Song of the Week: The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

Spotlight On: Tim Burton

This week the spotlight is on one of my other favorite directors, Tim Burton. I am always really excited when one of his movies is coming out because I know that it will be really different and interesting and have really cool visuals. His films are known to be very dark and sort of gothic, and that is what I love about them. You can always tell when a film is a Tim Burton film. Here are my favorites of his films (which is basically all of them...)

Vincent

This was a stop motion animation short film that he made in 1982. It is about a boy who likes to make believe that he is Vincent Price. What is really cool is that Vincent Price actually narrates it.

This movie was one of my absolute favorites when I was a kid, and to tell the truth, it still is. It has a great cast and is just a really cool movie. There really aren't any other movies like Beetlejuice.



<Batman

People don't seem to remember that there were pre-Nolan Batman movies that were actually good! The Batman series was just temporarily ruined by the shitstorm known as Batman and Robin. Tim Burton's Batman movies were fantastic, and this one is famous for having Jack Nicholson as the Joker. People often compare his performance to Heath Ledger, but one is not better than the other, they just have completely different approaches.



Edward Scissorhands

Edward Scissorhands was Tim Burtons first of many collaborations with Johnny Depp, and is probably my favorite of Burton's films. I just love how there is the contrast between Edward with his big scary castle and the townspeople with their pastel world. This is also the final film appearance of the great Vincent Price.



Batman Returns

This is my favorite Batman movie. I love the entire cast, especially Michelle Pfeiffer as Selina Kyle/ Catwoman and Danny DeVito as Oswald Cobblepot/ Penguin. This movie is definitely a lot darker than the first Batman movie, and there is more trademark Tim Burton visuals.





The Nightmare Before Christmas

While Tim Burton did not actually direct this film, he did come up with the story and create all of the characters, so it is still very much his film. This movie has some of the best stop motion animation I have ever seen, and is full of all of these great characters and songs. This is a movie that I have seen a million or so times and will see a million more times.



 Ed Wood

Such a good movie. This is Burtons second collaboration with Depp and is a film about the "world's worst director," Edward D. Wood Jr. It features great performances by Depp and Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi. Apparently what attracted Burton to this project was that the relationship between Wood and Lugosi reminded him of his relationship with another horror great, Vincent Price.



Mars Attacks!

A tribute to 1950s/ 1960s sci fi films, Mars Attacks! is a hilarious sci fi spoof that has some of the coolest looking aliens on film. I hadn't seen this movie since I was a little kid, and then i rented it a little while ago and i completely forgot how much I used to love this movie. It has Jack Nicholson as the president, Sarah Jessica Parker's head on a dog's body, aliens heads exploding...this movie is just fantastic...



Sleepy Hollow

This is another movie that I absolutely loved as a kid and still love to this day. Despite his earlier films having horror elements, this is Burton's first actual horror film. The art direction in this movie is gorgeous. The whole city is very grey and dark along with all of the peoples clothes and all of the colors are very saturated, except of course for the red, red blood.



Planet of the Apes

Not the best of Burton's films, but I think that it is still worth mentioning. It features great gorilla makeup by Rick Baker, which is probably the greatest thing about the movie. I did like this movie, but it is nowhere near as good as the original.


Big Fish

I always thought that this movie was really cool. Like all Tim Burton films it features amazing visuals, and it has a really interesting storyline and a great cast including Ewan McGregor, Alison Lohman, Helena Bonham Carter, Albert Finney, Jessica Lange, Billy Crudup, and Marion Cotillard.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I am a big fan of the original movie with Gene Wilder, so by comparison this movie isn't my favorite. I still think that it is a fun movie though and does have some better visuals than the original. For example, the chocolate river actually looks like a chocolate river in this movie, instead of brown water. My favorite part of the movies is HERE

Corpse Bride

This movie has gorgeous stop motion animation, characters, songs, and voice acting by people such as Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.



Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

I love horror and I love musicals, so if you combine the two then I am one happy camper. This movie is amazing! It has a similar look to Sleepy Hollow, with the desaturated colors and bright reds. It also has, in my opinion, Johnny Depp's greatest performances. Who knew he could sing too? I love all of the songs in this movie, and all of the gore is fantastic, and this movie is just one of my favorites.



Alice in Wonderland

I saw this movie in 3D, and it just looked so cool. My favorite characters in this movie are probably the Cheshire Cat, the March Hare, and I love Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen. My favorite part of this movie was when yelled, "IDIOT!" at Cripin Glover's character.

My Review: Black Swan (2)

What a beautiful, wonderful, amazing film. Today was my second time seeing Black Swan in theaters and it was even better this time. I thought that it wouldn't be as good now that there's not as much mystery around it, but this is a movie that gets better with multiple viewings. This movie, in my opinion, is perfect and I love every minute of it. What I love most is its theme of duality. Nina has to portray both the white swan and the black swan, and thus becomes both in real life. She starts the movie already embodying the traits of the white swan. She is fragile and beautiful, and is absolutely perfect for that role.

What her ballet director is concerned about, however, is if she can pull off the black swan. So while her body is preparing for the technical aspects of the ballet, her mind starts preparing her in other ways. She starts having hallucinations and seeing darker versions of herself on other people, including a rival ballet dancer named Lily played by Mila Kunis.

Throughout the movie, the black swan starts emerging in physical ways as well. She develops a rash on her back that gets larger and larger scratches on it.

It gets worse and worse throughout the movie as she becomes more and more like the black swan, until it eventually sprouts little hairs, and there is a disturbing sequence of her pulling out one of the hairs. The best part of the movie has to be the premiere of the ballet.

It starts off with her dancing the white swan. She starts off doing a beautiful job, but the male dancer drops her, ruining her performance. We see her cry as she dances off stage with her back to the audience, and goes back to her dressing room only to find Lily waiting for her. Throughout the whole movie, she has suspected that Lily was trying to replace her, and when Lily suggests that she should dance the black swan for her, she loses it and stabs Lily in the stomach with a shard of glass and hides her in the bathroom.

It is this act that truly transforms her into the evil, seductive black swan. Now that she is fully transformed, she has become perfect for the part and thus dances it perfectly.

She becomes the black swan both psychologically and literally and as she dances she sprouts large black feathers during her second dance. She has stood up to her overbearing mother, allowed herself to be seduced by her ballet director, and has destroyed her rival. She is fully transformed from the frail, innocent white swan that she has always been to the seductive and powerful black swan that she had been slowly becoming.  

There is an absolutely gorgeous shot at the very end of her dance when her arms are up in the air. She is physically back to normal, but her shadow still has wings. That is probably my favorite shot in the whole movie. After she is finished dancing the black swan and has to become the white swan again, she retuns to her dressing room to find that Lily is not dead. Instead, she sees that she is the one with the wound in her stomach. Lily was really just a projection of herself and how she saw the black swan. This is evident earlier in the film as well in the morning after their sex scene. She arrives at rehearsal to find that Lily did not stay the night. She needed Lily as a rival, lover, and victim in order to transform herself into her own evil twin. So the films ends with dancing her final dance as the white swan. She is transformed back to her fragile self upon realization that she did not kill Lily and finishes the ballet beautifully.

 There is another gorgeous shot at the very end of Nina slowly falling on the mattress after her character kills herself and she has to jump.

The ending here shows how she has become one with her character. As the white swan dies, so does Nina, and she bleeds out from her pretty white costume, her last word being, "Perfect..." She became her characters, and so she was perfect. But she reached perfection at the tragic loss of herself.

This movie has sensational performances by Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, and Mila Kunis. I was really disappointed that Cassel and Hershey weren't nominated for Oscars, for they truly deserved to be. Ms. Portman however did receive her second Oscar nomination for her role as Nina Sayers, and I believe that on February 27th she will get her first win. This is a movie that I genuinly love, and look forward to seeing again. My Review: still 10/10.

