Fuck. Yeah.

Vacation

A VACATION FROM FROM MY PROBLEMS!!!

Nothing long term, just a weekend up in Berkley for a sibling reunion. Time to go buy more then I can afford at the orignal Amoeba, walk around San Francisco and weep that I will never be able to afford to live there. And then go see Tegan & Sara who if you will recall are going to save us all. I'm quite excited.

Should be back Monday or Tuesday, just in time to bitch belatedly about The Oscars, and put my money where my mouth is and write up Alice And Wonderland.

Until then Ariverdetchee

Burtonfest Day V: A Vision Worth Fighting For

I am not the first to point out the fact that there is some irony in the fact that Tim Burton made Ed Wood’s Biopic. After while Ed Wood was one of the least successful filmmakers, because of his commitment to a personal vision (not to mention a fair dose of incompetence and “the batshit crazies). Burton on the other hand has become one of those few directors whose a sure thing for more or less the exact same reasons. It’s kind of like Warren Buffet delivering a hobo’s eulogy. Do we really expect this guy to understand where Wood was coming from, when the only two speeds he knows are “Wildly successful, and slightly less wildly successful then expected.”

To say that I’m can relate to Ed Wood is uncomfortable for me to say only because its starting to become untrue. I’m beginning to envy the bastard. Now yes I know that Burton’s Biopic is to a certain extent a white washing of Wood’s life, but damn it the man got published and made movies, that’s gotta count for something.

The sad fact is, I’ve gotten to the point where I have stopped taking the success stories of young filmmakers (Including ironically Burton’s own) as inspiration and have started taking them as a taunt. To quote Palahniuk in one of his finer moments “When did the future stop becoming a promise and start becoming a threat?”

Now before, you unbookmark this blog forever in disgust from this morbid display of self pity, I assure you the point is just around the corner. What Ed Wood so perfectly captures is why you have to do it anyway. Why it is worth fighting for your vision even when your vision involves water buffalo and Bela Lugosi. Because… well what the fuck else are you going to do?

Wood is maybe Burton’s most beautiful film to look at (odd since its easily his most restrained as well) thanks to its austere black and white photography by Stefan Czapsky. Howard Shore turns in some of the best work of his career as well with his inspired Theremin based score.

Wood of course follows Johnny Depp, a studio factotum putting on terrible plays while trying to get his films off the ground. The film follows Wood through the course of three films, exiting out before the proverbial nightmare descent into booze, pills and pornography. Depp’s Wood is boy scout straight and enthusiastic, despite his panache for cross dressing and lackadaisical attitude towards film production (In one of my favorite gags, it turns out his long time cinematographer is color blind. Its funny not because of he’s color blind, but because this has somehow never managed to come up before).

Burton drops in comedic ringers right and left, including a pitch perfect performance by Bill Murray as a sly would be transsexual (The way he delivers the line “Goodbye Penis” never fails to make me laugh). He also coaxes strong performances out of Patricia Arquette and more unlikely Sarah Jessica Parker. A small parenthetical, its hard to think of just what to make of Burton’s views towards women. The ideal Burton woman shown time and time again is defined by her sweetness and intelligence, a slight a-sexuality as well as her willingness to nurture the freakish lead (This goes all the way back to Dottie in Pee Wee but also Christina Ricci in Sleepy Hollow, Emily Watson in The Corpse Bride, etc. etc.) . Meanwhile his villainous women, like Miranda Richardson in Sleepy Hollow, or Parker in Wood tend to be “queens of the harpies” types, whose defining flaw is usually that they don't want to do all the neat stuff the heroes do. There are exceptions of course Michelle’s Pfiefer’s hyper sexual Catwoman, Wynona Ryder’s Shrew cum nurturer in Edward Scissorhands, and Helena Bonham Carter’s shrew who wants to be a nurturer in Sweeney Todd. While the supportive nurturer may not a particularly deep archetype, I don’t think that its fair to label his female roles perfunctory the way some do. Burton seems to genuinely like women and they usually end up having as much fun as the boys do.

