Dark Shadows (4/5 Stars)

Death to Hippies

 It may surprise you in this age of vampire saturation that director Tim Burton, the reigning godfather of cinematic spookiness, has never done a vampire movie before. “Dark Shadows,” is his first. The same goes for his frequent collaborator, Johnny Depp. He has been pale and gothic plenty of times but he has never actually sucked blood. He does it well, or at least he does it better than they do it in “Twilight.”

The vampire in question is Barnabas Collins, the son of a very wealthy fishmonger merchant. Circa 1772, the father founded a fishing colony in New England, named it Collinswood, and built a huge gothic mansion on a really big hill overlooking the sea. Barnabas had a youthful fling with the housemaid, but never committed, instead marrying a woman of more noble birth. Unfortunately for him, the maid was a witch. Out of mad love, she killed his parents, murdered his wife, and turned him into a vampire. Then after he still refused her advances, she revealed to the townspeople his accursed nature and they buried him alive in a coffin in the middle of the woods. There he stayed wide-awake for two hundred years. In 1972, a modern day construction crew accidentally uncovered Barnabas’ coffin. Barnabas, always so polite, apologizes before murdering everyone. He was so very thirsty.

 If any of this seems like kind of heavy stuff to you, you wouldn’t be Tim Burton. To a guy like that, this is the set up of a comedy. Well, sort of. I wouldn’t exactly call Tim Burton a comedian. But there are plenty of small jokes. Mostly fish-out-of-water stuff involving the interaction between gothic horror and hippies. Sort of like Scooby Doo in reverse. Now that I think of it, Scooby Doo wasn’t all that funny either, but I still liked it. And this movie too. I liked this movie.

 At this point in my Tim Burton fandom, I have decided it is okay to overlook the things he has always been bad at because he does other things so well. For instance, with any other director, I would be dismayed if they spent so much time doing remakes and adaptations. Tim Burton does almost nothing else. (“Alice in Wonderland” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” “Sweeney Todd”). But this is okay, because Burton has consistently proven that when he is not following an already completely worked out story, what we generally end up with is a narrative mess (“Mars Attacks!” “Planet of the Apes” “Sleepy Hollow”). What he excels at though is art direction, makeup, costumes, etc. and in this he can be considered one of the best.

 “Dark Shadows,” is apparently a remake of a 70s soap opera melodrama. I bet it was really bad. Anyway, its basic story affords Burton a chance to put his trademark look on something he has no business sticking his dreadfully macabre hands on: flower power. You’ve never seen hippiedom look so pale and haunted. We are at the point probably where we tend to take for granted the amount of vision and effort Burton puts into the look of his movies. This movie, just like his others, is ridiculously gorgeous. The best parts of the movie involve the juxtaposition of the ancient occult Barnabas with beanbags, disco balls, and a van full of hippies. My favorite scene takes place around a campfire where Barnabas describes being locked in his coffin for 200 years and other horrors. All the hippies think he is really deep and weird and stuff. I can only imagine that this might parallel what Tim Burton faced in the 70s when he was growing up. He seems not made for that time. I bet he really got a kick out of having Barnabas murder all the hippies at the end of the scene for no particular reason. I know I did.

 Artistic direction in a Tim Burton doesn’t end with inanimate objects. The actors themselves are cast because they look like they belong in a Tim Burton movie. The perfect example of this is Helena Bonham Carter with her bone-white complexion and large eyes. Nobody looks better undead. Then there is Michelle Pfieffer, that most skeletal of beauties. Chloe Grace Moretz appears in her first Tim Burton movie and fits right in as well. A nice surprise is the witch, played by Eva Green. She is not one someone would expect to see in this type of movie. Her abnormal attractiveness is more suited for normal movies. She was after all a very good Bond Girl in “Casino Royale.” But notice the way she smiles just a little too widely or the way she swivels her head on that just a little too long of a neck of hers. As a witch, her beauty is only skin-deep and she has found a way to play that really well.

 Of course, nobody is better at downplaying attractiveness than Johnny Depp who has basically made a career out of it. What him and Burton seem to have completely in common is a strong aversion to sensuality. It is a rather common theme in their movies (Edward Scissorhands, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd). Having said that, this movie has plenty of sex in it, or at least plenty for a Tim Burton movie. (Vampire sex it must be said is incredibly violent. I wonder if that’s a modern evolution of the character or whether all the old books described it as such as well.) That doesn’t mean that anyone besides the witch is enjoying it though. Depp in particular is as stiff as possible about it like he always is, which I have always found humorous and still do.

