Tim Burton -- classic or dud?

What, he gave up on Lisa Marie? I missed something indeed!

A most frustratingly good director, because lately he has gone through mostly odd missteps. Not QUITE a mass-market David Lynch or anything, though he has the knack of handling big budget projects more than Lynch does. Still, most everyone I know seems to have a Burton film they adore above all others and for me that's Ed Wood, which becomes my favorite film of the nineties the more time goes on...

Dud dud *DUD* for Planet of the Apes

It seems like he's the number one guy to call when you need someone to direct a "weird" film. Him or Terry Gilliam.

"Mars Attacks" was fun but ultimately terrible.

"Vincent" and "Frankenweenie" are both pretty neat, though.

I saw the trailer for Big Fish and it looks pretty good, like about a Billy Liar-esque character on his deathbed (also what makes me come back to Billy Liar is the obscene resemblance between Tom Courtenay and Ewan McGregor).

Classic: Pee-Wee, Edward Scissorhands, Nightmare before Christmas, Ed Wood, Batman, Beetlejuice

Not-so-classic: Sleepy hollow, James and the Giant Peach, Mars Attacks

Utter dud: Planet of the Apes. God. Make me gag.

oh come off it! batman is way better than 'ed wood'; and anyway -- eww with the hollywood romanticism! it's all bidness baby!

no, you're not: i always figured this was the general consensus (the "oh the early stuff is always best!" hipster trope notwithstanding)

Hitchcock and Herrmann might have something to say about that. Or Leone and Morricone. Or...

xpost

Dud or Mediocre: everything else

The Terry Gilliam comparison's pretty interesting: Gilliam worked his way back into being allowed to write his own material after directing Twelve Monkeys/The Fisher King, and then blew it in one film (Fear and Loathing), and became box office poison (Lost in La Mancha), though now he's directing The Brothers Grimm (Heath Ledger/Matt Damon!) and Good Omens, both for next year. I don't know why Tim Burton gets more breaks.

! Ed Wood never got a film/director Oscar Nomination?

Fucking NO. Martin Landau did pick up an Oscar for best supporting actor -- I think deserved, though Samuel Jackson (this was the year of Pulp Fiction, remember) admitted he was sorta bored by Ed Wood and wished he'd won! Can't blame him!

what timmy and johnny did to alice in wonderland was deeply detestable, creating loud, garish ugliness out of a quizzical whimsy.

agree

batman was the worst thing that ever happened to burton tbh, he’s not cut out to make huge-budget tentpole movies

essentially he's pretty good when he's working with an original story or script. Too much of his stuff has been garish reboots, adaptations or remakes, give or take an exception to that rule, like Sweeney Todd.

His Dumbo got a pretty good review from Dargis in the NY Times today. "Takes a turn toward the facinatingly weird," it seems, and M Keaton evokes Walt Disney as the villain.

also an ilxor worked on the music

most critical reaction has been negative to tepid.

i love devito and kean, but don't have the stomach for late burton

keaton

Bilge Ebiri likes it

The circus settings do liberate Burton, giving him the opportunity to stage elaborate, bizarre acts with grandiosity and verve. Whether we’re watching Dumbo hoisted along a fake burning building to launch himself off a collapsing platform, or trying to navigate an ill-advised trapeze act, whenever the spotlights come on and the crowd roars, Dumbo comes to life....

So that’s what’s good about Dumbo. Here’s what’s bad: The story. The characters. Luckily there isn’t much of either.

https://www.vulture.com/2019/03/dumbo-movie-review.html

the world did not need this movie

thats a high bar

Morbs, you temper your fabled vituperation over the weirdest things.

this is definitely as dumb as a marvel cu movie on paper (and probably on celluloid too)

As much as I hate Tim Burton's works, I still like Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Aside from that, they could all be thrown into the deepest part of the ocean.

pee wee's big adventure is his best

sleepy hollow tbh

oh yeah let's do this again

I still have trouble believing this movie exists.

idk i just don’t really need to see dumbo reimagined with humans? the trailers have left me p cold so far, i think will skip & wait til this one is streaming

Disney’s obsession with maintaining its ip is a helluva drug

Yeah, the notion of watching any of Disney's live-action photocopies is pretty unappealing, but the participation of late-period Burton is just rancid icing on the shitty cake.

the Jungle Book remake was surprisingly good, beauty & the beast was ok, but both of those i also waited til they were streaming to watch. i have no desire to see them in the theater

the whole idea of this series of remakes is just kinda weird to me

Disney-qua-Disney has done almost nothing but remakes and sequels for years now. I don't know what's up with that but I agree that it's weird.

