POST 8: TIM BURTON: A biography

                                          Tim Burton

Fill in the gaps in this biography of Tim Burton

Tim Burton was born in 1958, in the city of Burbank, California.

He remains without question one of the most original film maker working in cinema today.

 Indeed, his talent and originality have kept him at the top of the profession where he occupies a very special place, somewhere between the mainstream and the avant-garde, in that region of cinema occupied by artists which worldview is not unconventional that it attains popular appeal.

In 1989, Tim Burton directed the hugely known Batman which, although his least personal film, was one of the most popular movies of all time and gave him unprecedented success in Hollywood, considering the originality and adventurousness of his previous films (for example Beetlejuice in 1988).

Edward Scissorhands (1990), another hit, saw him at the peak of his directing powers and established a fruitful working collaboration/partnership with actor Johnny Depp who played in his 2005 film version of Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and who became one of his most esteemed partner since their first film together.

In 1992, Batman Returns was a way darker film than the original, a reflection of how much cinematographic freedom Tim Burton had won (producers Warner Bros were reputedly unhappy with the final result).

And even if Ed Wood (1994), his loving tribute to the life and work of the legendary ‘Worst Director of All Time’ Edward D. Wood, Jr., was a box-office disaster, it got some of the best critics of Burton’s career.

In fact, Tim Burton is known/famous both for his dark, quirky-themed movies like Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, or Dark Shadows (2012) and for blockbusters such as Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Batman, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland (2010), one of his most successful films, which became the fifth highest grossing films of all times.

Burton has produced 18 feature films as of 2014, and has released 12 as of 2012  (among which the very nice Christmas tale called The  Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993).

All in all, Tim Burton’s films consistently challenge the spectator’s expectations, push forward the principles of filmmaking and bring to life previously unthinkable characters (like Edward Scissorhands).

Taken as a whole, his work is based on the confrontation between the fantastic and the horror, and the consequences of these two worlds intermingling.

Big Fish, Burton’s 2003 effort, is no different. And ___, somehow, it is not really the

_________.

On the surface, it would appear to have all the aspects of a classic Burton film: a magic screenplay, fairy-tale characters, flights of imagination, forces of nature (as well as the supernatural), far-fetched situations and vastly imaginative visual style and imagery. The movie is, in fact, fully packed with fanciful episodes that it begins to feel like a loose adaptation of The Odyssey, told from the mouth of an aging character named Ed Bloom, a story-teller and dreamer who sees the world with beautiful eyes.

                                                                        

 

                                                                  

POST 6: Personal choice of a song in relation with a notion

Same Love - Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

This song by Macklemore was released in 2012, one month after the french parlement proposed a law to authorize homosexual mariage (i'm not sure it has something to do but it is a interesting coincidence). Macklemore is an american rapper with irish origins. Though he comes from a christian family, he supports gay rights especially with this song, which is about the subject.

In this song, Macklemore talks mainly about homosexuals in the american society. 

In the first verse, he paints all of the stereotypes built around homosexual in the society, for instance, when he says "i thought that i was gay, cause i could draw (...)". Then, he brings out the problem of american conservatism and the place that church takes in this society.

In the second verse, he explains how society twisted words and expression like "gay" or "faggot" that have a totally negative connotation meaning for young people that being gay is ridiculous, and homosexuals are associated to weakness.

In the third verse, he gives his personal point of view on the question (though he does that during the whole song), defending gay rights through religion, saying that no matter what everybody has the same god, and that gay people are humans, like everybody, born this way, and not chosing to be gay like right-wing conservative people think.
He compares gays to black people before they got their rights and gives the same arguments we could have given for black people at the time, only, using one more argument: love.
We can relate this song to the notion of forms of power because we can see mainly two forms of power facing each other: the power of love, and the power of society, repression and fear.

Also, we can even branch out to the notion of progress with the end of the song since we compares gay rights to black people rights, which was a progress for the time, and when he says "love is patient" at the end, it means that gays will never give up for their rights and that America is, slowly, openning itself to gays because nowadays, 9 states have legalised gay marriage.

(354 words)

POST 7: Art Exhibition Review

Pop Art Myths, Thyssen Museum, Madrid (www.museothyssen.org) from June 10 to September 14 (now over).

This summer in Madrid, weather was so hot you could use a fresh place to hide in the afternoon. The Thyssen museum offered this with additionally a very nice trip back to the 50's and the 60's, or the mythical Pop Art years. The exhibition (which stayed for 3 months) was a perfect resumey of different parts of this innovative art (for the time) and is divided in different categories which show very well the principal values of this movement. It is a very light exhibition with no more then 9 rooms and 4 to 5 pieces by room but the art pieces were chosen so well you do not feel like you are missing anything at the end.

What is very well thought out in this exhibition is how they organized the room and the paintings with themes that are proper to Pop Art: emblems, comics, myths, portraits, urban erotism, history, and of course, above all, everyday objects. Andy Warhol has a great place in this exhibition for his emblematic role in the Pop Art movement and we can see some of his famous work like the Marylins, one of the many One Dollar Bill silk-screen work or an incredible self portrait that correspond to his character and artwork. Of course, Roy Lichtenstein's "cartoons" are obviously a classic in a pop art exhibition and 3 or 4 good pieces are exposed in the first room. A part from theese two, a lot of different pop art artists are represented in this very heterogeneous art show. Although i was quite impressed and very satisfied with the work shown in the exhibition, i still think they were missing Warhol's silk-screen work of the campbell soup and coca cola bottles which are classics of the ideas artists had at the time about the beginning of consumerism society.

I am now in my 2nd year of litterary studies and Pop Art has always been one of my favorite art movement. Andy Warhol, which is a kind of american Yves Saint Laurent and not only his personnality really fascinates me but also his point of view on society and the way he revolutionned painting. Which is why i chose to present S&H Green Stamps, created in 1965 by Andy Warhol:

S&H Green Stamps, Andy Warhol

We can associate this painting of a lot of other silk-screen works by Warhol with Campbell soup cans, coca cola bottle or even the face of Marylin Monroe or Liz Taylor. With the silk-screen technique, Warhol wanted to say how society had made everyone and everything look the same, so plain, but yet with differences, because not a single stamp is the same as his neighbour if you look loser to the painting. It is the same for all of his other silk-screen pieces. I liked the way Warhol painted that society in a what seemed a really deep way of thinking thought he actually didn't have that much work to didn't care that much about each of his paintings. His atelier was more like a factory and yet he managed to provide pieces of art that will stay forever in our culture like myths.

Campbell's Soup Can, Andy Warhol, 1962

Four Marilyns, Andy Warhol, 1964

Green Coca Cola Bottles, Andy Warhol, 1962

Ten Lizes, Andy Warhol, 1963

Also, if you are a Pop Art lover and happen to be in Paris, a nice way to see a few but great Pop Art pieces at le Centre Georges Pompidou, in the permanent exhibition where you can see for instance the Ten Lizes by Andy Warhol.