As if that has anything to do with marriage. Do you suppose your father and I like each other?
The visual imagination of Tim Burton is probably unequalled among today’s filmmakers and when he brings it to bear on a project suited to his particular talents, the results are almost always unique and special. Corpse Bride, like Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas, is an example of Burton playing on his home turf and swinging for the fences.
Why do I get the feeling you’re going to be the death of me?
After the disappointment that was Episode I, Star Wars fans were understandably leery about the release of Episode II. The good news was that the second prequel was marked improvement over the first, but there was still enough wrong with the movie to have the faithful collectively pulling their hair out.
Look for your friends, but do not trust to hope.
It has forsaken these lands.
The middle entry in a trilogy often has the hardest job, picking up where the first story left off and leaving enough for the final part to build on. In other words, it has to hit the ground running, assuming you remember what you saw a year ago and then leave you hanging two or three hours later. I don’t count faux trilogies like the Indiana Jones movies, which are only called a “trilogy” because there just happened to be three movies. There was, however, no common narrative thread tying the films together, like there is for Lord of the Rings.
Like The Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers successfully avoids the “middle movie” trap. (more…)
I do not know what strength is in my blood, but I swear to you I will not let the White City fall, nor our people fail.
The first film of the Lord of the Rings trilogy had a tall order to fill. It had to establish the complex fantasy universe of Middle Earth and the peoples who inhabit it, while putting the story of the Ring into motion and accomplish this in the amount of time you could reasonably expect an audience to sit still for a movie. It probably would have been no problem to make a ten-hour film out of the first book alone.
Candy doesn’t have to have a point. That’s why it’s candy.
I dimly remember reading Roald Dahl‘s book as a child but, for the life of me, I can’t recall if I ever saw the 1971 adapatation with Gene Wilder. I almost rented it to watch a few weeks ago but the only copy I could get from Netflix was the original pan-and-scan “full” screen edition. I’m sorry, but if there is one thing that this writer does not abide, it’s the butchering of a film’s original image to fit the confines of a TV screen. Thus the Wilder version will go unreviewed here until I can track down a widescreen copy.
Tim Burton‘s other films based on other people’s material have been a mixed bag. (more…)
So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.
After the bitter disappointment of Episode I, The Phantom Menace, and the almost-but-not-quite-there glimpses of hope in Episode II, Attack of the Clones, the third time was finally the charm for Star Wars fans. They finally got the prequel they deserved with Episode III.
Despite the diminished expectations created by the first two prequels, the third installment still had a lot to live up to. This was the episode that would have to deliver all that the fans had been expecting from the sequels, namely the story about how Anakin Skywalker turned to evil and became Darth Vader and of the birth of the twins Luke and Leia who would be the heroes of the second, er, first, I mean, the other Star Wars trilogy.