I'm reading The Big Picture by Ben Fritz on why the mainstream movie landscape has changed. Disney did research and figured out that movies that cost over $100M are less risky than others. Also Disney is not in the movie business, but the movie brand business, and audiences like knowing what they'll see before they see it. Bob Iger likes Apple and Fritz likens Disney films to Apple: they only release a few new versions of old products every year, and not many complain about it.

Does the 101 Dalmatians live action series pre-date this project or were they the first?

When pondering what might come of 90s nostalgia, I kept thinking about the popularity of films with either children or animals messing up people or disrupting someone's life. Home Alone, Baby's Day Out, 3 Ninjas, Beethoven, K9, Turner & Hooch. Arguably John Candy and Rodney Dangerfield have also served this purpose a bit earlier.

I caught a bit of 102 Dalmatians recently and it seems like the apotheosis of this. Glen Close is served humiliation after humiliation. Like someone saw Beethoven, was thrilled by Charles Grodin's cries of disgust and wanted to top that exquisite high.

Amuses me to imagine a generation making a wave of films trying to take this as far as possible. Horses Fucking Up Your Golf Course, Ducks Shit All Over Your Garden Party, Skunks At A Business Merger etc

Not sure if the upcoming Cruella movie is a remake of a remake or a sequel of a remake, sure to be a hoot either way.

Disney-qua-Disney has done almost nothing but remakes and sequels for years now. I don't know what's up with that but I agree that it's weird.

this is just an update of Disney's core policy since their first feature film in 1937 though

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - based on an 1812 fairy tale
Pinocchio (1940) - based on an 1881 Italian serial
Fantasia (1940) - The Sorceror's Apprentice based on a 1797 German poem
The Reluctant Dragon (1941) - based on an 1898 Scottish short story
Dumbo (1941) - based on a 1939 story & toy that tbf never came out
Bambi (1942) - based on a 1923 Austrian book
[USA finally enters WWII so there's a gap here]
Song of the South (1946) - based on 1881 version of "African-American" folk tales
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949) - one based on a 1908 Scottish novel, one on an 1820 American short story
Cinderella (1950) - based on the 1697 French version of a folk tale
Alice in Wonderland (1951) - based on an 1865 English novel
Peter Pan (1953) - based on a 1904 Scottish play
Lady and the Tramp (1955) - started as an original story by a Disney work-for-hire guy!!! but then Walt bought a short from a 1945 issue of Cosmopolitan and told them to adapt that
Sleeping Beauty (1959) - based on a fairy tale, especially the version by the same dude as Cinderella
One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) - based on a 1956 English novel
The Sword in the Stone (1963) - based on the 1938 novel that imagined the childhood version of a folk myth
The Jungle Book (1967) - based on the 1893-94 series of stories
The Aristocats (1970) - commissioned by Walt in 1961 as two live-action TV adaptations of animal stories, any animal stories, just by GOD don't you dare come up with an original story. Story treatment bought in 1962 for a live-action feature. Approved by Walt to be an animated feature in 1963. Rewritten many times, evidently for the worse, but still ends up as Disney's first original animated feature imo.
Robin Hood (1973) - based on the English medieval legend and also on French medieval legend Reynard The Fox and also on a dropped storyline from The Aristocats
Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968), Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974) and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) - straight-up stolen from E.H. Shephard and the family of A.A. Milne, who have still not received any royalties as Disney sadly have not managed to make any single short, feature, anthology, TV series, toy, T-shirt, child's cutlery or any other merchandise that has made a profit. It's so sweet that out of the goodness of their hearts, they keep selling more!
The Rescuers (1977) - based on a series of British novels, 1959-1978
The Fox and the Hound (1981) - based on a 1967 American novel
The Black Cauldron (1985) - based on 1964-65 American novels that were based on Welsh mythology
The Great Mouse Detective (1986) - based on the Basil Of Baker Street novels (1958-82)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) - based on 1981 American novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?
Oliver & Company (1988) - what if 1837 Dickens, but dogs
The Little Mermaid (1989) - what if 1837 Andersen, but with a penis on the VHS cover
DuckTales the Movie (1990) - what if TV adaptation of 1952-70s Barks, but movie
The Rescuers Down Under (1990) - what if Rescuers, but down under (but all the voices are American and Canadian and English and Welsh and Norwegian)
Beauty and the Beast (1991) - based on French fairy tale
Aladdin (1992) - based on middle eastern folk tale added to a French version of The One Thousand And One Nights in 1710
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) - based on a 1982 poem written by Tim Burton while he was work-for-hire at Disney
The Lion King (1994) - feverishly promoted as The First All-Original Disney Animated Feature EVARRR!!!! but was totally ripped off of Tezuka's Kimba The White Lion (manga 1950-54, rip-off derived from 52-part anime, 1965-66)
A Goofy Movie (1995) - movie version of 1992 TV version of 1932-infinity Disney shorts+etc character
Pocahontas (1995) - thoroughly-researched biopic
James and the Giant Peach (1996) - based on 1961 English novel
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) - based on 1831 French novel
Hercules (1997) - based on Greek myth
Mulan (1998) - based on C6th Chinese ballad
Tarzan (1999) - based on 1912 American serial
Fantasia 2000 (2000) - what if Fantasia, but 2000

