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Trailer here. (http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/corpse_bride/)
Release Date: Halloween 2005 (wide)
Cast: (voices) Johnny Depp (Victor), Helena Bonham Carter (The Corpse Bride), Emily Watson (Victoria), Albert Finney, Christopher Lee, Richard E. Grant, Joanna Lumley.
Director: Tim Burton and Mike Johnson (feature directorial debut; worked as an animator on James and the Giant Peach, which Burton also produced)
Composer: Danny Elfman
Screenwriter: Caroline Thompson (Edward Scissorhands, Buddy, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Black Beauty, The Secret Garden); rewrite by Pamela Pettler (cowriter of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
Premise: Victor (Depp) is travelling home with his friend to get married to his fiancee Victoria (Watson). The two stop to rest in the woods, and as a joke, Victor puts his wedding ring on a finger-shaped stick in the ground and says his wedding vows. The stick turns out to be a rotted finger belonging to a murdered girl (Bonham-Carter), who returns as a zombie and insists that she is now Victor's lawfully wedded wife.
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This looks amazing.
Quote from: GhostboyThis looks amazing.
I second that.
Quote from: SiliasRubyQuote from: GhostboyThis looks amazing.
I second that.
yeah....wow.
It does look pretty cool in that Tim Burton kind of way. It almost looks like a sequel to Nightmare Before Christmas. It looks really dark but most parents will probably take their kids to see it anyway. I would love it if it got an R rating or even a PG-13. But probably not much chance in that happening.
Quote from: Small Town LonerIt looks really dark but most parents will probably take their kids to see it anyway.
I think the "Corpse" part of the title would turn many parents off.
Wow.
Great trailer and looks like a great film too. I predict a box office hit for this Halloween.
Maybe not a huge hit, but a very definite cult classic.
I'm a little skeptical. How are they going to stretch this story out to feature film length?
My guess: lots of running around.
i hope this doesn't turns into an excuse to sell shitloads of products and toys and clothing just like the nightmare before christmas did. it's ridiculous.
What's the use of puppets when everything looks CGI? I liked the look of Nightmare better.
Quote from: SiliasRubyQuote from: GhostboyThis looks amazing.
I second that.
i third that.
Quote from: cronopioi hope this doesn't turns into an excuse to sell shitloads of products and toys and clothing just like the nightmare before christmas did. it's ridiculous.
EVERYTHING is an excuse to sell shitloads.
Quote from: MeatballQuote from: cronopioi hope this doesn't turns into an excuse to sell shitloads of products and toys and clothing just like the nightmare before christmas did. it's ridiculous.
EVERYTHING is an excuse to sell shitloads.
somehow, i don't see my mother belonging to that statement. :elitist:
Quote from: MeatballQuote from: cronopioi hope this doesn't turns into an excuse to sell shitloads of products and toys and clothing just like the nightmare before christmas did. it's ridiculous.
EVERYTHING is an excuse to sell shitloads.
Indeed.
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Looks great. Im looking forword to this one, much more then "Chocolate Factory."
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New Trailer here. (http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1367919&sdm=web&qtw=480&qth=300)
Best movie of the year race is now down to The New World and this.
..,
cool
Quote from: cronopioi hope this doesn't turns into an excuse to sell shitloads of products and toys and clothing just like the nightmare before christmas did. it's ridiculous.
here we go:
http://www.spawn.com/toys/series.aspx?series=276
Comic-Con 2005: Tim Burton's Corpse Bride Panel
Another helping of delicious macabre from the creators of Nightmare Before Christmas. We've seen new footage and report!
Fans of Nightmare Before Christmas have waited a long time for a spiritual sibling to that stylishly-crafted spot motion animation masterpiece. Tim Burton's Corpse Bride is that very movie, another stop-motion concoction with the same sense of macabre style and black humor. At this year's Comic-Con, producer Allison Abatte and Director Mike Johnson spoke about the film before screening a lengthy musical clip.
Several technological innovations have been made since Nightmare, but the panelists were adamant about their desire to work without CG. To do everything current audiences are expecting, puppets had to be made to handle all the complex movements. "We have a full… animated head on this [movie]," Johnson said, adding, "The corpse bride was such a complicated puppet that animators said it was like working with three puppets."
One thing that helped speed up the production was the introduction of new camera methods. In addition to fully armatronned rigs (which allow the camera to move around its subject three-dimensionally), Johnson said, "We shot Corpse Bride using digital still cameras… so that helped a lot."
The panel featured a sneak peek at one of the new film's musical numbers, a musical explanation of the origin of the bride, as performed by Danny Elfman. Portrayed as a signing skeleton in a horrorshow bar, the hepcat bonedaddy delivers a Cab Calloway-esque performance while other skeletons accompany him on various instruments. At different points during the song, he grabs bones and skulls from other skeletons and uses them as musical instruments, and the entire bar is included in the storytelling action. A rousing sequence, it is one of four in the film, so "a lot less than Nightmare, according to Abbate.
The visual style, as with Nightmare, has an Edward Gorey feel, but this time out, the production feels a lot slicker. There is still the tactile, hands-on look of the previous film, but overall, there is a polish and smoothness to all of the animation. The sets the production team has created are amazing, from the crowded jazz bar to the lonely forest populated with towering trees and gnarled branches.
Once the clip played to rousing cheers, audience members were invited to ask questions of the two-person panel. While many of the questions were technical, others bordered on whimsical. When asked if Jack Skellington might make a guest appearance in the film, Abatte laughed off the question and said, "His agent wouldn't let him out of his contract."
A manual labor of love
With "Corpse Bride," Tim Burton returns to the painstaking stop-motion technique of his earlier "Nightmare." "It feels like a lost art form," he says. Source: Los Angeles Times
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Every bride-to-be needs someone to turn to for sage counsel as the big day nears.
But only in "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride" could that traditional movie role be played by a maggot that lives in one of the bride's eyes. And only in stop-motion animation could the slimy creature be portrayed by a handmade puppet whose innards are actually filled with Swiss-watch-quality gears.
"He's inspired by Peter Lorre — an homage to the old horror films," explained co-director Mike Johnson as he inspected the puppet vault at 3 Mills Studio, in an industrial section of East London, where the movie was crafted. "He's kind of a twisted Jiminy Cricket-type voice of wisdom — when she's troubled, he pops out of her eye socket and offers some advice."
Today's movie audiences are more sophisticated than ever, and accustomed to action-packed films that follow explosion with explosion, but Burton still believes that fans can be lured by a story told at a stately pace using old-fashioned animation techniques developed decades ago.
It is a gamble costing nearly $40 million, but one with a built-in safety net — the legion of Burton-philes who adored "The Nightmare Before Christmas," his last stop-motion feature, which earned more than $50 million after its 1993 release and is still going strong on DVD. With its cult following, "Nightmare" remains a merchandising bonanza: A video game is being readied for fall release.
