Tim Burton

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mfunk9786
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Re: Tim Burton

#76 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Aug 23, 2018 8:00 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Thu Aug 23, 2018 5:21 pm
Beetlejuice holds up best for me. Maybe Tim Burton is like Bright Eyes albums, in that lots of people have one they fervently like more than all the others even though they're not all that different
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning is better than everything TIm Burton has done in his life put together but I see your point
Brian C wrote:
Thu Aug 23, 2018 5:19 pm
I wouldn’t go this far, but one of the disillusionments of growing up for me has been realizing how much I overrated Burton when I was young.
Was never particularly sold (Big Fish is on a very shortlist of my most hated films) but stuff like Edward Scissorhands and Nightmare Before Christmas always seemed pretty good to me until I revisited them and realized it was just because I was a kid and they were 'creative'

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Big Ben
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Re: Tim Burton

#77 Post by Big Ben » Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:14 pm

Probably a good time to remind people that Burton didn't direct The Nightmare Before Christmas he only produced it. It has his aesthetic but it's neither his words nor direction.

As for what Brian said about Burton and youth I think that's about how I feel too. Burton filled that weird niche for my weird youth but that was later replaced by far weirder oddities like David Lynch (This is a compliment).

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knives
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Re: Tim Burton

#78 Post by knives » Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:26 pm

Actually even the art style is largely not his though he would adapt to his later films starting right away with my favorite: Batman Returns.

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colinr0380
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Re: Tim Burton

#79 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Aug 24, 2018 4:51 pm

This might be a good time to link to the excellent Red Letter Media discussion on Ed Wood. It is also interesting to think of the time in the 1990s when the Burton-Depp partnership was an extremely strong draw, and that the Tim Burton films were strange and eccentric but successfully so, with a lot of heart to their strangeness. Plus they were often not Johnny Depp's very strangest roles of the time (Cry-Baby, Arizona Dream, Benny & Joon, Dead Man, Don Juan DeMarco all come to mind!)

I'm actually finding his remake of Planet of the Apes is growing on me a bit. Especially now that we have the later 'realistic, CGI' Planet of the Apes films to compare it to, the 2001 film feels like it occupies an interesting middle ground, between the original and modern series. It also takes the subversive notion from the original films that the apes were a bit more humanitarian (or at least wrestling with human ethics and moral quandaries over animal testing) than the humans were and sort of made it bluntly explicit. Whilst the humans can talk in the Burton film they are strangely much blander for that, and probably intentionally so (I often think they're versions of the Eloi in The Time Machine, most obviously so in the beautiful mute love interest in the 1967 film. Which makes the apes the Morlocks, I suppose). I occasionally feel a bit sorry for the beautiful but blank and sidelined 'love interest' played by Estella Warren (who if she were in films a decade later would be perfect for headlining a Young Adult property, doing some Maze Running, Hunger Gaming or Twilighting), for being in a film where the filmmaker was far more interested in the potential bestiality angle with Helena Bonham Carter's ape activist!

I also really like the way the Tim Roth villain character is used at the end:
SpoilerShow
when he is trapped behind a kind of plexiglass barrier in the reactivated spaceship and goes wild (or 'reverts' to his ape nature), shooting his pistol pointlessly at the barrier only for the bullets to bounce off and chase him around the small room, and we end his character on a shot of him cowering beneath one of the ancient control panels, which works both as a bringing low comeuppance of the pompous villain of the piece, but also underlines that sense of a fearful and dangerous animal once again rightly caged for the safety of all. More than any of the activist metaphors of earlier in the film, that brief shot suggests the cycle of exploitation has come full circle, adding a bitter tinge to the victory.

A cycle which turns yet again with the twist ending (which I don't really have trouble with, and like the time dilation aspect to the twist. Although it cannot be anywhere near as impactful as the ending of the 1967 film, and despite just being a tossed away zinger weirdly suggests a much more interesting and intriguing sequel than the playing it safe film we have just watched! It is like all the creativity and imagination went into the punchline!), which suggests a kind of symbiotic relationship between ape and man, going through endless cycles of dominance and submission. Though all of the Planet of the Apes films are much more interesting when that battle between human and animal nature is fought out internally and morally wrestled with, rather than bluntly literalised!

