9 opens on 9/9/09 – Watch the Trailer

Here is the trailer for 9, the new animated feature film produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov, and directed by Shane Acker. Not to get too carried away, it looks absolutely awesome, immediately jumping to the top of the “Must See” list for 2009  (although, curiously, the look of the characters is less suggestive of Burton’s NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS than of the IMAX stop-motion short subject MORE). The script was written by Pamela Pettler (“Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, Monster House), based on Acker’s short subject, which is available on YouTube. Danny Elfman provides the music. Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer, John C. Reilly, and Crispin Glover provide the voices. Focus Features opens the film nationwide on September 9.
At the official website you can get information to send a text message and receive a response from acker and Bekmambetov, plus an exclusive scene from the film.
Read the official synopsis below:

When 9 (The Lord of the Ring’s Elijah Wood) first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world. All humans are gone, and it is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the earth intent on their extinction. Despite being the neophyte of the group, 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good. They must take the offensive if they are to survive, and they must discover why the machines want to destroy them in the first place. As they’ll soon come to learn, the very future of civilization may depend on them.

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Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

Tim Burton’s second stop-motion feature film bears some obvious similarities to THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, but it has almost as much in common with BEETLEJUICE (not to mention touches of EDWARD SCISSORHANDS and the excellent short subject VINCENT). Not only does the story involve a “newly-dead” couple in a bizarre afterlife, populated by characters whose appearance betrays comically obvious evidence of how they departed the land of the living, there is also a BEETLEJUICE-type of manic energy — a sense of imagination run riot that makes the film always worth watching, even when the story loses traction.
As a technical achievement, CORPSE BRIDE goes far beyond NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. The stop-motion work is breath-taking in its ability to imbue life into the characters; the expressive capability of the armature puppets puts the vast majority of computer-generated animation to shame (even Pixar, the king of all things CGI, has never made human characters half this impressive).
Moreover, the film is stylistic tour-de-force of amazing camera angles and intricately choreogrpahed movements. There is no proscenium arch staging here; scenes play out in dynamic fashion that makes the action come alive, and the fabulously detailed sets and costumes create a world far more vivid and three-dimensional than scene in any other form of animation.
And in a welcome departure from the SHREK films, CORPSE BRIDE is not afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve. There is plenty of humor but none of the knowing, almost condescending winking to the audience that says, “We all know this is fairytale nonsense, so let’s just smirk and have a ball.”
At the center of its story is the titular, tragic character (voiced by Helena Bonham Carter) who was murdered while waiting for her fiance to elope with her. In Victor (Johnny Depp), she finds a replacement, but like Sally in NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS she has trouble making him appreciate her charms (there are other similarities, such as her detachable limbs, which work independently).
Unfortunately, once the premise is set up, the film doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with it; it’s almost as if the script couldn’t figure out what story to tell. The initial idea seems to be that Victor is being forced into an arranged marriage with a live woman named Victoria; the monochromatic look of of the land of the living makes this prospect resemble an extremely unpleasant living death. The passionate love of the Corpse Bride, coupled with the (literally) colorful characters in the world of the dead, makes marriage to her seem far more appealing, but the film fails to follow through on this idea.
The basic problem seems to be a failure of nerve. The Corpse Bride, whose name is Emily, is obviously fashioned convey a ghoulishly erotic allure, with her beguiling eyes, thin waist and half-exposed breasts (even the lack of flesh on some of her bones only emphasizes how slim her figure is). Yet the film shies away from the implications. Although inspired by a Russian folktale, the story is pure Victorian Gothic in its ambience, an essential requirement of which was always that the heroes and heroines be so pure and virtuous that they were often insufferably dull as well. Contrasted with these lifeless characters was the darkly hypnotic dynamism of the villains/monsters (think of Erik in PHANTOM OF THE OPERA or the Count in DRACULA). Of course, virtue always won out in the end, but the element that made the stories truly interesting was the flirtation with the dark side.
From Tim Burton, we expect a little bit more than flirtation. Like David Lynch (but with much more colorful approach and commercial appeal), Burton is a director who views the bizarre and the macabre not with disgust but with eager fascination. His “monsters” (with a few exceptions) are usually demented artists and outsiders, yearning for love and acceptance, who only seem monstrous when viewed through a lens of ignorance and misunderstanding. Emily fits this mold to perfection, and it would have been dramatically satisfying to portray the process by which Victor overcomes his initial alarm and learns to embrace love from beyond the grave, turning his back on conventional normality in favor of something new and exciting.
Alas, it is not to be. Instead, Victor falls in love with Victoria, his living fiance on first sight; consequently, Emily is reduced to being a fly in the ointment, an impediment on the way to this happy marriage to a living bride. This story could have worked too, if Emily had been a genuine threat, a monstrous succubus from beyond the grave, tempting Victor away from marital bliss in favor of a lust-filled damnation, but the character is too sad and tragic to fill the role of monster.
Instead, the plot turns into Victor’s quandary about being forced to disappoint one of the women who loves him. In a way, the situation is not that different from the third act of of the Japanese classic UGETSU, in which a wayward husband finds himself enthalled by a beguiling female ghost. The difference is that Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1953 classic is a 94-minute, adult-themed film that benefited from its complexity — but CORPSE BRIDE is a 64-minute fairy tale, which would have benefited from a fairy tale simplicity to its storytelling. With Victor truly in love with his Victoria, but sympathetic to Emily’s plight, the tug-of-war inherent in his situation sends the story tacking back and forth, and it requires some fairly manipulative and convenient twists to provide conventionally satisfactory solution.
The weakness in the plotting is easy enough to tolerate as long as the visuals and Elfman’s songs carry the film. The Corpse Bride’s resurrection from the grave is a stunningly realized sequence that makes the film worth seeing all on its own (in fact, the incredibly smooth animation of wedding veil is enough to make the film worth seeing), and her sad refrain upon realizing that Victor does not love her (“I know that I am dead, yet I have more tears to shed”) is genuinely moving.
But surprisingly, some of the songs fall flat (the opening number has a dirge-like pace that almost stops the film before it can start — it’s all recitative-style exposition, unlike the blissful arias that launched NIGHTMARE). And the script’s attempts at humor (including a Peter Lorre-inspired maggot filling in the Jiminy Cricket role) often elicit groans rather than chuckles.
The great thing about NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS was that it set the standard; it had no immediate precedent by which it could be judged. CORPSE BRIDE bears the burden of having to live up to that earlier achievement. On a technical level, it more than meets — and even surpasses — expectations. But on an overall artistic level, it is no match for its illustrious predecessor. It’s dark, demented, and fun, but it’s more of an extremely clever trick than a truly delightful treat.

SECOND VIEWING

A second viewing of the film helped me overcome my initial disappointment and somewhat revise my opinion. The story still the wanders back and forth a bit, but the heart-felt emotion invested into the plight of the lead characters — Victor, Victoria, and especially Emily the Corpse Bride — helps offset the structural weaknesses.

TRIVIA

In an early scene, Victor sits down at a piano in his fiance’s home and begins to play while the camera performs a graceful, sweeping arc around him (worthy of any live-action Hollywood musical). When we finally get a closeup look at his hands on the keyboard, we see that the brand name on the piano is not Steinway but “Harryhausen.” Ray Harryhausen, of course, is the maestro behind the stop-motion effects for such classic fantasy films as THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD and JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS.

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005). Directed by Tim Burton, Mike Johnson. Written by John August and Pamela Pettler and Caroline Thompson, story and characters by Tim Burton. Music and songs by Danny Elfman, additional lyrics by John August. Voices: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Tracey Ulman, Paul Whitehouse, Joanna Lumley, Albert Finney, Richard E. Grant, Christopher Lee, Michael Gough, Jane Horrocks, Enn Reitel, Deep Roy, Danny Elfman.