Warner Bros.' "Corpse Bride," which opens Friday in Los Angeles, represented a huge time commitment for Burton and his inner circle, who were also busy readying the summer hit "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Production took roughly three years because stop-motion animation is so challenging — each of the puppets must be carefully moved between frames, a process that taxes the stamina and goodwill of everyone involved.
Like most Tim Burton stories, "Corpse Bride" is a familiar tale with a macabre twist. It's a traditional love triangle, except that one of the protagonists happens to be dead, which proves a considerable inconvenience. Johnny Depp provides the voice for Victor, the timid protagonist whose puppet bears a strong resemblance to Depp, and Helena Bonham Carter, Burton's wife, plays the passionate, love-starved corpse bride.
Much of the visual and thematic power stems from the contrast between the drab, Victorian-era Land of the Living and the more colorful Land of the Dead, with Depp's character caught somewhere in between.
"We are sort of doing a reversal, making the Land of the Living seem much more dead, more muted, a humorless society," said Burton. "And the Land of the Dead is more upbeat and more emotional. It stems from growing up feeling slightly repressed, in a suburban kind of way, with not much emotion shown, and looking at the Day of the Dead in Mexico, where they treat death as part of life instead of treating it as bland and dark. I just preferred other cultures, where they treat it as a celebration of life, not a negative."
Burton had wanted to make a stop-motion follow-up to "Nightmare Before Christmas" for more than a decade but waited for a story that was the right fit with the unusual technique, which has been eclipsed in the eyes of most filmmakers by computer-generated animation.
"I just grew up loving the handmade quality and beauty of stop-motion," he said. "It reminds you that movies are an art form, not a business. It feels like a lost art form, with the beauty of the puppets."
Despite the detailed work required, Burton's crew knows that stop-motion has usually been sniffed at by animation connoisseurs, who prefer the more traditional methods pioneered by Disney or cutting-edge computerized imagery.
"I think computer-generated animation can make really appealing, great movies, but people get so locked in they say other types of animation are dead, and that is upsetting to me," Burton said.
The industry consensus that stop-motion's days are numbered is probably a result of the way the technique was used in its early days, primarily for horror films, said Pete Kozachik, the director of photography on both "Corpse Bride" and "Nightmare Before Christmas."
He said the best-known example of stop-motion is probably the classic "King Kong" sequences, which were pathbreaking at the time.
Kozachik said many older viewers find stop-motion films too strange to enjoy, but that the younger generation raised on MTV is more visually astute and able to judge a stop-motion film as a story that rises or falls on its own merits.
"The process has always been a niche and has not always been well-respected," he said. "It used to be used as the only tool to make giant monsters in horror films. It's got a certain look that is less than perfectly real. There is a weird, surreal, expressionistic quality about it."
The filmmakers believe they have a secret weapon in this regard: the corpse bride herself. Her charisma and sexiness carry the show, Kozachik said.
"She is an enigma for most of the film," he said. "She starts out as kind of a ditz, and at some point she has an epiphany. I think most red-blooded men are going to find her just fine, even if she is dead."
THE METHOD, THE MADNESS
BURTON has toyed with the idea of constantly keeping a stop-motion feature in production but concluded that it only makes sense to use the technique when there is a perfect match between the story and the antiquated technique.
"I don't know why, but these animated films feel very personal," he said. "It's easier for me to feel stronger about than a live-action film. Part of the joy of doing it is remembering why you like to make films."
Burton's commitment to the project is obvious, but the reality is that the director had been busy on "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and left much of the day-to-day supervision to co-director Johnson, a "Nightmare Before Christmas" veteran blessed with the patience needed to work with teams of animators month after month.
"We're trying to get the best of both worlds," said Johnson. "We're hoping that it holds up as a dramatic story to the level that a live-action Victorian period piece would, and we want the fun and gags and visual things that go with stop-motion. It's a balancing act. Hopefully it works on both levels."
Johnson admits that the stop-motion animation system is "archaic" in an age when viewers are accustomed to super-smooth computer-generated effects, but he remains a devotee.
He said the planned release of "Corpse Bride" this fall, and the release of an Aardman Animations stop-motion film, represent something of a revival in the field. It has been about five years since the last stop-motion feature, DreamWorks' "Chicken Run."
"You have to be crazy to do this," he said. "There are probably between 50 and 100 people in the world who actually make a living doing stop-motion. There aren't many opportunities to do it at this level, so people really come running."
The process is improving because of high-tech materials, he said, citing the way the new generation of silicon skin reacts to light much as human skin does, giving the art director many more possibilities.
A THREE-YEAR COMMITMENT
JOHNSON credits Burton for coming up with the film's concept and look and says his job is to realize Burton's vision. "He oversees the shots and the storyboards and has final say on everything," says Johnson.
The tall, tapered puppets have a distinct Burton look, but many require special rigging because their feet and ankles are too small to support their body weight. Shooting on the puppet-sized stages has been incredibly slow, averaging just two minutes of film per week.
That means a long-term commitment is needed — three years' worth of soggy sandwiches from the nearby supermarket that is the only lunch option in the drab section of East London where the studio is located.
"The thing that makes it the hardest is you are using real sets, real lights, real fabrics, and some of these puppets couldn't even sit down unless you designed them to do it, so we really had to know what each character was going to do before the puppet was designed," said producer Allison Abbate, another "Nightmare" alum. "The magic is that the puppets are really doing all those things you see them do."
Her task is complicated by the large number of sets and scenes that have to be successfully coordinated if the production pace is to be maintained. The goal all along was to release the film late in September 2005 to capitalize on the upcoming Halloween season.
"We have 35 sets and 25 animators, and every set is like its own little movie," she said. "The director has to be in 35 places at once."
The English-made puppets are remarkable. The lead puppets cost about $30,000 each to produce, and a full-time maintenance team is on set to keep them in action. Each miniature head has translucent silicon skin and gears hidden inside so that smiles, smirks and other facial expressions can be produced.
The baseball-size heads, the smallest ever made for this purpose, are extremely delicate and precise. The merest unwanted move can destroy a scene's continuity, giving the animators fits and throwing off the crucial Halloween timetable.
That leads to skills not normally needed on a movie set. Shannon O'Neill, for example, is trained as a jeweler, but she spent her time working on the puppets' facial mechanics. By putting a tiny Allen wrench into the Corpse Bride's ear, for example, O'Neill can turn a gear and get the main character to smile or open her mouth to speak, and can even manipulate her eyebrows.
"I never needed glasses until I worked on these," she said, gingerly adjusting the bride's eyebrows, which are mounted on tiny ball-and-socket joints.
Another example of the painstaking work required is a wedding cake from the Land of the Dead that is decorated with 50 skulls and some bones. It took four craftsmen about seven days to make the prop, which has to be rigged internally so that it can seem to move naturally when it is carried by a crew of skeletons.
All anticipated motions have to be planned for ahead of time. The cake had to be constructed in a way that these motions could be carried out without destroying it.
It is a considerable expenditure of time and money for an item that will only be on screen for about eight seconds.
