I forgive Tim Burton. I grant him amnesty for the travesty that was his remake of Planet of the Apes. I forgive him. In one fell swoop, he had lost nigh the entirety of my respect, and in another swoop, regained it.
The two particular movies of Burton’s that had won my respect, in the first place, had been the classic Edward Scissorhands, and the not-so-popular The Nightmare Before Christmas. In my opinion, what Burton has a knack for is storytelling, in that he can weave a fantastical and whimsical tale, with interesting and unique characters, that contains elements of both truth and fiction, weaved together to form a little world that is like our own, but slightly off. The worlds he create, at least the good ones, are always tinged with an air of dementia or derangement, or just a spectral sense of something lying underneath it all. The suburbia of Scissorhands that just seemed too well-groomed, too idealistic, and way too white (in colour, not race) is what was truly creepy in the movie, surely not the scissor-handed, unwashed man found in the attic of a run-down house. Burton’s specialty is twisting reality around on its tail, creating an environment where what is normally freakish becomes the more sane elements of reality.
I think that which I would say of the subjects of Beetlejuice and Barman really go without saying. Suffice it to say that it is very, very indicative of the scale of outrage I felt over Planet when one considers how incredibly fond of Burton’s previous works I am and one realizes that was mostly neutered by one huge mistake of a movie.
Anyway, in returning to my opening statement: I forgive Tim Burton. The reason for this newfound generosity I feel deep within my heart (oh, how much a generous man I am), is A Big Fish. This new movie of his was great. Out and out, right here, I give it a 0% Failure Rating. This movie just does not fail in any way, honestly. A quick analogy for this movie would be that it is a photographic negative of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (one of my all-time favourite plays, too), in that all the extreme negativity of Salesman is replaced with extreme positivity. And, apparently, positivity is not a word, while negativity is, according to Word’s built-in dictionary; I hereby decree positivity to be the noun form of the adjective positive, and just forget about the suggest response of positivism. I mean, please -- Positivism? Just, no. No, that sounds like a word a motivational speech writer or self-help book author created. I apologise for digressing from the topic at hand, though: A Big Fish
The general premise that this movie is founded upon is rather simple, in its barest form: so, you have a father who tells a lot of stories, and his son, who has problems coping with the fact that his father's life-story is a long-winded fairy tale, or Aesopian fable. The meat of the movie is the son retracing the series of stories, through flashbacks and memories, that piece together and form what his father's past has been described to him like. I don't really desire to give away the transgression of events in the movie too much, but let me just allude to them, instead, and state that it all entails the involvement of a giant, circus, and a pair of Asian siamese twin girls. Right, so, yeah: completely normal, everyday stuff.
What it boils down to is that Fish is an incredibly fun adventure that bounces from absurdity to implausibility. One may even say that it kind of reads like an old-style, 1930's or 1940's radio program; one may even go so far as to say this is what was intended -- It's not far-fetched to inferr this conclusion. The performances of all the actors are unquestionably appropriate, if not all-around excellent: I was especially fond of the acting in the parts of the movie that were the stories. It was sort of like seeing players from the Dick Van Dyke show or Mary Tyler Moore raise back to life -- horrid, abhorant zombie-creatures of candid joy.
[Editor's Note: The LAst entry in my Drafts . . . This had to be the most persistently present entry in that folder for the longest time, because I started writing it the day after I saw Big Fish, and that was in the theatres. Then, I picked it up once I saw it when my folks rented it . . . Then, I just never finished it. I don't know why I never finished it, but I just . . . Didn't. And, now, it's been so long since I saw that movie . . . I just don't care.
So, here it is: the last, lingering draft. What comes next will be purely part of a new era for me and this Blog--if anything.]
The two particular movies of Burton’s that had won my respect, in the first place, had been the classic Edward Scissorhands, and the not-so-popular The Nightmare Before Christmas. In my opinion, what Burton has a knack for is storytelling, in that he can weave a fantastical and whimsical tale, with interesting and unique characters, that contains elements of both truth and fiction, weaved together to form a little world that is like our own, but slightly off. The worlds he create, at least the good ones, are always tinged with an air of dementia or derangement, or just a spectral sense of something lying underneath it all. The suburbia of Scissorhands that just seemed too well-groomed, too idealistic, and way too white (in colour, not race) is what was truly creepy in the movie, surely not the scissor-handed, unwashed man found in the attic of a run-down house. Burton’s specialty is twisting reality around on its tail, creating an environment where what is normally freakish becomes the more sane elements of reality.
I think that which I would say of the subjects of Beetlejuice and Barman really go without saying. Suffice it to say that it is very, very indicative of the scale of outrage I felt over Planet when one considers how incredibly fond of Burton’s previous works I am and one realizes that was mostly neutered by one huge mistake of a movie.
Anyway, in returning to my opening statement: I forgive Tim Burton. The reason for this newfound generosity I feel deep within my heart (oh, how much a generous man I am), is A Big Fish. This new movie of his was great. Out and out, right here, I give it a 0% Failure Rating. This movie just does not fail in any way, honestly. A quick analogy for this movie would be that it is a photographic negative of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (one of my all-time favourite plays, too), in that all the extreme negativity of Salesman is replaced with extreme positivity. And, apparently, positivity is not a word, while negativity is, according to Word’s built-in dictionary; I hereby decree positivity to be the noun form of the adjective positive, and just forget about the suggest response of positivism. I mean, please -- Positivism? Just, no. No, that sounds like a word a motivational speech writer or self-help book author created. I apologise for digressing from the topic at hand, though: A Big Fish
The general premise that this movie is founded upon is rather simple, in its barest form: so, you have a father who tells a lot of stories, and his son, who has problems coping with the fact that his father's life-story is a long-winded fairy tale, or Aesopian fable. The meat of the movie is the son retracing the series of stories, through flashbacks and memories, that piece together and form what his father's past has been described to him like. I don't really desire to give away the transgression of events in the movie too much, but let me just allude to them, instead, and state that it all entails the involvement of a giant, circus, and a pair of Asian siamese twin girls. Right, so, yeah: completely normal, everyday stuff.
What it boils down to is that Fish is an incredibly fun adventure that bounces from absurdity to implausibility. One may even say that it kind of reads like an old-style, 1930's or 1940's radio program; one may even go so far as to say this is what was intended -- It's not far-fetched to inferr this conclusion. The performances of all the actors are unquestionably appropriate, if not all-around excellent: I was especially fond of the acting in the parts of the movie that were the stories. It was sort of like seeing players from the Dick Van Dyke show or Mary Tyler Moore raise back to life -- horrid, abhorant zombie-creatures of candid joy.
[Editor's Note: The LAst entry in my Drafts . . . This had to be the most persistently present entry in that folder for the longest time, because I started writing it the day after I saw Big Fish, and that was in the theatres. Then, I picked it up once I saw it when my folks rented it . . . Then, I just never finished it. I don't know why I never finished it, but I just . . . Didn't. And, now, it's been so long since I saw that movie . . . I just don't care.
So, here it is: the last, lingering draft. What comes next will be purely part of a new era for me and this Blog--if anything.]
posted by c.Jay Wrong at
11:59 PM
<< Home