 One more thing about Depp must be mentioned: his extravagant vocabulary. It’s ridiculously first-rate and has been for about a decade in almost every movie he has been in (Pirates of the Caribbean, Rango, Rum Diary etc.) As all these movies have different writers I am beginning to think that Depp must be smuggling a thesaurus to work each day and punching up his lines.
 

Alice in Wonderland (4/5 Stars) March 15, 2010

Gorgeous Overpriced Nonsense

It goes without saying that having Tim Burton adapt a version of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ is a fantastic idea. I was very excited when I first heard about it. Even more so when the first pictures of it came out with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen. Once I learned that he had managed to get a Jabberwock into the story (something that had not been done in any previous adaptation) my anticipation was truly piqued. Having said that the movie is sort of a let down. I say it is a let down because it completely betrays the tone, theme, and characters of Lewis Carroll. But only ‘sort of’ because Tim Burton outdoes himself with an incredibly detailed and fantastic vision of Wonderland. 

It goes without saying that Tim Burton should never try any story that is completely original (in fact besides Frankenweenie I don’t think he ever has.) The guy is just terrible at narrative cohesion and character development. This is perhaps why his best movies are adaptations of already complete stories like Ed Wood and Sweeney Todd while some of his not very good movies are adaptations of shorter stories that he unsuccessfully tries to elaborate a larger story on like Sleepy Hollow or invent an entirely new plot for like Planet of the Apes. This movie is of the former category. The original books are very episodic in nature and don’t easily translate into a movie already (saying this Walt Disney did an awesome job doing just that in the 1951 film). But this isn’t a straight adaptation. It is a sequel that takes place after the original books in which an adult Alice tumbles down the rabbit hole in an attempt to escape an awkward marriage proposal. Once in Wonderland she is confronted with a White Rabbit, a pair of not quite human twins named Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, a Dodo, and a mouse. All of them can speak. They inform her that she is part of a prophecy that foretells the frabjous day when she will slay the Jabberwock. All of a sudden a bunch of armored red cards and a Bandersnatch rush out of the jungle and try to capture all of them. Apparently the Red Queen has been terrorizing the countryside for no particular reason. The White Queen can’t do anything about it because she’s like Ghandi. The Mad Hatter, well for his part, he’s completely insane. If you have trouble making sense of this then that’s probably because it doesn’t make any because like all nonsense it can’t.

The great thing about Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (and the reason that it is one of my favorite books) is not its flights of fancy or imagination. It’s the brilliancy of its logic and wordplay. Here’s a pretty good example, which is not in the movie: 

‘Take some more tea,’ the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
‘I’ve had nothing yet, ‘ Alice replied in an offended tone, ‘so I can’t take more.’
‘You mean you can’t take LESS,’ said the Hatter: ‘It’s very easy to take MORE than nothing.’

All good logical nonsense has three levels to it. The first is a flat statement of nonsense (Have more tea). The second is the reasoned response (I can’t take more). The third is the explanation of the earlier nonsense and the logical refutation of the reasoned response (take MORE than nothing). Carroll’s books are entirely full of this sort of thing. He is a brilliant wordsmith and probably impossible to have a normal conversation with. He has the ability to flip conversations onto their back and tickle them to death. The unifying theme in his book was always little Alice’s reaction to this nonsense. By nature she is an imaginative girl (Won’t read a book without pictures) who follows her curiosity without thinking (why not go down a rabbit hole? Curious and curiouser). But the new world she finds isn’t very kind to her. In fact, almost across the board everyone she meets is incredibly rude. Alice being good mannered tries to humor the odd creatures she meets but is bandied about with illogic and contemptuous behavior. The Red Queen tops them all by insisting on good manners while indecently shouting “Off With His Head!” at everyone. Finally Alice gets angry herself and ultimately rejects the nonsense and the dream (Who cares for you? You’re just a pack of cards!) This is not the embrace of imagination. It is quite the opposite. Alice’s arc is one of greater maturation. She is shedding childish silly things. It is fitting that Carroll was the tutor of the real Alice. The story is a perfect revenge of a schoolteacher. Take the uninterested daydreaming pupil and insert her into a world filled with even more childish, inattentive, rebellious, and ADD prone creatures. See how she likes it. 

