tim burton’s secret formula
August 24, 2010
[click to watch video]
I actually like Tim Burton most of the time, but still found this amusing.
What’s your favourite Tim Burton film?
Tim Burton’s Secret Formula
~ from College Humor via Miss Cellania ~
12 Comments
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Bom, bom, deedly-deedly,bom, bom, bom….
Oh… “Mars Attacks”
I haven’t seen that one!
The trouble is, that sketch isn’t funny because it has a very nasty ring of truth to it and Burton’s ‘secret formula’ isn’t even a secret anymore.
For me, Burton’s best works were his early ones – Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood – in fact a quick run shows that between Beetlejuice in 1988 and Mars Attacks in 1996 he had a pretty good run of funny, odd and interesting movies – even his Bat flicks are pretty good, and even 1999′s Sleepy Hollow was worth watching. Add to that the genius short cartoon Vincent and the short film Frankenweenie and he was one of the best of his genration. If you take into account his production credits for Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride he had a pretty good career.
It all went pearshaped after that horrible re-make of Planet of the Apes. Although some of his films since – notably Charlie and Sweeney Todd have had flashes of genius he really hasn’t made a whole film thats worth watching in 10 years. Mostly because they all rely on the ‘secret formula’. And looking at his ‘in development’ slate I can’t see that changing – re-makes of Frankenweenie, Dark Shadows and, Lord Help us, The Addams family don’t exactly thrill one to the core. The one bright spot is that Mai the Psychic Girl still appears to be a live project, so Burton directing Manga with a soundtrack by Sparks is something one might hold out a bit of hope for.
Sadly though, a spent force I think. To answer the question, my favourites are Edward Scissorhands and Mars Attacks (if only because my father loved it so), and his best is probably Ed Wood.
Well, that’s what I thought made the sketch funny – the ring of truth in it.
My fave is still Edward Scissorhands and I’m quite looking forward to Dark Shadows. Will Johnny Depp play Barnabas???
Otherwise I find him a bit hit-and-miss, much like the Coen Bros.
I had to read Steve’s whole comment to determine that the only Tim Burton film I ever even saw part of was, in fact, Mars Attacks. Which was kind of funny.
Self-consciously Gothic things make me flee screaming, so that’s probably why…
“Self-consciously Gothic things make me flee screaming, so that’s probably why…”
So you dissed my online poetry a dozen years ago.
Only if you were wearing a bunch of body piercings and listening to Emo music while you wrote it.
It was almost that bad.
“Beetlejuice” is probably the only one I ever liked very much. The Batmans were OK, but Superhero flicks in general are less interesting to me.
That’s another one I haven’t seen…