RELATED ARTICLE: Mainstreaming Necrophilia for the Masses

Copyright 2005 Steve Biodrowski

Sense of Wonder: Looking Over Films Overlooked by Oscar

With the Academy Awards show coming this Sunday, and everyone wondering which films will be selected as the best of 2007, now seems a good time to look over the films that the Oscars overlooked. It is no secret that cinefantastique is typically shut out of consideration in the major categories, seldom even earning nominations in anything other than technical areas like special effects and sound design. This tendency does not always hold true – witness the Best Picture win by LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING – but Peter Jackson’s fantasy epic remains the exception rather than the rule. Genre stigmatization is still evident in the way that several obviously Oscar-worthy films were ignored or slighted in this year’s nominations.
To be fair, the Academy did offer a handful of nominations to films that were either hybrids (the horror-musical SWEENEY TODD) or borderline cinefantastique (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, which features a villain easily as horrifying as THE HITCHER).  Also, 2007 was an uneven year for the genres: the studio blockbusters that pleased audiences worldwide were not necessarily magnificent works of art, and the handful of great science-fiction, fantasy, and horror films did not sell enough tickets to generate the kind of momentum (a la RETURN OF THE KING) that can break down the barriers to Oscar acceptance. Nevertheless, there are some titles, some performances, some screenplays that simply cry out for recognition. Hence, we offer this tour of an alternate universe in which science-fiction, fantasy, and horror films receive the respect they deserve.
Our rules for qualification do not conform exactly with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (which requires a one-week continuous run). To appear on this list, a film need only have screened in Los Angeles at an event open to the public. So, for example, one-time festival screenings count, but press screenings do not.

BEST PICTURE

2007 offered at least two genre films that utilized the medium almost to perfection. A synthesis of great writing, acting, and direction – complimented by excellence in technical areas. These are movies that could have been nominated in almost any category.
Sweeney Todd - Cinefantastique Online's pick for the best of 2007SWEENEY TODD
You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll…gag in horror at the fountains of blood pouring out of the screen!What more can you ask for? Tim Burton’s filmization of Stephen Sondheim’s musical, starring Johnny Depp as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, features some of the best work of the director’s career. Not only a musical, SWEENEY TODD is also a black comedy and a moody piece of Gothic horror – all foggy streets, dark shadows, and dingy living spaces.
Against this virtually monochromatic backdrop (in the style of 1930s Universal films ), Burton lets the gore fly faster and freer than it ever did in the most outrageous Hammer horror from the ’60s. By combining motifs from these two great classic horror traditions, Burton not only pays homage to the films he (and we) loved as children; he also gives the stage musical a vivid cinematic live that destroys any vestige of the proscenium arch. Even more important, Burton proves, once again, that he truly understands the power of a good visual: it must not merely flash by looking pretty; it must linger in the mind’s eye with emotional resonance. The bucket-loads of blood in this film are not gratuitous; they are the visual expression of the passion, rage, love, revenge, regret, and recrimination of the title character. With bold artistic brushstrokes that exceed even the most delirous extravances of Dario Argento (TENEBRE) or Pupi Avati (HOUSE OF THE LAUGHING WINDOWS), Burton uses the crimson color to paint a picture of devastating impact. It’s grand guignol elevated to high art. Beside this masterpiece, most of the year’s Oscar nominees (not to mention official horror films like HALLOWEEN) resemble childish crayon scribblings.
The Academy deserves credit for awarding SWEENEY TODD nominations in the categories for Actor in a Leading Role (Johnny Depp), Art Direction (Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo), and Costume Design (Colleen Atwood). Nevertheless, we are disappointed that the film was ignored in the Best Picture category. We would make room for it by removing the over-rated THERE WILL BE BLOOD, which loses points for ripping its title off from the tag-line of the SAW franchise.
THE HOST
The Host: Bronze medalist Nam-joo (Bae Doo-na) tries to fell the creature with an arrowBong Joon-ho’s Korean monster movie has it all: a great monster, a great cast of characters, and a great story. Unfortunately, this film, which truly set the bar for high-quality genre fare, received only a limited art house release. In terms of box office, it was no match for the high-powered CLOVERFIELD, but it is easily the better of the two films, following its premise through to a satisfying conclusion without ever descending into manipulative movie cliches. In a nutshell, this is a monster movie that works, because it never winks to the audience and say, “This is just a monster movie, you know, so don’t expect any integrity.”
As a film that works on so many levels – monster-movie, comedy, family drama, political thriller – THE HOST is certainly worthy of a Best Picture nomination. Having already removed THERE WILL BE BLOOD to make room for SWEENEY TODD, I would pluck ATONEMENT out of the list. Even if the Acadmey could not see the wisdom in this move, they at least should have realized that THE HOST deserves a slot among the Best Foreign Language films. As an ensemble piece, it does not quite have a stand-out performance I would have nominated in the acting categories, but its script (typically a weak link in monster flicks) is strong enough to deserve recognition in the Original Screenplay category, and director Bong Joon-ho deserves credit for balancing the elements so well.

DIRECTING

Tim Burton for SWEENEY TODD
Tim Burton provides some of the best work of his career:  he puts his strong visual sense to use, giving us a modern take on old-fashioned Gothic horror imagery, which is tied to a screenplay (adapted by John Logan from the musical by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler) that is strong enough to support the stylistic flourishes.  Burton also gets the performances from his actors, and he makes the emotional beats register with full melodramatic impact. Surely, he deserves the slot occupied by Paul Thomas Anderson, who allowed THERE WILL BE BLOOD to run on like an actor’s improve gone bad, wherein the director was afraid to yell cut at star Daniel Day Lewis.
Juan Carlos Fresnadillo for 28 WEEKS LATER
This strong effort stops just short of being one of the great horror movies. A follow-up to 28 DAYS LATER, it reactivates the Rage Virus but (like George Romero’s DEAD movies) avoids continuing characters in favor of examining the phenomenon at a later stage in its development. As England begins to re-patriate beneath the protection of a U.S.-led NATO force, human frailty subverts security protocol, allowing the seemingly defeated disease to escape control. The resulting chaos plays out in a shorter time frame and a smaller area than its predecessor, yet it is depicted in far larger scope, thanks to some great special effects and action scenes (including a nighttime aerial bombing to kill off the infected). 
Atypical for the horror genre, the film is in some way strongest in its early section, when it is establishing the characters and playing out their personal dramas, which will lead to disastrous results for all (a husband abandons his wife to the Infected; when he begs forgiveness of her in an isolation ward, she accidentally passes the disease on to him, triggering the outbreak). Once the outbreak occurs, the story loses a little of its emotional hold; it turns from an intense drama played out against the background of a horrifying atrocity, into a run-and-jump escape movie, as the survivors try to outrun not only the Infected but also the military, who have orders to kill everyone rather than risk letting the virus spread.
In effect, this becomes a remake of Romero’s THE CRAZIES (1975), which also focused on a band of survivors attempting to escape a military quarantine. As in that film, the audience is asked to identify with the escapees, even while the military action is, at least in some sense, justified: in attempting to save themselves, our protagonists are potentially threatening the lives of millions of others. The irony in this case is that a young boy has immunity from the disease, but the military officer in charge of medicine is overruled in her attempts to study him; consequently, she must break ranks to save the life of her patient.
As in films like THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE and CHILDREN OF MEN,the remainder of the narrative systematically kills off the surrogate parental characters, who sacrifice themselves to keep the boy alive. Unlike those films, the sacrifice turns out to be in vain. The cynicism of the ending is effectively done, but it reduces an otherwise great film to the level of a cheap exploitation movie, in which audience investment in the characters is violated for the sake of a black humor “twist” ending; still, you have to give the film credit: as frustrating as the denouement might be, it is justified within the context of the story. With its depiction of a military occupation, 28 WEEKS LATER deliberately evokes images of Iraq without preaching any overt message, except that the rules of engagement inevitably lead to collateral damage, and that the resulting us-versus-them mentality prevents the sort of cooperation that could lead to a successful resolution of the crisis.
Having undermined itself ever so slightly with its determination to be downbeat at all costs, 28 WEEKS LATER loses its shot at earning an Alternate Best Screenplay nomination. On the other hand, director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo does a fine job of marshaling the resources at his command: he has you along for the ride from beginning to end, and you never feel as if you’re being dragged against your will; you’re on board and eager to follow. Neither DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERLFY nor JUNO offered such big challenges to overcome, so either Julian Schnabel or Jason Reitman could make way in the category for Fresnadillo.

