Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

[Ghostboy]

i 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

[cron]

i want to get a girlfriend before this movie comes out. today it finally struck me  that tim burton has great make-out movies.

[Ghostboy]

i 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.

[MacGuffin]

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.

[Pozer]

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

[modage]

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).  

[RegularKarate]

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.

[Myxo]

but 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.

[modage]

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?

[polkablues]

but 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.

[Alethia]

oh my goodness.....

[Sal]

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.

[w/o horse]

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.

[AntiDumbFrogQuestion]

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

[killafilm]

Anyone see this via DLP projection?

And if so, should I check it out that way?