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Press screening this week can't wait etc
Also, for all you Apple fans, this is the lastest of an ever-increasing number of films edited in Final Cut Pro.
Quote from: GhostboyPress screening this week can't wait etc
Looking forward to your etc.
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"Tim Burton, fresh off playing Peter Petigrew in
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban..."
Oh, this isn't "The Caption Thread." My bad.
Hey, he looks kind of like my avatar.
i saw this tonite. tim burton was there.
i'm anxious to hear what ghostboy thought...
Well what did you think?
Burton Heads to Altar in 'Corpse Bride'
The dead bride, Helena Bonham Carter, wore a brown sweater and frilly olive skirt. Jittery groom Johnny Depp wore white pants and a gray T-shirt. Wedding singer Danny Elfman was all in black. Matchmaker Tim Burton wore a blue shirt and black slacks.
The key players of "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride" sat down at the Toronto International Film Festival to share recollections of their strange and wondrous animated matrimonial fantasy and ponder why it is they all collaborate so often.
"With all of these people here, it's nice because it feels like a real artistic collaboration," "Corpse Bride" director Burton said in an interview with The Associated Press, alongside co-director Mike Johnson, voice stars Depp and Bonham Carter and composer Elfman, who also wrote the movie's songs and sang one of them.
"It's a movie industry, it's a business. It's treated as a business, but I think everybody here likes to think they're making art. You want to be creative, and you respond to people who have that spirit. That's a real joy, and that's the reason that I like working with these people."
"And trust," adds Bonham Carter. "It takes a long time to trust someone. You work with people, anybody you don't know, it takes about a film's length to get to know each other. Then if you move on, you have to start right back at the beginning. But if you carry on together and try doing different things, you can all grow together."
After playing the Toronto festival, "Corpse Bride" debuts in limited release Friday and opens nationwide Sept. 23.
Burton and Elfman have collaborated on 12 films, among them "Edward Scissorhands," "Batman" and "Batman Returns," "Beetlejuice," "Big Fish" and this summer's hit "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."
Along with playing Willy Wonka in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," Depp's five Burton films include "Edward Scissorhands" and "Sleepy Hollow."
After getting his big Hollywood break as an assistant on the animated fantasy "Tim Burton's the Nightmare Before Christmas," Johnson was invited to co-direct the filmmaker's latest stop-motion adventure.
Since co-starring in Burton's remake of "Planet of the Apes," Bonham Carter went on to appear in "Big Fish" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."
"And they had a child," Depp slyly adds, to round out Burton and Bonham Carter's collaborations.
After Burton and Bonham Carter met on "Planet of the Apes," they became a couple and had a son in 2003. They live in adjoining houses in London.
This time out, Depp provides the voice of Victor, the son of fish merchants hoping to raise their social status by marrying their boy off to the daughter (Emily Watson) of penniless but titled aristocrats.
Yet the nervous bridegroom, who can't master his vows during wedding rehearsal, inadvertently finds himself conjugally joined to the decomposing cadaver of a woman (Bonham Carter) buried in her bridal gown, who has been waiting for a hubby to come and claim her.
The film was created using intricate puppets shot in stop-motion animation, one frame at a time, the same process used on "Nightmare Before Christmas."
Elfman recalls Burton describing "Corpse Bride" about six years ago. As with all of Burton's fanciful tales, Elfman felt certain his musical approach and the director's storytelling style would click.
"Whatever it is, I know there's going to be some sensibility that's a little bit askew and that enables me to catch ahold, and I know it's going to be a good ride," Elfman said.
Since "Edward Scissorhands," Depp has had a champion in Burton, who kept coming back to the actor even though Hollywood had its doubts.
"I feel very lucky to have been along for the ride," said Depp, whose choice of odd and uncommercial roles had made him a tough star to cast until he scored a blockbuster with "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl."
"Lucky to get the gigs from him, because I know over the years, he has had to have a great number of battles to get to cast me. Fighting the studio heads. `You mean the weird guy who does the European art movies? No, he's box-office poison.' Tim would go in and battle for me, so I feel very lucky."
Burton no longer had to beg to cast Depp because of his sudden box-office success. In fact, for "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," the studio bosses suggested Depp for Willy Wonka "before I could even utter the words," Burton said. "I just thought, `What took you guys so long? It's about time.'"
Quote from: modagei saw this tonite. tim burton was there.
i'm anxious to hear what ghostboy thought...
I'm jealous. Burton isn't my favorite director the way he used to be when I was younger, but I'd still die if I got the chance to meet him.
And I loved
Corpse Bride. It was everything I wanted it to be. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if the skeleton modeled off Tom Waits had actually been Tom Waits, instead of Danny Elfman.
The piano duet was one of the most romantic things I've ever seen. So romantic, in fact, that SPOILER it was almost a letdown that Victor didn't end up with the (insanely attractive) Corpse Bride.END SPOILER
i want to get a girlfriend before this movie comes out. today it finally struck me that tim burton has great make-out movies.
Quote from: cronopioi want to get a girlfriend before this movie comes out. today it finally struck me that tim burton has great make-out movies.
Seriously. I wanted a hand to hold during this one.
My full review is here. (http://www.road-dog-productions.com/reviews/archives/2005/09/corpse_bride.html)
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Johnny Depp always has been one of our favorite and best actors but even he remembers his bad reputation. While we doing our interview a tray of glasses was dropped in another room with a loud crash. Johnny laughed and said “You saw me here. I couldn’t have done it! I’m going to get blamed for that.”
Even just using his voice in the stop-motion animated Corpse Bride, the power of Depp comes through.
Corpse Bride is set in a 19th-century European village and follows the story of Victor [Johnny Depp], a young man whisked away to the underworld and wed to a mysterious Corpse Bride [Helena Bonham Carter]. While his real bride, Victoria [Emily Watson], waits bereft in the land of the living.
Daniel Robert Epstein: How did you get into the character of a puppet?
Johnny Depp: I had the great luxury that when I arrived to do the recording Victor was standing there and so I got to meet the puppets. They were beautiful and really inspiring.
DRE: Did you think of anything specific when creating Victor’s voice?
JD: No, not particularly. I was just trying to save my own ass for being ill prepared. I didn’t realize that we were going to be doing the recording while I was shooting Wonka. Tim [Burton] was so helpful as he always is. He's a character that's not so far away other characters that I've played in the past for Tim like Edward Scissorhands because he’s a little bit of an outsider. A bumbling, deeply insecure nervous character. A lot like me in life.
DRE: Did you identify with Victor?
JD: Yeah, feeling like a failure, feeling inept, unable to be understood. That's a pretty consistent theme in a lot of people's lives. But it's like Victor represented, in the same way that Scissorhands did, that emotion of not quite feeling comfortable in life. It's that universal emotion of growing up that we all drag around with us for the rest of our days.
DRE: What did you think of the final film, Corpse Bride?
JD: Honestly, it's the first time that I was able to watch a movie that I was involved in that I didn't hate because I felt a distance. I felt the character.
DRE: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is your biggest hit since the Pirates of the Caribbean, what’s your reaction to that?
