Tim Burton -- classic or dud?

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