Film Freak Central

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005)

****/****
screenplay by John August and Pamela Pettler and Caroline Thompson
directed by Tim Burton & Mike Johnson

by Walter Chaw A self-contained, melancholic, dulcet little ode to love and sacrifice, Tim Burton's stop-motion Corpse Bride is also a sly stab at class systems, a knowing tribute to both the Hammer horror run and the Universal monster tradition, and another of Burton's evocations of German Expressionism. As fairy tale, it rivals his Edward Scissorhands, as underworld fantasia, his Beetlejuice, and as classic studio-bound horror, his Sleepy Hollow--in many ways, in fact, Burton's return to the stop-motion of his breakthrough short Vincent (and his co-produced The Nightmare Before Christmas) feels like a figurative homecoming to the technique that suits him best. William Blake described an "infernal method" in his theory of creation wherein the artist touched every page of every print of his work to infuse it, ineffably, with the hand of its creator, and so stop-motion, with every movement manipulated painstakingly by the human hand, is infused with a Romanticist's idea of (possibly Satanic) vigor. It's animation that gives the term its "soul"--there's something vital about Corpse Bride that has nothing to do with its story, and watching it, you come to the realization that the reason so much of Burton's work feels airless or dated (or that his stars are so perverse) is that his way with puppets translates only uneasily to his way with actors.

Frankenweenie (2012) - Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

**/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras C+
screenplay by John August, based on a screenplay by Lenny Ripps
directed by Tim Burton

click any image to enlarge

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Back in the early-Eighties, Tim Burton was part of the conveyor belt at the Walt Disney Company, cranking out artwork for films like The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. But drawing cuddly animals proved as bad a fit for Burton as it did for R. Crumb, and the studio eventually allowed him to separate from the pack, giving him a chance to hone his voice that was kind of unprecedented. Under the Disney umbrella, Burton produced two black-and-white shorts: the animated Vincent, a sweet and Seussian ode to his idol, Vincent Price (who narrated); and the live-action Frankenweenie, about a boy who uses mad science to bring his departed canine back to life. The latter scandalized Disney (too "scary," plus dead dogs and black-and-white have got to be roughly equivalent anathema to kiddie fare), and plans were shelved to attach the film to prints of Pinocchio in 1984. Three decades later, Disney confidently bankrolled a feature-length remake of Frankenweenie, stop-motion animated this time but still in black-and-white, and still with an undead dog at the crux of the narrative. What changed in the interim?

Planet of the Apes (2001) [Special Edition] - DVD

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham-Carter, Estella Warren
screenplay by William Broyles Jr. and Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal
directed by Tim Burton

by Walter Chaw A failure of sense, a failure of cohesion, and, most remarkably for director Tim Burton, a failure of atmosphere, Planet of the Apes is a messianic space opera fantasy in the Dune mold that never goes anywhere and takes its time getting there. Rick Baker's special effects make-up is spectacular, no question, but the screenplay by William Broyles Jr., Lawrence Konner, and Mark Rosenthal is a trite, bloated thing further crippled, ironically, by the make-up (which tends to slur speech), and by the abominable last-minute slap-dash editing that condemns Planet of the Apes to a conspicuous lack of poetry. The script's failings should come as no surprise: These three hack screenwriters have produced between them such cinematic dead weight as Apollo 13, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, The Jewel of the Nile, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. What does come as a considerable shock--as well as a considerable disappointment--is the almost total lack of anything resembling the quirky neo-expressionistic ethos that has made Tim Burton one of our most vital and interesting directors.

RUNNING TIME 124 minutes MPAA PG-13 ASPECT RATIO(S) 2.35:1 (16x9-enhanced) LANGUAGES English DD 5.1 English DTS 5.1 Spanish Dolby Surround CC Yes SUBTITLES English REGION 1 DISC TYPE 2 DVD-9s STUDIO Fox

Mark Wahlberg's air force space jockey/primatologist Leo Davidson is attached, sometime in the distant future, to a spacecraft engaged in the dual tasks of training chimps to fly exploration vehicles and, apparently, examining deep space electrical storms. When Leo's favourite chimp, Pericles, is lost to one such storm/wormhole, Leo impertinently jumps into a pod in pursuit. (If you're familiar with the historical Pericles and his importance to Athens, incidentally, the monkey Pericles's role suddenly becomes exceedingly predictable.) Leo is deposited on a mysterious planet that is ruled by the highly evolved variations of three primate species: ape, chimpanzee, and orangutan. That there is such an egalitarian caste system established amongst the species, with each group represented in positions of power in the military and the government, calls into question the central conflict of the film concerning the plight of humans forced into servitude.