JD: I've learned to condition myself to not have any expectations in terms of box office because as you well know that kind of thing escaped me for many years. So it's relatively a new experience to have more than a few people go and see my films, but it's very exciting. But literally that whole part of the process is so foreign to me and so distant that just two or three weeks ago, I called my agent Tracy [Jacobs] and said, “Is Charlie doing okay?” She said, “Yeah. It looks like it's going to cross the $200 million mark domestically.” I said, “Well, is that good?” She said, “Yeah, it's very good. Don't worry.”
DRE: How has this huge bump in popularity changed things for you?
JD: I've noticed a bit of a change and I've noticed certainly a change in the attitude towards me from the upper echelon of the industry which is pretty interesting. For example every time that Tim [Burton] wanted to cast me in his films he had to fight like a bastard with the studio to be able to do so. The funny thing was he sat down with the Warner Bros people and they said, “What do you think of Johnny for Wonka?” Tim said that he was like, “Yeah, okay. Good.” So the fact that they brought it up surprised him.
DRE: Will you work together more in the future?
JD: I hope so. It's all up to him whether he gives me the job. Working with Tim is really like going home for me. It's this place that's very comfortable even with the knowledge that there's a lot of risks that have to be taken so you have to really be prepared to explore. But there is great comfort and safety there.
DRE: Have you asked him to direct something you wanted to do?
JD: No, I haven't done that yet. But aside from Scissorhands, which was kind of a general meeting, I get these mysterious phone calls out of nowhere after months or even years. Where he'll say, “What are you doing?” “Nothing. I'm just hanging around.” “Can you meet me for dinner next week?” “Sure. Where?” “New York.” “Okay.” “Okay. I'll see you then.” It's always been like that.
DRE: Your recent roles have all been major transformations, do you want to play something closer to yourself?
JD: No, any actor with any semblance of sanity or insanity, biggest fear is to go anywhere near who you are. It's okay to use certain truths. I've kind of touched on it here and there with character type parts like the upcoming The Libertine. More than anything I'm interested in exploring one area and then saying, “Alright. That's territory covered. Lets see what happens next and where I can go next.” But I do have that voice of Marlon [Brando] reverberating in there. One time he said to me, “How many films do you do a year?” I said, “I don't know. Two or three.” He said, “You've got to watch yourself because we only have so many faces in our pocket.” You get to a certain point and you've played all these different characters you start going, “My God, he really was right.” But I don't know. One of the joys of the gig is that you get to observe people and by observing people you find these little traits, these interesting little things that people do and you go, “Oh, I'll have a bit of that. I'll have a bit of that.” Then you just store it up and save it for later because you'll never know when you'll need it.
DRE: Is it difficult to observe people now with your fame at a peak?
JD: Yeah and that’s the rub. That's one of the occupational hazards because you want to be the observer and then suddenly you walk into a room and everyone goes, “Isn't that that guy? What's his name?” That's one of the dangers, but there are still ways to do it. You can still kind of do it from afar. What's fascinating for me is the idea that you can watch the straightest laced super conservative couple in the world having a meal or whatever and if you watch them for long enough you'll realize that they're absolutely insane. It's really fascinating.
DRE: What’s the most important form of validation in your career?
JD: The thing for me that's most touching is the couple of the people who have stuck with me since the early days. One being my agent, Tracy Jacobs. She really believed in me when no one else did. When they wouldn't even look at me Tracy was always there. I didn't believe in me and she did. But more than anything, it's those kids outside the movie theater, who go and watch these things and who have stuck with me on a very long, lengthy, strange, bumpy road. That's what means the most. They're the people who keep me employed. I kind of look at them like they're my boss.
DRE: Have your kids seen your recent films?
JD: Jack was real little when Pirates came out. He was sort of in the Neanderthal stage. Lily-Rose was there and she loved it. It's interesting because they had come on the set of Pirates so they were used to seeing papa as this weird, greasy, pirate guy and then when they knew that I was going to be playing Willy Wonka they were of course very excited about it because they knew the original film with Gene Wilder. My daughter is pretty familiar with the book as well. So they came to visit me on the set and they walked into my trailer and there I was decked out in the top hat and the Prince Valiant hairdo and the cha-cha heels and the eyes and the teeth and the rubber gloves. They just froze and stared at me for what felt like an eternity, about two minutes. Then they got over it and wanted to try everything on. I was so scared when they were going to see Charlie, way more than the idea of being reviewed by a movie critic. I was so in fear that my kids were going to not react well to the film. So I was sitting at home waiting for them to come back and they arrived back and Jack, walks in and looks up at me and quoted Wonka. He went, “You're really weird.” [Laughs] I felt suddenly liberated.
DRE: What made you want to return to the character of Captain Jack Sparrow?
JD: What happens to me is that once you've clicked into that character and you really know the guy you become very close and you love him. So it's always very difficult at the end. There is that week to ten days before wrap where you can hear the clock ticking and then you go through a really nasty kind of depression afterwards. There's an odd separation anxiety because you've just been this person for a pretty good length of time and then they're suddenly gone. For me, with Captain Jack, I had a sneaking suspicion that I'd see him again, and when they said, “We'd like to do two and three together.”' I was all for it because I wanted selfishly to be the guy again.
DRE: What was the most intense experience with that feeling?
JD: Sometime the separation is more emotional than others. I remember the last day of Scissorhands after 89 days and we did the makeup I looked into the mirror and thought, “Well, this is it. This is the last time I'll see you.” So it becomes very emotional. It's a weird, weird thing. I don’t think that it's normal and I don't think that it's particularly good for you. But it's what I got.
DRE: Do you think you’ll ever get back to Terry Gilliam’s Don Quixote movie?
JD: He keeps threatening that. I really hope that there's a way to salvage that because when we were there it was like the best of Terry Gilliam. It was really going to be a good film. Unfortunately there was that hideous curse on it. I hope so. I'd certainly get back into the ring and do that one. I'm sure that Vanessa [Paradis] would too.
DRE: Have you worked with Keith Richards yet on the new Pirates movies?
JD: No, it's not totally official yet. Everyone is trying. He's got a little tour to do.
Completely fullfilling! Structured brilliantly! Burton serves a delicious treat and Elfman adds the icing! Depp and Bonham Carter are a match made in... the afterlife! ****
- POZER! from XIXAX.COM
i'm glad ghostboy loved this but i didn't. besides the incredible animation i felt the film was a huge step down from nightmare. burton said that with nightmare the story was so well planned that he was able to hand the film off to henry selick but with this film because the story they were going from was so loose he had to be there to help find it. i don't think they quite got there. if he had done like he wanted and had a stop motion film out every couple years i guess this wouldnt be crushed under the weight of expectation but it really does feel regressive after a 13 year weight. so it pains me but burton continues his misfire streak for me pretty much uninterupted (except sleepy hollow) for the past 10 years. and it seems very very brief. it looks beautiful, but the jokes in this are pretty lame and the songs are not memorable. (which reminds me: WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO DANNY ELFMAN!? pitchfork nailed it when they said jon brion took over from elfman as the hipster composer. is he allergic to memorable themes and songs now? he hasn't done a great score in FOREVER either!) C+ (i'm so serious).