But really the heart and soul of the film is Martin Landau. And look though people love to bitch and moan about Samuel Jackson losing the Oscar for Pulp Fiction. I’ll fight with pistols at dawn anyone who claims Landau didn’t deserve it. His soulful, broken, hilarious performance is what holds the movie’s truth.

Because for all of the talk about how whitewashed Ed Wood is, its never anything less then truthful. Yes visions are worth fighting for. Yes its wonderful to create. But that doesn’t mean you get a happy ending. Sometimes, you die in a tract house in Burbank still jonsing for that last fix you’ll never get. Sometimes you die in a shitty apartment in Glendale, a hack director of second rate smut, whose movies are only pulled out so giggling stoners can heap some scorn on. Self delusion is a mighty fine drug, but once it crosses that line into self deception all sorts of nasty things can happen.

Ed Wood is something that should be impossible. A film about Desperation that’s a joy to watch.

Burtonfest Day IV: Other People's Sandboxes (Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Nightmare Before Christmas, and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory)

Burton’s notoriety has from the beginning, come from just how fully formed his voice was . I’ll be writing about the effect that knowing a Burton film was a Burton film had on me later (as in on March 24th, dun dun dun). But suffice to say, Burton is an auteurist’s delight, able to shoehorn his personality into anything, Small passion projects? Burton. Big Budget superhero movies with one of the most notoriously meddlesome producers in the business? Still Burton. Biopics on other people? Still Burton. Remakes of other iconic films? Burton yet again. He’s the Coyote of filmmakers not only able to survive any hostile environs but thrive there.

Which is odd when you consider how many film’s Burton has made that leave the question of just how irreplaceable his sensibilities are a startlingly open one. Indeed his best known film, and the one that arguably the most people assosciate with him is the one he had the least to do with.

I mean The Nightmare Before Christmas is so quintessentially Burton isn’t it? The forlorn soulful outsider bring macarbre merriment to the boring “normal” world, The obsession with Holidays, Automatons, Shifting Gears, Creepy Crawlies, sweet meek love interests, German expressionism, a bad guy defined by his venality (The Cardinal Sin In Burton’s World), Danny Elfman, and a cast of lovable misunderstood monsters.

The only problem is that Tim Burton didn’t write or direct the movie. What he did do no one seems to be able to agree on. Rarely has the party line of a studio been so malformed. Beyond the fact that he wrote the story, and did the preliminary character designs, no one seems to agree on just what else his participation was. Depending on who you ask Burton was either on set every day, or got Disney off Selick’s back and then showed up for the premiere.

So lets take the middle ground. Lets assume that this was a project close to Burton’s heart that he a lot invested in, but was unable to devote his full attention to it as he was participating in back to back shoots with Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns. Let’s say he knew what his film was and was smart enough to see that Henry Selick was filmmaker enough not to fuck it up. (A similar situation is raised with The Corpse Bride, which, though I don’t have time to cover in this Burton fest, I really love. And which has even less consensus on how much participation Burton had. Though in this case he is at least nominally credited as director.) That still leaves us with a basic problem, call it the Phillip K. Dick school of Film Criticism. If an auteur can be replicated so perfectly that no one really notices, what does that mean for the Auteur, and the people who admire him.

Or as Drew McWeeney put it in his scathing review of Alice In Wonderland.

Tim Burton is a brand these days, and that's certainly impressive, but he's not much of a filmmaker anymore.

Jesus Christ. Ouch. So Is Burton really as meaningless a place holder as this and this recent College Humor Video seems to suggest?

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

In the end the answer has to be no. But in this case its not because of Burton but because of Selick. Now fifteen years later, with Selick grown into his own independently fascinating artist, just what he brings to the movie is much clearer. The odd thing about watching The Nightmare Before Christmas today, is not how much of Burton Selick was able to reproduce without anyone noticing, but how much of his own unique sensibility (the obsession with doubles and parallel worlds, his intricate model maker aesthetic) slipped into the world without anyone noticing.