Word somehow spreads of Leo's presence and his ill-defined mystical "difference" and, along with sympathetic chimp Ari (Helena Bonham-Carter), Leo unites large numbers of humans in a desperate battle against their monkey oppressors, who are led by evil chimp General Thade (Tim Roth) and noble gorilla Attar (Michael Clarke Duncan). That the presence of humans (and horses) at all on this planet is never adequately explained is but one of several startling lapses in logic that riddle the plot.

To match Baker's remarkable prosthetics, the actors were rigorously trained in the subtleties of primate speech patterns and movement to decidedly inhuman results. The highlight of the film comes in an all-too-brief seriocomic vignette involving the humans running through bed chambers of apes engaged in all manner of alien mating, vanity, or hygiene habits preparatory to slumber. Unfortunately, once all the technical wizardry buffering its lifeless centre has been stripped away, Planet of the Apes assaults its audience with a collection of interminable set-pieces, banal monologues, guillotine-edited and perplexing transitions, unbearable strains of credulity, and a dedicated avoidance of satirical or sociological relevance. One has a right to expect more than tired second-hand PETA slogans and watered-down Animal Farm irony from the director of such a dark and intellectually complicated fable as Edward Scissorhands.

When not listless and sodden, Burton's Planet of the Apes offers repetitive action sequences and, ultimately, a twist ending that is astounding for the extent to which Burton takes his audience for granted. The film as a whole is sloppy and very boring (once the "wow" of Baker's work wears off, which is quickly) and, with the exception of Helena Bonham-Carter's militantly liberal chimp and Tim Roth's militantly conservative chimp, possessed of zero performances of particular resonance. Worse, Planet of the Apes seems content to rest on the majesty of its special effects and neglect the necessity for placing those effects in the context of an interesting story peopled (monkeyed?) with compelling characters. The über-bland Michael Clarke Duncan in a hi-tech ape suit, for example, is just that.

In a film at least ancillary about evolution (the fifth this summer behind Evolution, A.I., Jurassic Park III, and, arguably, The Animal), it seems piquant that this Planet of the Apes is actually a good deal dumber (with the exception of a wry cameo by former NRA-head Charlton Heston) than the 1968 original, its stupefaction affected to accommodate, I suspect, Hollywood's prevailing view that the viewing public has gotten denser in the intervening years. Judging by the relative box-office failures of 2001's equally dim-witted Pearl Harbor and A.I., I wouldn't be so quick with that assumption.

THE DVD
by Bill Chambers There are basically two types of Special Edition DVD: the promotional (for new releases) and the retrospective (for older, proven titles). The former tends to be a lot fluffier--its extras aim to put you at ease for purchasing a disposable film but don't have much merit in their own right. In the latter, there's little at stake, the participants can and do say whatever they want; witness William Friedkin's acerbic comments within The French Connection: Five Star Collection's supplements. There are exceptions to both, of course, and Fox's 2-Disc SE of Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes, from this site's favourite DVD producer David Prior, is a glaring one to the promotional kind: Although there's not a lot of self-criticism going on, the bonus material has a breadth and depth that is an endangered species now that the masses have started to embrace DVD and demand the format's dumbing-down.

The first platter sports a top-drawer THX-approved transfer of Planet of the Apes in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen. Burton's oeuvre seems to alternate between diffused and razor-edged in appearance; Planet of the Apes boasts of softer images from acclaimed cinematographer Philippe Rousselot (A River Runs Through It) that look lovely here, with the often-dim picture having superb definition. (Be sure to run the THX signals from the main menu for optimal quality.) While they both sound terrific, the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is outperformed by the DTS track, which gives a necessary boost to the volume of dialogue and adds some dimensionality to the discrete surrounds. If you're hungry for a great demo piece, try Wahlberg's crash landing on the Ape planet--prior to that, I had been lamenting the lack of aural fireworks (Danny Elfman's main title theme is sonically 'small'), but not after.

