Tim Burton Interviews Edited by Kristian Fraga

Introduction:" Burton responded to his critics with one of his most unique and inspired works to date Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas this picture ushered in a quantum leap in the art of stop motion animation and was the first Disney movie to be released using this technique president of Walt Disney pictures and touchstone put it, "this was an opportunity for us to be in business with Tim Burton and to say we can think outside the envelope can do different and usual things"

"I thought that people, especially kids, would love his work they way they loved Charles Addams"
"Mimi Avins in her 1995 premiere magazine profile of the film "but nobody recognized that of Disney they thought ok this is just too weird"

The introduction section of this book suggested that Tim Burton is an unique style of animator, drawer and creation-er within film and that he extended the possibilities in films not just for Disney however producers approach all assumed that his style would engage to kids just like"Charles Addams" however ended up being unrecognizable Disney films and audiences all saw it  as "too weird".

page 5- "Burton's first step into live action work was with frankenweenie"
Tim Burton said in his interview that "Disney own both films I cant even get a copy of them"
"At one point frankenweenie was scheduled to be paired with a re-release of Pinocchio but with negative feedback at a test screening caused studio heads to change their minds"

Tim said that "they claimed the film was too violent", "the only violence in that is when the dog gets run over by a car and that is done off camera"

Suggesting that originally Disney and people from the feedback test screening didn't originally
approve of Burton's film frankenweenie as it was just "too violent" for audiences although Burton suggested that the violence was off camera although later on in page 55 frankenweeneie was given a PG rating instead of G and then Disney buried it into their vault and Tim said that from what he understood was that Disney wouldn't give you a personal copy of it and Burton agreed that they were very weird about it

Although later on in page 96 they focus on The Nightmare Before Christmas " a twisted holiday fable that take place on a night when the sky is so dark it still has a conventional hero, a hissable villain and tunes that would be out of place in an old fashioned Broadway musical"

Within this book Burton discussed his work with Disney and also expressed how they acted towards his work originally and how they're still weird about it today as Disney has always been protective over his work as it was considered to scary for kids but eventually overtime they have partnered with Burton's style.

Disney Discourse- Producing the magic kingdom- edited by Eric Smoodin

When reading this book it discussed about little part of Disney audiences and consumers and talked a little bit about Alice In wonderland at the beginning, when reading these chapters I found them very interesting and thought that they could link to my topic.

Alice In Wonderland: page 11- "Disney cartoons experienced peaks and valleys in terms of critical acceptance: in particular, immediate past war years through to the production of Cinderella 1950 and Alice In Wonderland 1951 marked a general decline for the cartoons among the movie reviewers"

This page proved that not all Disney films were accepted as ideas as they were declined as idea's proving that they may not be looked upon as the best Disney cartoon films however both of these cartoons have now been developed into live-action films and both have had an amazing response compared to the reviews back then, suggesting that Burton's remake on Alice In Wonderland is actually more popular than the original cartoon ever was.

Children and animality as film audiences and consumers - page 211-232- "The fantasy positions laid out (for both children and adults) in associations of children with animals circulate around the conflated two paradigmatic distinctions between child and adult and that between animal and human" 

This suggests that combining animals and humans are seen as an connections between animals and humans have emotional connections and they associate children with animal and that this can affect the viewers and for example the relationship between the two main characters in Frankeenweenie can relate to this of sparky and his owner. 

Sight and Sound December 1994 Page 27-29

 After reading the section of animated dreams on The Nightmare Before Christmas which included an interview with Henry Selick and an introduction it was very fascinating what they'd said for example that "independent animation directors may be recognized as auteurs, but within the Hollywood mainstream directors are still seen as only a few steps up the food chain from inkers and painters" suggesting that independent directors are more recognized compared to the big hollywood directors where as for the film "Disney is marking it's latest feature as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas" which proves Burton's impact on Disney because they described that the film "strongly evocative, in familiar dark night shades of Burton's visual signiture the film marks a departure for Disney" which proves that Tim Burton has had an huge affect on Disney's films as Burton offers a new range of ideas from the typical Disney classics although "the studio hasn't made anything as creepily sinister as this since Pinocchio visited pleasure island and turned into a donkey".

