Stop Motion Burton

Werth: Hello, Wise.  

Wise: Howdy, Werth.  Do you happen to know if there's a Hot Topic here in Manhattan, or do I need to head to a mall somewhere in New Jersey?  

Werth: Are you all out of black nail polish and fishnet tights?  

Wise: Of course not, but I do need some supplies to get my goth fangirl on because Tim Burton's latest stop-motion animation film Frankenweenie opens today. This calls for a new Emily the Strange lunchbox!

Werth: More than that, Wise.  It calls for a Film Gab salute to the multiple stop-motion animated films in Burton's oeuvre. 

Wise: I couldn't agree more.  Corpse Bride (2005) relates the unlikely tale of Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp), the shy son of arriviste fish merchants who is pledged to marry the daughter of a titled but broke noble family (Emily Watson as a very plucky Victoria Everglott) only to have those plans interrupted by an accidental union with the titular decomposing lady (Helena Bonham Carter).  

The plot revolves around Victor's attempts to escape the underworld and reunite with his true love Victoria while Corpse Bride Emily attempts to persuade Victor of the many charms of the afterlife. 

 

Werth: Sounds like the presidential debate this week. 

Wise: The film marks Burton's first time as the director of a full-length stop-motion animation film (along with co-director Mike Johnson).  

In some ways, the format seems the perfect outlet for Burton's imagination—stylized puppets sing and emote in an endearingly creepy, toy-like fantasy world—but it's also a reminder of the kind of compassionate filmmaker he can be. Unlike the high-concept pageantry without a shred of human emotion in a live-action film like Alice in Wonderland, the heart of Corpse Bride focuses on hopes and disappointments, tragedy, trickery, despair and love.  

Plus, there's genuine humor, including Emily's maggot conscience that bears a striking resemblance to Peter Lorre. 

 



Werth: Everyone should have a Peter Lorre maggot as a conscience.

Wise: Depp is marvelous as a self-doubting introvert who gradually learns to express his emotions and to fight for his passions.  Watson has less to do, but is no less appealing as a damsel in distress who finds she has a lot more fortitude than anyone gave her credit for. 

Bonham Carter resurrects some of the spunky innocence she displayed as an ingenue in all those Merchant and Ivory films at the beginning of her career, but marries it to a macabre sexpot glamor that makes her the darling of the black eyeliner set.  

Werth: I bet her wardrobe at home looks more like the Corpse Bride's than Miss Honeychurch's.

Wise: Of course, no discussion of Corpse Bride would be complete without mentioning Danny Elfman's rollicking score.  He somehow manages to make his music appropriate to both Burton's gaudy Halloween world and to the characters' emotional lives.  He also provides the singing voice to Mr. Bonejangles, a one-eyed dancing skeleton (and a sly nod to Sammy Davis, Jr).  

The supporting players are uniformly great, filled with a roster of British talent that includes Joanna Lumley, Richard E. Grant, Michael Gough, and Christopher Lee.  But it's all these talents together, harnessed by Burton and Johnson that makes Corpse Bride such a pleasure.  

Werth: Frankenweenie and Corpse Bride may be his most recent forays into the world of stop-motion animation, but Burton has been working in the world of puppets and clay from his first days as a director. One of his first shorts made for Disney which you can catch on the Special Edition DVD of The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) (which Burton produced but didn't direct) shows exactly where this talented artist was going. Vincent (1982) is a darkly charming, black and white animated poem about a young boy named Vincent Malloy who wishes he was Vincent Price.

Wise: Like Bill Hader wishes he was Vincent Price.

Werth: Minus Gloria Swanson and James Mason. Vincent's imagination is a joyous trip into the macabre with little Vincent turning his mom into a waxwork, scouring dark alleys with his zombie dog, and realizing that his wife has been buried alive... all to narration spoken with a twinkle of irony by the one and only Vincent Price.

Wise: I guess Orson Welles was busy. 

Werth: What really makes this piece so unique is its impeccable design, which Burton did himself. The textures of the clothing and hair, the wild expressionism-by-way-of-Dr. Seuss sets, the cinematic lighting, even the little bags under Vincent's eyes are created with painstaking attention to detail. 

All of these qualities would make their way into Burton's stop-animation scenes in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985) and Beetlejuice (1988) and his visionary production of The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and James and the Giant Peach (1996) (both directed by Coraline director, Henry Selick.)
 
Wise: So, Werth, I've got my ironic My Little Pony t-shirt and my wallet chain, and I'm ready join you at Frankenweenie. 