You can see the situation in its inverse in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Now yes I know that I am supposed to love Paul Reubens, and the weird anarchic shit he does. I know he’s having his big comeback now, and really good for him. That said I more or less cannot stand Pee Wee Herman. If that means I have to go to hipster jail for awhile so be it. But I cannot bring myself to give a shit about a talking chair, even if Laurence Fishburn occasionally shows up as a mail delivering cowboy.

Once again though, while what used to be amazing about Pee Wee’s Big Adventure is how Burton was able to replicate the experience of the show. What’s amazing now, is that Burton’s personality was already so fully formed, even within the strictures of a well defined strictures of another Artist’s cemented persona. Sure Reuben’s discovering that there is in fact no basement at the Alamo, or his dance to Tequila, are all him. But the film’s most famous sequences.

Like Large Marge:


Or his dream sequence:


That nightmarish blend of silent cinema, stop motion, Harryhausen, story told around the campire, and something that I don’t know what the fuck it is, is there from the start. This is the basic’s of The Burton aesthetic, and the fact that it remains omni present in everything he touches, speaks to me not of his laziness, but his strength as a filmmaker.


Take Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, which aside from Planet Of The Apes (which I will admit to never having seen) is easily Burton’s most maligned film. It’s hard to think of a movie less receptive to a remake then Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (Perhaps Planet Of The Apes but the idea that anyone would do that is laughable). It takes a lot of work for a film to become both a beloved family classic and a symbol for The Counter Culture. And by taking on such a sacred cow, Burton seemed to be inviting as many people to be as pissed off at him as possible.

After all isn’t this exactly the filmmaker that his detractors say Burton has become? A corporate shill willing to lend his “Barton Fink” feeling to anyone willing to write him a check? A lazy artist just going through the motions telling other people’s stories?

It doesn’t help that Johnny Depp didn’t get the memo that we are supposed to think that Wonka, if not likable is at least kind of neat, and thus decided to play him as the love child of Michael Jackson and Carol Burnett. And yet even here as the shilliest man in Shillton I can’t help but find Burton’s presence readily apparent.

Not just in the flaming automatons, and army of identical oompa loompas. Not just in the flares of absurdist humor (Wonka coming back to find his house literally gone), startling minutia of the frames, familiar cast, and Elfman score. That’s all just the dressing.

Instead I find Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, to be Burton’s most personal film. Given the fact that it was made around the birth of his first child, and marriage to Carter, Burton’s potrayl of Wonka as an aging wunderkid finding a family for the first time makes sense as an autobiography.

You see I agree with the detractors on one thing. I don’t know if Tim Burton knows quite who he is as a filmmaker anymore. I think The period from Pee Wee to Ed Wood, when he was just a cool cult filmmaker, is distinctive from Mars Attacks to The Corpse Bride, where he has probably been the closest to a director as Superstar this side of Tarantino. I think Tim Burton is coming to terms with what Tim Burton means, I think with Todd you see him working out his darkest side of the spectrum, and with Alice if the PG rating is any indication, you’ll see him working out the lightest version of such.

After all, this really only makes sense, as Burton, or at least his persona has changed so markedly over the last couple of years. The man who once infamously quipped that he was far more upset by the death of his Chihuahua then his Father, and set about selling himself as THE UBER Goth, has remade himself in the image of a family man, who is unafraid to be photographed smiling.

Far from an artist stuck in stasis I find Burton one whoses always evolving. I for one can’t wait to see where he goes next.

Burtonfest Day III: Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice is at its simplest level a movie I like simply because it cheers me up. That might not be the deepest reason for loving a movie, but it works for me. I love Beetlejuice for the nimbleness of its comic invention, the surprising sharpness of its satirical teeth and lastly the genuine and surprising sweetness at the film’s core.