But during an interview with Selick he discussed that he was given the job of briefing and to keep Burton's style and to stick to the 'suits' of co-fiances of Disney, in addition to this "after a slow start the film gained $60 million in the US" but Henry Selick said that it was "very gratifying not to have typical Disney structure instead there was Tim Burton - an 800 pound gorilla with creative control" and because Tim is a lone film maker with an unusual films every single one has been successful not just because of his imagination but because Selick believes "animation leads itself to illustrating dreams of anything.

Comparing Empire's review on Alice In Wonderland past and present

Alice In Wonderland
Disney's animated adaptation of Lewis Carroll.

Plot
A little girl follows a flustered rabbit into the dream-world of Wonderland.

Review
Lewis Carroll's episodic fantasy stories have been translated on to screen more than 20 times, but Disney's animated version arguably remains the best, perhaps because a cartoon is the ideal way to bring such quirky characters to life.

Uncle Walt had a mind to adapt Carroll as far back as 1933, envisioning silent star Mary Pickford in the role of a live-action feature, but didn't commence production until after the war. Having undergone a drafted screenplay by Brave New World author Aldous Huxley, whose script Walt rejected because he could only understand "every second word", Disney's Alice opened in 1951 to almost universally bad reviews.

Fifty years on the movie is clearly due a reappraisal. It's colourful, fun and as surreal as Disney is ever likely to get, this isn't as good as the books, but works as a cute introduction to them.

Verdict
Two words: Disney classic.

Alice In Wonderland
Burton and Depp get curiouser and curiouser

Plot
Years after her adventures in Wonderland have become a dimly-remembered dream, 19-year-old Alice (Wasikowska) takes a tumble into eerily familiar Underland, a realm of terror under the mad Red Queen (Bonham Carter), who has usurped the White Queen (Hathaway). Disappointed she’s forgotten them, the Hatter (Depp) and friends insist Alice is their prophesied champion returned. Uh oh.

Review

Lewis Carroll and Tim Burton: a dream team or what? Visually the certainty that the two imaginative fabulists were made for each other is, to a great extent, realized exquisitely, with spectacular 3D, a haunting design for Wonderland, a seamless meeting of live action with animation, and a great deal of offbeat, twisted charm. It is in the telling that the story -- which is not an adaptation of Alice Adventures In Wonderland and Through The Looking-Glass but really a kind of sequel that references both and incorporates characters from both -- is, it has to be said, far less Carroll than Burton taking fanciful flight with a script penned by Linda Woolverton, (screenwriter of Beauty And The Beast and The Lion King for Disney).

Woolverton’s theme is Alice becoming a woman and finding her destiny, with a little help from socio-political allegory and the most eclectic cinematic band of guerrilla revolutionaries in fantasy since the Fellowship Of The Ring, from Johnny Depp’s acutely sensitive, schizophrenic Hatter to the agitated Dormouse voiced by Barbara Windsor and the mischievous illusionist Cheshire Cat voiced by Stephen Fry.

Strictly speaking it should be entitled something like Alice in Underland or Alice: The Return. So, be warned, there is no recitation of The Walrus and the Carpenter, no Mock Turtle or Humpty Dumpty (although arguably it’s worth the trip just to hear Depp recite from Jabberwocky). That’s regrettable for Carroll enthusiasts, the most fervent of whom will lament the loss of many cherished puns and quips, riddles, recitations, logic exercises, word games, contests and game playing. At least flamingoes and hedgehogs are still abused as croquet equipment, the mad queen’s soldiers are styled as playing cards (with her henchman-in-chief Glover’s one-eyed Knave) and a positively Narnian-in-scale battle of goodies, baddies and beasties for the realm kicks off over a giant chess board.

