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…)

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 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…)

Today is a good day. In fact, today is an AMAZING day! Why? Because I, this very morning, stumbled upon the Cullinan diamond of the baking industry: two of my passions, Tim Burton and Cake, have been consolidated into one delectable object of Burtonesque beauty. If there is one thing that will make me cross continents, it is a good cake. Hell, I’d immigrate for a good cake. And today I found LOTS and LOTS of magnificent cakes. All hail, Google! Hail to thee, thane of Search! – for making the discovery of such gems so easy. All hail, Google, thou shalt be king hereafter! (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…)

The man is just a walking ball of talent. It seems so wrong that so much artistic flair should be allocated to one individual. And yet when one is watching the beauty and imagination of stop-motion Sally falling to pieces as she jumps from the turret of her fortress prison; or the dramatic intensity of Sweeney Todd singing to his razor as he contemplates bloody murder; or the comic tragedy of Edward Scissorhands trying assimilate into suburbia by succumbing to its behavioural demands, it seems so right.

I have just finished reading Burton on Burton revised edition, in which editor Mark Salisbury has précised a host of interviews conducted with Mr Tim Genius Burton pertaining to his films – beginning with his first film, Vincent, and ending with Corpse Bride. The book also features a fabulously entertaining forward by Johnny Depp – the man many refer to as Burton’s on-screen alter ego. (more…)