That probably plays into why the film feels strangely unsatisfying as it seems to have all of the beats of a standard but straightforward and unsurprising sci-fi action piece but also keeps strangely undermining those aspects as with the subversion of the love interest, the rather dull lunk hero compared to some of the eccentric characters in the Burton filmography before that (though Mark Whalberg looks positively charismatic here compared to future sci-fi fantasy leading men to come in the future such as a Sam Worthington or Taylor Lautner!) or the stupidity of diving into a wormhole to recover your experimental monkey (which dooms everyone). All of the interesting aspects about it are the subversive elements that prevent it from working as a straightforward summer blockbuster. The perverse darkness with a sense of black humour works for something revelling in that perversity like the Batman films or the wonderful Mars Attacks! (which felt as if it came along at a perfect time to stand in stark counterpoint to the straightforward gung ho jingoism of Independence Day), not quite so much when everything is playing out to a standard template that grates against the strangeness. But now that we have the 'straightforward summer blockbuster' Planet of the Apes films, the Burton one belatedly now has the material to kick against!

I suppose the one thing that everyone can agree on though is that the excellent main title sequence and Danny Elfman score is the standout aspect of the film!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sat Aug 25, 2018 3:41 am, edited 4 times in total.

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Lost Highway
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Re: Tim Burton

#80 Post by Lost Highway » Fri Aug 24, 2018 5:09 pm

Pee-Wee‘s Big Adventure is my favourite of his and Beetlehuice and Batman Returns are great. Much of Burton‘s output since has been bad but occasionally he still cranks out a decent movie. Of his later films I enjoyed Sweeney Todd (though much of the credit goes to Sondheim) and I was pleasantly surprised by Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, which only falls apart at the end with the obligatory but as always ineptly handled action climax.

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dda1996a
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Re: Tim Burton

#81 Post by dda1996a » Fri Aug 24, 2018 5:12 pm

colinr0380 wrote:
Fri Aug 24, 2018 4:51 pm
]It is also interesting to think of the time in the 1990s when the Burton-Depp partnership was an extremely strong draw, and that the Tim Burton films were strange and eccentric but successfully so, with a lot of heart to their strangeness. Plus they were often not Johnny Depp's very strangest roles of the time (Cry-Baby, Arizona Dream, Benny & Joon, Dead Man, Don Juan DeMarco all come to mind!)
Ah, the days where Depp was interesting and sought interesting characters instead of make up, weird hats and lots of money

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FrauBlucher
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Re: Tim Burton

#82 Post by FrauBlucher » Fri Aug 24, 2018 5:29 pm

I have yet to see a Burton film that I look forward to a repeat viewing. Beetlejuice and Sweeney Todd are the two I would return too if arm was twisted. It’s like loading up on sugary foods, then realizing how unsatisfying that was.

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All the Best People
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Re: Tim Burton

#83 Post by All the Best People » Sat Aug 25, 2018 1:10 am

My ranking of Tim Burton films is as follows (alphabetical within headings):

THE BEST
Batman Returns
Edward Scissorhands
Ed Wood

THE GOOD
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory [I haven't seen this since it was in theaters so don't know if my opinion would hold]
Mars Attacks!
Sleepy Hollow
Sweeney Todd

SOLID ENOUGH
Batman
Big Eyes
Big Fish

EH
Beetlejuice
Corpse Bride

I AM NOT ENTERTAINED
Planet of the Apes

LIKE, SERIOUSLY, NOT ENTERTAINED, WHY DOES THIS EVEN EXIST?
Alice in Wonderland

OH GOD, NO! WHY??????????? HOW?????????????????
Dark Shadows

I am of a certain age where the likes of Edward Scissorhands was a meaningful, beautiful, and poetic expression of outsiderness. His films of the late 90s could be fun, though they never really got to the heights of that or Wood. Sadly, I have found is his films less and less essential as the years have gone by. Has his work changed, or have I? Perhaps a bit of both, but I really do think it's mostly him.