Beetlejuice finds Tim Burton, working with an anarchic sensibility, carried over from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, that for better or for worse hasn’t cropped up for more then an isolated scene or two in Burton’s more stately films (Mars Attacks excluded, but then again I for one always exclude Mars Attacks). The film follows the dream logic of a 30’s cartoon mixed with Sartre, its a model of narrative economy clocking in at a breezy ninety minutes, a picture perfect example of Set up and pay off, and this isn’t even mentioning the giant balls the film has to potray the afterlife as a big shambling bureaucracy staffed by surly suicides and populated by shambling corpses whose means of shuffling off the mortal coil are terribly apparent.

Though the film is filled with audacious ideas, daring non sequiters, and a Mad Magazine like gag a minute aesthetic, It all works so well because the film actually takes the time to ground it all in a story you care about. For all the talk about how Tim Burton hates the normals, he makes the Maitland’s a truly likable couple clearly siding with them over the self impressed grotesque “artists” who end up invading their home (Played by Catherine O’ Hara, Jeffery Jones, and Glenn Shaddix all perfectly awful).

Now this is no easy feat given that the presence of Geena Davis in a movie usually causes my eyes to burst and drip vicious fluid down my cheeks, and this is Alec Baldwin back when the words “smug asshole” preceded him far more often then “charming character actor”. By the time they’ve shuffled off the mortal coil in a suitably tragicomic way, find themselves nearly devoured by Saturian Sand Worms (Don’t ask. Its one of the films great Dada gags, where the punch line is there is nothing even resembling an explination), given a guide to the afterlife that “reads like stereo instructions” and are forced to deal with the awful family that seems hell bent on destroying their homes you can’t help but feel for them.

But like Joe Dante, Burton is firmly of the opinion that a nothing would improve the world more then a few monsters running around in it. So after their attempts to drive their new unwelcome guests out fail to bring more then a delightfully incongruit Henry Belafonte song, and a very fey Dick Cavett (Awesome) in the film’s most famous scene (And a great showcase for O’Hara whose always been underrated as a physical comedian).



After which the Maitland’s turn to more desperate measures. Despite having the title roll very little of Beetlejuice actually features Beetlejuice. (The title was famously last minute. Used only after Burton threatened to kill himself after the studio took his joking suggestion to call the movie “Scared Sheetless” seriously) Which probably works for the best. I can take or leave Michael Keaton, I know that apparently he was a genius as a stand up comic, but by the time I became aware from him he was better known as “That dude for Multiplicity and Jack Frost.” Or “That Batman who didn’t suck as badly as the other two.

Still its easy to see why he was so popular with the role. To say Keaton gets in the spirit of things would be an understatement. He plays every scene to eleven coming off like a cross between a Tex Avery creation, a used car salesman, and some guy desperately trying to sleep with your wife. He personifies the comic anarchy that the film so successfully questions. Sure he’s a bad guy, but things are just so interesting when he’s around.



Also shining in her role is Winnona Ryder. It hasn’t been a great fifteen years or so for Ryder. She’s suffered an epic rash of miscasting (Dracula, Age Of Innocence), terrible films (The Darwin Awards, The Informers, Sex And Death 101, Alien Resur- look this list could go on for awhile), and nothing roles (Star Trek, Mr. Deeds). With this long litany of terrible parts (Scanner Darkly being one key exception) its easy to forget what a fresh presence she once was. In her early roles like this the underrated Lucas ( A Movie that actually succeeds in making Charlie Sheen appear to be a decent human being! Talk about special effects), Night On Earth, and Heathers, she effortlessly projected a real sweetness, backed by intelligence, spunk, not to mention cute tomboyish looks. She’s really the heart of the movie and her bond with Davis, is really solid without being oversold. Unlike so many other comedies that can basically be summed up with the phrase “A bunch of crazy shit happens.” This one actually cares that something sticks. I miss that Winnona Ryder, here’s hoping that Afronsky finds a way to bring her back.

