were a bit older, and Margaret's daughter Jane was an adult.

Did Margaret and Walter really have a paint-off in court?
Yes. In 1986, Margaret sued Walter for $3 million for slander. The case was heard in Honolulu federal court and lasted three-and-a-half weeks. Like in the movie, Walter acted as his own attorney and the judge challenged both of them to paint a child with big eyes. In 53 minutes, Margaret painted a little boy with huge eyes, staring nervously from behind a fence. As depicted in the movie, the painting became Exhibit 224. As for Walter, the movie is accurate. He said that he couldn't paint because he had a sore shoulder.

Margaret was awarded $4 million but never saw a dime of it because Walter was broke. He had spent years withering the fortune away on alcohol, drinking from morning until night, living in a fisherman's shack in La Jolla, California. -The Guardian

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/big-eyes/

I thought it was pretty good.

big eyes was good. i watched edward scissorhands tonight and it was actually a really stunning movie -- a modern fairy tale. ed wood is brilliant as well. it's very odd to me that this guys can make movies like these and yet 70% of his output is total garbage.

if you liked edward scissorhands (and especially the score) check out venetian snare's "this bitter earth" which interpolates dinah washington and danny elfman's memorable score from said film. magic

wasn't too keen on big eyes but it seemed like a success after the shit track record of recent years

what timmy and johnny did to alice in wonderland was deeply detestable, creating loud, garish ugliness out of a quizzical whimsy.

agree

batman was the worst thing that ever happened to burton tbh, he’s not cut out to make huge-budget tentpole movies

essentially he's pretty good when he's working with an original story or script. Too much of his stuff has been garish reboots, adaptations or remakes, give or take an exception to that rule, like Sweeney Todd.

His Dumbo got a pretty good review from Dargis in the NY Times today. "Takes a turn toward the facinatingly weird," it seems, and M Keaton evokes Walt Disney as the villain.

also an ilxor worked on the music

most critical reaction has been negative to tepid.

i love devito and kean, but don't have the stomach for late burton

keaton

Bilge Ebiri likes it

The circus settings do liberate Burton, giving him the opportunity to stage elaborate, bizarre acts with grandiosity and verve. Whether we’re watching Dumbo hoisted along a fake burning building to launch himself off a collapsing platform, or trying to navigate an ill-advised trapeze act, whenever the spotlights come on and the crowd roars, Dumbo comes to life....

So that’s what’s good about Dumbo. Here’s what’s bad: The story. The characters. Luckily there isn’t much of either.

https://www.vulture.com/2019/03/dumbo-movie-review.html

the world did not need this movie

thats a high bar

Morbs, you temper your fabled vituperation over the weirdest things.

this is definitely as dumb as a marvel cu movie on paper (and probably on celluloid too)

As much as I hate Tim Burton's works, I still like Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Aside from that, they could all be thrown into the deepest part of the ocean.

pee wee's big adventure is his best

sleepy hollow tbh

oh yeah let's do this again

I still have trouble believing this movie exists.

idk i just don’t really need to see dumbo reimagined with humans? the trailers have left me p cold so far, i think will skip & wait til this one is streaming

Disney’s obsession with maintaining its ip is a helluva drug

Yeah, the notion of watching any of Disney's live-action photocopies is pretty unappealing, but the participation of late-period Burton is just rancid icing on the shitty cake.

the Jungle Book remake was surprisingly good, beauty & the beast was ok, but both of those i also waited til they were streaming to watch. i have no desire to see them in the theater

the whole idea of this series of remakes is just kinda weird to me

Disney-qua-Disney has done almost nothing but remakes and sequels for years now. I don't know what's up with that but I agree that it's weird.

I'm reading The Big Picture by Ben Fritz on why the mainstream movie landscape has changed. Disney did research and figured out that movies that cost over $100M are less risky than others. Also Disney is not in the movie business, but the movie brand business, and audiences like knowing what they'll see before they see it. Bob Iger likes Apple and Fritz likens Disney films to Apple: they only release a few new versions of old products every year, and not many complain about it.

Does the 101 Dalmatians live action series pre-date this project or were they the first?

When pondering what might come of 90s nostalgia, I kept thinking about the popularity of films with either children or animals messing up people or disrupting someone's life. Home Alone, Baby's Day Out, 3 Ninjas, Beethoven, K9, Turner & Hooch. Arguably John Candy and Rodney Dangerfield have also served this purpose a bit earlier.