I do think it goes without saying that without Danny Elfman, most of his films would lose impact (though it's interesting that Ed Wood, one of his best films, was scored by someone else).

Ftr, I would slot The Nightmare Before Christmas in among THE BEST, probably, and I believe I agree with the contemporaneous assertion that its one-third each of Burton, Selick, and Elfman.

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Swift
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Re: Tim Burton

#84 Post by Swift » Sat Aug 25, 2018 3:07 pm

Big Ben wrote:
Thu Aug 23, 2018 2:21 pm
I confess Burton's Factory creeps me out. I'm all down for eccentric weirdos but Depp's performance is unintentionally creepy in my opinion. No doubt he didn't want to emulate Wilder's version but I recall thinking when I first saw Burton's film how unsettling I found it.
Have Burton or Depp ever talked about Michael Jackson in relation to this portrayal of the character. The choice of pasty white made up face and a higher pitched voice to portray a reclusive, eccentric man who invites kids over to his home always seemed to me as a deliberate take on Jackson.

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Kirkinson
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Re: Tim Burton

#85 Post by Kirkinson » Sat Aug 25, 2018 3:56 pm


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jazzo
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Re: Tim Burton

#86 Post by jazzo » Sat Aug 25, 2018 11:14 pm

I can’t speak to most of his output since Big Fish, which I kind-of despised, and decided I was finally done with him. While recently searching for a film for our family’s movie night, however, the kids and I tried his Frankenweenie feature length, and we all found it engaging, and I, personally, was quite moved by the picture’s end.

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JamesF
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Re: Tim Burton

#87 Post by JamesF » Sun Aug 26, 2018 3:07 am

All the Best People wrote:
Sat Aug 25, 2018 1:10 am
My ranking of Tim Burton films is as follows (alphabetical within headings):
Your list missed out Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, which I would hope is in the “GREAT” section!

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MoonlitKnight
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Re: Tim Burton

#88 Post by MoonlitKnight » Sun Aug 26, 2018 9:57 am

JamesF wrote:
Sun Aug 26, 2018 3:07 am
All the Best People wrote:
Sat Aug 25, 2018 1:10 am
My ranking of Tim Burton films is as follows (alphabetical within headings):
Your list missed out Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, which I would hope is in the “GREAT” section!
As well as "Frankenweenie" (which, echoing jazzo's sentiment, I think most people would find perhaps Burton's best effort over the last 10 years) and "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" (which actually I really liked; I certainly found it more compelling than any of those Harry Potter and the Divergent Hunger Games for Maze Runners movies -- I'd love to see the other 2 books also adapted, but I'm guessing that's not going to happen. :-k ).

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All the Best People
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Re: Tim Burton

#89 Post by All the Best People » Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:46 pm

JamesF wrote:
Sun Aug 26, 2018 3:07 am
All the Best People wrote:
Sat Aug 25, 2018 1:10 am
My ranking of Tim Burton films is as follows (alphabetical within headings):
Your list missed out Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, which I would hope is in the “GREAT” section!
I've never seen it, and have seen only the short "Frankenweenie", which is strong.

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Re: Tim Burton

#90 Post by Zot! » Tue Aug 28, 2018 9:49 am

Terrible amateur comedy sketch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFzLRP8e4vE that regardless captures Burton's worst tendencies, which otherwise continue unabated.

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Re: Tim Burton

#91 Post by connor » Tue Aug 28, 2018 11:26 am

I agree with Rosenbaum that Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is pretty great. As is Sweeney Todd and both versions of Frankenweenie. Big Fish however was terrible and Alice in Wonderland was such a churn of shiny shit flying across the screen that I can hardly remember it. Dark Shadows was best when it was goofy. Sleepy Hollow doesn't quite work (the ridiculous conspiracy theory script) but is gorgeous to watch with that impeccable production design, sort of his own Gangs of New York. Mars Attacks! is frequently hilarious and even the somewhat maudlin Edward Scissorhands has its moments (his own take on Douglas Sirk?). Add all this to Beetlejuice, Ed Wood, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and Nightmare Before Christmas and I'd say that's a pretty great body of work.

