Tim Burton’s Buffoonery

Tim Burton has one of the more instantly recognizable shtick’s in Hollywood today.  He works with the bizarre.  His films feature bizarre characters set in bizarre places with bizarre stories.  There is also usually a dark element to the characters and stories he creates.  The shtick has become so recognizable with him; get Johnny Depp to act as a weird character, throw in some dark scenery and some crooked doors and you have a Burton movie.

Beetle Juice (1988) is a very offbeat, disturbing, dark, grotesque movie; right up Tim Burton’s alley.  This was before his discovery of Johnny Depp so he had to employ Michael Keaton instead.  Looking back, Beetle Juice oozes Burton’s style.  At the 5 second mark in this clip of the introduction of Beetle Juice, we see our two stars looking toward the grave of Beetle Juice.  Notice how strange and off-beat everything looks.  We have a scary gargoyle perched on top of the headstone, a random road sign pointing them to the correct spot they need to dig (which is like cardboard and green foam packing material) and the spindly limbs of that tree.

Throughout the clip we see Beetle Juice being nasty, doing and saying strange things and finally grabbing his crotch at 4:10 to the sound of a car horn.  It works well, however and I think Keaton plays the part wonderfully.

Another film that is very out of touch with reality in the strict Burton way is Edward Scissorhands.  We have another strange character (Depp) who attempts to assimilate with “normal” people, who aren’t very normal; almost too normal.

Edward’s house in the movie.  Gargoyles are prominent, the front gate looks like the entrance to a graveyard, and Burton still makes it a point to have the spindly, crooked tree branches, leafless and cold perched out there.  When I first saw that image, I was immediately reminded of Norman Bates’ iconic house from Psycho.

The angles of many of the shots that Burton uses only increases the sense of displacement and uneasiness of the scenery.

Among other things, Edward is quite the sculpture of hedges in gardens.  He can clip hedges with great speed and accuracy and end up with animals or anything you want.  Here is a view of some of his works, everything I’ve discussed is in this clip as well.  Barren, crooked limbs, gargoyles and a pretty bizarre image.

The movie poster for Big Fish speaks for itself with those fucking branches again.  Tim Burton’s shtick is really starting to grow to epic proportions by this point in his career.  Corpse Bride is clearly very similar, at least stylistically to The Nightmare Before Christmas which he WROTE, not directed; I guess he felt like directing his own similar movie.

 

 

 

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is essentially a big Johnny Depp-fest with him (of course) playing a strange and bizarre character.  Much more strange and other-worldly than Gene Wilder’s portrayal.  I mean, what in the hell…

Watch for our beloved branches right at the 8 second mark at the beginning of the clip.  And there’s Johnny Depp acting like…well…how Johnny Depp should in a movie like this.  Totally weird and abnormal you’re almost not even surprised at his surprising behavior.

Tim Burton has become almost unbearable in his predictability.  He now has a Frankenweenie remake scheduled and some new movie in which the description on imdb starts off talking about a “gothic-horror” movie.  Great.  Another Burton.

 

 

 

What Wins Oscars (Part 1)

It appears that if an actor plays a mentally challenged person they will win an Oscar in the Best Actor category. A movie about a mentally handicapped person is a sure shot to get the Academy teary-eyed and cheering.  They are usually extremely sentimental movies with a touch of compassion.  The following movies strike something in most of us about the mentally handicapped that makes us feel sorry for what we’re seeing on the screen.  The challenged characters are also almost always put in extreme circumstances and must decide to do what’s right in their debilitated state.

Charly (1968)

The movie that began this phenomenon is “Charly” a 1968 movie directed by Ralph Nelson.  Charly is played by Cliff Robertson who is now “notable” for playing Ben Parker in the Spider Man trilogy.  The movie is based off of the novel Flowers for Algernon written by Daniel Keyes.  Robertson beat out Alan Arkin, Alan Bates, Ron Moody and Peter O’Toole.

Rain Man (1988)

The character of Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman) is a bit of a different case than Charly.  Raymond Babbitt is a savant you see, he is very good with numbers and can solve seemingly impossible equations very quickly.  But, he’s clearly not normal as he is autistic.  We feel sorry for him, and his hard task is to get along with his brother (Tom Cruise) and get his share of his father’s inheritance.  Dustin Hoffman wins the Best Actor Oscar at the 1989 awards ceremony beating out Gene Hackman, Tom Hanks, Edward James Olmos and Max von Sydow.

My Left Foot (1989)

Daniel Day-Lewis plays Christy Brown, a man afflicted with Cerebral Palsy who struggles through life with various problems and situations.  The film is aptly titled because Christy Brown writes with his left foot only.  Now, obviously playing a Cerebral Palsy victim would be challenging to even the most attuned actors and Daniel Day-Lewis does it well.  And he won the Oscar for playing him.  He beat Kenneth Branagh, Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman and Robin Williams for the Oscar.  He did do a wonderful job portraying Christy Brown, the first example who is also based on a real person.  He’s not only playing a Cerebral Palsy stricken person, but there’s a biographical aspect to it as well.