At least that’s what I got out of it. Tim Burton gets the exact opposite. In his movie, all the characters were apparently friends of Alice when she was there the first time. What’s more Alice never objects to the silly things that go on around her in this world. In fact, the whole moral of the story is to exalt your imagination. Alice needs to embrace her muchness and think impossible thoughts. This is okay a moral as any but it really hurts Carroll’s much strived for logical nonsense. Without the reasonable objections the movie never gets past the first level of simple stated nonsense. The effect of this is a movie completely deprived of laughs and any logical explanation of the silliness. At one point Johnny Depp recites the first stanza of Carroll’s famous poem ‘Jabberwocky.’ It goes something like this:

Twas brillig and the slithy toves 
did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogroves 
and the momewraths outgrabe.

Now since Alice doesn’t object or ask him what the hell he’s talking about, this stanza is never explained. If you haven’t read the book I feel sorry for you. I only truly appreciated it in the book after Humpty Dumpty explained all the portmanteaus contained within it. That stanza makes sense take my word for it.

So the story doesn’t make any sense, isn’t funny, and completely misinterprets the original masterpiece, why then am I giving it four stars. Well, because the movie is goddamn gorgeous that’s why. Say what you want about Burton’s storytelling skills but he is a consummate visual artist. Every setting, set decoration, and character in the movie has been lovingly crafted into his unique visionary style. Anne Hathaway as the White Queen is angelic. Mia Wasikowska, as Alice, looks fantastic in her suit of armor. Helena Bonham Carter and Crispin Glover make great rotten hearts. Johnny Depp looked…interesting? The White and Red Armies of chess pieces/cards are sights to behold. And the Jabberwock was everything I hoped it could be and more. None of the actors give very good performances because of the complete lack of motivation the characters have for anything they do, but hey they look great doing it. For the love of God, will somebody get Tim Burton a good screenwriter!

I must complain about one more thing, and that is the 3D ticket price and the vast hypocrisy that is behind. The ticket cost is now $16.50, four dollars more than the very high normal ticket price of $12.50. The extra four dollars are there to pay for the glasses. The theater will not let you bring in previously purchased glasses. You must buy them new every single time. At the end of the showing the theater has the audacity to ask us to “Go Green” and recycle the glasses, presumably so they can sell them once again for $4 to another unwitting customer. If the theater really cared a wit about the environment they would allow us to reuse the glasses ourselves. Then they wouldn’t have to make so many unnecessary copies of them. Go Green? Bullshit I say! Shame, movie industry, Shame!

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street 01/10/08

Tim Burton is one of our most visually impressive directors. Most frames in his movies could easily be hung in art galleries. (There is one especially I love in this film. It's of Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp by the beach in full goth attire. I hope it someday becomes a poster called 'By the Beach' that I can buy and hang in my room ) Unfortunately his stories always leave something to be desired. That's why it was a stroke of genius for him to adapt already proven material. The tale of Sweeney Todd was adapted from the stage musical of Stephen Sondheim, a great American composer. The way Burton directs this story makes it seem as if it was written especially for him. 
This is a perfect movie. And by that I mean I can't think of a single way it could be better. I think it is Burton's best film yet, and probably the one that will finally get him recognized when Oscar time comes around. Everything about this film speaks to Burton at the top of his game. The story is very dark revenge tale and it takes place in 19th century London, the grungiest place in history. His two leads are Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, the most beautiful undead couple out there. Carter especially is inspired casting and just her looks require her to be in every Tim Burton film. There are not two actors out there that wear pale better than these two. Mixed into this is the supporting work of Sacha Baron Cohen as an hilarious Italian barber and Alan Rickman as a rotten and corrupt judge. Both are perfectly cast. 
Everything about this movie is inspired. From the direction to the set decorations to the costumes (Colleen Atwood) to the performances to the music and lyrics. I expect Oscar nominations for all of these and also one for Best Picture. This is one of the best and original movies of the year. In a year of great movies this one stands apart. There has been nothing like it since the last Tim Burton film.

Corpse Bride 10/02/05

This movie is beautiful. Beautiful in the way that is shall we say, Burtonesque. Does that say it all. I think it does. Mr. Burton has spent over twenty years now constructing his glorious and glamorous version of death and decay and has earned him the right of his own adjective. Let the dictionary now contain Burtonesque, and have this movie pictured right next to it. Like all of his movies, the strength is visual. A cascade of charicatures of characters and dazzling sights of the underworld. It has a certain real-life feel for the obtuse characters that only comes from the 3-D clay animation. The plotline here is not incredibly grand but complements the style well. The claymation acting is extremely well done, and moves unnaturally smooth. All the songs by Danny Elfman are enchanting. It's good all around. How we say a tight picture. As good as it can be. Nothing spectacular, but still nothing to miss.