Werth: Who cares what you're wearing, as long as you join me next week for more Film Gab.

Thanksgabbing Day

Werth: Happy Thanksgiving, Wise!

Wise: Happy Thanksgiving, Werth! I take it you chowed down on platters and platters of edible delights.

Werth: Chowed and chowed. Did you create one of your infamous Wise Family spreads?

Wise: Did I ever: three kinds of pie, sweet potato gratin, roasted corn and red peppers, buttermilk mashed potatoes, and a turkey that almost made me weep with gluttonous joy. 

Werth: You know, in between the courses of white and red wine, I thought to myself how thankful I am.

Wise: Friends, family and food on our tables are good reasons for thanks.

Werth: I meant thankful for some of the movies I've seen this year.

Wise: But I thought Adam Sandler only made one film this year. 

Werth: There was a lot to be thankful for—Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011), Bette Davis in a black wig in Beyond the Forest (1949), Olivia de Haviland playing twins with name tag necklaces so you can tell them apart in Dark Mirror (1946)—

Wise: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (2011), a finale that was thrilling, yet deeply tender; the salute to fashion photographer icon Bill Cunningham New York (2011); and Tangled (2010), Disney's return to making fairy tales that are both gorgeous and full of spunk. 

Werth: But the film I saw this year that I was most thankful for was Tim Burton's 2003 grown-up fantasy, Big Fish.

Wise: Fish for Thanksgiving. Interesting...  

Werth: Based on Daniel Wallace's 1998 novel of the same name, Big Fish basically tells the story of a storyteller. Will Bloom (Billy Crudup) comes home to visit his ailing father Ed (Albert Finney) after years of estrangement. Ed is a habitual yarn-spinner of epic proportion who can't even tell the truth about what happened the day his son was born. 

He ignores the fact that he was in Wichita selling one of his Handi-matic gadgets, blows by exaggeration and heads straight for a tall-tale about wrestling with a legendary giant fish.  

 Wise: Wallace has written several well-received novels that playfully reconsider Southern traditions and storytelling.  

Werth: The film goes back and forth between the present and the imagined past of Ed's tales with Ewan McGregor filling in as the irresistibly charming younger Albert Finney. Burton has always been an expert at creating odd, macabre childhood visions, but what he does here is unique even for him. The delightful circus, neighborhood soothsaying witch and barefoot town trapped in a folk-sy past aren't viewed from the perspective of a child, but from that of an adult. 

In Big Fish, Burton takes a step away from his kiddie-flick roots and melds a touching father-son melodrama with a celebration of artists who create imaginative stories, larger-than-life characters and captivating places—in short, directors like himself.  

Wise: It certainly was a departure from his usual carnival funhouse and an embrace of a more mature, though no less wondrous, vision.  

Werth: Packed with gorgeous visuals, intimate un-Burton-like close-ups and a cast of greats including Finney, McGregor, Jessica Lange, Marion Cotillard, Helena Bonham Carter and Robert Guillaume, Big Fish did not make a splash with critics (only garnering one Oscar nom for Danny Elfman's soundtrack), but this Film Gabber was boo-hoo'ing like a baby by the end—and as far as I'm concerned, that makes Big Fish a must-see.  

Wise: Although I can't say I had the same reaction to Big Fish, I do agree that the films I'm most thankful for are the ones that affect us most personally.  For me, that film this year was Weekend (2011), written, directed and edited by Andrew Haigh.  The film follows Russell (Tom Cullen), a shy, circumspect  man who exists at the fringes of his friends' lives.  Slipping away from a house party one night, he wends his way to a bar where he meets Glen (Chris New), and, after a few spectacularly awkward flirtations, they end up spending the night together.  

Werth: I have a couple stories that wind-up like that...  

Wise: I think almost everyone does, but the unusual thing about Russell and Glen is that they can't seem to allow their night of drunken fumbling to fade into the past. A few hours turns into an entire weekend as they battle preconceived ideas, pry open each others' deepest secrets, and eventually forge new selves.  

Werth: Sounds like a weekend-long love hangover.  

Wise: It's actually the exact opposite of a hangover.  At the start of the movie, neither man believes in love—Russell because he doesn't trust himself; Glen because he doesn't trust others—but by the end, each has surrendered himself to the other.  

Werth: Are you sure this isn't one of the Twilight movies? 

Wise: Weekend doesn't offer the glib melodramatics of adolescent infatuation.  Instead it addresses anxieties, loneliness, and the possibility of finding happiness with another person through work, vulnerability and luck.  