Red Riding Hood Posters

I am loving all of the Red Riding Hood posters. They are all pretty similar looking, but they all look amazing. They are all very dark except for the red of her cape and showcase the spiky looking trees. If I did not already want to see this movie, I would be persuaded simply by these gorgeous posters.

Movie I Want To See: X-Men First Class

This movie looks so cool! I was kind of skeptical about his movie when I first read that it was being made because I didn't think that they would pick good people to play younger versions of Patrick Stewart and Ian  McKellen, but I think that they did an amazing job casting this movie. James McAvoy was a great choice as young Professor X, but I really love Michael Fassbender as young Magneto.

One thing that kind of bugs me is that there is a bit of a continuity error with the other films. A younger actress than January Jones plays Emma Frost in X-Men Origins: Wolverine even though that movie takes place a few decades after this movie. I'm guessing that they don't really care, or just don't think that people will notice. Its not really that big of a deal because Emma Frost wasn't a major character in that movie, but was there nevertheless.... Anyways, besides that this movie looks really cool. I'm loving Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique and whatever character Zoe Kravitz plays...

Character of the Week: Ash Williams

This week's character of the week is everyones favorite horror icon, Ashley J. Williams from Evil Dead, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. He goes from fighting deadites in a cabin in the woods to being trapped in medieval times fighting a whole army of them. He is pretty much the definition of awesome with his chainsaw hand and his one-liners played by the amazing Bruce Campbell. The Evil Dead movies are some of my favorites, and that is mostly due to Campbell's performance of Ash. He is great at physical comedy and makes even the corniest lines sound cool...

My Favorite Movie Kisses

In honor of tomorrow being Valentine's Day, I am making a list of my favorite movie kisses. I have never been a huge fan of romance films, but these are the kisses that left an impression on me.

The Kiss (1896)

The one that started it all....this is the first kiss ever put on film.



The Gold Rush (1925)

I saw this movie for the first time a few days ago, and I thought that this was the cutest thing I had ever seen. I'm pissed because the only version of The Gold Rush that I could find on Youtube was the reissue where this end scene was cut out. Since you can't watch it I will try to describe it for you. Charlie Chaplin's character has just become a multi-millionaire and this group of journalists are writing a story on him. While on the ship, he sees his love Georgia and they decide to put her in a picture they take of him. So they stand them next to eachother with their faces really close together, but before they take the photo, he leans in and kisses her.

Gone With the Wind (1939)

It is the kiss that convinces Scarlett to marry Rhett. I just love it because she is spending the whole scene laughing at his marriage proposal, but as soon as he kisses her shes like, "okay..." You'll find better videos of this one Youtube, but this is the only one that I could find that I could embed.




Notorious (1946)

I love this one because it's sneaky...The Production Code at the time said that kisses could be no longer than three seconds, so instead of having a really long kiss, they had a bunch of little ones.



From Here to Eternity (1953)

I'm not going to lie...I have never actually seen this entire movie. I have seen this kiss several times on other movies and always thought that it was a really nice kiss...




On the Waterfront (1954)

This is probably the sexiest kiss on my list and not just because it has the beautiful Marlon Brando. I love it because the music swells up in the scene, but as soon as he kisses her it just stops and all you hear is their breathing....



Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

This is such a good movie! I love Audrey Hepburn, and this is probably my favorite romance film. I love this kissing scene because its when she realizes that she loves him, it is in the rain, and they have her pet cat between them. It is just a really good scene.

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Even though she said that she'd just as soon kiss a Wookiee as kiss Han Solo, this is the moment when Leia finally gives in to his charms.




Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Not the most romantic kiss in the world, but it is still quite memorable...



Moulin Rouge (2001)

I love this movie so much!!! It came out when I was 11 and I was in love with Ewan McGregor and thought that this was the greatest movie of all time. My favorite part was always when they sang the Elephant Love Medley and then kissed after it was over...



Spiderman (2002)

This is definitely one of the most creative kisses I've seen on film, and I just love it!



Wall-E (2008)

CUTE!!!!!!!!