 SCREENPLAY

This category can sometimes be a weak one in genres where sometimes more effort is put into creating fantastic worlds than in crafting the narrative that takes place in those worlds. Fortunately, 2007 saw some strong efforts in this area. As mentioned above, we think the visuals of SWEENEY TODD and THE HOST worked well because they were in the service of strong scripts. Below we pick out another film that is not as much an overall success but nevertheless benefits from good writing.
STARDUST
STARDUST: Michelle Pfeiffer as the evil witch LamiaThis is a sweet, endearing variation on the typical fantasy formula, with quirky British humor and some eccentric twists and turns that elevate it above the standard fare. Yet it does not quite thrill and amaze; your sense of wonder will be tickled but not overwhelmed. For compensation, you get an oddball turn by Robert DeNiro as a cross-dressing sky pirate and a deliciously evil witch personified by Michelle Pfeiffer, having more obvious fun than she has had on screen since playing Catwoman in BATMAN RETURNS. These entertaining performances are part of an ensemble, so they perhaps do not stand out enough for me to make a case for including them in the acting categories. Still, the writing – by Matthew Vaugn and Jane Goldman, working from the novel by Neil Gaiman – is imaginative and endearing enough to deserve a nomination in the Adapted Screenplay category, in place of the over-nominated THERE WILL BE BLOOD.
Brian Solomon of Vault of Horror argues that FIDO (the satirical zombie movie that got a platform release in 2007) deserves recognition in this category. Read his Oscar picks here. John Morehead at Theofantastique also found FIDO worth considering.

ACTING

There were some good genre films in 2007 that tripped up in some way or another, not quite reaching the level that would make us want to slot them into the Best Picture category. Often, these films were saved by strong performances that engaged viewers and overwhelmed any minor flaws. 
 Robert Carlyle in 28 WEEKS LATER
Carlyle deserves a nod for his performance as the husband who does the one thing that no husband should ever do in a horror movie: he runs out and leaves his wife behind with the infected maniacs! I still cannot believe the film had the nerve to do this; it is a bold move far more convincing than the ending of THE MIST. The amazing thing is that, as much as you hate him and loathe the character, you never hate and loath him more than he hates and loathes himself. Carlyle registers the conflicting cowardice and guilt so perfectly that you sympathize; he forces you to look into the face not of an ideal Hollywood hero but of a flawed and all too believable human being. It’s debatable whether Carlyle’s role is big enough to qualify as Lead Performance, but I would have no problem with removing Daniel Day Lewis from the category to make room for a far more worthy nominee. Lewis is also playing a man who is supposed to hold our interest even while he performs loathsome actions, but his high-toned scenery chewing is far less successful than Carlyle’s understated performance. 
Brian Solomon seconds our choice in his Oscar Picks at Vault of Horror.

John Cusack in 1408

John Cusak checks into 1408Who would have thought that the most successful horror movie of the year would be a little drama about a guy alone in a room, which just happens to be haunted?* While the gore films were dropping like flies in 2007, this adaptation of a Stephen King story proved that a good old-fashioned haunted house – or in this case, haunted hotel room – could still deliver the chills. 1408 does an impressive job of keeping its limited space visually interesting for feature length, even if it does not fully live up to its promise. There seems to have been some confusion about resolving the story, which resulted in two different endings, both available on DVD, neither one satisfactory.
Fortunately, John Cusack’s performance forces you to overlook the dramatic deficiencies. As the author who makes a living writing about spending the night in haunted locations, the actor provides a virtual one-man show, allowing the audience to experience his terror with an almost first-hand immediacy, so that the shock effects never degenerate into mere mechanical jump-and-scare tactics. Instead, the supernatural manifestations represent the inner demons plaguing the character, and the ghost story can easily be read as a psycho-drama of a man examining the failures of his life. Had the film abandoned the supernatural overtones, and presented its flashbacks a la  WILD STRAWBERRIES, Cusack would have had a shot at earning a real Oscar-nomination. Having already knocked out Daniel Day Lewis to make room for Robert Carlyle, it is hard to say who else should move aside to make room for Cusack. I would probably move aside Tommy Lee Jones’ nomination for IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH, which seems like a surrogate nod for his work in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.
Will Smith in I AM LEGEND
Will Smith gives an Oscar-worthy performance, turning this action-horror film into a character study. The portrait of a solitary man trying to survive in a world where the rest of the population has been reduced to night-lurking monsters is thoroughly engrossing and frequently frightening – so much so that this could have ranked as a potential genre classic. Sadly, things start to go downhill when it turns out that the “Last Man on Earth” is not really alone, and the finale completely falls apart with its utterly unconvincing happy ending. Had this film been able to sustain itself with conviction to the bitter end, it would have surely ranked as one of the Best Pictures of the Year.
John Morehead of Theofantastique makes a far more eloquent argument for Will Smith’s including in the Best Actor category. We urge you to check it out.  
Belen Rueda for THE ORPHANAGE
Be;em Rueda as the woman haunted by the ghost of a missing childThis fine Spanish-language ghost story effectively follows in the footsteps of THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE and PAN’S LABYRINTH. It may not quite match the achievement of those films, but it does orchestrate its spooky terrors as well as one could want, mixing them in with an involving human story as well. In the end, the methodical pacing, which helps build tension, is too slow, and the plot’s twists and turns do not line up in a way that clearly makes sense. We’re left with a flawed gem that’s good enough to make us want to overlook the imperfections. Those imperfections do not extend to lead actress Belen Rueda, who practically carries the movie on her capable shoulders. You are always engaged with her character, which is the major coup that carries you past any weaknesses in the script (which raises more questions than it answers). Since the Academy saw fit to nominated Cate Blanchett for both a Lead and a Supporting role, I think she should be gracious enough to bow out of the Lead Actress category, especially since the nomination for ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE seems to have been inspired mostly by a desire to create a historical footnote (it is the second time she has been nominated for playing Queen Elizabeth).

Timothy Spall in SWEENEY TODD

We had been hoping for a Supporting Actor nomination for Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford in SWEENEY TODD. As a man who thinks he is smarter and smother than he really is, Spall makes the most of his limited screen time; every nod and would-be sly smile is pure gold, and yet he never overdoes it. Bad, Academy, bad!
Who else thinks Timothy Spall deserved the nomination? Click here to find out!

 BEST SCORE

We must express disappointment that Academy rules no longer allow for a specific category for scores comprised of songs and/or music adapted from existing material, both of which are the case for SWEENEY TODD, the screen version of Stephen Sondheim’s stage musical. Certainly, Sondheim’s music is worthy of recognition, but the only way he could have qualified would have been by writing a new song, which could have been admitted into the Best Song category. Frankly, there is something wrong when great work is ignored simply because there is no slot available for it.
For more music that was overlooked by the Academy, check out Randall Larson’s picks for the best soundtracks of 2007.

 VISUAL EFFECTS

THE HOST 
A nomination in this category would certainly not have been out of order for the Korean monster movie. This year’s three nominees (GOLDEN COMPASS, PIRATES OF THE CARRIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END, and TRANSFORMERS) offered plenty of visual flash, but none of them were truly convincing; they were fantasies in which suspension of disbelief was readily available. THE HOST puts its monster right down in the middle of the real world and makes you believe it. 
SUNSHINE
This engrossing piece of drama (from the creative team behind 28 DAYS LATER) falls just short of being one of the best films of the year. Its story of a (virtual suicide) mission to re-ignite the sun is conveyed with a desperate conviction, worthy of the high-stakes of the story. Unlike most cinematic science-fiction, this one remains rooted in reality (despite one or two leaps of faith in the premise), and the special effects, besides being spectacular, also have to be convincing. Had the screenplay not descended into schlocky territory in the third act (it practically becomes an old-fashioned monster movie), this might have been good enough to rank among the classics of the genre. Still, for using its special effects to help create a more believable portrait of space travel, we think this one deserved more Academy attention than the fantasy films that were actually nominated.