I caught a bit of 102 Dalmatians recently and it seems like the apotheosis of this. Glen Close is served humiliation after humiliation. Like someone saw Beethoven, was thrilled by Charles Grodin's cries of disgust and wanted to top that exquisite high.

Amuses me to imagine a generation making a wave of films trying to take this as far as possible. Horses Fucking Up Your Golf Course, Ducks Shit All Over Your Garden Party, Skunks At A Business Merger etc

Not sure if the upcoming Cruella movie is a remake of a remake or a sequel of a remake, sure to be a hoot either way.

Disney-qua-Disney has done almost nothing but remakes and sequels for years now. I don't know what's up with that but I agree that it's weird.

this is just an update of Disney's core policy since their first feature film in 1937 though

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - based on an 1812 fairy tale
Pinocchio (1940) - based on an 1881 Italian serial
Fantasia (1940) - The Sorceror's Apprentice based on a 1797 German poem
The Reluctant Dragon (1941) - based on an 1898 Scottish short story
Dumbo (1941) - based on a 1939 story & toy that tbf never came out
Bambi (1942) - based on a 1923 Austrian book
[USA finally enters WWII so there's a gap here]
Song of the South (1946) - based on 1881 version of "African-American" folk tales
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949) - one based on a 1908 Scottish novel, one on an 1820 American short story
Cinderella (1950) - based on the 1697 French version of a folk tale
Alice in Wonderland (1951) - based on an 1865 English novel
Peter Pan (1953) - based on a 1904 Scottish play
Lady and the Tramp (1955) - started as an original story by a Disney work-for-hire guy!!! but then Walt bought a short from a 1945 issue of Cosmopolitan and told them to adapt that
Sleeping Beauty (1959) - based on a fairy tale, especially the version by the same dude as Cinderella
One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) - based on a 1956 English novel
The Sword in the Stone (1963) - based on the 1938 novel that imagined the childhood version of a folk myth
The Jungle Book (1967) - based on the 1893-94 series of stories
The Aristocats (1970) - commissioned by Walt in 1961 as two live-action TV adaptations of animal stories, any animal stories, just by GOD don't you dare come up with an original story. Story treatment bought in 1962 for a live-action feature. Approved by Walt to be an animated feature in 1963. Rewritten many times, evidently for the worse, but still ends up as Disney's first original animated feature imo.
Robin Hood (1973) - based on the English medieval legend and also on French medieval legend Reynard The Fox and also on a dropped storyline from The Aristocats
Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968), Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974) and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) - straight-up stolen from E.H. Shephard and the family of A.A. Milne, who have still not received any royalties as Disney sadly have not managed to make any single short, feature, anthology, TV series, toy, T-shirt, child's cutlery or any other merchandise that has made a profit. It's so sweet that out of the goodness of their hearts, they keep selling more!
The Rescuers (1977) - based on a series of British novels, 1959-1978
The Fox and the Hound (1981) - based on a 1967 American novel
The Black Cauldron (1985) - based on 1964-65 American novels that were based on Welsh mythology
The Great Mouse Detective (1986) - based on the Basil Of Baker Street novels (1958-82)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) - based on 1981 American novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?
Oliver & Company (1988) - what if 1837 Dickens, but dogs
The Little Mermaid (1989) - what if 1837 Andersen, but with a penis on the VHS cover
DuckTales the Movie (1990) - what if TV adaptation of 1952-70s Barks, but movie
The Rescuers Down Under (1990) - what if Rescuers, but down under (but all the voices are American and Canadian and English and Welsh and Norwegian)
Beauty and the Beast (1991) - based on French fairy tale
Aladdin (1992) - based on middle eastern folk tale added to a French version of The One Thousand And One Nights in 1710
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) - based on a 1982 poem written by Tim Burton while he was work-for-hire at Disney
The Lion King (1994) - feverishly promoted as The First All-Original Disney Animated Feature EVARRR!!!! but was totally ripped off of Tezuka's Kimba The White Lion (manga 1950-54, rip-off derived from 52-part anime, 1965-66)
A Goofy Movie (1995) - movie version of 1992 TV version of 1932-infinity Disney shorts+etc character
Pocahontas (1995) - thoroughly-researched biopic
James and the Giant Peach (1996) - based on 1961 English novel
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) - based on 1831 French novel
Hercules (1997) - based on Greek myth
Mulan (1998) - based on C6th Chinese ballad
Tarzan (1999) - based on 1912 American serial
Fantasia 2000 (2000) - what if Fantasia, but 2000