With its clever rapid fire gags, potent surreality, heartfelt script, and wicked sense of humor, I can’t help but smile from the moment Beetlejuice starts to the time it ends. I mean how can you not like a film that ends with Belafonte, a floating Winnona Ryder, A witch doctor and a dead football team for a chorus line.

Burtonfest Day II: Sleepy Hollow

I forgot what a deeply weird movie Sleepy Hollow was. I knew that it was an experiment, a pastiche of hammer horror, and Mario Bava with the gore and angst turned up to eleven. In short I remembered it as pretty much harmless. What I forgot is just how strange and conflicted the film is. How blackly comic (Probably the only movie ever to build a gag around the blood of an unborn fetus), perversely sexual, and bizarrely campy yet deadpan it all was. Guys, I don’t know if anyone else has noticed or if I’m just late to the party, but Sleepy Hollow is one seriously fucked up movie.

I’m beginning to think that Andrew Kevin Walker has a curse on him, that whenever he tries to make a gothic horror film, he’ll fail miserably. Now granted Sleep0y Hollow didn’t have the epic production problems that Wolfman had, I’m more then willing to bet that what ended up filmed was a far cry from Walker’s script. While the deadly serious Walker movie peeks through in the film’s somewhere beyond Freudian Dream sequences, and Depp’s impassioned speeches about reason in the face of Headless horsemen, they're buried under the fact that Burton made one hell of a goofy ass movie. Which somehow makes everything even more disturbing.

Unlike the Wolfman which swung wildly between attempts at serious gothic horror and scenes in which we where treated to the sight of Anthony Hopkins practicing lycanthrope based Kung Fu and CGI dancing bears, Hollow finds its tone of overwrought melodrama and sticks to it with a dedication that’s admirable even when it seems borderline insane. The scene in which we get to watch Christopher Walken’s origin story, complete with more filed teeth and decapitations then the reign of Henry the VIII plays like Burton watched Coppala’s Dracula origin and went, “Myah Too subtle.”


This is between the scenes of Depp attaching fetishic, insectoid, “forensic equipment” to his face.



And one in which the cast capers around the giant Vagina Tree.

(It might not look it but this tree is made entirely from Vaginas)

A graphic sex scene filmed with Jeffery Jones, Black Sunday inspired dream sequences, Michael Gambon being dragged out of stain glass windows with a spike impaled through his chest like he’s a Marlin, all implemented with some of the dodgiest CGI this side of Emmerich’s Godzilla and punctuated by the occasional bit of decapitation.

Like I said this is a weird fucking movie.

Depp gives a central performance so aggressively foppish that it’s kind of unbelievable. Sleepy Hollow is a transformative film for Depp. One where Being Johnny Depp didn’t quite mean the same thing it meant when it one was referring to his films up to Fear And Loathing, but where he had yet to reach the Captain Jack level of Archness he’s known for today. His Crane actually seems like the love child between Captain Jack and William Blake from Dead Man. A kind of flamboyant sop.

The rest of the cast gets into the same spirit. Michael Gambon looks suitably distressed to be facing a Hessian of the damned who emerges from a vagina tree, Michael Gough gets decapitated quite nicely, and even Casper Van Diem gets into the spirit of things. Miranda Richardson gives a performance that can only be described as resplendently bitchy. Not to mention Christopher Lee who makes the most out of his brief cameo. Give Burton credit for this. He was the first to realize the potential in Old Man Christopher Lee. Before Lucas, before Jackson, it was Burton who gave Lee his first crack at a major movie since Gremlins 2.

The only one not in on the joke unfortunately is Christina Ricci. Who despite the fact that she makes my heart go pitter patter like no one outside of Kate Winslet, spends the entire movie acting like no one bothered to tell her it was a period piece until they began to lace her up into her corset.

While Sleepy Hollow is more disturbing (and usually not for the reasons the movie means it) then scary, but it does have a couple of great set pieces. Particularly a scene in a cabin that works because it “pays off” about three times before it ends. It knows Genre beats well enough to know you keep expecting it to end, and when it doesn’t… Well all bets are off.