MAKEUP EFFECTS 

HATCHET
The biggest cinematic crime of 2007 is that Adam Green’s retro-slasher masterpiece HATCHET was consigned to a low-profile stealth release despite earning adulation from horror fans on the worldwide festival circuit in 2006. Opening on a handful of screens, with almost no advertising (on the same weekend that Rob Zombie’s misguided HALLOWEEN opened in thousands of theatres), HATCHET never had much of a chance to find an audience beyond the hardcore fans who carefully check their local theatre listings. In terms of quality and craftsmanship the distinction between the two films is so wide that it would be laughable if not for the fact that HALLOWEEN raked in $70-million while HATCHET pretty much came and went without a peep – essentially a “platform” release to garner some reviews and hopefully boost video sales. In a year that saw botched efforts like GRINDHOUSE, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT, and THE MIST fail to suck audiences into theatres despite heavy promotional campaigns, it is a shame that the true crowd-pleaser – the one truly capable of galvanizing an audience with shocking hard-core horror – will be enjoyed mostly by people in their living rooms. Without the roaring appreciative audience, this film loses some of its lustre, and it does not quite hold up to a second viewing as well as one would like: the humor is still funny, but it does not qutie sustain the pacing during the first half, before the horror fully kicks in.
Of course, this kind of low-budget shockfest never, ever receives Academy Award consideration, but we find ourselves wondering whatever happened to the Achievement in Makeup category that so famously earned the ire of Siskel and Ebert when it was first instituted back in the 1980s: the Laurel and Hardy of film critics named it their “Dog of the Week,” predicting that the category would be an excuse to honor gory splatter effects of the kind seen in FRIDAY THE 13TH movies. All we can say is: this is one prediction we wish had come true, at least in this case. HATCHET features some of the best and bloodiest makeups ever seen on the screen, courtesy of John Carl Buechler.

BORDERLINE GENRE TITLES

Since its inception as a print magazine in 1970, Cinefantastique always defined the genre broadly, reviewing many films that others considered to be mainstream or art house efforts. Below are listed some worthwhile titles that do not quite fit our brief, which was to highlight films that had been overlooked because of their disreputable genre associations. Nevertheless, they were to some extent overlooked, so we give them their due here.

BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA
This was advertised as though it were a knock-off of THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA – another whimsical young-adult fantasy with lots of special effects. In fact, it is something much better: a convincing, heart-warming story about two young friends, who find brief escape from their daily lives into a make-believe world they call Terabithia. The fantasy excursions are charming, but the film’s real coup is the every-day drama of real world. The plot takes a heart-breaking turn near the end that ranks about a ten on the hankie-scale, easily outdoing the final-reel fatality in HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX. As a genre film, this barely ranks, but it is good enough to include here as a borderline genre entry. The screenplay has a nice depth to it, bridging the gap between wistful childhood and adult tragedy – worth a nomination.
ZODIAC
Zodiac: Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) speaks to a witness, who may be the killerThis grim recounting of the real-life serial killer, who terrorized the Bay Area decades ago, is grim, intelligent, and surprisingly moving. Its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: the devotion to detail envelopes you in the story, but it also wears you down over the course of the extensive running time. Consequently, the forest tends to be obscured by the trees, but the basic idea behind the film does seep through: the unknown Zodiac Killer terrifies us because to our minds he seems like a faceless Boogey-Man; if we could just put a name and a face to him, he would lose his mythic status, reduced to something merely human. A great achievement, but the running time does seem to stretch more than necessary. Like TERABITHIA, this is only a borderline cinefantastique entry: although not, technically, a horror film, it deals with themes relevant to the genre. It is also an ambitious project that excels in numerous categories, from its script to its photogrpahy to its editing. The ensemble acting is of the sort that does not necessarily produce an obvious stand-out for Oscar consideration, but director David Fincher, one of the most talented men working in his field, should have received attention from the Academy for bringing such a difficult project to fruition.
CFQ contributor Andrew Fitzpatrick, who runs the Blood-Spattered Scribe, argues passionately for ZODIAC’s deserving a Best Picture nomination; read it here.

 ACTUAL NOMINEES

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
This borderline horror effort (it features a villain as lethal and frightening as any masked maniacal stalker) received the kind of Academy respect not lavished on outright genre efforts, including nominations for Best Picture, Directing (Joel and Ethan Coen), Adapted Screenplay (Joel & Ethan Coen), Supporting Actor (Javiar Bardem), Cinematography (Roger Deakins), Editing (Roderick Jaynes), Sound Editing (Skip Lievsay), and Sound Mixing (Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff, and Peter Kurland). Despite the trappings of “realism,” the film actually takes place in a weird kind of enclosed universe wherein horrible events that should send ripple into society at large instead impact only a handful of main characters. (One is reminded of the 1964 TWILIGHT ZONE episode “The Jeopardy Room,” in which a lethal game of bullets and bombs goes on in a pair of hotel rooms without ever attracting the notice of any lawful authorities.) In this case, after a drug deal goes wrong and a thief (Josh Brolin) escpapes with the money, hired gun Anton Chigurh  (Javier Bardem) goes on a killing spree across half the state without attracting much attention beyond one tired old sheriff undergoing an existential crisis (Tommy Lee Jones). There are one or two lip service mentions given to a DEA agent on the case, but we never see him, and even though Chigurh’s first on-screen victim is an officer of the law, there is no statewide manhunt or even very much effort put into his pursuit. The effect is to create an alternate reality ruled only by chaos and random chance, where the rules of law and society seem to have been suspended. Morality is barely an issue, and the occasional pang of conscience will only put you in harm’s way. Despite basing their work on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen seem equally inspired by James M. Cain (the car accident near the end, as in The Postman Always Rings Twice – which they previously used in THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE) and Sergio Leone (Chigurh’s lethal visit, to fulfill a vow made to a dead man, plays like a variation on Angel Eyes [Lee Van Cleef]’s fulfilling a contract made to a dead man in THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY). The film deserves accolades, but ultimately the Coen’s may be too true to their vision for their own good: the non-ending, although consistent with the film, is a terrible disappointment.
CFQ contributor John T. Stanhope offers his appraisal: “…horror fans, be of good cheer: if NO COUNTRY can be considered a horror film at least to some degree, then it is the first to knock the ball out of the park with the Oscars.” Read the entire review here.
RATATOUILLE
This computer-animated film from Disney and Pixar was the most well-reviewed film of the year, so it is little surprise that it nabbed a nomination for Best Animated Feature. The Academy also gave it the nod in categories for Original Screenplay (Brad Bird, story by Bird, Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco), Original Score (Michael Giacchino), Sound Editing ( Randy Thom and Michael Silvers), Sound Mixing (Randy Thom, Michael Semanick, and Doc Kane). Some fans and commentors have even gone so far as to suggest that RATATOUILLE warranted a Best Picture nominaton and that the Best Animated Feature nom was a mere consolation prize that allowed Academy voters to overlook the film. We tend to disagree. The Animated Feature category should not exist (there are not enough animated films each year to justify its existence), but since the category does exist, and since RATATOUILLE has been nominated, it is a bit of a stretch to maintain that the film is being neglected.
Writer-director Brad Bird’s film is a delightful confection, but it is not quite the fine cuisine that its supporters would have us believe. The screenplay apparently went through a difficult development history (a process obliquely hinted at on the DVD), and the result suffers from too many cooks throwing in too many good ingredients that do not quite compliment each other. Although this sounds like a recipe for disaster, the results are actually quite tasty, just not fully satisfying – rather like a plate whose arrangement, aroma, and flavor are perfectly pleassing, until you finish and realize there was not much of a meal hidden beneath the flavorful sauce. 
In this review, We go into more depth regarding RATATOUILLE’s non-nomination for Best Picture.
Both Brian Solomon and Brian Collins think that BEOWULF should have been nominated for Best Animated Feature.

THE EDGAR G. ULMER AWARD

This, obviously, is not an official Oscar category but one invented to bestow accolades on low-budget independent films. Although movies should be reviewed based on their achievements, not their budgets, it is hard not to be amazed by what some filmmakers manage to do with almost no resources. Years ago, Myron Meisel (film critic for the now-defunct L.A. Reader) used to include the “Edgar G. Ulmer Award” in his annual year-end list. Ulmer was a talented director who most often worked in independent films, and Meisel awarded this honor to a worthy film that, for whatever reason (usually meagre resources and limited distribution), would otherwise go unrecognized for its artistic merits.