and then the 21st century is mostly sequels and TV adaptations and more fairy tales and what if King Lear, except bear? and what if song, but long? except for Wreck-It Ralph, which stands as the second original Disney animated feature ever. (Honorable mention to Bolt, where John Lasseter moved over from Pixar and fired the writer/director of an original film and told his new employees to remake it to his own specifications in 18 months while he stood behind them and smelled their hair)

there are 8 zillion live-action Disney movies that only Americans have ever heard of, but on first glance a wild amount of them are based on Scottish novels, and even The Absent-Minded Professor and The Shaggy Dog and Condorman are based on existing stories with the titles changed

Zootopia was a pretty solid exception, wrt recent Disney Animation Studios.

While I appreciate the sic-cyclopedia entry, I was speaking more about their recent tendency to lean hard on remakes and sequels of their own previous work as opposed to the familiar adaptations of non-Disney material. Between live action and animated films from 2017 through the end of this year, I count thirteen remakes/sequels of existing Disney properties, two newly-adapted properties (Nutcracker and Artemis Fowl), and one original film (Coco). It wasn't a whole helluva lot better in the years before that, but they were a little closer to a 50/50 split between 'fresh' material and autophagia.

presumably part of that tally is them buying things where new instalments link up, even if they’re not direct sequels? eg Marvel, Star Wars, vs historically “Disney”-branded stuff

I count Pixar separately still, though they’ve obv become sequelier as they became more merged w/ Disney

Nah, I'm just counting movies that announce themselves proudly as a Walt Disney (or Pixar) production, no Lucasfilm or Marvel.

ooooof

i'm not esp likely to ever see this, but a glance at the reviews shows it's not a "photocopy"

but keep thinkin Tarantella is original

I'm never going to see this, but the biggest red flag is that the cartoon runs about an hour and this one runs about twice that.

meh, 2019

In case you failed to see it upthread...

Morbs, you temper your fabled vituperation over the weirdest things.

― WAS ACTING A FOOL AND FELL ON GRILL (Old Lunch), Friday, March 29, 2019 2:06 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also golf clap for strawmanning all of the zero people in existence who ever called Tarantino original. Yeeeeesh.

i was thinking about this yesterday and its now starting to make more sense to view Disney originals like...broadway musicals or whatever and these remakes as revivals.

revivals which just happen to allow disney to extend the copyright on their properties

thus keeping alive the goose that lays the dollar-crammed eggs

I hope I live long enough to see like the fifth or sixth iteration of a Disney remake where it's just like this crude and barely recognizable rendition of Pinocchio standing in a stark white field for two hours and endlessly repeating 'Hi, I'm Pinocchio!' to the camera from a variety of angles.

Pinocchio (2042): Not as bad as I thought it might be, Pinocchio's enunciation was flawless, and Disney has really upped their game on the presentation of the glaring void in which all of their films are now set. *** + 1/2*

My greatest dream is somehow stripping Disney of all their copyrights and filming everyone crying who will be hit hard in the bank balance by this, so I can watch these crying videos everyday for immense sexual pleasure.

I can't believe he got Mars Attacks! made. I can't believe he assembled that cast.

really liked it when it came out and it goes up in my estimation every time i revisit, some kind of lunatic masterpiece

that and Ed Wood have become my abiding favorites

i haven't seen it in years but every so often, the phrase "the international sign of the donut" pops into my head

It's definitely more Joe Dante than Tim Burton.

Wednesday sucks, right? Is it just me? made it three episodes and decided "nah". the humor doesn't work at all and this cutesy goth thing is so played out.

i was the opposite- i’m surprised by how much i really enjoy it … like there are a lot of dopey jokes and puns and fan service but the mystery is kinda compelling & i like all the main characters

also there is a great scene where she dances to the Cramps “Goo Goo Muck”

clip here bc it’s truly excellent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE2bY2gOBhk