PI-NO-THANK-YOU, TIM BURTON

I was coughing a bit as I opened this article. My cough turned into dry-heaving. Fuck everything about this idea.

I shudder to think what Burton might do with the cricket.  Oh God, there's your Depp role.

An aside:  if you'd put ANYBODY else in the lead role in Begnini's Pinocchio, it would be a sweet, beautiful to look at film.  He just kills the damn thing dead.

I have no particular affinity for PINOCCHIO, though I'm certainly not keen to have another Burton film inflicted on our timeline. He needs to go back to original projects. Who knows if he has another ED WOOD in him at this stage, but I feel like he should at least be using the power of his "brand" to get a greenlight for something that isn't simply an Burtonized adaptation of an existing property

PS There is no way he could ever improve on Monstro

Burton flicks lost my interest a long time ago, I have no desire to see this.

If Pinocchio is a stop-motion creation in the real-world that could be nifty and I think Burton's visuals would fit the story's  big scary world just fine. But then I could just watch the film in my head that I'd expect from him. I'd rather an original tale like NBC or CORPSE BRIDE, An homage to the dark fairy tales instead of re-imaginings.

Burton was interesting in the 90s.  After that it became like a fad that didn't know it was out of style.

I'm still looking forward to Burton's Dark Shadows.

Well, at least Victor Salva ain't directing it. So there's that. 

Would someone please stop this guy before he shoehorns his played-out aesthetic into every great work of literature that ever existed? 

You are both very right...unfortunately. Although I dug "Big Fish", I think Burton pretty much lost his edge after "Sleepy Hollow", which itself wasn't that great. He clearly peaked with "Ed Wood" and it's been mostly downhill from there. Now he just uses his clout to do these vanity projects pissing on stories that have already been made into fine movies. His Burtonized versions are thoroughly unnecessary. I don't know why he didn't learn from the failure of "Planet of the Apes".

As meh as he has become of late, it's worth noting that everything he's done in that period has made from "lots" to "astonishing amounts" of money.  His last real failure was Mars Attacks!  Even Sweeny Todd did ok.  I just wish he had a bit of the Soderbergs in him and did throw in the occasional weird personal project in between.

Dark Shadows and Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter do sound a bit refreshingly obscure/nuts.  So we'll see I guess. (Although with Bekmanbetov at the helm of one  it might just be Sleepy Hollow meets Van Helsing with more slo-mo)

Yeah. In terms of impact on the public and financial returns Burton's career is it its golden phase, huge numbers of people are seeing his films and they're making huge amounts of money. I also don't think his clout has anything to do with the recent films like Apes, Charlie and Alice being made - they'd have been made without him - he's just doing director-for-hire work on big studio pieces, a return to the Batman days. Most the early Burton films were genuinely personal vanity pieces and weren't big financial successes: Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Mars Attacks, Ed Wood, etc.

Though I'll love more of the early work, and hope Dark Shadows is a return to form, the big budget Disney pics would have been pretty bad whoever made them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by leederick 

I also don't think his clout has anything to do with the recent films like Apes, Charlie and Alice being made - they'd have been made without him - he's just doing director-for-hire work on big studio pieces, a return to the Batman days. Most the early Burton films were genuinely personal vanity pieces and weren't big financial successes: Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Mars Attacks, Ed Wood, etc.

No, he definitely did "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" because he wanted to based on his belief that the original movie was an inadequate adaptation of the book and he believed he could make a better one. I actually read about that in a John August interview, where August revealed that he asked Burton if he should watch "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" to get ideas. Burton's response was an emphatic "no!".

At the time, I could kinda see where Burton was coming from since I think the songs and lead performance in the original are pretty cheesy, but Burton's adaptation ended up making the 70s version look way, way better, especially when you compare Depp's wretched, tone-deaf performance to Wilder's superlative work.

Now I can't actually confirm that Burton had similar delusions of grandeur about "Planet of the Apes" and "Alice in Wonderland", but I bet he believed they needed to be 'improved' by him as well. It sounds pretty likely. I haven't seen his "Alice in Wonderland", but someone who did told me that, just as he did in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", Burton made it deviate from the original story by bringing his daddy issues into it.

That's why I call these vanity projects. He takes stories that were fine just the way they were and fuses his Burton production design and theme fetishes onto them warping them into something different just to satisfy his personal obsessions.

I'm willing to sideline Planet Of The Apes as being one that Burton can't full take the blame. It's his least Burton-y, and the film was rushed into production after many other directors and starts had been attached. Hell, it might be his worst, though I never saw Alice In Wonderland - it seems like one of those cases where he wised up a little about the industry regarding for-hire gigs.