and then the 21st century is mostly sequels and TV adaptations and more fairy tales and what if King Lear, except bear? and what if song, but long? except for Wreck-It Ralph, which stands as the second original Disney animated feature ever. (Honorable mention to Bolt, where John Lasseter moved over from Pixar and fired the writer/director of an original film and told his new employees to remake it to his own specifications in 18 months while he stood behind them and smelled their hair)

there are 8 zillion live-action Disney movies that only Americans have ever heard of, but on first glance a wild amount of them are based on Scottish novels, and even The Absent-Minded Professor and The Shaggy Dog and Condorman are based on existing stories with the titles changed

Zootopia was a pretty solid exception, wrt recent Disney Animation Studios.

While I appreciate the sic-cyclopedia entry, I was speaking more about their recent tendency to lean hard on remakes and sequels of their own previous work as opposed to the familiar adaptations of non-Disney material. Between live action and animated films from 2017 through the end of this year, I count thirteen remakes/sequels of existing Disney properties, two newly-adapted properties (Nutcracker and Artemis Fowl), and one original film (Coco). It wasn't a whole helluva lot better in the years before that, but they were a little closer to a 50/50 split between 'fresh' material and autophagia.

presumably part of that tally is them buying things where new instalments link up, even if they’re not direct sequels? eg Marvel, Star Wars, vs historically “Disney”-branded stuff

I count Pixar separately still, though they’ve obv become sequelier as they became more merged w/ Disney

Nah, I'm just counting movies that announce themselves proudly as a Walt Disney (or Pixar) production, no Lucasfilm or Marvel.

ooooof

i'm not esp likely to ever see this, but a glance at the reviews shows it's not a "photocopy"

but keep thinkin Tarantella is original

I'm never going to see this, but the biggest red flag is that the cartoon runs about an hour and this one runs about twice that.

meh, 2019

In case you failed to see it upthread...

Morbs, you temper your fabled vituperation over the weirdest things.

― WAS ACTING A FOOL AND FELL ON GRILL (Old Lunch), Friday, March 29, 2019 2:06 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also golf clap for strawmanning all of the zero people in existence who ever called Tarantino original. Yeeeeesh.

i was thinking about this yesterday and its now starting to make more sense to view Disney originals like...broadway musicals or whatever and these remakes as revivals.

revivals which just happen to allow disney to extend the copyright on their properties

thus keeping alive the goose that lays the dollar-crammed eggs

I hope I live long enough to see like the fifth or sixth iteration of a Disney remake where it's just like this crude and barely recognizable rendition of Pinocchio standing in a stark white field for two hours and endlessly repeating 'Hi, I'm Pinocchio!' to the camera from a variety of angles.

Pinocchio (2042): Not as bad as I thought it might be, Pinocchio's enunciation was flawless, and Disney has really upped their game on the presentation of the glaring void in which all of their films are now set. *** + 1/2*

My greatest dream is somehow stripping Disney of all their copyrights and filming everyone crying who will be hit hard in the bank balance by this, so I can watch these crying videos everyday for immense sexual pleasure.

I can't believe he got Mars Attacks! made. I can't believe he assembled that cast.

really liked it when it came out and it goes up in my estimation every time i revisit, some kind of lunatic masterpiece

that and Ed Wood have become my abiding favorites

i haven't seen it in years but every so often, the phrase "the international sign of the donut" pops into my head

It's definitely more Joe Dante than Tim Burton.

Wednesday sucks, right? Is it just me? made it three episodes and decided "nah". the humor doesn't work at all and this cutesy goth thing is so played out.

i was the opposite- i’m surprised by how much i really enjoy it … like there are a lot of dopey jokes and puns and fan service but the mystery is kinda compelling & i like all the main characters

also there is a great scene where she dances to the Cramps “Goo Goo Muck”

clip here bc it’s truly excellent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE2bY2gOBhk