Werth: It sounds like it's a movie that made you very thankful. 

Wise: Almost as thankful as I am that I'll still be eating turkey leftovers during next week's Film Gab. 

Werth: Happy Thanksgiving Film Gabbers! 

Gab in the Buff

Werth: Hello, Wise.  

Wise: Hi, Werth.  

Werth: What are you wearing?  

Wise: Excuse me?

Werth: It's National Nude Recreation Week and I was wondering if you were celebrating.  

Wise: If blasting my air conditioner and wearing a sweater counts as celebrating, then yes.  

Werth: Oh Wise, if ya' got it, flaunt it! And if you've got as much as the 1982 coming-of-age hit Porky's, flaunt it at theaters and drive-ins around the country.  

Wise: At least one of us has good taste in porcine titled film.

Werth: When I was a young boy at school, nothing would get a whispering campaign started faster than, "Have you seen Porky's?" None of us were old enough to have watched it, but those of us who had older siblings, binoculars or really permissive parents captivated each other with tales of this raunchy comedy. The plot is so basic, it's stupid. 

It's 1954. Some high school guys want to get laid so they go to the local watering hole run by rotund Porky Wallace (Chuck Mitchell) who, instead of getting the boys a hooker, embarrasses them by chasing them out of a shack stark naked into the Florida swamps.  

Wise: Sort of a teenage crudité for the alligators?  

Werth: The lads are none too pleased by this, so revenge is meted out in the form of structural vandalism to Porky's bar, sending it crashing into the swamp along with plates of hot wings, chili and beer. 

Wise: Revenge is a dish best served by high school delinquents.

Werth: I can't tell you how excited every red-blooded male was to see Porky's in the early 80's. The shower scene where one youth sticks his you-know-what in a peephole and the portly Coach Beulah Balbricker (Nancy Parsons) grabs a-hold and won't let go was puerile catnip to a whole generation of horned-up guys. And the nudity—oh the nudity. Female gym class showers, sex scenes and nude male sprinting—no fleshly expense was spared in showing off the bodies of both sexes.

Wise: I assume you were more partial to one than to the other.   

Werth: The character's name was Meat (Tony Ganios) and seeing him hightail it out of the swamp with his sausage was probably the best acting of his career. And speaking of acting, don't miss Kim Catrall in a very early role as Miss Lassie Honeywell. 

Wise: Because she always came home?   

Werth: Because she barked during sex. And even though critics like Siskel and Ebert growled about how awful this movie was, it is a testament to how sex and nudity can sell a film, and even make it memorable.  

Wise: Long before Helena Bonham Carter was memorable playing either witchy psychopaths, murderous chess pieces or dutiful queens, she was the porcelain-complected muse of Merchant and Ivory's most upper-crusty adaptations of British classics.  In A Room with a View (1985) she plays Lucy Honeychurch, a proper English girl who travels to turn of the century Italy with her dour cousin Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie Smith) where she discovers that there is a life of passion outside the pages of her guidebooks.  

Once she returns to England, she must decide between the proper match her mother wants her to make with Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis) and the unconventional but rapturous life she could have with George Emerson (Julian Sands) who she met in Florence and with whom she shared an unexpected kiss. 

Werth: Get to the nudity.

Wise: A Room with a View is perhaps the prototypical Ismail Merchant and James Ivory collaboration, filled with A-list British talent, plummy accents, lush interiors and elaborate period costumes.  But for all the emphasis on production design, this movie throbs with pleasure.  Published in 1908, E. M. Forster's novel was a bit more circumspect in expressing exactly what Lucy Honeychurch is choosing over her staid British life, but the film makes her desire for luscious foods, ideas and love abundantly clear. 

Werth: Nudity!

Wise: When George Emerson and his father unexpectedly rent a neighboring house, Lucy's rambunctious younger brother Freddie (Rupert Graves) invites George and a very game Reverend Beebe (Simon Callow) to go for a swim in a nearby pond.  The three shed their clothes and begin horsing around only the be discovered by Lucy, her mother and a deeply perturbed Cecil who ushers Lucy to safety post-haste.  One glance has been enough, however—  

Werth: You can glance more than once thanks to the pause and rewind function on the DVD.  

Wise: —and Lucy recognizes in their schoolboy antics the kind of freedom she wants to experience in life.  

Werth: So the moral here is public nudity is the best shortcut to better living.  

Wise: Just bring plenty of sunblock and join us here next week when we strip down more movies on Film Gab.