I'm kinda with Mod here, but a little less so.
The Elfman thing was uncalled for.
I also don't consider this a Burton Misfire... people like Mod expect too much out of him I think... If he were to make a film exactly like his early films, he would get shit... when he tries to do something different, he gets shit. He was never Kubrick or even Gilliam, just someone to expect good films out of. Now we can't expect that as much.
Anyway, totally not as good as Nightmare, but enjoyable.
Quote from: modagebut burton continues his misfire streak for me pretty much uninterupted (except sleepy hollow) for the past 10 years.
God, I think Sleepy Hollow is the
worst film he has made in the past ten years.
its tough for me. i literally GREW UP with burton. my parents took me to see Pee Wee in the theatre, and Beetlejuice, and Batman (5 times) and Edward Scissorhands, and Batman Returns (4 times) and Nightmare Before Christmas so he really informed my childhood. it earned him a special spot in the hall of fame for me because for the first half of his career it was magic everytime. so i've continued to follow him and it really wasn't until a few years ago i even realized he had fallen off. (i even liked planet of the apes when i saw it in 01!) but after big fish didn't connect, wonka was almost awful and this was just so-so, it is beginning to look like he may never be great again. but that probably wont make any difference because i've seen every movie of his in the theatre except ed wood and he's earned it. but i just wish he were earning it now. sleepy hollow is a blip on an otherwise uninterupted downward trajectory.
the elfman thing was a side-rant but c'mon the songs in this were not very good. and with his horrid wonka songs and spider-man non-theme when was the last movie he really did something great?
Quote from: MyxoQuote from: modagebut burton continues his misfire streak for me pretty much uninterupted (except sleepy hollow) for the past 10 years.
God, I think Sleepy Hollow is the worst film he has made in the past ten years.
And I consider "Big Fish" his best film of all.
oh my goodness.....
Hey - the "burton is over" argument has merit. I'm not going to deny that his latest films have not been touching down in the same place as his earlier work but he is still a great director. I enjoyed Corpse Bride a good deal more than any of his latest output but it also suffered from the Elfman-doesn't-deliver syndrome. Maybe these guys are just getting old; their brains are getting softer and they're starting to lose it. Nah..I dont know.
It bored the fuck out of me, mostly. Save for a few key scenes. Let's put it this way, I fell asleep twice. And Edward Scissorhands is in my top somewhere. I have the songs of Nightmare Before Christmas memorized just like you do. To put into perspective what I am saying here. I like Burton, a lot. There is definitely the chance that my expectations were way too high, and that perhaps modage is right in that it is so-so, because so-so is so not what I was expecting.
There simply wasn't anything that pulled me inside of the story. It was typical, and it fucking pisses me off Burton is doing typical, you know (disclaimer: as typical as Burton could be). It's natural of course that a man in Hollywood would lose his edge, but Burton kept his edge for so fucking long that I think that's what makes it hard for Burton fans to see where he is now. If he is there - I don't know, maybe it's just because I'm not where Burton is.
This movie had good guys and bad guys and it had a love story with an obvious ending and it had a metric load of puns. How much of the dialogue involved a pun? Who do they think they are, Finding Nemo? What I loved about Burton's characters of the past was that they were distinct, not bad guys or good guys. Edward was no social recluse you know, you hand the guy a lemonade and he'll drink it, he had just been locked in a castle. Jack was quite an ambitious Halloween-land skeleton, he meant well, okay, he wanted to make Christmas better. This new guy in Corpse Bride, I don't even know his name. Who is he. What is he. What's he want. Why's he special. And why the fuck don't they tell me.
Some of the camera work and modeling was absolutely draw dropping. It was ambitious thematically, without a doubt. It was a movie, not a stop-animation cartoon.
My bar was probably too high. I'll check it out later. Much later.
It's weird I pay so much attention to director's and love a signature type of style but lately I think I'm going to try watching Tim Burton movies without thinking 'this is directed by TIM muthafuckin' BURTON!!!!"
it might help enjoy Corpse Bride even more sans that unique brand of cinephile stressing
Anyone see this via DLP projection?
And if so, should I check it out that way?
It's funny how he keeps throwing in lame homages to classic movies.
Mod, I'm surprised you didn't enjoy this more. While certainly no Nightmare I still found it rather awesome. As you said the animation is great, i'd also add some truely great character design to that. I thought the story was solid, while the songs were so-so. I don't know, I just found the Corpse Bride character extremely easy to fall in love with, I guess GB has the same feeling. And I also carried your disapointment into the theater with me. I find that you calling this a "misfire" only compliments Burton as a filmmaker.
Quote from: killafilmMod, I'm surprised you didn't enjoy this more. While certainly no Nightmare I still found it rather awesome. As you said the animation is great, i'd also add some truely great character design to that. I thought the story was solid, while the songs were so-so. I don't know, I just found the Corpse Bride character extremely easy to fall in love with, I guess GB has the same feeling. And I also carried your disapointment into the theater with me. I find that you calling this a "misfire" only compliments Burton as a filmmaker.
That about sums up my thoughts. Not great, not as good as Nightmare, but it was very entertaining, and the visuals and character designs were a lot of fun to look at.
It gets even better the second time.
http://disneyshopping.go.com/DSSectionPage.process?Merchant_Id=2&Section_Id=13801&Product_Id=187458
read the warning.
You see that all the time out here.
All apartment buildings have that sign hanging up by the entry way. It took us a couple of buildings to figure that out.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fsuicidegirls.com%2Fmedia%2Fauthors%2F1725%2Farticle.jpg&hash=c41d197cdf66e34c3dd7d8a291c723a0e8941fed)
When one talks about the greats in movie music composing the name Danny Elfman invariably comes up. His collaborations with Sam Raimi, Gus Van Sant and the creation of The Simpsons’ unmistakable theme song have made his name synonymous with great works.
Though it’s his collaborations with visionary director Tim Burton that has brought him his most acclaim. From his starring role in The Nightmare Before Christmas to his Oscar nominated score for Big Fish their names have been eternally linked together.
Now they have collaborated again on the score and original songs for Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. Not only did Elfman create a wonderful and romantic score but he wrote and sang one of the best songs in the film, Remains of the Day, as the skeleton man Bonejangles.
Daniel Robert Epstein: I was the journalist at the Toronto Film Festival who asked what the best music concert you ever went to was. You said you went to Jimi Hendrix’s last show, what was that like?
Danny Elfman: I kind of only half remember it because it was at the end of his three day Idlewild thing. I don’t know for a fact that it was his very last concert but I know that he died quite soon thereafter. So I can say it was one of his last concerts.
DRE: Close enough.
ELFMAN: I was exhausted and muddy and tired and it was like definitely really amazing. But my memory of the last day of Idlewild is all just a little bit fuzzy at this point.