In 2007, there were relatively few sleeper hits that would qualify in this category – little movies that fill the artistic void left by the high-profile Hollywood blockbusters. Instead, we got a string of disappointments (GRINDHOUSE) and one or two outright disasters (THE MIST, MR. MAGORIUM’S WONDER EMPORIUM). The year’s installment of the After Dark franchise offered only one title, THE DEATHS OF IAN STONE, with almost enough imagination to justify consideration; unfortunately, its potential was dissipated by ill-conceived borrowings from THE MATRIX. Two festival favorites from 2006 did get a platform theatrical release in 2007: HATCHET might have qualified, but despite its low budget and limited release, the film seems too slick to truly qualify in the spirit of this category. Therefore, the Ulmer Award goes to…

THE OTHER SIDE

THE OTHER SIDE: Reapers come to collect souls escaped from Hell.This action-horror-fantasy, which like HATCHET earned some attention on the festival circuit in 2006, finally got a one-week platform release in Los Angeles before heading to video. This film feels like the cinefantastique equivalent of EL MARIACHI – an action-packed low-budget flick designed to launch a big-budget sequel-remake. The story (about souls who escape from Hell, pursued by Reapers intent on bringing them back) cleverly lays out the groundwork for the future and still stands on its own, nicely wrapping up several plot threads into a neat package. On first viewing, you will be blown away by how much director Gregg Bishop got on camera. Unfortunately, after the initial enthusiasm has worn, subsequent viewings betray the budgetary shortcomings more clearly. Let’s hope he gets a chance to do a big-budget version soon.
After posting this article, I was embarrassed to realize that I had overlooked FIDO, the satirical zombie film that received only a small platform release before being forgotten by critics and Academy voters. The Vault of Horror and Theofantastique fill the void left by me.

FESTIVAL FAVORITES

As with the Ulmer Award, this category was invented to benefit low-profile efforts that cannot compete fairly with wide releases; in many cases, they do not even qualify for the Oscars because they never get a genuine release. There were several stand-outs last year, but two of them, THE SIGNAL and George A. Romero’s DIARY OF THE DEAD, were fortunate enough to be picked up for theatrical release in 2008, so we will not include them here. Some others films were not so lucky, even though they were almost equally deserving.
STORM WARNING
This excellent Australian variation on the violent “torture porn” formula cleverly turns the tables. The story follows a married couple who get lost on a boating holiday and come face-to-face with dangerous locals – imagine DELIVERANCE cross-bred with TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and you will have some idea of the results. The sick joke of the movie is that the crazy family holding our heroes hostage do just enough to make you hate their guts, and then the captured husband and wife – mostly the wife – deliver some well-deserved and extremely gruesome payback that elicits cheers from the audience. It’s nice to see the maniacs on the receiving end for a change, and this film easily bests THE HILLS HAVE EYES, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING, THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2, and other recent examples of the form. In fact, even if you normally avoid this kind of movie, you may find yourself enjoying the mayhem. STORM WARNING truly deserved a U.S. theatrical release, but it went direct-to-video, since the box office failure of HOSTEL 2, TURISTAS, and CAPTIVITY has soured Hollywood on the financial prospects of violent horror films.
ROOM 205: A premonition of deathROOM 205 and ALONE are two foreign language ghost stories (from Denmark and Thailand, respectively) that share some similar strengths and weaknesses: like THE ORPHANAGE, they build carefully to their supernatural effects, which are nicely achieved, but the result is a lack of the kind of narrative momentum that engrosses the audience in the story from beginning to end. Nevertheless, both of them deserve an art house release in the United States; audiences willing to give them a chance will be amply rewarded. Although not perfect, each film has enough going for it to deserve consideration in the Foreign Language category, but only ALONE comes close to have the kind of art house cache that actually attracts Academy voters. (Read more about both films here.)

 DVDS

We leave the Academy Award conceit completely behind here, so that we can acknowledge a handful of discs that preserved some of out favorite classic horror films. There were many great home video releases in 2007. The two most significant, in terms of making great films available to their audience, were MGM’s Midnight Movies DVD release of WITCHFINDER GENERAL and the Fox Horror Classics box set.
The former is a 1967 Vincent Price film that had been released in altered form for its theatrical run and then further altered (its original score replaced with sound-alike synthesizer music) for home video. MGM’s DVD finally presented the film to U.S. viewers in its restored form, with a nice making-of featurette and an informative audio commentary by actor Ian Ogilvy and producer Phillip Wadilove.
The Fox Horror Classics set included three moody black-and-white thrillers from the 1940s (THE UNDYING MONSTER, THE LODGER, and HANGOVER SQUARE) that had been previously unavailable on DVD. This alone made the set worthwhile, but the discs also contain a wealth of interesting background material, much of it focusing on Laird Cregar, the ominous actor who effectively played deranged killers in LODGER and SQUARE.

 SUMMING UP 2007: THE YEAR WITHOUT END

If last year demonstrated one trend worth mention, it is the tendency for films to fall apart in the finale.

  • I AM LEGEND was not only a great thriller but also a great drama about a lone man trying to hang onto his sanity without the normal social interaction that makes life bearable; at least it was for the first three-quarters. Then it turned into a dumb Hollywood formula film, with a dopey ending.
  • NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN was a gripping thriller about the vicissitudes of fate, until it decided to simply stop.
  • SUNSHINE made you feel the threat of doomsday – and appreciate the sacrifice the characters made to avert it – until it turned into resorted to including an unlikely villain in its third act.
  • THE MIST started off strong, then gradually degenerated into a mess o’ monster cliches, finally winding up with one of the most botched endings ever recorded on film – a bad joke that writer-director Frank Darabont plays on his lead character.
  • 28 DAYS LATER basically told audiences it would have been better for the world (or at least France) if the military had killed the innocent kids we root for throughout the running time.
  • 1408 could not decide how to conclude, so it offered two endings: one in the theatrical version and another on the two-disc DVD. Neither one fully does the film justice.

We only hope and pray that, during 2008, filmmakers learn the value of dramatic catharsis and resolution. It is, after all, one of the big reasons that audiences attend movies.

ACADEMY OF THE OVERRATED

Finally, in honor of a line of dialogue in Woody Allen’s 1979 comedy MANHATTAN, we like to hand out this annual award to a film that truly earned more critical praise than it deserved.

THE MIST: What can we say? Hard-core horror fans loved it. Some called it the best film of the year. Some called it the best Stephen King adaptation ever. If either of those statements were true, than the horror genre would be further along the road of rotted putrefaction than even the most decayed zombie in DIARY OF THE DEAD. THE MIST starts off strong, but it does not deliver the scares, and it is doubtful that anyone truly enjoys the ill-conceived ending; more likely, they admire its audacity (in the same way that pundit Andrew Sullivan once gushed over the “boldness” of George W. Bush’s economic plan, regardless of whether or not it would actually work, which it didn’t). Curiously, this was a case (like GRINDHOUSE) where the genre press proved themselves as out of touch with audiences as mainstream critics are often accused of being: despite rave reviews, viewers stayed away in droves, and the film evaporated from theatres faster than the titular fog when hit with a Martian heat ray. It was a well-deserved box office fate that almost restores one’s faith in the taste of the American public (until you look at the 2007 films that went blockbuster, that is).
Brian Collins of Horror Movie a Day gives an alternative list of Oscar nominees here, including a radically different appraisal of THE MIST.
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[*I AM LEGEND made far more money than 1408, but the Will Smith film seems to be regarded as a science-fiction action-adventure, despite its horrific elements.]

