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.

The Dark Gab

Werth: Greetings, Citizen.

Wise: Werth, I see you're in the your cape and tights again. Can I take this to mean we're going to gab about superhero movies... or should I call the men in the white coats?

Werth: Put your phone away, Wise, because in honor of the premiere of Christopher Nolan's finale to his Batman trilogy The Dark Knight Rises, I would like to give a Film Gab salute to the Caped Crusader. As early as 1943, Batman and Robin were BAM-ing and POW-ing their way through villains on the big screen in serialized shorts based on the popular DC Comics characters. 

Wise: Which were almost as popular as the Boy Wonder's shorts.  

Werth: And in 1966 the Dynamic Duo swung onto the silver screen again with Adam West and Burt Ward reprising their successful television personae along with a bevy of villainous character actors.

Wise: Particularly the sourball delights of Burgess Meredith's Penguin and Cesar Romero's Joker. 

Werth: Then Tim Burton resurrected the franchise in 1989 with his hugely successful Batman before Joel Schumacher took over with Batman Forever (1995) and Christopher Nolan gave a grittier, more realistic take to the crimefighter in 2005 with Batman Begins.

Wise: Batman's had more facelifts than Jocelyn Wildenstein. 

Werth: But the Batman movie that I'm most fond of is Burton's 1992 sequel, Batman Returns. Burton returns to Gotham City with even more visual punches than he served up in his first film. Batman (a stern Michael Keaton) is celebrating Christmas by trying to save the city from a trio of Scrooges: The Penguin (disgusting Danny DeVito), Catwoman (Michelle "Cat Nip" Pfeffier) and city power-grabber (literally) Max Schreck (a be-wigged Christopher Walken). 

Wise: Even Tiny Tim couldn't reform that crew.  

Werth: The plot is pretty silly, but what makes this film work is Burton's grasp of the mix of the dark and the fantastical—which has been one of the draws of comic books from their inception. On one hand you have The Penguin attempting to blow up the city using hundreds of adorable missle-wearing penguins, but on the other, you have two very touching origination stories. 

One about a deformed child who was tossed into the sewers by his 1% parents and the other, a lonely woman who is shoved out a window to her "death" after being taken advantage of by every man she's ever come across. The Penguin and Catwoman aren't just mean-spirited baddies—they're victims. 

Wise: I almost felt bad for them... until Halle Berry made us her victim. 

Werth: And because of comic book touches like Catwoman's hardcore, latex, fetish-wear costume, Batman Returns dances nimbly between comic-book fantasy, and dark, sexual  melodrama.  

Bo Welch's production design makes the whole thing look gorgeous, gracefully merging a snow-capped Gothic cityscape with a host of circus and carnival sideshow touches that make this film dark, but fun enough not to be taken too seriously.

Wise: Batman may be the DC star getting the most attention this summer, but for a long time the company's main attraction was the Man of Steel himself. Hollywoodland (2006) acknowledges the power of cinematic superheros, but also examines the costs in bringing these comic book champions to the screen.  The film presents a fictionalized version of the events surrounding the death of TV's first Superman George Reeves (Ben Affleck).  A second-tier actor who always seemed to be on the cusp of something bigger, Reeves became an idol to millions of 1950s children, but found that defending Truth, Justice, and the American way prevented him from being taken seriously as an actor.

Werth: Ronald Reagan had the same problem.

Wise: His champion, and lover, Toni Mannix (Diane Lane) supports him through the bad times, but also complicates his relationship to Hollywood because her husband Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins) is one of the MGM studio chiefs and his displeasure could spell disaster for Reeves career.

Werth: That's why sleeping with the boss' wife is always a bad idea... even if you're Superman.

Wise: Interlaced with scenes from Reeves' life is a second narrative following ramshackle (and entirely invented) private investigator Louis Simo (Adrien Brody) as he descends into the mysteries surrounding Reeves' death from a gunshot wound in his Beverly Hills home.  Simo has an ex-wife, a kid obsessed with the dead guy in tights, and a bad habit of being on the losing end of a fistfight.  Still, he's determined to expose the sordid underbelly of the Tinseltown in his search for the truth.

Werth: Sounds a lot like L.A. Confidential.

Wise: That's the inevitable comparison—and, most likely, Hollywoodland probably benefited from Curtis Hanson's success—but the two films are actually quite different.  Director Allen Coulter and writer Paul Bernbaum are more interested in meditating on the nature of fame and the need to be heroic in private life than in the double backing plot twists that makes Confidential such an entertaining thriller.  

What both films do have in common, besides their period and setting, are great performances: Diane Lane is amazing as a woman well aware of her shelf life and determined to make the most of it; 

Ben Affleck mostly tamps down his tendency toward glibness and reveals the sorrows of a man who playacts the dreams of others while unable to achieve his own; and Bob Hoskins snacks on the scenery as an exalted thug with a tender spot for beauty.

Werth: I notice you're not mentioning Brody.

Wise: Brody does fine work here, although his sections feel a bit overlarded with incident.  Films with parallel plots are difficult to balance, especially when one half is much more compelling than the other, as is the case here with Reeves, or when the normally delightful Amy Adams ran smack onto a Meryl Streep juggernaut.

Werth: It's hard to make duos work. Luckily neither you nor I are Meryl Streep.

Wise: Tune in next week for more Film Gab from blogdom's Dynamic Duo!

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! 

A Bit of Burton

Video artist Kees van Dijkhuizen has created a lovely video montage of the films of Tim Burton. Sure there are lots of people who make favorite director videos on the internets, but Dijkhuizen takes particular pleasure in artistically linking a director's work instead of just showing everyone's favorite one-liners. It's a fun way to look at a director's career- so much fun that Dijikhuizen has also given the montage treatment to Baz Luhrman, Sofia Coppola, David Fincher and Wes Anderson.