The Magic of Tim Burton

I was on my way to screening Alice in Wonderland last night when I was suckerpunched by a gutbusting flurry of antibiotic side effects. I won’t go into unflattering and gory details, but attending a two-hour movie wouldn’t have been a pleasant experience for me or anyone in my row.

Still, despite genuine interest in Burton’s revisionist take on the curiously adored Lewis Carol classic, I have a feeling I know what I missed. Not that I was going in to Alice with any predisposition, but Tim Burton isn’t exactly unpredictable.

See for yourself:

Even Johnny Depp Thinks 3-D Movies Suck

I’ve opined many times on this very website about how I think 3-D was, is and will always be gimmicky, irrelevant and 100 percent lame. I have yet to see a movie, including last year’s darlings, Avatar and Up, where the three-dimensional technology enhanced the experience and story, making the feature unequivocally better. I can also say without hesitation there is no soon or yet to be movie that has piqued my interest because it will feature 3-D. I hate it and I hope it dies a quick and painful death.

Another reason I hate 3-D is I can’t even recognize it onscreen. Say what? Yeah, I have amblyopia – commonly referred to as “lazy eye” – which means the brain doesn’t fully acknowledge the images seen by the amblyopic eye, which, in my case, is my right eye. I wore a patch when I was really little and it went away until I was about 17 or 18. As of today, it’s just something I live with. And I’m not the only person suffering, as much as 5 percent of the populations suffer from amblyopia, with up to another 12 percent suffering from some degree of stereoblindness, which is the inability to see depth properly. That’s why Johnny Depp won’t be seeing Alice in Wonderland in 3-D. He recently told Entertainment Weekly, “I’ve got a weird thing where I don’t see properly out of my left eye, so I truly can’t see 3-D.”

What are your thoughts on 3-D movies nowadays and in the future? Yay or nay?

Johnny Depp Needs A Rest From Wonderland

Early word on Alice in Wonderland is that it’s wretched. Not that early buzz matters when pressed up against the hairy-chested brawn of studio marketing and Johnny “loved by all” Depp– (doing his best impression of Elijah Wood).

To celebrate, Obsessed with film rolls out the Alice In Wonderland red carpet with an interesting take on Johnny Depp and what he’s become “at the hands of Tim Burton”.

In the last five years, Depp has made the following films: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the three Pirates of the Caribbean, Public Enemies, and Alice in Wonderland.  In only one – Public Enemies- could anyone argue that Depp played a recognizable human character that wasn’t a complete cartoon. The rest of those performances are shallow, one-note performances lacking in the depth that made some of his earlier craziness so enduring. Even his Jack Sparrow characterization, much vaunted by a stunned public at the time, is lunacy without any real point.

Amen.

Since Depp’s re-arrival amidst his much ballyhooed performance as Pirates of the Caribbean’s Jack Sparrow, the guy’s become the every man’s favorite actor. The general gushing about his acting skills as based solely on Captain Jack has always bothered me. Probably because it comes off as a false analysis of greatness: A cheap card trick that leaves the audiences giddily clapping with flat hands when the real magic was to be found elsewhere. When Johnny Depp was first cast as Jack Sparrow, was anyone talking about Depp as an all-star headliner off of his previous films The Libertine or Secret Window? … Continue Reading

Rating the 2010 Super Bowl Trailers

Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints on winning Super Bowl XLIV in what may have been the most boring NFL championship since, well, the last time the Indianapolis Colts went to the Super Bowl in 2007. And while I love football as much as the next dude, I won’t lie – I anticipate the commercial breaks in the hope I’ll see some genius advertising or some phenomenal movie preview.

This year’s commercials and trailers were ho-hum, except for the Google “Search On” ad (who thought you could tell a love story using a search engine in less than a minute?), the Doritos “House Rules” commercial and the Careerbuilder.com “Casual Friday” spot, the rest were either bizarre, unfunny or beyond stale (Bud Light, I’m talking to you).  Even more glaring was the absence of trailers for Iron Man 2, The A-Team, Clash of the Titans, Toy Story 3, Shrek Forever After, Despicable Me and Tron: Legacy.

Here’s a rundown of the movie trailers shown during Super Bowl XLIV. Click the movie name to watch the preview.

… Continue Reading

Alice in Wonderland Teaser Trailer

We were privy to some first-look photos last month and now the teaser trailer for Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” has hit the web. I don’t have much to say, except it looks a lot like, well, Tim Burton. That’s what I thought (and what Dan wrote) when we first saw the Entertainment Weekly pics. But guess what? That’s a good thing. My only question is this: Why a March release date? Call me skeptical, but wouldn’t this be better served as a Christmas Day release? At any rate, check out the trailer below and give us your thoughts. I’ve never been a fan of the “Alice in Wonderland” story, but having Tim Burton behind the wheel puts this on my must-see films list of 2010.

Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland Looks Like Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland

I don’t think you can say Tim Burton is a bad director, but to call anything he does “visionary” any more is a big, fat overstatement. His stuff isn’t so much “visionary” as simply stamped “Tim Burton”– all the stripes and gaunt makeup and twisted architecture are variants on everything else he’s done to date and is expected. Of course, the whole conceit usually works, but I do have two nitpicks/requests: A) Give the hollow/red-tinged eyeball socket a rest and 2) enough of the Helena Bonham-Carter nepotism.

So what was all this leading to? Oh yeah– USA Today has some pretty incredible frst-looks of Burton’s upcoming Alice in Wonderland. While Alice most likely isn’t going to be any different than a Lewis Carol tale taking ultra-potent hits of Burton , some of the images are striking to say the least.  To see the full character images as previewed at left (Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Anne Hathaway as the White Queen and Helena Bonham-Carter’s forehead as the Red Queen), click here.

To see and explore some fantastical concept art, click here. Or just peek at (and click to make humongloid) the image below… which looks pretty great.