DRE: I’m sure it was a fuzzy even then.
ELFMAN: I think I was only 16
DRE: Of course we’re talking about Corpse Bride. Warner Bros seems to be much more behind this one than Disney was behind Nightmare Before Christmas. How did that change things for you?
ELFMAN: In the making of the film there’s no difference. Tim [Burton] keeps his projects far away from studio interference. He did Nightmare in San Francisco and he did Corpse Bride in London and both productions were very much on their own but there was a big difference in the feeling at the end. Unfortunately with Nightmare Disney got the impression that they had a horrible flop that nobody wanted to see and the kids hated it based on a preview. It was disheartening because you felt all their support just disappear. They stopped all the merchandising, they just cut it cold and when you’re working really hard for two years on something it’s really difficult when you see the studio and the producers just totally distance themselves from it.
DRE: You’ve worked with so many filmmakers at this point. What’s it like working with someone like Tim who is given so much freedom within the studio system?
ELFMAN: Working with Tim is just like working with Tim. It’s a regular thing for me. It’s always both easy and difficult than working with other directors. It’s easier in a sense I know I’m going to be able to do some really fun stuff and getting inside his head is such an interesting place to be. It can be difficult insofar as he can be very difficult to nail down and pull him into the musical world. He’s not a pushover. With some directors I will get an automatic yes. But Tim will get very specific and wait for things to hit him a certain way. Sometimes things will hit him strangely or odd. Sometimes we have to go through a bit of a journey to get to where we’re going to get to. But the good thing about working with Tim is that I know however that journey is, difficult or not, I’m always going to be pleased at the end. It’s never a waste of time.
DRE: What kind of film is harder when it comes to working with Tim, is it something like Big Fish which deals with a lot of complex underlying emotions?
ELFMAN: The complex part sometimes is really just Tim’s own complexity. He’s not a simple guy so arriving at a certain place isn’t necessarily automatic or simple. I think sometimes we have to take kind of a little bit of a circular journey and find what the musical heart and the tone of the film is. These are not the kind of films where it is real easy to walk in and go “Oh yeah, yeah, I know exactly what that is. That’s a piece of cake.” They very rarely would fall into that category.
DRE: I remember at the press conference in Toronto you had said that you did not want to sing originally in Corpse Bride. Did you do a temp track and like it?
ELFMAN: No, I did a temp because I do a complete temp version of everything. They had it for a long time and were storyboarding to it. When it came time to produce the song, I’d written it for another voice. That’s what happened. I imagined a different voice much rougher than mine. We put a ton of effort into finding a voice and we did auditions in London and New York. It was a big deal. I recorded three different singers but Tim called and said, “You know, I still like the temp better. Would you mind doing the song?” So I did, the thing was I could sing Jack Skellington’s parts for days but Bonejangles is the kind of a voice that’s really difficult for me to do. It was a challenge. His voice was a much rougher kind of voice than Jack’s would be.
DRE: I read Mel Blanc’s biography and he said after doing Yosemite Sam he would have to drink tea and relax his voice for a few days.
ELFMAN: Yeah, it was like that with Bonejangles for me. I could only sing for 20 minutes then my throat would be completely trashed and I’d have to stop. Then I had to go back in like three times because they kept making changes to the storyboards so I had to redo some of it. It was tons of fun, but painful.
DRE: When you went to the set of Corpse Bride, what did that do for your songwriting process?
ELFMAN: Nothing because the songs were done before there were things to look at. When I wrote the songs there was nothing but Tim’s pictures. They couldn’t start animating until there was a finished song. It was always really fun going onto the set, but when I was doing the songs I primarily had Tim’s drawings.
DRE: When you see a very skinny character like Victor, would you write a song for him that doesn’t have a lot of bass in it? Or does it not make a difference what the character looks like?
ELFMAN: Early on before I saw anything I wrote these piano solos for Victor. So already at the very beginning I had come up with a theme. But Victor doesn’t actually sing in the movie although he did originally have a song but that didn’t survive. But I would just think about what they were singing about and just have fun. Just like on Nightmare.
DRE: How much did you deal with [Corpse Bride] co-director Mike Johnson?
ELFMAN: A lot because when I was starting to work on the bigger songs like Remains of the Day and the Wedding Song I had to sit and do a lot of jawboning with him and all the storyboard artists. We would talk through different ideas and then I would write down lots of notes. Based on that I would go off and start writing tunes and when I finished a tune I would just work with Tim. Then when Tim and I were in sync we would turn the tune over to the production.
DRE: Since Corpse Bride was a lower budgeted film, did you still use a full orchestra?
ELFMAN: Yeah it was a full orchestra. Not as big as the orchestra for Charlie [and the Chocolate Factory], but it’s probably a little closer to the size of the orchestra in Nightmare or in-between. I didn’t really feel like I needed a really large orchestra, but it wasn’t a small one either. I think it was just kind of normal.
DRE: Is it a budget that dictates the size of an orchestra or is it the scale and scope of the film?
ELFMAN: In both Corpse Bride and Charlie it was the scale and scope of the film. For Nightmare I wanted a smaller orchestra. I didn’t want a big orchestral sound. For Corpse Bride because it was a more romantic score so originally I was going to use a similar thing to Nightmare, but then I ended up adding a slightly bigger orchestra because I felt like I needed a bigger string section.
DRE: When other directors call you, what is it they want from you?
ELFMAN: I have no idea. Believe me, I have no idea why anybody hires me ever and I’m often surprised that they do. You’d have to ask the directors. I’m sure it’s because they heard something in some film score that I did that made them think, “Oh, I like that.” I can only imagine that that’s the case. Very few directors have told me specifically.
DRE: After something like Good Will Hunting, did smaller scale films come your way?
ELFMAN: I can’t say it that a whole lot more did or maybe they did and I just didn’t really know. Once I book up a year, I don’t really know what films do come my way because they don’t get to me. If I’m already hired on a film I may get four more film offers but I’m not going to know about it. They’ll simply be told that I’m unavailable for this period of time. I never do scores that are overlapping. It’s actually impossible to do that unless you’re willing to hire other people.
DRE: Have you heard of SuicideGirls?
ELFMAN: Yeah, I saw it last night. It’s pretty fun and wild.
DRE: How many Goth and punk fans do you see nowadays since you’re not touring?
ELFMAN: Well, I don’t. Except when I was in Japan with Tim a couple weeks ago and we spent like a great evening in a Goth club. It was almost like a Nightmare Before Christmas club really. First I was spooked because as I was walking up into the club I heard the music and it was me singing a Jack Skellington tune. I wanted to leave but then Tim was like, “No, let’s stay a while and check it out.” It ended up being really fun. But that’s like the first exposure I’ve had with that kind of element first hand in ages.
DRE: Both you and Tim come off a little Goth even though you were both older when it first hit big. Were you ever like that?
