March couldn’t come soon enough!

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is honouring Director Tim Burton with a retrospective exhibit of the artwork connected to some of his most beloved films including Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas. The exhibition will include hundreds of never-before-seen paintings, sculptures and puppets from the artist’s own collection. Celebs including Johnny Depp, Patti Smith, Danny DeVito, Tim Burton and partner Helena Bonham Carter attended the exhibition premier in New York this week (see footage). The exhibition will run from 22 November 2009 until 26 April 2010 and has been described by MONA as an exhibition of Burton’s work “as a director, producer, writer, and concept artist for live-action and animated films, along with his work as a fiction writer, photographer and illustrator.” (more…)

Jack Skellington is a figure not only familiar to Tim Burton fans but a character that has become a cult symbol of today’s popular culture. The protagonist from Burton’s film, The Nightmare Before Christmas, has been monopolised by Disney and turned into an icon. In an amalgamation of Halloween and Christmas, the Pumpkin King and the inhabitants of Halloween Town even appear on a beautiful limited edition range of Disney Christmas decorations this year. (more…)

So what’s the greater point in Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus? There does seem to be one lurking indecipherably within the subtext. Gilliam, a member of the Monty Python alumni and director of films including The Brothers Grimm, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Twelve Monkeys, is known for his obscure imagination and complicated plot constructions. The Imaginarium delivers some poignant propositions but appears to lack a binding thread – unless one falls back on the grandiose ‘it’s an exploration of human nature’ theme, which is sufficiently vague to suit the film’s irrational tone and is yet supported by the evidence of an occasionally coherent observation or statement that manages to force its head through the Gilliam’s veil of insanity. (more…)

I love films – to escape with, to debate over, to analyse and to berate. But there is nothing that kills a great discussion like the pompous ass who self-righteously imposes his highfalutin intellectualisms onto the discussion. Differing opinions keep life interesting and when art is concerned, there will always be dissention. I agree that there is some kind of ethereal standard that separates the great movies from the good movies and the good movies from the poor ones. And subjectivity cannot be absolved from the standard – it’s the human condition. I guess my point is this: in the great conundrum of human existence, who actually cares about the so-called standard of greatness or which movies win awards or which films are intellectually and stylistically superior? Joe Queenan (guardian.co.uk journalist) says it best: (more…)

In one sentence: Inglourious Basterds is the shiz. Quentin Tarentino’s latest film has received a crazy mix of love (gripping dialogue, spectacular performances, great script, ‘Tarentino’s the master’) and hate (too much dialogue, stodgy performances, unoriginal script, ‘Tarentino’s losing his touch’ … blah blah blah … my ass) from the media – a reaction not uncommon when the cult film director is up for debate. I watched Tarentino’s latest with high hopes and the film most certainly did not disappoint.

It was always a great idea to subvert the outcome of World War Two by making an African American, a Jewish woman and a band of Nazi-killing Jews led by an American gentile hailing from the mountains of Tennessee, the ones to destroy Hitler and his psychotic entourage. The escapades of the Nazi-scalping Jews (aka “The Bastards”), fronted by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) aka Aldo the Apache (a name coined by Nazi soldiers referring to the scalping methods adopted by Raine from the Native American Apache tribe), were enthralling to the max! Even the antics of the lady in the seat next to me, who covered her head with her jersey and emitted rodent-like squeals when a scalping or beating took place, did not deter my attention from what was going down on screen. (more…)

The teaser trailer for Tim Burton’s Alice interpretation was released earlier this year (July) and now … drum roll please … the official trailer has made its beautiful way into the world. Follow the link to peruse the Alice website and to watch the new trailer.

For more info on the film, check out:

Burton’s Alice and Teaser Trailer for Tim Burton’s Alice

THE GENIUS OF TARSEM SINGH

Salvador Dali said “I have Dalinian thought: the one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous”: a philosophy perfectly understood and applied by film director Tarsem Singh, whose cinematography encompasses the terrifyingly impressionable hyper-realism of surrealist art. The director’s images are intensely vivid in a subconsciously unrealistic manner. Each shot produced is a work of art – precisely crafted and coloured to reflect thought, tone and emotion within the context of the scene. Singh’s images are provocative as well as evocative. The magnificence and sheer opulence of the director’s art is most beautifully pictured in The Cell (2000) and The Fall (2006), both of which poignantly register Singh’s creative genius. (more…)

Hail to guardian.co.uk for making a duller than dull Thursday totally awesome. On this afternoon’s front page is a teaser trailer for Tim Burton’s Alice interpretation, which is due for release on 5 March 2010. The recently released promotional stills for the film are magnificent and this trailer just makes the anticipation all the more unbearable! Unseen characters revealed in the trailer include the Cheshire Cat (voiced by Stephen Fry), the Jabberwocky (Christopher Lee) and exciting new cast revelation: Crispin Glover as the Knave of Hearts. The comments provoked by the teaser have already divided the troops in true Burton fashion: it’s the cult of Burtonesque, members of which thrive on the director’s outrageous imaginings and eccentricity **Yay** versus the cult of WTF?, whose members have been sent into a royal panic over the impending corruption of a modern classic as well as Burton’s ‘lack of originality’ in interpreting an already existing piece of literature **Boo**. The cult of we don’t care will merely be stampeded in the impending war of cinematic opinion **shame**. Burton is a master of satire and social commentary, and is thus more than aptly suited to the task of Alice. Lewis Carroll’s story has become a modern fairytale, and the great thing about fairytales is that they are reinvented as each generation passes. The lessons taught and the observations made are adapted to suit the context of the time in which the story is told, the historical context forming the foundation of all interpretations and adaptations. In his Alice mythology, Lewis Carroll challenged the unimaginative stoicism of nineteenth century England, an attitude that stagnated and thus permeated subsequent generations. If Burton is able to continue Carroll’s legacy by confronting a culture of rigidly inescapable tradition, then the director has succeeded.

It can only be described as torture! Pure, unadulterated, pain-inflicting torture. My brain was sent into a frenzy of excitement when I laid eyes on the first pictures (released June 22) of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland adaptation. And then the anticlimax of a lifetime! The film is to be released in March of next year. Let me repeat that: the film is to be released in March of next year. How am I supposed to handle the suspense after glimpsing the film’s spectacular Burtonesque vision? The waiting is torture. Pure, unadulterated, pain-inflicting torture. (more…)