I think APES has a great look and the art direction is top knotch

Maybe he should just stop directing and focus his efforts behind the scenes on other people's films

I wish Tim Burton would finish his troubled remake of An Affair to Remember

Ugh. Ed Wood remains one of my all-time favorite films but I haven't been able to sit through anything recent  of his in a while. And Dark Shadows sounds awful. Apparently they're taking a Beetlejuice-type approach with it. I love Beetlejuice but I don't see that working here and I'm not a big Dark Shadows fan or anything. Come to think of it, why do we need a Dark Shadows film at all?

My Facebook remains a depressing reminder that he's still popular. I have "friends" that still eat this shit up and have even gotten petulant with me when I've posted about what a hack I think he is now. I'm guessing most of these people have never seen or heard of Dark Shadows but they "can't wait. Burton rules! lol!"

Although I'm sure its already been seen by all and sundry, this seems appropriate to leave here...

...seriously has there become a safer, more predictable director these days? So sad.

Film students, in my experience at least, worship at Burton's feet. It's insufferable to behold.

I recall vividly the reaction of one of my peers when I disparaged Alice in Wonderland (which he had not yet seen):

"OH YEAH? Well you just didn't like it because it didn't have any fuckin' Koreans in it, it's gonna be great, so FUCK YOU."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Naisu Baddi 

 

That's why I call these vanity projects. He takes stories that were fine just the way they were and fuses his Burton production design and theme fetishes onto them warping them into something different just to satisfy his personal obsessions.

You've nailed my exact problem with modern Burton. Back in the day, I was a big fan of his because his particular aesthetic was something fresh, and his voice so interesting. The thing is, as time's gone on none of this has changed while he's relied increasingly on pre-established, famous and arguably 'safe' stories to cram the same formula into time and time again. 'Tim Burton' has become less a man/artist than a brand, a lick of paint you slap onto a popular story to draw in the emo crowd.

Because of this, his casting choices have grown old as well. He's not the first director to use a regular troupe of actors, and certainly not the first to repeatedly cast their spouse, but while someone like Scorsese uses the same actors for very different films Burton's stuff is the same shit with the same people doing the same shit each and every time. It's just gotten old, and worst of all it consumes the classic stories they're tackling to the point of unrecognizability.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Whiteboy Jones 

Film students, in my experience at least, worship at Burton's feet. It's insufferable to behold.

 

I recall vividly the reaction of one of my peers when I disparaged Alice in Wonderland (which he had not yet seen):

 

"OH YEAH? Well you just didn't like it because it didn't have any fuckin' Koreans in it, it's gonna be great, so FUCK YOU."

Seriously, some of you guys sound like you've got some pretty fuckin douchey 'friends'.

...and wondering aloud, would there even be a Hot Topic clothing chain in the states if not for Burtons faux goth bullshit?

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Rain Dog 

 ...wondering aloud, would there even be a Hot Topic clothing chain in the states if not for Burtons faux goth bullshit?

That could be cinema's equivalent of the 'chicken and egg' question. All I know is that they feed back into each other and feed each other, like an Ouroborous with way too much white makeup.

Originally Posted by The Rain Dog 

Seriously, some of you guys sound like you've got some pretty fuckin douchey 'friends'.

Hey, never said he was a friend.

What I don't understand is, aren't film students meant to be insufferably elitest snobs? I'd think Burton would be way too uncool for them.

Is THAT really what they're aspiring to these days? Dear god, what sort of films am I going to have to suffer through a decade from now???

My film school scene consisted much more of people who thought that (500) Days of Summer was profound than of snobs. So they find Burton's gothy, Hot Topic sensibilities attractive.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Whiteboy Jones 

My film school scene consisted much more of people who thought that (500) Days of Summer was profound than of snobs. So they find Burton's gothy, Hot Topic sensibilities attractive.

Dear sweet lord, give me film snobs any day.

Yeah, I'd have given anything for someone to scoff at me over liking Spielberg than glaring daggers at me for not loving Little Miss Sunshine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Whiteboy Jones 

My film school scene consisted much more of people who thought that (500) Days of Summer was profound than of snobs. So they find Burton's gothy, Hot Topic sensibilities attractive.

Nurse, get me a 35mm reel of Rashomon and an industrial size tub of lube; I'm going in, and I'm going in hard.
 

In a perverse way, I actually sort of enjoyed it because I got to feel SO superior to everybody ALL THE TIME.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Whiteboy Jones 

... thought that (500) Days of Summer was profound ...

... thought that (500) Days of Summer was profound ...

... thought that (500) Days of Summer was profound ...

Someone keep these people away from actually good romantic comedies. We may end up with an epidemic of Stendhal Syndrome break-outs and self-mutilations.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Workyticket 

That could be cinema's equivalent of the 'chicken and egg' question. All I know is that they feed back into each other and feed each other, like an Ouroborous with way too much white makeup.

MMMMM... my tail is delicious!
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by DARKMITE8 

 

MMMMM... my tail is delicious!
 

 

(In the style of Michael Biehn in the Thanksgiving trailer) Sunovabitch...