ELFMAN: No, I was never like anything. When I started in the 1970’s I was only into music recorded before 1935. So I was a freak. I’m closer to some kind of weird film/music nerd than like some kind of punk or Goth. Then suddenly I wanted to be in a ska band and I did this weird musical theater for years. I got all these different incarnations. But I’ve never been a punk or a Goth. I think I’ve just been a nerd with these like weird musical styles.
DRE: Do you have any desire to play live music anymore?
ELFMAN: Not really. Let me put it this way, I have no desire ever to be on an Oingo Boingo stage again.
DRE: Why not?
ELFMAN: I can’t get in front of a stage that loud again. I spent 17 years in a band in front of monitors and it fucked up my ears. It was insanely loud. I was standing in front of four monitors blasting my own voice into my head which has to be louder than the band to be able to sing and hear yourself during these fucking two and a half, three hour shows. Then it all has to be louder than 6000 screaming audience members. Believe me when I say this, it was louder than anything you can imagine. I really got to the point where if I stayed in that environment any longer I would be deaf right now.
DRE: Obviously, that would be highly detrimental to you.
ELFMAN: Yeah and as a result I’ve gotten some pretty shitty hearing levels. Which is a big problem and it’s gotten to be a worse problem as I go. So the thought of getting out into that level, I mean I can’t even take really loud clubs anymore. If I walk into a restaurant or a club where it’s loud it physically hurts. It feels like I’m getting daggers in my head.
DRE: Supposedly about 12 years ago you and Tim had a fight and that’s why you ended up not scoring Ed Wood, is that an exaggeration?
ELFMAN: No, we had one big blow up in our 20 years together and that is true about Ed Wood. We were very upset and we both said we‘d never speak to each other again. It was one of those kinds of moments. But with Tim and I, it’s almost like a family thing. Now with the wisdom of age and hindsight, over a two decade period with our personalities being what they are, it’s inevitable that we’d have to have some kind of meltdown somewhere.
DRE: It had been about ten years up to that point.
ELFMAN: Yeah and we used to joke that we’d end up like Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock and sure enough, we did. But fortunately, this is where the family thing comes in, we never disagreed over a piece of music. Let me put it that way.
DRE: It was just over probably nothing.
ELFMAN: It’s too complex to even get into. But these things are never over about one thing. It was probably something that had been building up for years and had to explode. In the year and a half or so that Tim and I didn’t speak, I felt really shitty. It turned out that he didn’t feel very good about it either. So that’s where the family thing comes in because I’ve had fights with my own brother where I vowed I’d never speak to him again. But in the end you’re family and you find yourself missing that person. That’s absolutely what happened with Tim. So it was gratifying to find out that we both felt the same way. While Tim was shooting Mars Attacks, I got this call from a producer saying, “Will Danny ever consider speaking to Tim again?” I was on a plane the next day. We met in a coffee shop in Kansas, hugged, sat down and said, “That was fucked up.” He said “Let’s forget the whole thing and just move on from this discussion.” I said “Absolutely.” We never spoke of it again and we’ve never had any personal issues again.
DRE: On purpose or it just has never come up again?
ELFMAN: I think it was a learning experience so now I think we’re probably both a little more cautious. We’re both really passionate about what we do so you get smarter about stuff like that. It’s like in a marriage, you know. You go through like a big horrible break up so you get together and you really don’t want that to happen again. Then when you feel your emotions getting all worked up and intense, you step back.
DRE: What do you think of the score to Ed Wood?
ELFMAN: I didn’t really know what to make of it. The whole thing was just weird, so I didn’t really have any objective opinion. I never was even able to like watch the whole thing in one sitting. It just represented a really nasty period. Once again, if you’re in a marriage and there was something in the center of that whole thing, a part of you will never be able to just go and look at that thing because it’s always going to remind you of that really nasty period.
That was a particularly intense time because I’d been on Nightmare for two and a half years then did Batman Returns in the middle of that. It was all this overlapping stuff and a lot of frustrations just kind of blew up. But I’ve had different kinds of disagreements with different directors over the years and there are directors who I don’t want to work with anymore but as intense as it was I’ve never had an unworkable disagreement with Tim over a piece of music. At the end of the day I always got to remember that. I’ve always come out of a Tim Burton movie feeling good even with some of the ones that were really difficult to work on.
DRE: I read that you have a couple screenplays.
ELFMAN: I have a musical that Disney bought, another musical at Fox that l I wrote years ago and I have a non-musical ghost film that I wrote for Warner Bros, that has been a turnaround for like 12 years. But I just got it out of turnaround this year. In fact, as a result of doing Charlie and Corpse Bride part of my deal was to get the script back. But I wrote another one which we’re looking for money now.
DRE: Did you write these films by yourself?
ELFMAN: Yeah. The first one I wrote, which wasn’t a musical is a ghost story. It takes place in an orphanage in Italy at the end of World War II. Fun little story about this little kid and this ghost that is pursuing him. The last one I wrote is about this incredible true story in Key West, Florida in the 30’s and 40’s about a doctor who lived with his dead lover for seven years and then was caught and had a sensational trial. A huge trial and it just was too incredible a story to pass up. But it’s, as you can imagine, a difficult sell. The movie is an old guy and a corpse and unlike the Corpse Bride it’s not a beautiful animated woman who lives in a wonderful, jazzy world. It’s all these internal things inside his head. This incredible obsessive love that he had for this woman.
DRE: Are these things that you would like to direct?
ELFMAN: Yeah.
DRE: Would you ever consider doing it on a low budget like your brother does?
ELFMAN: I wrote this last one to be a lower budget movie. But the first ones I wrote were between like 12 and 20 million to make them. This last one I tried to do something that could be done for closer to five. But getting five million for a film that odd is still not an easy call. But we’re working on it.
DRE: Literally about two hours ago I spoke to the director of the new Johnny Cash movie Walk the Line, what would the Oingo Boingo biopic be like?
ELFMAN: I think it would be really boring.
DRE: Because you’re all still alive?
ELFMAN: Well and Oingo Boingo really didn’t have that wild life. In real life the members of Oingo Boingo were not crazy rock and rollers doing extraordinary stuff. Ten of the years I was in Oingo Boingo I was scoring films so my life would have been the most boring one on the planet.
DRE: The movie Back to School had a pretty impressive cast, on top of Rodney Dangerfield and Robert Downey Jr., Kurt Vonnegut had a small role. You and the band had a small role in that, how was that?
ELFMAN: It was just a quick thing. I can’t even remember if it was one or two days. It was funny because Robert Downey Jr. was sitting there at a mock mixing board to mix the band and we were essentially lip synching the tune.
DRE: I read how you’re not going to work on Spider-Man 3. Do you want to comment on that?
ELFMAN: Let me put it this way, there is no amount of money that anybody could offer me to do Spider-Man 3. I would sooner go back to bussing tables,.
DRE: I look on the IMDB and I see six people credited with the music on Spider-Man 2. Did that contribute to your feelings?
