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…)

Whilst walking home on Friday night, I was fortunate enough to witness three guys perform a stealth operation right in front of my very eyes: one was the designated tip-tagger, and the other two were lookouts. Once the deed had been done they bolted down the street as if the armed forces were breathing bullets down their necks. I shook my head and then laughed out loud as I considered how bored and unstimulated one must feel to find the act of signing a rubbish bin so enthralling. The whole adolescent, gangster-wannabe thing seems just a tad … um … pointless. If I wanted to mark my territory I would find a more attractive way of doing it. Challenging authority through art or intellect seems to be far more useful than vandalising public property with some lame-ass signature. But dawgs will be dogs – at least urine wasn’t involved. (more…)

Christian Lander is my hero. If you have not visited Stuffwhitepeoplelike.com, get your ass online and do it NOW! It is the funniest shit in the history of ever! In fact, I love it so much that I spent last evening at the London School of Economics listening to a lecture given by Lander entitled, STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE – How to find social success with the urban-dwelling middle classes. And let me tell you, I was audience to an hour and a half long comedy session that I didn’t even have to pay for: awesome! Lander started his talk off by reading a piece of writing from his new book, Stuff White People Like: The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions, which has just been released in the UK. His opening reading, #11 on the list of stuff white people like: Asian Girls, got him banned from delivering a lecture at Oxford University. A great start to an evening of raucous hilarity … and insight. (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 Boy with Nails in his Eyes
put up his aluminium tree.
It looked pretty strange
because he couldn’t really see.

Tim Burton’s: The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy is one of my most favourite books: it is sufficiently warped to appease my twisted sense of humour, it combines poetry with fairytale, the social comment is poignant, the art is beautifully quirky, the emotion is intense and Burton’s imagination is as transcendent as always. I love an artist who is prepared to take a risk. (more…)

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…)

Owing to POPULAR DEMAND I have compiled an essential guide to the understanding and identification of the Goth. This is useful when on a Camden safari or on the streets of Berlin. (more…)

A couple of weeks ago, I spent four brilliant days trekking around Dublin with husband, who time and time again, proves himself to be the most awesome travel partner in the universe. The amount of time we spend laughing is beyond normal. He was happy to go on a literary walk of the city with me and was most accommodating of my excitement over some historically significant literary buildings and a bunch of statues, including a reclining Oscar Wilde on a rock and a Patrick Kavanagh sitting on a bench. (more…)