Also on Disc One, an "enhanced viewing mode" that's a combination of 'white rabbit' (click when the symbol pops-up to watch making-of vignettes, many centred around the film's CGI-work) and picture-in-picture pods that contain soundbites and other items of interest, glimpses into the construction of sets and such. The only drawback is that you can't kill two birds with one stone by having Tim Burton's or Danny Elfman's commentary playing between items. On that note, Prior coaxes one of Burton's better yak-tracks out of him, though the director pauses often and doesn't stick to the action at hand, a defensible trait when one considers the mental prowess it would take to intellectualize the none-too-coherent Planet of the Apes. Elfman's (excellent) commentary shares space with his score plus isolated sound effects. Cast/crew profiles, NUON stuff, and a DVD-ROM script-to-screen/storyboard function round out the disc.

The above in itself would've qualified as an outstanding DVD for such a mediocre, if profitable, film. But Prior, a filmmaker in his own right, loves process (as his Fight Club and Die Hard: Five Star Collection DVDs showed)--he comes at Planet of the Apes from every angle: We're shown the backstage rigours with a completeness that might be unparalleled, and with an intimacy that definitely is. The second platter is divided into six rotating sections (it's a neat bit of animation), each one assigned a different aspect of the film's inception. A brief summary:

1.THE MAKING OF THE APES
Simian Academy (24 mins.)
Every effort was made to transform the human players into primates; this documentary takes us inside former Cirque de Soleil star Terry Notary's "Ape School" as well as a subdivision for the apes. ("Human School," natch.) We learn that putting gloves on a chimpanzee ain't easy ("How much videotape you got in that camera?" trainer Mike Alexander asks) and get to see and hear a good-humoured Helena Bonham-Carter, who wasn't exactly Notary's star pupil, attempt to master breathing techniques and poor posture.

Face Like a Monkey (30 mins.)
I had high hopes for the Rick Baker segment on the Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas: Collector's Edition DVD, but it was found wanting. Baker's other large-scale assignment of late gets the definitive treatment here: a tour of the make-up guru's workshop, early prostheses tests, and various condensed sessions in the make-up chair are interspersed with a forthright Baker lamenting the casting of Tim Roth (his nose was too big for the application Baker had devised) and even confessing initial qualms about working with Burton on the project, fearing the director would demand overstylized--i.e. Burtonian--simians. (Aside: One of the Polaroids decorating Paul Giammatti's mirror depicts him as Andy Kaufman's alter ego, Tony Clifton.)

Ape Couture (7 mins.)
Costume designer Colleen Atwood discusses the stress that Planet of the Apes put on her sewing machines. A glimpse of Bonham-Carter's dreadlocked "princess" drag (the character was later revised to be a senator's daughter) makes one wish the film had stuck with it.

Screen Tests
Dry runs at make-up, costumes, group shots, stunts, and movement--four for each--are organized in respective quadrants, à la Mike Figgis's Timecode. You can listen to whichever window you please with a few simple clicks.

Chimp Symphony, Op. 37 (10 mins.)
It's two months until Planet of the Apes' theatrical release date. Danny Elfman is conducting a hodgepodge orchestra on the same recording stage that Jerry Goldsmith used for the original Planet of the Apes. Though Elfman claims to create from an emotional place, he rationalizes his motivations very well.

On Location-Lake Powell, Arizona (12 mins.)
Lake Powell stood in for the site of Taylor's violent arrival in 1968's Planet of the Apes. Burton and co. went back there in hommage, albeit to shoot a dissimilar set-piece. We discover that Mother Nature is no match for teamsters with a propane tank.

Swinging from the Trees (10 mins.)
Stunt co-ordinator Charlie Croughwell gives up a trade secret to our awe in this examination of the primitive mechanisms devised to put spring in the apes' steps. Perhaps the most shocking revelation, however, is that all those apes Braveheart-ing towards our heroes were filmed against a bluescreen--matting has come a long way, baby.

2.MULTI-ANGLE FEATURETTES
Multi-angle/multi-audio behind-the-scenes perspectives of four sequences from Planet of the Apes. An innovative "navigation bar" enables you to view the appropriate art or script passage for the sequence or the sequence itself in finished form.

3.EXTENDED SCENES
Five wise trims from a non-linear source. In the best one, Estella Warren asks Leo if he thinks Ari is jonesing for him--she's obviously trying to find out if Leo and Ari's attraction is mutual.

