My friend Corey Klemow sent a note querying me on this sentence from my earlier entry on Tim Burton (and other so-called artists of whom I'm less than fond):
And I'm sorry, anyone who makes Mars Attacks! and Planet of the Apes and the Batman movies and Edward Scissorhands doesn't get to play the artist card for a long, long time.
Corey writes:
How does "Edward Scissorhands" fit into that list... ? All the others are based on licensed properties; "Edward Scissorhands" is an original tale.
Which I suppose is a fair cop; Corey's caught me out there. He also likes the movie wholeheartedly. I don't, which is why I included it. I think it's a Tim Burton movie. Which means, as somebody sharp once observed:
Having started out as an animator, he knows how to make pretty moving pictures. But being able to make pretty moving pictures is not the same as being able to make pretty moving pictures, if you take the point...To move us, a film must engage us, and that means that at some point, a film must give us humanity, even if the characters are not human. Make that especially if the characters are not human.
Corey also rises in defense of "Big Fish," which he thinks was [Burton's]
best film ever, with his excesses reigned in and a very real emotional undercurrent.
Maybe. I'll admit I haven't seen it. By the time it came out, the ship had already sailed for me as far as Burton was concerned. However, I should have said a few words about Ed Wood, which I think is Burton's best film ever (of those I've seen, of course).
Why? Well I'm always going to think it's because he was working from an actual...what's it called...script.
(An interesting aside: The screenplay was written by Larry Karaszewski & Scott Alexander. According to the IMDB, Karaszewski is currently working on research for a film about the Marx brothers. Considering that he & Alexander went on to write Man on the Moon and The People vs. Larry Flynt, I hope there's action on this)
Anyway, I should have cited it as an exception to my generally low opinion of Burton's work. I also should have posted the question I most want to ask Burton:
What is his deal with casting nominally brunette actresses opposite Johnny Depp and making them into blondes?
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