Forrest Gump (1994)

Forrest Gump swept the nation when it debuted the summer of 1994.  Everyone wanted to see it and witness what a “masterpiece” Robert Zemeckis had created.  Tom Hanks plays Forrest Gump a slow southern boy who accidentally witnesses a bunch of historical events throughout his life.  Sometimes we feel sorry for Forrest, sometimes we laugh with Forrest, sometimes we laugh at Forrest; but we love Forrest all the same.

And we love Tom Hanks for playing him.  He beat Morgan Freeman, Nigel Hawthorne, Paul Newman and John Travolta.

The rest of the actors were nominated for a Best Actor Oscar but did not win the award.

In 1950, Jimmy Stewart starred in a movie called “Harvey”.  It’s a good humored tale about a man (Stewart) who “sees” a giant rabbit named Harvey that follows him around.  Now, Stewart does not portray the character as mentally challenged per se, though the question arises throughout the movie of his mental state.  Jose Ferrer won that year for his portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac.  The most blatant example of a mentally challenged character not winning is Sean Penn in “I Am Sam” in 2001.  He did at least get nominated, it’s a sad movie and Penn faces great struggles for custody of his daughter and must deal with these things even with his handicap.  Denzel Washington won that year for “Training Day”.

Billy Bob Thornton was also only nominated for his role in Sling Blade as Karl Childers.

Big Checks to Cash, Big Pants to Fill – The Expansion of Marlon Brando

It can be argued that Marlon Brando’s last good movie was “Last Tango in Paris” which was released in 1972; the same year as “The Godfather”, perhaps his most famous role.  After that time period it became well known that Brando was still acting strictly for the money.  He worked for only 13 days on “Superman” and was paid $3 million.  He was cast as Jor-El (Superman’s Father) and is only in the movie briefly.  According to legend, his lines were written on baby Superman’s diaper due to his refusal to memorize his lines.

As Brando aged he gained weight and refused to lose it.  At this point in his career he could get roles simply on his name and producers would pay him large sums of money for him to act in their movies.  Seeing he could do this and make a comfortable living, he did not have any personal desire to lose weight to get roles; he stopped caring about acting.  He took the 1980s off, save for “A Dry White Season” in 1989; which, by the way, he made “$3.3 million plus 11.3% of gross with proviso M.G.M. would contribute his upfront payment plus a similar amount to an anti-apartheid group.”

Brando had always been critical of acting as a profession and was amazed at how wealthy people became off of it.  His incredible acting abilities seemed to come naturally to him, so he failed to see the craft that some actors put into their work.  He was a natural born talent.  Watch Brando in “A Streetcar Named Desire” released in 1951, his introduction scene is incredible, where he fluidly delivers lines while chewing on chewing gum and parading around the apartment.

It’s easy to forget you’re watching an actor.  Now watch Humphrey Bogart in “In a Lonely Place” released in 1950. 

Now that you skipped over that you didn’t notice how stiff Bogart feels when he delivers his lines.  I am a big fan of Bogart’s he’s one of my favorite actor personalities, but when you watch him next to Brando it’s very easy to see he’s acting and spitting out memorized lines.

This is what Brando was coming from, the hottest thing to hit movies in a long time; changed the face of acting, etc. etc.  As he became a bigger star and made more money in movies he became more openly critical of Hollywood and everything about it.

Actors would probably have gone to very great lengths to land the role of Colonel Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now” but Brando, riding his star power, decided not to even lose weight for his portrayal as the Colonel.  He knew he would still get the part.  His massive girth is what sparked Coppola’s mind to shroud Brando in dark shadows while he speaks.  In hindsight the scenes work, but the underlying fact is that Brando was making no changes to his daily existence to better himself in the acting profession.  He would do only what was necessary to make a living by acting.

After returning from his 9 year hiatus away from film, he only acted in a few movies which are largely forgettable.  Almost only worth watching now just to see Brando in older age.  Here’s a good picture from “The Score”, his final movie released in 2001.  Doing it only for a paycheck and it showed.  Actors becoming disenchanted with their profession is no uncommon thing.  Every one of my favorite actors has taken roles where you just wonder what the hell they were thinking.  Why would such a genius stoop to such lows?  These questions are not for me to know, maybe they all just want a nice paycheck once in awhile; and don’t always want to take the most challenging of roles, just ride their star power for a bit.  They don’t all, however, enter the realm of blatant disregard for what the director wants them to appear like on set, or wants them to do on set.

Marlon Brando did.  And, Marlon Brando will also go down in history as one of the greatest screen actors of all time.