As to his Batman films, comic writer Grant Morrison summed it up best:
I like [Batman Returns] better than the first one, and I think Michelle Pfeiffer was really good. But on both movies it's a closed set, so it's models and, like, 30 people in Gotham, and only one street corner, and I find them quite claustrophobic. In retrospect, you have to watch them as if they're stage plays rather than movies. I think at the time I wouldn't even have noticed, but they really feel cramped – this really tiny fairy-tale world.

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Lost Highway
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Re: Tim Burton

#92 Post by Lost Highway » Tue Aug 28, 2018 4:20 pm

I felt that the exteriors of the first Batman film consisted of one set endlessly reused and the Gotham of that movie never felt like an actual place, like the LA of Blade Runner for instance. With Batman Returns the world building worked far better. It’s one of my favourite Burton films and again, it’s just let down by a poorly staged action climax, something I’ve referred to in my last post.

I also like his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in fact I far prefer it to the earlier film, which I never really liked. Depp is actually pretty funny and the art direction is Burton at his most Burtonesque, the movie looks fantastic.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Tim Burton

#93 Post by hearthesilence » Tue Aug 28, 2018 4:51 pm

I was mainly a Batman fan when I first saw those films as a kid, and at the time, they were disappointing in ways that would only matter to a comic book devotee. I probably saw the 1989 film dozens of times in fragments, but it was years before i saw it again as an adult, maybe even a decade, and honestly I'd much rather watch the Prince videos for two hours rather than the movie proper. (I didn't even own a single Prince record growing up - how things have changed.) It's a thoroughly mediocre movie, and even Burton himself seems to believe that in the commentary track. Worth hearing - the way this film came together was so haphazard, it's especially astonishing that a relative newcomer like Burton could keep a level head with a $100+ million budget on his shoulders. Nicholson deserves praise for stealing the film - he's doing his usual shtick, but it's his shtick, no one else's - and also for supporting Burton rather than making the film an ordeal. (It's amusing to hear this given the rumors that Nicholson drove some people crazy on The Departed, essentially doing whatever he wanted for his character.) He's entertaining, and in retrospect it's as if Keaton's Beetlejuice was given a bigger role in Burton's next film. But Keaton himself as Wayne is nearly wasted, and the story is often flat out boring. Even the direction seems pretty stiff. The movie works best as a giant set piece, and it's impressive enough to look at that one forgets how hollow the whole thing really is.

Batman Returns is theoretically a better film, but I would argue that it's worse and a flat out terrible film. Supposedly it's more personal, but it is on a very superficial level. The same themes seen in his earlier, better films are repeated without resonance, and both the script and the acting is smug and fatally self-conscious - Pfeiffer and DeVito overact to the point of embarrassment.

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Brian C
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Re: Tim Burton

#94 Post by Brian C » Tue Aug 28, 2018 5:27 pm

It's possible that I've said this before, but Burton's Batman was the first movie that I remember actually recognizing the artistry of. I was 11 when it was released and was really taken in by the style and atmosphere of the movie's Gotham City. It seemed so dark and mysterious to me.

Up until that point, I don't remember recognizing the stylistic elements of movies. I'd just follow along with the story. I'm not sure it really occurred to me that people actually made movies - they were there and that was that. So while I don't find the movie especially watchable now, I'd still say that it's an important and even formative film for me - it made me look at movies in a different and much more curious sort of way.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Tim Burton

#95 Post by hearthesilence » Tue Aug 28, 2018 5:38 pm

It's been dulled a bit by familiarity, but the retro look fused to futuristic noir (pretty much an homage to Metropolis) is a fantastic look. It may be derivative, but it holds up well. Long before I got into film as an art form, I recall liking it a lot in Madonna's "Express Yourself" music video and the Batman cartoons from the '90s. Again, Batman is not what I'd call great filmmaking - some of the blocking and editing is clunky and the pacing pretty sluggish. But the look and the style can make one forgive those things, albeit to a point.