4.PROMOTIONAL WORKSHOP
HBO's "The Making of Planet of the Apes" isn't as thorough as any of Prior's featurettes, but it has a gritty style that's a welcome change of pace as these things go. (Call it Michael Clarke Duncan: Truth or Dare.) This is also where to go for trailers (2--4 if you count Moulin Rouge and Dr. Dolittle 2), TV spots (6), posters (with all due respect, the film had a hideous marketing campaign), a reproduction of the press kit, a commercial for the soundtrack album, and Paul Oakenfield's so-lame-it's-cool "Rule the Planet" remix.

5.DVD-ROM
Information on Disc One's exclusive ROM content in addition to Disc Two's: kid-geared DVD-ROM excerpts from "Leo's Logbook" and the "Jr. Novella" of Planet of the Apes.

6.GALLERY
Step through "scenes" and "props" still galleries, fifteen in total.

This DVD is more fun than a barrel of puns. Don't hate it for being attached to a rudderless "re-imagining" of an allegorical classic. (Friend and FILM FREAK CENTRAL contributor Vincent Suarez hit the nail on the head when he called it a "de-imagining" in passing conversation.) David Prior's exhaustive package verifies that an enormous amount of elbow grease--and genius--went into conceptualizing this Planet of the Apes, contrary to the film's aggregate value. Originally published: November 10, 2001.

Alice in Wonderland (2010) - Blu-ray + DVD

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Mia Wasikowska
screenplay by Linda Woolverton
directed by Tim Burton

by Walter Chaw A diary of missed opportunities but not the disaster it could have been, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland reminds a great deal of Walter Murch's Return to Oz in that both are closer in spirit to the respective dark of their inspirations while still falling tantalizingly shy of the beguiling murk of their headwaters. (In terms of adaptations, No Country for Old Men holds the gold standard for cinema that understands its source well enough to use it in its own sentence.) It'll be compared of course to the Disney animated classic that mistook Lewis Carroll's misanthropy-soaked surrealism for whimsy--a comparison Burton tries to sidestep by incorporating more elements (the Bandersnatch, the Jabberwocky, the Jub-Jub Bird, snickersnack) from the largely-ignored second book, Alice Through the Looking Glass, but one that'll hound a film featuring plucked-out eyeballs and a castle moat traversed by skipping across severed heads.

Big Fish (2003) ["Fairy Tale for a Grown-Up" Edition] - DVD

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange
screenplay by John August, based on the novel by Daniel Wallace
directed by Tim Burton

by Walter Chaw Tim Burton treads the territory of America as grand cinema in his best films, and Big Fish, while not among them, leads the director back to their territory, the modest fairy tales of grotesquerie of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, even the underestimated Batman Returns and Sleepy Hollow. Big Fish finds Edward Bloom (Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney) on his deathbed, spinning tall yarns about his life to the irritation of estranged son Will (Billy Crudup), who wishes to "know" his real father without understanding that the fabric of personal fiction is the whole cloth of a man. At question is the very nature of storytelling and folklore, a question that gains primacy when asked by strangers (even those like Edward, who only see themselves as strangers, too big for the mundane) in a strange land. Steeped in magic realism, Burton's picture loses steam in its constant switching from past to present, but gains in a treatment of grief and the grieving that announces a maturation of the sad moods of the director at his finest.

Edward Scissorhands (1990) [Anniversary Edition] - DVD

***/**** Image A- Sound B Extras C+
starring Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest, Anthony Michael Hall
screenplay by Caroline Thompson
directed by Tim Burton

by Walter Chaw Edward (Johnny Depp), all of Edward Gorey blacks and angles, is the product of a variation on the Frankenstein myth, his mad scientist creator (Vincent Price) dying before he can replace Edward's scissor-hands with wax appendages. Marooned at a child's emotional development, he's thus unburdened by the sort of rage for usurpation of Mary Shelly's creation; when he kills his "father" by neither accident nor design, find in Edward an adolescent's existential angst in an Oedipal split interrupted at the moment he was to be given the instruments of his ascension into "humanity" by his creator. The irony of his condition is expressed by the Stan Winston-designed shears with which he's burdened, lost on the edges of civilization (Tim Burton's twisted view of suburbia), cutting out articles from scavenged magazines and junk mail flyers and arranging them in a collage that includes a story about a boy without eyes, an ad for the kind of prefab-furniture favoured by Burton's suburbanites, and a Madonna-and-child. Our introduction to Edward, facilitated by chirpy Avon sales lady and housewife Peg (Dianne Wiest), is the film's signature set-piece, allowing as it does this twisted, tragic figure to emerge as both effrontery and holy effigy. For Burton, Edward glows with the romance of an eternal child--Peter Pan in love with a memory of Wendy for eternity, adrift with the Lost Boys and working with ice.

