Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

It won't be long before we get Tim Burton's unique look at Lewis Carroll's classic tale of Alice in Wonderland. Of course, Burton follows in the footsteps of Jan Svankmajer, and even Walt Disney's own animation department with trippy versions of the most famous of all the "literary nonsense" genre. Still, the Disney train is looking at Burton to helm a new live action version of one of their classic animated princess stories, Sleeping Beauty. The film, entitled Malificent, will retell the story focusing on the titular evil antagonist. The /Film article this is reported on does not confirm Burton's participation with the project, but with a 2011 release of the Philip K. Dick adaptation The King of the Elves for Disney animation, whatever Pixar is doing, Tron Legacy and this, it looks like Disney may actually be something more than being the conglomerate ass of Hollywood in the coming years.

The daily dip of news from the world of Pandora comes way of ABC News today. It has been reported that while watching Avatar, a 42-year-old Taiwanese man suffering from hypertension got over-excited, took a stroke and passed away. This almost makes me want to stick a toe back on the James Cameron bandwagon for a bit.

Cinematical posted the story today that Paramount Pictures has announced the release date for the Coen Brothers' remake of the western classic True Grit to Christmas. How much does the recent buzz for Jeff Bridges' part in Crazy Heart psych everybody up for his ability to outdo John Wayne tenfold in this flick?

CineMusic has reported after not being able to complete the score due to scheduling differences, the portion of the score already recorded by Danny Elfman will be seeing the light of day when The Wolfman is released, replacing his replacement Paul Haslinger. Conrad Pope has been signed on to round out the unfinished score.

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Admittedly, I'm not a very manly fellow. Still, one of the few typical male things about me is that I don't have a clue about anything fashion, therefore, despite the ties to the cinema industry, you'll hardly ever see me blog about fashion, unless it is extremely gaudy (meaning that I enjoy Bjork) or if it has something to do with Halloween. In the latest issue of Harper's Bazaar, Tim Burton has lent his style to Halloween fashion. Check out the gallery at Cinematical. What does it say about me that I dig the mummy?

It doesn't take much to see by the opening there that it was a slow news day in the movie world, so instead of blogging about how stupid some casting news is, here are a few random movie related articles I've found throughout the day to keep me occupied.

First, Time Out London has counted down the top fifty directorial debuts in cinematic history. Sad to say that I've never seen the top spot, Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter, but I can say it has some mighty big shoes to fill. Also on the list is Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple, George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, David Lynch's Eraserhead, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Luis Bunuel's L'Age D'Or and Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead among others.

Coed Magazine has a countdown of the worst movies to hit number one at the box office. Topping the list is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, but come on, what about the original Red Sonja? Ishtar? Also, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace may have been an abysmal entry in comparison to George Lucas' original trilogy, and when reading movie articles all the time, you get accustomed to nerd rage directed at Lucas and Phantom Menace being the norm. But Jesus, saying it was a worse movie than Epic Movie, Norbit or Batman and Robin? Somebody needs to be stoned to death (Michael Dance).

I spent most of my downtime today watching a set of YouTube videos, set around a guy looking through the tapes of a fictional unfinished short film called Marble Hornets. The series of videos begin as what would appear to be a friend mocking a fellow student filmmaker, almost suggesting the feel of American Movie, and eventually evolves into an amateur horror web series. Most of the bizarre happenings come from the mythical creature of Slender Man, a character made up from a web contest by SomethingAwful.com. Still, I'm posting it because what the guy does works. With Paranormal Activity coming out this weekend, the documentary style horror subgenre seems to have some stories yet to tell, even in a post-Blair Witch Project world. The kid that edited this has gotten a lot of people's attention and should probably be applauded for making a series of homemade shorts that will surely be more entertaining than all the other entries in the faux documentary style, sans the great Cloverfield of course.

Sunday, July 26th, 2009 (Short Film Sunday: Vincent)

Last week's short film, Treevenge, was directed by Jason Eisener, a director that I feel one day may become a big name. This week however, I am going to feature a filmmaker that most up and comers hope to emulate, the masterful Tim Burton. Almost everything the 50-year-old director has touched, has become something of a masterpiece, or cultural phenomenon. This past week has been no exception, as during the San Diego Comic Con, the trailer to his newest film, Alice in Wonderland, an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's whimsical novel, made its debut. Burton's official website also released a teaser gallery from his upcoming picture book, The Art of Tim Burton.

