Tales from Cinematic Motions

[elpollodiablo]

Someone kill Tim Burton before he makes another film. Seriously.


GEE I WONDER WHO'S GONNA BE IN THAT ONE HMMM MAYBE JOHNNY 'THE SIMPLETON' DEPP AND HELENA BONHAM CARTER THEY SEEM TO GO PRETTY WELL TOGETHER HUH

[das kranke Tier]

I have an altogether unfounded mega-boner for Helena Bonham Carter...

[elpollodiablo]

Well you should propose to her then because I'm fairly sure you could make better films than Tim Burton's last few

[coldforge]

I sure did like a Nightmare Before Christmas, but god DAMN am I tired of his mallgoth shtik.

[diesel_powered]

"The stories are like drugs for children, you know?" Burton said. "It's like, 'Whoa, man.' The imagery, they've never quite nailed making it compelling as a full story. So I think it's an interesting challenge to direct."

Oh how articulate. I never liked Nightmare Before Christmas.

[C of heartbreak]

I am obligated to like the soundtrack, but I was never crazy about the movie itself.

[elpollodiablo]

"The stories are like drugs for children, you know?" Burton said. "It's like, 'Whoa, man.' The imagery, they've never quite nailed making it compelling as a full story. So I think it's an interesting challenge to direct."

Oh how articulate.

No wonder he and JD get along so well!

[diesel_powered]

True dat.

[hannah]

He never gets above gimmick, cannot do service to a story to save his life. Half-assed, half-assed, half-assed!

Why would he make Alice in Wonderland when he can jack from Svankmajer elsewhere? Isn't going that way just a little too redundant?

[elpollodiablo]

He never gets above gimmick

This is exactly right, and it's what makes him a total hack. It's not that he has any coherent vision, he just enjoys being the creepy/fantasy go-to guy, I think. And he's long since figured out (along with a lot of other folks making films) that you can put that idiot man child into any piece of shit to come down the line and it'll at least turn a profit.

[Wally]

I agree with anyone who has anything negative to say about Tim Burton.

[C of heartbreak]

Speaking of which, the other day at 4am I was watching Batman, and I was trying to think of the word for when something is so far beyond/bad at being campy that you can't even laugh at it, but I drew a blank.

[Wally]

Speaking of which, the other day at 4am I was watching Batman, and I was trying to think of the word for when something is so far beyond/bad and being campy that you can't even laugh at it, but I drew a blank.

Illest waffle?

[Andrew_TSKS]

i have tickets to a free preview screening of "sweeney todd" and i am totally looking forward to checking it out, so FUCK ALL OF YOU.

[elpollodiablo]

Were they giving those out at the carwash in Richmond too?

[heather marie]

i have tickets to a free preview screening of "sweeney todd" and i am totally looking forward to checking it out, so FUCK ALL OF YOU.

I don't have free tickets but I am looking forward to it. My inner 14 year old still loves Tim Burton and I know that he's gimmicky but I sorta like it. Sorry, guys.

[Andrew_TSKS]

my roommate got it for me, i have no idea from where. i don't care, though, i'm stoked.

[Andrew_TSKS]

i'm kinda weirded out by this:

The Most Overpaid Celebrities

Case in point: Oscar winner Nicole Kidman. She earned an estimated $15 million for her latest film, "The Golden Compass," known around the studio lot these days as the biggest turkey of 2007. It grossed a dreary $26 million this weekend, though its reported budget flirted with the $200 million mark. (That's "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings" territory.)

isn't something like this only going to make the movie do worse? and why the hell does the movie industry put so much emphasis on numbers anyway? i can't really put into words exactly how, but i feel like this has to damage the performance of some movies. isn't stuff like this just going to make it harder for "golden compass" to eventually make a profit? so why would you even want people to know, let alone trumpet it in all of your press releases? it doesn't make any sense to me.

[hannah]

Speaking of Nicole Kidman: as Heather mentioned in one of the happy threads, we saw Margot at the Wedding on Saturday. I wasn't too fond of The Squid and the Whale because I thought the, well, squid and the whale thing some phony-baloney, and though Margot wasn't altogether free of such easy metaphors -- and certainly had a lot of on-the-nose dialogue -- it sure got me nostalgic for where I grew up, nastiness and all. Okay, the Stuyvesant/Bronx Science/Packer conversation was what sold me. Nice details.  I'm weak like that.

And I though Kidman was excellent, as she sometimes can be. Woman has made some weird choices, and sometimes they pay off (well, I liked Birth and Dogville) and sometimes they don't (Bewitched, the Diane Arbus picture, her goddamn Oscar winner, the Invasion -- wait, they're remaking Lady from Shanghai? -- etc.) and sometimes I can't remember if it was her or Naomi Watts who was in the movie, but here she did right by the movie and the movie did right by her, because Jennifer Jason Leigh is awesome and the kid who played Kidman's kid even more so.

Damn, I need to see some Eric Rohmer.

[justinh]

I don't know about later Tim Burton stuff, but Beetlejuice, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Ed Wood, and Edward Scissorhands are all worthy of watching repeatedly.   His later movies haven't been so compelling, but they're still pretty great to look at.

[Heathcote]

fuck all this shit, i just watched the trapped in the closet video for the first time! It's the best thing I've ever seen! I wish there were 100s of hiphoperas for me to buy, there should be a hiphopera clubnight out there...i'd be sold...

[elpollodiablo]

I liked Birth and Dogville as well. I like Nicole Kidman, generally.

What I don't especially care for are Noah Baumbach films. If I want to see privileged easterners behaving badly I can go visit my cousin at Miami. I thought Margot was a total dud.

[hannah]

What I don't especially care for are Noah Baumbach films. If I want to see privileged easterners behaving badly I can go visit my cousin at Miami. I thought Margot was a total dud.

I think that's a fair assessment of The Squid and the Whale, which more often got the bad behavior wrong than right -- particularly with the Jeff Daniels character -- but I think Margot (mostly) did right by its characters' flaws without making them seem grotesque-for-grotesque's-sake. (Though Malcolm was a bit of a stretch, except when either Margot or her husband was shocked to hear he went to Stuyvesant, and the out-of-fashion names of the characters got to be ludicrous after a while.) Anyhow, that's more than I can say about -- though these may not be perfect examples -- About Schmidt, Cache, or The Dreamers, which simultaneously condescend to and romanticize their characters, as if privilege is any kind of excuse.

[Andrew_TSKS]

I don't know about later Tim Burton stuff, but Beetlejuice, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Ed Wood, and Edward Scissorhands are all worthy of watching repeatedly.   His later movies haven't been so compelling, but they're still pretty great to look at.

i gotta rep for sleepy hollow in a big big way. love that movie.

also, where baumbach is concerned, i really don't think squid and the whale is nearly as bad as you guys are making it out to be. i liked it a lot, and in a completely different form of endorsement, my friend eric felt so intensely uncomfortable with it, due to how much it reminded him of his own parents' divorce, that he got super depressed after seeing it and sat up talking to jojo and i about his parents' divorce for two hours afterwards. i thought the fact that it brought out that kind of emotion in him spoke well for the film, and even he admitted that that was true, though he never wants to see it again. so yeah, i don't think it's a failure as a movie at all. the bit with the squid and the whale as a metaphor or whatever only takes up maybe a minute of the movie anyway.

[diesel_powered]

So... I made an attempt to watch U-turn tonight, but I just couldn't make it through. I just couldn't sit around and watch Sean Penn get his ass kicked for two hours by a bunch of fucked up hicks. I got about halfway through and gave up. Oliver Stone can eat a dick.