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) - DVD|[Collector's Edition] - Blu-ray Disc

***/****
DVD - Image A Sound A
BD - Image A- Sound A+ Extras A-
screenplay by Caroline Thompson, based on a poem by Tim Burton (adaptation by Michael McDowell)
directed by Henry Selick

by Vincent Suarez You know the feeling: too many movies, too little time. You walk down the corridor of your local multiplex, relishing the titles on the marquees and posters, and you know that many will unfortunately have to be seen on home video. If you're lucky, you'll make wise choices, but, occasionally, your home viewing includes that film you regret not seeing theatrically. For me, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (hereafter Nightmare) is one of those films. Having grown weary of Burton's quirkiness after the disappointing Batman Returns, I passed up Nightmare in favour of movies I now cannot recall; what a shame. Fortunately, Touchstone's optical disc presentations of this magnificent film (the previous LaserDiscs and last year's DVD release) provide more than a glimpse of what was surely a wonderful theatrical experience.

Dark Shadows (2012) - Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

*½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B-
starring Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green
screenplay by Seth Grahame-Smith, based on the television series "Dark Shadows" by Dan Curtis
directed by Tim Burton

click any image to enlarge

by Angelo Muredda Like so many of his recent dioramas, Tim Burton's Dark Shadows starts off looking suspiciously like a real movie. The director's tendency to Burtonize cherished texts into gauche self-portraits is suppressed in an economical opening that tells with a straight face the dolorous tale of Barnabas Collins, once-imprisoned and newly-freed vampire star of Dan Curtis's late-afternoon soap. The mood is sombre--a nice hat-tip to Curtis's morose series, which, if you'll pardon the wonky chronology, played out like a Smiths song drained of irony. Alas, before long Barnabas awakens in 1972 to meet his distant relatives and dissipated hangers-on, and the mere presence of pasty-white, pink-shaded, ginger-wigged Helena Bonham Carter as family psychiatrist Julia Hoffman is enough to break the spell. Carter's mannered and carefully-sculpted weirdness alerts us that this is yet another wax museum standing in for a film no one had the heart to finish.

Ed Wood (1994) - [Special Edition] DVD + Blu-ray Disc

***½/****
DVD - Image A Sound A Extras A
BD - Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette
screenplay by Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski
directed by Tim Burton

click any image to enlarge

by Walter Chaw Raging Bull for starfuckers, Ed Wood is in a lot of ways the quintessential dissection of the allure of Hollywood, allying it more closely, perhaps, with a different Martin Scorsese film, The King of Comedy. (It's The King of Comedy recast with the stalked celebrity a willing participant in the stalker's obsessive lunacy.) Ed Wood diverges from most biopics in director Tim Burton's tactic of skewing the film towards the same sort of kitsch-surreal of Wood's own films, managing in so doing the trick that David Cronenberg performed with Naked Lunch: a hagiography that's as much critical analysis as hommage. It engages in a conversation about how Wood's films are seen at the same time that it endeavours to tell the highlights of Wood's life. The result is a picture that bridges the gap between cult and camp classic; the melancholic and the melodramatic; and the difference between a director of vision and a director with a vision that sucks.

Mars Attacks! (1996) - Blu-ray Disc

***/**** Image A- Sound C
starring Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan
screenplay by Jonathan Gems
directed by Tim Burton

by Jefferson Robbins When Tim Burton calls in his Hollywood chips, it's usually, to our benefit, to facilitate his darker impulses. 1989's Batman gave him free reign to make Edward Scissorhands, for instance, and Warner Bros. incubated the bitter confection of Sweeney Todd after raking in more traditional bucks on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I daresay one of those Burton Unbound documents is his A-list romp Mars Attacks!, which today gives off strange vibrations that echo forward as well as back. It's a '50s UFO-invasion flick farce, of course, based on a 1962 trading card set illustrated by, among others, comics great Wally Wood. It's anarchic, unexpected ("Wha? Trading cards?" we all said at the time), and darkly funny. It plays in the massive footprint of the same year's Independence Day, and in its more biting moments, it somehow speaks to the great collapses of the subsequent decade.