ELFMAN: It’s all about how the production went completely insane at the end. It was the worst film experience I’ve had in 20 years. It was all pure insanity, it was all completely needless and in the end they went nuts trying to imitate every single note of their temp score. If I think somebody’s obsessively attached to a temp score in any way I’d stay away from it. But this was the worst I’ve seen times ten and I’ve worked with some pretty anal directors. Warren Beatty and Martin Brest are not easy people but this was taking anal retentive to a new extreme.
DRE: It’s odd because Sam Raimi is a guy you’ve been working with for 15 years.
ELFMAN: Sam was not there.
He was there, but he was not the Sam that I knew. As you said, I’ve known Sam for almost 15 years. It was my fifth movie with him and all I can say is that the person who was there at the end of Spider-Man 2 was not Sam. I don’t know who it was, but it wasn’t Sam. It was as close to living out Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as I’ve ever experienced. There’s a lot of micro-managers out there. Tim’s a micro-manager musically in his own way and there’s moments where he’ll get real obsessive over like a certain cue. But we work it out. Never in 20 years have I come across a situation where I couldn’t work it out. For a director to be a micro-manager is nothing new. If anything I would say most of them are. But to get to the level where you don’t need a composer, you just need a musical arranger to adapt note for note as close as possible. There’s nothing for me to do as a composer here.
DRE: Would you work with Sam again?
ELFMAN: Not if I can help it.
It’s too bad because Sam was at the top of my list. He was actually even easier than Tim to work with and we’d never had a disagreement. To see such a profound negative change in a human being was almost enough to make me feel like I didn’t want to make films anymore. It was really disheartening and sad to see the way it ended up. The end of Spider-Man 2 was a self-induced hysteria. It got to a point where I couldn’t even adapt my own music close enough because two thirds of their temp score was Spider-Man 1. If I varied from one note it was like a self-induced hysteria.
DRE: That’s bizarre.
ELFMAN: They wanted this one cue that was basically from Hellraiser and I was like “I can’t get any closer and I’m not going to imitate [Hellraiser composer] Christopher Young. Go fucking hire Christopher Young.” So they hired Christopher Young to do a cue like Hellraiser and he couldn’t get close enough to Hellraiser so they ended up licensing the cue from Hellraiser.
DRE: What are you doing now?
ELFMAN: I’m moving on to Charlotte’s Web. Ironically another singing spider.
DRE: Does that have songs in it?
ELFMAN: Well there’s just one song, a lullaby. The mother sings it to the child, and then Charlotte sings to Wilbur the pig.
DRE: Have you worked with Gary Winick before?
ELFMAN: No, I’ve actually just met him once in New York. We only talked on the phone and I just knew that Charlotte’s Web is a real classic story.
DRE: I love that book so much.
ELFMAN: I haven’t seen a frame yet and I’m just praying that it comes out good. There’s just no way to tell at this point other than its great potential. Obviously this is a big stretch going into this kind of world of animals and CG combined with live action. But I really liked Tadpole so I think he’s talented and I’m really curious to see what he came up with.
thats crazy about ed wood, i never even realized he didn't score that. its even crazier about spider-man 2. :shock:
This was beautiful. A marvel to look at and deeply moving. Aobut the jokes, it's a matter of taste. Over here at xixax, people don't seem to like Burton's humor. I was laughing all the way through it, so did most of the audience, and also on Charlie...I think is a cultural thing. Mexicans seem to find these movies funnier than americans. I absolutely loved that musical number about how "dying is ok", which is fantastic as a celebration of the obscure. The character's expressions match their personalities exquisitely. I think i'm so easilly receptive to burton¿s black humor and parodies of marriage and fear of death that I felt like a kid through much if the film. Frankly, how this is supposed to be boring and thebrown bunny is supposed to be moving according to a lot of people around here escapes me.
Title: Tim Burton's Corpse Bride
Released: 31st January 2006
SRP: $28.98
Further Details
Warner has officially announced Tim Burton's Corpse Bride which features the voices of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. The disc will be available to own from the 31st January, and should retail at around $28.98. The film itself will be presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, along with an English Dolby Digital 5.1 EX track. We have no word on extra material yet I'm afraid, but we'll bring you the full specs shortly.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.xixax.com%2Fimages%2Fdvd%2Fcorpsebridedvd.jpg&hash=b72b3489523e4e8a26a6b1fc91c26d760b7f59ed)
I did like this film quite a lot, its look was amazing, all the characters design was beautiful and I was transfixed on in it, but I just found it a bit drawn out, like a watered-down version of nightmare. I also thought it ended very abruptly...... I walked out the cinema feeling a little unsatisfied.
The girl I took really didn't like it, she claims the songs ruined it!
Quote from: Alexandro on October 24, 2005, 12:05:35 PM
This was beautiful.
so agreed, this was like the greatest diorama ever. :bravo:
now it's clear to me, burton's films work when he delimits their settings modestly.
Quote from: modage on September 24, 2005, 01:47:15 PM
(which reminds me: WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO DANNY ELFMAN!? pitchfork nailed it when they said jon brion took over from elfman as the hipster composer. is he allergic to memorable themes and songs now? he hasn't done a great score in FOREVER either!) (i'm so serious).
I'd say the biggest problem I had with "Corpse Bride" was the songs. They weren't awful, but they were in no way essential or memorable like those from "The Nightmare Before Christmas."
For Tim Burton, I'd say it was a good film. Not his best, but it looks fantastic, as with everything he does. I'm sure someone has said this before, but the reason I'm quick to forgive Tim Burton is that he's one of the few directors around who has a distinct visual style. In an age where most film's visual styles are all too homogenous, that makes Burton's lesser works still a fun time. (Except for "Planet of the Apes." There are just no excuses for that)
Quote from: ddmarfield on November 14, 2005, 04:35:39 PM
the reason I'm quick to forgive Tim Burton is that he's one of the few directors around who has a distinct visual style. In an age where most film's visual styles are all too homogenous, that makes Burton's lesser works still a fun time. (Except for "Planet of the Apes." There are just no excuses for that)
I like his visual style, but I don't feel that he elevates a mediocre story with his visuals. His good films like Ed Wood, Batman, Corpse Bride, etc. are enhanced by the visuals but in his bad films the visuals don't make up for the lack of a good script. Some directors can really energize an average story with great visuals but its not so much the case with Burton.
Quote from: Ravi on November 14, 2005, 04:46:48 PM
Quote from: ddmarfield on November 14, 2005, 04:35:39 PM
the reason I'm quick to forgive Tim Burton is that he's one of the few directors around who has a distinct visual style. In an age where most film's visual styles are all too homogenous, that makes Burton's lesser works still a fun time. (Except for "Planet of the Apes." There are just no excuses for that)
I like his visual style, but I don't feel that he elevates a mediocre story with his visuals. His good films like Ed Wood, Batman, Corpse Bride, etc. are enhanced by the visuals but in his bad films the visuals don't make up for the lack of a good script. Some directors can really energize an average story with great visuals but its not so much the case with Burton.
Agreed on both accounts. I'll never question Burton's visuals, but I don't think he is a very good storyteller.