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MoonlitKnight
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Re: Tim Burton

#96 Post by MoonlitKnight » Wed Aug 29, 2018 2:26 am

The look started to depreciate for me when Schumacher took over the series and started injecting the overt campiness of the '60s TV series into the mix. Talk about adding oil to water...

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Re: Tim Burton

#97 Post by bearcuborg » Wed Aug 29, 2018 4:36 am

MoonlitKnight and hearthesilence, you both said it all regarding his Batman movies.
MoonlitKnight wrote:
Wed Aug 29, 2018 2:26 am
The look started to depreciate for me when Schumacher took over the series and started injecting the overt campiness of the '60s TV series into the mix. Talk about adding oil to water...
Yeah, that was the first time I walked out on a movie, I did so after the opening scene if memory serves.

It took me awhile to catch on to Burton, as this skit pretty much summed up everything I felt about him for a good stretch of his career.

I still have fond memories of Ed Wood, Pee Wee and Beetlejuice. I remember not liking the headless horseman story he did, but it looked great, maybe his best in that regard.

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Lost Highway
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Re: Tim Burton

#98 Post by Lost Highway » Wed Aug 29, 2018 7:43 am

MoonlitKnight wrote:
Wed Aug 29, 2018 2:26 am
The look started to depreciate for me when Schumacher took over the series and started injecting the overt campiness of the '60s TV series into the mix. Talk about adding oil to water...
Which should be no surprise. I can't think of a worse Hollywood director than Schumacher from the 80s to the 00s.

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Re: Tim Burton

#99 Post by Zot! » Wed Aug 29, 2018 8:19 am

Lost Highway wrote:
Wed Aug 29, 2018 7:43 am
MoonlitKnight wrote:
Wed Aug 29, 2018 2:26 am
The look started to depreciate for me when Schumacher took over the series and started injecting the overt campiness of the '60s TV series into the mix. Talk about adding oil to water...
Which should be no surprise. I can't think of a worse Hollywood director than Schumacher from the 80s to the 00s.
The 60's series actually has an active fanbase and I think it still shows up as an alternate universe version of the bat-verse in certain media. Schumacher's overtly gay take on the character, inclusive of sculpted bat nipples, may have sunk that bedazzled ship for the intended audience.
I seem to remember thinking The Client was good...maybe I need to rewatch.

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Lost Highway
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Re: Tim Burton

#100 Post by Lost Highway » Wed Aug 29, 2018 8:35 am

Zot! wrote:
Wed Aug 29, 2018 8:19 am

The 60's series actually has an active fanbase and I think it still shows up as an alternate universe version of the bat-verse in certain media. Schumacher's overtly gay take on the character, inclusive of sculpted bat nipples, may have sunk that bedazzled ship for the intended audience.
I seem to remember thinking The Client was good...maybe I need to rewatch.
I wouldn't blame this on the few touches of homo-eroticism which in all likelihood went over the heads of a general audience. X-Men 2 did rather well with a blatant gay-lib subtext.

It's really not too hard to spot everything else that is wrong with the movie, from ugly art direction and costuming, to awful acting and many shortcomings in terms of storytelling and filmmaking. Also it's not a gay take, it's a camp take, the two aren't the same. There are ways of making that work (as in the TV show) but Schumacher didn't have it in him. I've never seen him able to elevate a screenplay and the few times he got his hands on a decent screenplay, almost any director working at the time would have done a better job.

I always wondered whether Burton recommended Schumacher for the job because he was unlikely to overshadow the Burton Batman films. For all his faults, Burton is a director with a distinct aesthetic and vision while Schumacher always had poor taste.

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