Tim Burton on Sweeney Todd

HorrorMovies.ca has a brief interview snippet with director Tim Burton discussing SWEENEY TODD, specifically whether a bloody horror musical is likely to be a box office hit:

Well you know it’s always a risk. I remember when I first saw the show in London back when I was still a student. I didn’t know anything about the music and I remember seeing the show and these two ladies, these very proper, British ladies were sitting in front of me and they were kind of chatting throughout the show…
…and then when Joanna came up and the blood started spurting across the stage they both stopped and paused for a minute and, one leaned over and said “Was that really necessary?”
But in fact it was necessary and I’ve seen other productions of it where you know they’ve tried to be a bit more politically correct and skimp on it and it really lost something, because I mean the show is based in those old, grand cinemas, horror theatre melodramas, where you know they had buckets pouring out over the stage.
So, it just felt like that was true to the spirit of what the show is, it was and is over-the-top It’s more of an emotional release than it is a reality thing in this movie. So the studio they were cool about it, they accepted it, they knew it because they knew what the show was so there wasn’t you know. But you know anything, any movie is a risk, but it’s nice to be able to do something like that where you know it doesn’t fit into either musical or slasher movie category; kind of its own category.

Sweeney Todd bait-and-switch?

In response to the SWEENEY TODD trailer, Lewis Lazar of the Chicago Sun-Times works himself up into a state of righteous indignation over the alleged “bait-and-switch” strategy of the marketing campaign:

From what we know about the movie from its marketing strategy to date and from a small body of critics and VIPs who have seen the film (we have not), this “Sweeney Todd” also might be remembered for being the subject of one of the biggest bait-and-switch marketing schemes in movie history — a bait-and-switch that became an imperative to ensure the film generates an opening weekend box office figure substantial enough to suggest “blockbuster” to the movie-going public.
[…]
Sondheim’s original Broadway score in almost its entirety is said to be included in the Burton movie. In fact, reports indicate that about 90 percent of the movie is comprised of sung scenes. But curiously, you’d never know that to be the case from watching the official 150-second trailer, which makes the movie seem like a fast-paced bloody period thriller/horror flick about a crazed murderer and his sidekick Mrs. Lovett, played by the lovely Bonham Carter.
Only a few fleeting seconds of the trailer show Depp singing at all, but even that quick bit of vocalizing includes none of the intricate lyrics for which Sondheim is famous and for which Sondheim’s fans love him. But that music, we suspect, could prove quite offputting for those in the general moviegoing audience expecting a fairly straightforward, bloody slasher pic with Depp at its center.

Frankly, I’m not quite sure what has Lazar all lathered up. Yes, the trailer de-emphasizes the musical nature of the film, but the so-called “fleeting seconds” of Depp singing are actually a memorable 20-second clip of a major song; watching it, you will have no doubt that SWEENEY TODD is indeed a movie in which characters belt out Broadway-style show tunes.
As for the contention that trailer makes the film look like a “fast-paced bloody period/thriller/horror flick,” I have one obvious observation to make: That’s exactly what the film is. The fact that there is singing doesn’t change the nature of the story or the visual style one bit.
I am mightily amused that Lazar thinks the marketing people are trying to turn the film into a blockbuster by selling it as a bloody horror film. When I attended an advanced screening in October, the marketing people were scared to death of the horror label, thinking it would scare away audiences who might enjoy the music.
One more thing: Lazar’s “bait-and-switch” metaphor seems a bit strained to me. Used properly, the term refers to using “bait” to lure in a customer, then selling a completely different item (i.e., the car you saw advertised in the newspaper is “already sold” when you reach the lot, but since you’re here, why not check out these other great models?). In the case of SWEENEY TODD, the trailer and the marketing campaign are clearly selling the movie that the audiences will pay to see; Lazar merely seems miffed that Sondheim’s songs are not particularly big selling points to movie-going audiences.

NBR names Burton best director for SWEENEY TODD

Variety reports that the National Board of Review has named Tim Burton “Best Director” for his film adaptation of the gothic musical SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET. The NBR, comprised of film educators and other industry professionals not part of the studio system, puts out its annual Top Ten list each December. While the Western NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN received “Best Picture” honors, SWEENEY TODD did make the NBR’s Top Ten Films of 2007 list, too.

Meanwhile, just hours before the New York City premiere of SWEENEY TODD, star Johnny Depp announced he would go from “The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” to ruthless gangster John Dillenger for director Michael Mann (MANHUNTER) in PUBLIC ENEMIES. Based on Bryan Burrough’s 2004 non-fiction account of the crime waves of 1933-34 carried out by such notorious figures as Dillenger, Baby Face Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd, the film rolls March 10 on location in Chicago.

Sleepy Hollow (1999) – Film & DVD Review

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Since Tim Burton fans are showing up today in response to our preview of SWEENEY TODD, we thought we would offer up this review of Sweeney’s closest antecedent in Tim Burton’s ouevre.]

The Headless Horseman rides hell bent for leather in Tim Burton’s elaborate 1999 horror film, derived loosely from Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” There may be some problems in the storytelling and exposition departments, but no one would deny the effective visual scheme that creates a fairy tale world in which the existence of a malevolent Headless Horseman – who returns from the grave to decapitate his victims – is completely believable. Burton’s work is a triumph of style over substance – a visual tour-de-force in which the director’s fairy tale horror aesthetic (so charming in THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS) is rendered in live-action to stupendous effect, overwhelming the weaknesses in the storyline.

Continue reading “Sleepy Hollow (1999) – Film & DVD Review”

Sweeney Todd – Preview

Got a sneak peak at SWEENEY TODD on Tuesday, and it is absolutely fantastic – one of the best things Tim Burton has ever directed! The film was not finished (the closingcredits were missing, and the sound mix will be tweaked over the next five weeks), but barring ratings problems, this appears to be the final cut in all its gory glory. The movie is pretty much your dream of what it would be, when you first heard that Burton and Johnny Depp would be turning the Stephen Sondheim musical into a movie: it’s a dark, brooding horror-musical-comedy that hits all the right notes.
Depp casts aside the over-the-top antics of Jack Sparrow for a much more self-contained performance as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, in which the emotions (primarily a lust for revenge) ooze up to the surface in controlled bursts; without ever blunting the character’s razor-sharp edge, the actor demands that we sympathize and root for Sweeney as he slashes his way through half the throats in London. Alan Rickman is wonderful as the hypocritical Judge Turpin, whose machinations drove Sweeney to madness. Sacha Baron Cohen shines in a small role – you don’t have to be a  Borat fan to enjoy his work here. A special mention must go out for Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford, Turpin’s right-hand man – a perfectly wrought performance of a  slimy character who mistakenly believes himself to be slick and smart. Hopefully, the Oscar academy will not overlook him next year even though his role is not of the showy, melodramatic kind that usually draws attention.


If there is a flaw in the movie, it is that the cinematic storytelling occasionally short circuits the musical nature of the source material. The acting performances, through close-up camera angles and cutting, convey the point of some scenes long before the songs wrap up, as when Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower) first lays eyes on and falls in love with Sweeney’s daughter Johanna (Jayne Wisener), who is kept a virtual prisoner in Turpin’s mansion. Judging from the reaction and comments after the screening, fans of the musical will be pleased that the film is faithful to Sondheim, but SWEENEY TODD might have been even better if it had jettisoned more of the stage version, which on a few occasions feels like dead weight slowing the movie down.
The screening was followed by a session in which the marketing people asked for audience reactions. It was clear that the small audience (a bit over forty, mostly of fans of Burton and/or Johnny Depp) loved the film: over thirty called it great; eight called it very good; two said it was merely good; and no one admitted that he/she actively disliked it.
UPDATE: One of the two viewers who ranked the film as only “good” complained that the story offered “no closure,” but he did not get a chance to explain what he meant by that. (The film ties up all the plot threads; it may or may not show you exactly what happens to everybody, but it gives you enough information to figure it out satisfactorily.) This audience member also complained about Depp’s performance, saying that he had seen the actor in similar roles too often before; he called Sweeney “Edward Scissorhandspossessed by Jack Sparrow.” (“Scissorhands possessed by Jack the Ripper” would be more accurate; Sweeney has little if anything in common with the woozy pirate from CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, whose head seems soft from too much time in the sun.) Funnily enough, even though the “Scissorhands-Sparrow” remark had been intended as a criticism, the marketing people actually liked  it, saying they would like to put the comment in their promotional campaign.
UPDATE: One of the first questions that came up was regarding the singing voices, of the cast in general and of Johnny Depp in particular. According to a show of hands, a near unanimous majority of the audience thought Depp and his co-stars passed the test. Personally, I thought it was clear that neither Depp nor Rickman is a trained Broadway singer, but it doesn’t matter because they put so much acting into the songs that the lyrics become sung dialogue. I’m not saying their voices were off-key or flat, just that you could tell they were not going to throw back their heads and belt out notes that would shatter a champagne glass. The strength of their singing lay more in acting skill than in virtuoso vocal stylings, and the result is fully satisfying in the movie. 
Several viewers raised their hands when the moderator asked whether any of the women thought there was too much blood; interestingly, none of them said this ruined the movie for them or would prevent them from recommending it to friends. A few pointed out that the highly stylized nature of the film – most of the colors are muted and almost monochromatic, like Halloween Town in NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS – rendered the bright-red bloodshed in a highly artificial way that muted the impact, making it more palatable, even for non-gore hounds.
UPDATE: Some people in the screening compared the violence to KILL BILL. Personally, I found it closer to one of KILL BILL’s inspirations, the “Lone Wolf” samurai movies made in Japan in the 1970s. Like those ultra-violent extravaganzas, SWEENEY TODD features blood the flows in watery geysers – the effect is so over-the-top that it becomes almost cartoony. Still, the sight of razor slicing flesh does have an impact, especially during the montage of Sweeney carving his way through at least half a dozen victims during a song.
To be clear, the session was not about gathering audience reactions in order to re-cut the film to make it safer for a general audience; the goal was trying to gauge the film’s appeal. From the various questions and statements uttered over the course of half-an-hour, it appears that the marketing people believe the film will appeal to three or four non-intersecting groups:

  1. Teenage girls who like Depp
  2. Tim Burton fans
  3. Fans of the musical
  4. The “Adult Alternative” audience, who want to see something other than NATIONAL TREASURE 2

For some reason, there was some doubt that SWEENEY TODD would appeal to horror fans, even though it clearly is a horror movie, the songs notwithstanding. There seemed to be a misapprehension that “horror” equated with SAW, and that fans of that franchise and others of its ilk would not enjoy the Burton film.
Personally, I think nothing could be further from the truth. The blood explodes in only a few scenes of SWEENEY, but when it rains, it pours – in unbelievably graphic gouts of gushing red. I can’t remember when or if I ever saw this much red splashed across the screen in a mainstream studio movie. More important, the Sweeney character fits the classic movie monster mold: he does horrible things, but the audience identifies with and even roots for him to dispatch his victims, who more often than not deserve what they get.
It’s a mistake to think that torture-porn and/or high-octane violence are synonymous with horror. There are a few loud voices at horror movie blogs insisting that HOSTEL PART II, GRINDHOUSE, and 28 WEEKS LATER are what horror is all about, but these films can barely find an audience, if at all. Much bigger audiences will clearly turn out for scary movies – even ones with violence and blood-letting, like SILENCE OF THE LAMBS  – as long as they are done with some style and class. Certainly, SWEENEY TODD could draw in the same kind of viewers who turned SLEEPY HOLLOW into a blockbuster.
One other incident from the session deserves mention. One recurring question was whether the musical nature of SWEENEY TODD would turn off some young male viewers who might otherwise be interested in another Depp-Burton collaboration. In answer to this, an audience member recounted the following incident: after seeing a trailer for TODD before a screening of THE HEARTBREAK KID, two young men in the row in front of her turned to each other and enthusiastically cried out, ‘Fuck yeah!”
That’s not the kind of comment likely to find its way into the marketing report, so we preserve it here for historical purposes.
UPDATED AGAIN: I forgot to mention this previously, but one thought that went through my mind during the screening was that SWEENEY TODD reminds me of THE BLACK CAT, the classic 1934 horror film starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. The story has Lugosi as a man who returns for revenge after fifteen years in a Russian gulag (same amount of time Sweeney has been away). Meahwhile, Karloff’s character has married both Lugosi’s wife and – after the wife dies – Lugosi’s daughter (more or less what the Rickman character attempts to do in SWEENEY). In the end, Lugosi flays Karloff alive with a scalpel (sound familiar?). As in SWEENEY TODD, the audience is invited to identify with a demented character driven by revenge, even though his actions are almost as monstrous as those of the man he is targeting – perhaps even more so.
UPDATED AGAIN AGAIN: Some message boards linking to this report have complained that I neglected to mention Helana Bonham-Carter. I simply did not find her performance particularly remarkable. That does not mean it was bad or that I did not like her, only that I did not feel compelled to lavish suprlatives on her. For some reason, I was not concerned about her singing voice, so it was no surprise to hear her do well in that regard.  She certainly looked fantastic in the part: her lovely features covered in pale makeup that made her resemble the living dead, she was the perfect compliment to Depp’s Sweeney. Also, her name barely came up in the session after the screening, so it’s not as if I was reminded that this was a hot topic.
LATE UPDATE: Someone at the New York Post links to my article here. The brief post ends with this sentence:

Mr. Biodrowski doesn’t say if he signed the nondisclosure agreement that is standard before such screenings

No one asked me to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Nor was anyone else asked, apparently; long before I wrote my piece, the message boards at IMDB had lit up with responses from other people at the screening.
Also, I wanted to clarify a couple of points made in my original article:

  1. When I wrote the “teenage girls” were one of the target audiences for the film, I may have been over-interpreting what was being said. The actual age range mentioned was something like 17-30. “Teenage” stuck in my mind because some of the questions concerned whether parents would take their children- who dig Jack Sparrow – to see the bloody R-rated film. Women over 17 don’t need their parents to buy them a ticket, so the implication seemed to be that the film might lose the 13-16 year-old girls.
  2. Some of the message boards linking to this post have expressed disdain for the marketing people and their attempt to “sell” this movie. I think it was pretty clear that the people marketing this film believe they have something good, with built-in appeal to certain segments of the audience. I suspect the real concern is crafting a promotional campaign that will appeal to each of these groups while not alienating the others. I also suspect this is the reason why “horror fans” are not listed among the groups being targeted: the marketers probably fear they have much to lose and little to gain, that selling to the horror crowd will alienate other viewers and still not bring in the gore-hounds. I am just interpreting based on the questions asked last night; I could be wrong, of course.

DIGG this article.

Nightmare Before Christmas – Film & DVD Review

Tim Burton’s THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS gets another go-round in theatres beginning this week. Last year, the film was digitally enhanced with 3D for its annual Halloween reappearance. Disney puts the film into its El Capitan Theater in Hollywood every year; for 2006, the 3D presentation warranted  other theatres around the country – a tactic being repeated this year. If you have yet to see the 3D version, you should not miss this second opportunity. The results are not spectacularly eye-popping. Because NIGHTMARE was not designed as a 3D movie, there are few of the obvious sight gags we associate with the process: a couple of ghosts seem to float out of the screen early on, but there are no objects hurtling straight into our eyes. Instead, you perceive a wonderful depth and dimensionality to the stop-motion characters, as if looking into a window on their world. The digital enhancement seems to have sharpened the image, making everything seem real enough to touch. The beauty of the imagery – which contrasts the moody Halloween Town with the brightly colored land of Christmas – is more breath-taking than ever before, even if the characters are not leaping off the screen into our laps. 
Tim Burton`s skewered sensibility finds excellent expression through the masterful stop-motion of director Henry Selick. The songs and score by Danny Elfman are wonderful; the characters are engaging; the visuals are enthralling. Amidst all the weirdness of Halloween Town, the film still strikes a wonderful sentimental chord, emerging as a wonderful Christmas movie even more than a wonderful Halloween movie. Even the muted romance between Jack Skellington and Sally is poignant, and Jack`s reawakening to the joys of being the King of Halloween is invigorating.