Stylistically, Sleepy Hollow is Burton at his most arch and extreme. Every scene looks like it was shot on surviving Hammer sets that where modified whilst the entire crew was on Peyote. The obviousness of the film’s set bound nature gives the whole thing a nightmarish claustrophobic feel.

Sleepy Hollow isn’t what I’d call a great movie, or even a good one. But I have to say I enjoyed every minute of it. Its so uniquely off kilter, told through such a quintensially Burtonian prism, that I can’t help but kind of love it. I just don’t know if its in spite of or because of, how goofy it is.

Burtonfest Begins: Sweeney Todd

To seek revenge can lead to hell/ But everyone does it and few so well…

2007 was such a banner year for film that in many ways I still don’t think cinema has quite recovered. It was a year which yielded a bumper crop of instant American classics. Zodiac, There Will Be Blood, No Country For Old Men, and another, one that is not often mentioned in the same breath with those films but which I have absolutely no hesitation about listing in such exhaulted company.

I am of course talking about that rarified gentleman, Mr. Sweeney Todd and the mad melodrama he inhabits. A lurid terror created by a filmmaker in full command of his powers.

Tim Burton who has had one of the most blessed careers in modern Hollywood, both commercially and critically, has found his status dipping preciptariously with the release of Alice In Wonderland. At least two critics whom I have nothing but respect for, have released piece on Burton for which Scorched earth does not quite cover. Something tells me the reviews on Alice ain’t gonna be pretty. So consider this a prememptive attempt to bring some balance to the blogosphere. I’m an unrepentant Burton apologist, and I’m devoting the week here at Things That Don’t Suck to an appreciation of his work. (Two films you won’t find here are Batman Returns because I’ve already written it up. And Batman because its going to be part of the super secret project I keep hinting about. The one that starts on March 24th)

Sweeney Todd, is a film that to me at least is almost compulsively watchable (And as Tom Waits noted, I have to live with me), a sumptuous dark opera that finds the perfect vehicle for Burton’s talents. A visual splendor, with fantastic music and a black but beating heart. It’s the sort of film nightmares are made out of.

Despite being one of the most respected composers working in musical theatre Stephen Sondheim is curiously scantly represented on screen. Despite being one of its most successful products Sondheim is antithetical to much of what we think of as the musical. Though it is little wonder why. The American musical is usually a big brassy affair with easy crescendo’s, catchy melodies, and giant show stoppers. Sondheim’s work contains exactly none of these things (Here’s an excellent primer on his work). His music is so insular he’s almost frustrating to listen to. There’s nothing easy about his music it frankly demands attention. To the apathetic ear there seems to be very little going on, it takes care to hear the layers of point and counter point, sneaky melody, and clever interplay that occurs in his scores. But it’s the lyrics, once again deceptively simple where Sondheim really shines propulsive and poetic, and like his music deceptively clever. Not the sort of thing one wants to consider whilst munching popcorn (To complicate matters Burton excised The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd, the only composition in the piece that does sound like a traditional showstopper, and then cut the chorus out of God That’s Good, the only other song that might fit that bill, turning it into a solo act).

Look Here



And Then Here:



And Hey:



And then here for perfect examples. On The Surface the songs are down right unremarkable. Samey songs with simple melodic and harmonic structure and fixed tempo. But my watch them again, watch the delicate way the differences of pitch and lyrical counterpoint allow the performers to play off eachother. The perfection of the beats. The precision of the whole thing is astounding.

Even among Sondheim’s body of work, Todd is an odd bird. A Jacobian revenge masquerading as a musical, dark both in the excesses of its Grand Guignol revenge, and the very real darkness of the human heart that leads to it

From its opening frames Todd is a movie completely in control, Burton achieves his tone of Hammer Horror mixed with Broadway from the first. From The Opening credits which I considered the best since Se7en until Watchmen stole that title and gleefully harkens back to Burton’s animation roots with devilish glee.



