January 2010

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January 2010 

Return to Table of Contents January 2010

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Entertainment In Brief

A look inside Tim Burton’s noggin. Plus, a trip to Hogwarts is only a plane ride away

The otherworldly art of Tim Burton

Have you ever wanted to take a glimpse inside Tim Burton’s noggin to see what kind of creepy-crawly images are floating around? You can, thanks to New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

 

Until April 26th, MoMA presents Tim Burton, a major retrospective of Burton’s 27-year career as a filmmaker, artist, writer, photographer and illu­strator, which includes more than 700 sketches, Polaroid photos, paintings, posters and early videos.

 

And if you can’t make it to New York for the show, check out the compre­hensive website, http://www.moma.org/ interactives/exhibitions/2009/timburton/, which allows you explore much of the exhibit online.

 

(That haunting and catchy theme music you hear is by Burton’s longtime musical collaborator Danny Elfman, who composed the tune specifically for the retrospective.)

 

Born August 25, 1958, Burton was raised in sunny Burbank, California, where he felt isolated, and where he realized even “the word normal scared me.” Early pieces in the show range from childhood drawings and school projects to five early Super 8 mm films he shot with neighbourhood kids starting when he was just 14 years old. Even then, his fascination with horror movies and gothic images came through.

 

There are also drawings, posters and cartoons from his days as a student at the California Institute of the Arts and his time working as an animator at Walt Disney Studios. At 24 Burton made the critically acclaimed short film Vincent, which set him on his chosen path as director of such hits as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks!, Sleepy Hollow and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

 

Not content to just write and direct, Burton took to working closely with his films’ special effects, costume and puppet masters to create outlandish and imaginative props that became his visual trademark. Many are on display, including an exact replica of the deer-shaped topiary from Edward Scissorhands.


—Ingrid Randoja

  

The Blunt Truth

Few can rival Emily Blunt in the looks department, but as Blunt’s Queen Victoria bio-pic, The Young Victoria, expands into theatres across the country we thought it was time to do a reality check and compare the real Queen Victoria — as depicted at age 23 in an 1842 portrait by artist Franz Xavier Winterhalter — with Blunt’s young monarch... Got the hair right.

 

—Marni Weisz

Say, that looks familiar...

Wikipedia posted a list of the top-grossing films of the decade and a blog, kottke.org, noticed that out of the top 20 box-office hits, only one was based on a completely original idea, meaning it wasn’t a sequel, remake of a TV show, based on a toy, book, comic or theme park attraction.

 

That original film — landing at #15 — is Finding Nemo. And if you expand the parameters to the top 50 movies you wind up with just nine pics based on novel concepts. The only glimmer of originality on the list emanates from Pixar. Out of those nine original films, five are Pixar productions — Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Monsters, Inc. and WALL•E.

 

It’s understandable that when a studio spends $100- to $200-million making a blockbuster — which almost all of the films on the list are — it wants a ready-made fan base waiting in line to buy tickets. But you have to wonder, what happens when lucrative series like Harry Potter, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean, Shrek and Spider-Man end — and they are all reportedly reaching their finales. What will replace them? Are there enough quality branded products to adapt? Producers are already dipping into the second tier of Marvel and DC comic-book heroes. The list of old TV shows is dwindling, and will the movies based on board games like Battleship and Monopoly, and even one on based on Ouija boards, attract viewers?

 

—Ingrid Randoja

 

 

On home turf

Films shooting across Canada this month

You have your last chance to catch the cast of Sucker Punch in Vancouver this month; they’re slated to wrap filming toward the end of January. The latest thriller from writer-director Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) has been shooting at the Vancouver Film Studios since August. That venue allows Snyder to create the dark, strange 1950s world of protagonist Baby Doll (Emily Browning), a teen who’s been institutionalized by her evil stepfather and has just five days to escape having a lobotomy.

 

Aside from Browning (Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events), the cast includes the young ladies playing her fellow psych patients (Jena Malone, Jamie Chung, Abbie Cornish and High School Musical’s Vanessa Hudgens), dapper Mad Men star Jon Hamm as “High Roller,” who — rumours are — owns a brothel in an alternate reality cooked up by Baby Doll, and Carla Gugino (who worked for Snyder on Watchmen).

 

—Marni Weisz



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