A technical marvel of special effects, the film is also magical and beguiling in a way that few films ever are. Credit is due to all the wonderful talent assembled by Burton: especially stop-motion director Selick, composer Elfman, and screenwriter Caroline Thompson. Their combined efforts make this one of the greatest fantasies every committed to celluloid. Despite availability on VHS, laserdisc, and DVD, this is a film well worth seeing on the big screen again. In fact, why not turn it into a Rocky Horror-type experience and start singing the lyrics out loud along with the rest of the audience?
One of the great things about this movie is that it’s not afraid to be creepy, yet at the same time it has a warm and lovable feeling about it, although sometimes that seems to be more apparent to younger viewers. Let’s face it: any film that has parents saying it’s too scary for their children, while the children themselves love it, has something going for it.
Another interesting point is that, in a curious way, the film is a companion piece to JURASSIC PARK (which also came out in 1993), in that both are about the limits of intellect: JURASSIC’s John Hammond mistakenly thinks he and his staff can plan for every exigency and control the consequences, whereas Jack Skellington thinks he can know Christmas without really understanding it. In trying to analyze this alien (to him) holiday, Jack misses its spirit (or gestalt, if you prefer a less metaphysical term) and, unable to find it, mistakenly concludes that it doesn’t exist. Jack’s attempt to reinvent the yuletide season is somewhat less disastrous than Hammond’s attempt to recreate the Jurassic Period, but he nonetheless learns his lesson, and by the end, has found a renewed vigor for returning to what he knows best: being the Pumpkin King of Halloween.
All this may be a bit too intellectual for a film that truly is just a joy to watch. So just sit back and enjoy.

LASERDISC/DVD DETAILS

The The Nightmare Before Christmas “Special Edition” DVD is filled with the same extras and supplemental material that should mad fans drool when they appeared on laserdisc; the DVD basically replicates everything from the magnificent laserdisc box set, except the price: the laserdisc ran for about $100; you can own the DVD for closer to $20.
In either format, this presentation really is the last word on the film. Of course, DVD picture quality is, technically, superior, and you don’t have to get up and change discs (there were three to contain the film and the supplemental material). On the other hand, the laser presentation was more lavish in terms of packaging: the set came in an impressively sized box, with a rich velour interior, which also contained the coffee table picture book The Film, The Art, The Vision: Tim Burrton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, written by Frank Thompson. The book, with an introduction by Tim Burton and the complete lyrics by Danny Elfman, was quite a prize in and of itself, filled with behind-the-scenes photographs and information that would fascinate any true fan of this classic film masterpiece. Needless to say, that tiny CD case has no room for this lovely item.

Other than that, the two packages are almost identical in terms of content: a “making of” documentary, animation tests, deleted story boarded sequences not filmed, deleted scenes, an alternate ending with a surprise revelation about the identify of Oogie Boogie, a still frame archive, early pencil tests, audio commentary by director Henry Selick and director of photography Pete Kozachik, and three great short subjects: Tim Burrton’s “Vincent” and “Frankenweenie” and Henry Selick’s “Slow Bob in the Lower Dimension.”
As a film, The Nightmare Before Christmas is probably the greatest achievement of Tim Burrton’s career, but that credit must be shared with his many collaborators, including director Henry Selick, composer-lyricist Danny Elfman, and screenwriter Caroline Thompson. The making-of documentary helps gives some insight into the various contributions of these people, while tracing the origin of the project back to Burrton’s days at Disney (when he hoped the project would be a half-hour holiday TV special, along the lines of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer). You’ll also get a glimpse of the “frame-grabber” that helped elevate the quality of the stop-motion animation to new levels. Basically, the device allows the animators to reference the previous five frames of animation, in order to make sure that the puppet’s next photographed position will blend together for a smooth illusion of movement when projected.
The audio commentary by Selick and Kozachick is dense and informative; in fact, the only problem is that, with literally every shot being an elaborate special effect, there is not time for them to dwell on specifics—each images ranks only a few brief comments, and then it’s on to the next. Still, this is hardly much of a problem, as the film is then followed by a making-of documentary and loads of behind-the-scenes footage that fills in the details that have been only briefly discussed in the commentary. Curiously, throughout most of the film, it sounds as though Selick and Kozachick were recorded separately and then edited together, with their voices carefully alternating back and forth; only near the end do they finally overlap and actually address a comment or two to each other, revealing that, yes indeed, they were recorded together. Presumably, they realized they didn’t have time for chit and chat, and most likely they stopped and started the recording several times in order to make their comments as to-the-point as possible. One only wonders whether Kozachick’s verbal references to the “laserdisc” will survive on DVD. (At one point, he suggests spending a Saturday afternoon counting the number of shots in the movie, which he reckons to be near 800.)
The storyboards show some interesting material, including an abandoned last-reel revelation that Oogie Boogie was supposed to be Dr. Finklestein in disguise. This twist was wisely abandoned, as it adds nothing to the plot; it’s just one of those movie moments that’s there because—well, audience expect twists endings, right? Deleted footage contains some early test scenes, without the final dialogue as heard in the finished movie; in fact, it sounds closer to Burrton’s original poem, which formed the basis of the story (and was later published as an illustrated book).
The three short subjects throw some light onto the creative input of Burton and Selick. Burrton’s “Vincent,” in particular, reveals a visual style that is strikingly similar to Nightmare (there is even a briefly glimpsed cat that looks the same in both films), and the black-and-white Universal horror pastiche of “Frankenweenie” also foreshadows some of the monochromatic imagery of Halloween Town. Selick’s “Slow Bob,” on the other hand, has a more brightly colorful palette, suggesting both Nightmare’s Christmas Town setting and also Selick’s later feature film, James and the Giant Peach.
Of the shorts, Slow Bob and “Frankenweenie” are both charming efforts, and you’ll be happy to own them as part of this disc. But the real stand-out is “Vincent,” a wonderfully ghoulish little gem that resonates like a film version of Burrton’s twisted tales as seen in his book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy, and Other Stories. Structured like a music video, the film is set to a series of verses that tell the tale of Vincent, a young boy who wants to emulate his hero, Vincent Price (who reads the narration on the soundtrack). The images segue and shift to keep pace with the verses, switching back and forth between Vincent’s real life and his imaginary one (think of Calvin and Hobbes, if conceived by Gahan Wilson, Charles Addams, and Gary Larson). My personal favorite is “Vincent performs experiments on his dog Abercrombie/In the hopes of creating a horrible zombie.” A mini-masterpiece, it’s almost worth buying this disc just for this short subject.
In short, whether on laserdisc or DVD, this package is a must-have for fans, presenting an excellent film with a multitude of extra features and supplemental material. Somehow, the large-sized box set seemed a more appropriate package for such a wonderful collectors edition, but that little DVD fits much more easily onto your shelves.

Jack Skellington tries his boney hand at filling in for Santa.

TIM BURTON’S THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1993; 3D versio 2006). Directed by Henry Selick. Story by Tim Burton, adaptation by Michael McDowell, screenplay by Caroline Thompson. Voices: Danny Elfman, Christ Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, William Hickey, Glenn Shadix, Paul Reubens, Ken page, Edward Ivory.

Burton sneaks Sweeney

Sweeney ToddAt the Venice Film Festival, where he received a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement, director Tim Burton unveiled an eight-minute sneak of SWEENEY TODD. Variety’s Nick Vivarelli liked what he saw:

The clips, in sharp desaturated color, consisted largely of a key scene in the Stephen Sondheim musical in which Todd, played by Johnny Depp, is handed a razor case by Mrs. Lovett, played by Helena Bonham Carter.
Singing “My Friends” Depp proved he can carry a tune, dueting delightfully with Bonham Carter, herself debuting as a chantoosie.
A white streak in his hair, a mad twinkle in his eye, Depp — in his sixth Burton pic — seemed in fine form in the quick sneak, which, while entertainingly eerie, displayed no violence. Pic is reportedly headed for an “R” rating.
“I am just trying to make an old-fashioned horror movie with music in it,” Burton said at the presser.
He added that pics with “people like Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre” are among vintage scary works he drew on for inspiration.
“It’s quite uncharted territory. I don’t think there are that many horror movie musicals out there these days,” Burton noted. “It will be interesting to see what happens with it.”

Depp himself was on hand to deliver the Golden Lion to Burton. The event concluded with a screening of 3-D version of Tim Burton’s THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, which Disney is planning to re-release this October (no doubt in limited engagements, as has become an annual tradition with the film, even before its 3D airbrush job).