Though I’ve never been able to confirm I’ve always suspected that there is some subtle CGI augmentation in this film, to bring the characters closer to Burton’s platonic ideal. In shots like the one below his characters look so much like his sketches come to life its uncanny.



Burton has always been a rather static filmmaker, despite the insanity in his frames, his skills as a stylist have always been that of formalism and composition. Not so in Sweeney where he uses the melodrama at the heart of the story as an excuse to cut loose. It’s by far Burton’s most dynamic movie, his camera prowling the streets of London like a predatory beast, and taking long sweeping shots as if it’s being swung from a light fixture. Sequences like The Masked Ball, The beyond gruesome finale, and the wistful horrific staging of Joanna, thrum with a malignant vividness foreign to Burton’s usually much more easy going fantasias. Elsewhere his palate skips nimbly between opulent pop decadence and shadow soaked grandeur

The film’s cast is one of Burton’s best (Saying a lot as he’s never really had to struggle to find great actors wanting to work with him) and certainly one of his most perfect. Timothy Spall brings his specialized brand of rancid anti charisma to his roll of The Beedle. The newcomer's playing Anthony and Joanna, are perfectly cast as well acting as one critic said, "Like Disney Characters who have mistakenly wandered into Hannibal" Rickman brings unsuspected depth to his hissable villain, and Sacha Baron Cohen as expected gets into the spirit of things. Channeling the spirit of garish Vaudville (gotta love his Italian Flag smock) in his manic steet swindler. Before toning things down for his suitably ghastly ending.

The one who deserves the most credit and probably got the least of it, is Helena Bonahm Carter, who somehow wrests her character to unlikely life. For those unfamiliar with the plays history, The role of Mrs. Lovett was more or less defined by Angela Lansbury who played the part for like a bazillion years and will probably have herself stuffed after her untimely death and fitted with a voice box that will warble “The Worst Pies In London” until the Earth is consumed by the Sun.

She played Mrs. Lovett as an uber strumpet, a gleeful harpy from the black pits, and more or less every single person to play the role since then has followed suit. Carter had the balls to turn this caricature into an actual character for the first time since well ever. She infuses Lovett with real sadness and depth. Creating tragedy out of farce. Her and Depp’s duets on My Friends and her solo work on “Not While I’m Around” and “By The Sea” have a real longing and poignancy to them. Which isn’t to say that she brings nothing less then gleeful demented malice to the songs like Little Priest and God’s That’s Good. For the first time, well ever, I found myself actually hoping these two crazy kids would make it.

The other half of the pair, Depp’s Todd is equally apt. His role is deadpan, he plays Sweeney as a man so consumed by his desire for vengeance that he is literally unable to feel anything else. To a certain extent, Depp plays the straight man to the lunatic circus that’s orbiting around him and more then a couple of the films very few laughs (That said, when the film is funny, its very funny. Rarely has Burton's humor been so sharp. There's a priceless moment in The Judge's court, and Depp's performance in By The Sea defies description) are his utterly emotionless reactions to the things around him.


Still when its needed, Depp brings it. When his mask cracks, its for one reason, he’s going mad with uncontainable rage. When Sweeney kills its not a joke. There’s real madness in Depp’s eyes, to a point that’s genuinely frightening. What he lacks in singing (though the only song he actively fucks up is Epiphany. This being somewhat regrettable as its his most important song) he makes up for with clearly weighted investment.

Yet for all its darkness, Todd never once feels like a dour movie. It’s a meat pie filled with arsenic but there’s a dynamism to it that keeps it utterly alive. It’d be nigh impossible to find a more nihilistic film or a more exhilarating one. The whole world is going down in flames and its dancing right along.

I hope you’ll stick around for the rest of the week. “The Work Waits/ I’m Alive At Last/ And I’m Full Of JOY!”

Postscript: (I put together this tribute to Burton way too spur of the moment to try and make it a proper blogothon. But should anyone want to write up a Burton article, and email me a link, I'll be more then happy to post it.)