Burton had just as interesting of an early career years before he got to this point. His career began as a cell animator for the 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings, directed by Ralph Bakshi. Then, I have read rumors for years that he was an uncredited Muppeteer in 1979's The Muppet Movie, and the listing still exists on IMDb, as well as on Burton's Wikipedia page. Leaving the 70's behind, Burton got a job as an animator on the Disney film The Fox and the Hound. While working for Disney, we would also get our first look at Burton behind the camera, taking the helming role when he would shoot tonight's featured short, Vincent, about a young boy named Vincent Malloy, that was obsessed with Burton's real life hero, horror icon Vincent Price, who also narrated the story. The film saw a brief theatrical release running before the forgotten Matt Dillon film Tex, but the brilliant short went mainly unseen, as some of the more macabre references to Price's films wasn't very Disney-friendly, and the crowd wanting to see the badly received teen drama Tex didn't mesh with Burton's humor.

The film would lead to another Disney short called Frankenweenie in 1984, which would lead to Burton being fired by Disney for wasting the company's money and creating a film that was too scary for the audience in which it was intended. Both shorts would later find success and cult followings once they showed up on the special edition DVD for The Nightmare Before Christmas, and of course, the popularity of YouTube. They would also succeed in getting Burton noticed by Paul Reubens, a bizarre comedian that went under the pseudonym Pee-Wee Herman, who also famously created an act that looked like it should be targeting children, but kept an adult audience with its wit. He was impressed and got Burton to direct a screen adaptation of The Pee-Wee Herman Show, Burton's first feature film, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. This would be followed with a second huge cult hit in Beetlejuice, and rounding out the 80's, Burton would hit his first blockbuster gold with the film Batman.

The 90's would follow with another pairing with Price, this time in a small, and Price's last, on-screen role in Burton's masterful story Edward Scissorhands, a dark big budget sequel in the Caped Crusader franchise with Batman Returns, his return to stop motion animation in the classic Nightmare Before Christmas (a film that centered around the character Jack Skellington, whom made his debut as a background character in Vincent), his first flop that still has some following in Cabin Boy, creating a great homage to cult film icon Edward D. Wood, Jr. in Ed Wood, stepping down to producer in the moderately successful Batman Forever, returning to praise cult cinema with the star-studded Mars Attacks!, and rounding out the decade with another clever, dark adaptation in his first horror film, Sleepy Hollow.

In the new millennium, Burton gave us the only film of his that I have disliked, a re-envisioning of the classic Planet of the Apes, the very whimsical tale of growing old in his underrated Big Fish, another lavish and unique telling of a classic story in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, another return to the world of stop motion with Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, the horror musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and rounding out the decade by producing Shane Acker's upcoming film 9.

To think, such a grand career from roughly six minutes of animation, and a clever poem about his hero. Without further adieu, one of Burton's best, albeit short, works Vincent.

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

I worked late tonight, so I come home expecting to sleep rather than blog, but then I check a few things online and get completely submerged into all of the San Diego Comic Con coverage. The first thing I find is via ComingSoon, where the 2010 Joseph Kosinski Tron sequel finally got a title, Tron Legacy.

Elsewhere, we get plenty of coverage on The Green Hornet over at Cinematical. First, director Michel Gondry raps about the upcoming feature, and in a separate story, writers Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen (who also will star as the titular character), revealed the hero's car, a black 1966 Chrysler Crown Imperial.

It was also announced that Saw's James Wan will take over the job of director in an adaptation of one of my favorite video games of all time, Kanomi's Castlevania. I'm not crazy familiar with any of Wan's work, other than Saw; however, it may be an improvement over the last director attached to the project, Sylvain White, who previously directed Stomp the Yard, yet on the other hand has already signed on the helm the big screen version of DC Comic's The Losers.

Today, during the Avatar panel, fifteen minutes of the film was shown. Yet, if you are envious like me, and about a three day drive from San Diego, we will all get a chance to watch the preview for free on August 21st at IMAX theaters worldwide. An interesting marketing ploy for something that I felt already had quite a bit of buzz going on to not have a built in fan base already.

Away from Comic Con, well, it could have actually debuted there, but IGN doesn't have much of a write up about it, a new poster to Samuel Bayer's remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street came out today to compliment our first view of Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy Krueger yesterday. The poster features Haley again, although as before, we cannot make any of his features out.

And finally, the Alice in Wonderland trailer that I had promised yesterday. You'll have to click the link though, as embedding was disabled on Moviefone, as well as YouTube. As expected, the film definitely looks intriguing, and very Tim Burton-y.