Wrapped around the Wonderland sequences is a framing device — Alice flees a surprise engagement party when she discovers she is to wed a snotty aristrocrat — that feels forced but things soon perk up with the appearance of Michael Sheen’s White Rabbit. Hurtling down the rabbit hole and experiencing life from various size perspectives thanks to the ever-popular potions and cakes, we and Alice are re-introduced to some of the most unforgettable oddballs in literature. And actually, losing one classic line of surrealism, satire, poems and freaky stuff enshrined in nonsense literature to impose a very Burtonesque brand of bizarreness (like the castle moat that has to be crossed by stepping on offed heads) makes for an engagingly creepy and coherent story of girl power that does work very nicely. Exchanging the child Alice for an Alice who bravely infiltrates the Red Queen’s court of tantrum-driven whimsy and rage as a secret agent, rescues her comrades from the head chop and bursts beautifully into battle in armour on the back of the Bandersnatch creates a pleasing, exciting adventure in its own right.

Helena Bonham Carter’s tyrannical wacko is sensationally fun, her grotesquely enlarged head miraculously topping a diminutive body. Even Hathaway’s good queen is unnerving, her white hair at punky odds with her black brows and lips. As for Depp, in his seventh collaboration with Burton, what’s not to like? In a frizzed orange fright wig, huge yellow-green cat’s eye contact lenses and gap-toothed, Depp still has dash, determined to see him as more romantic hero than lunatic. We’re right there with him on that.

The rest of the cast is satisfyingly thick with sterling British thespians and personalities, from Lindsay Duncan as Alice’s mother to a splendid voice cast that includes Alan Rickman as the hookah-smoking caterpillar, Sir Christopher Lee the Jabberwocky, Timothy Spall as royal bloodhound Bayard and Matt Lucas digitally duplicated into the chatterbox twin Tweedles, Dum and Dee.

Shot in 2D and 3D’ed up subsequently a la The Nightmare Before Christmas, this has obvious appeal in either option and, no doubt, in its DVD edition which supposedly follows, in a groundbreaking policy, in a mere 12 weeks.

Verdict
Sadly Lewis lite and not without flaws but this is as Burtonesque as one could wish for, a real treat for fans of his twisted imagination and great British character actors.

Reviewed by Angie Errigo

After reading both reviews on the original Disney Classic Alice In Wonderland compared to Burton's version they both contain different positive and negative takes on these two films for example both of these films earned a 3/5 star rating which suggested that both films are on the same level possibly because one is a cartoon and the other is a live action film, although the reviews for the 1951 Alice In Wonderland reviews followed that originally that Lewis Carroll's stories have been "translated more than 20 times" suggesting how could anyone else compare to the adaptations already made before however "Disney's animated version arguably remain the best" suggesting that any remake of the film would never compared to the "Disney Classic" but expressed that "a cartoon is the ideal way to bring such quirky characters to life" suggesting that any remake would never compare to cartoon as they can't capture the same quirky abilities to the film but they're wrong as the review for Burton's version of Alice In Wonderland 2010 that isn't "Lewis Carroll and Tim Burton: a dream team or what?" as considering Burton's style can offer great potential to create more realism especially in Burton's imagination, but reviews are positive for Burton's as "a seamless meeting of live action with animation" as it brings a whole new level of possibilities to the story although the review seemed disappointed not seeing familiar characters from the Disney Classic "there is no recitation of the walrus and the carpenter, no mock turtle or humpty dumpty" which made the reviewer say that Burton's take of this feel was more of a "sequel" as Alice is older and no longer a curious young girl and is very much "a very Burtonesque brand of bizareness" although is "a real treat for fans of his twisted imaginiation" suggesting that the film would suit limited audiences.

Frankenweenie Empire Review

Review
How sweetly ironic it is. In 1984, anxious minds at Disney decided to dispense with the services of 26 year-old animator Timothy Walter Burton on the grounds that his live-action short, Frankenweenie, was too scary for children and thus a waste of studio resources. His sensibilities, not to mention his drawings and storyboards, were too dark, too macabre for a home in the Magic Kingdom. Now, 28 years later, so keen are Disney to be in partnership with their one-time weirdo apprentice that the familiar Sleeping Beauty’s castle logo intro to Disney productions gets a dark and stormy re-tool to herald his feature-length, stop-motion-animated, black-and-white, 3D film Frankenweenie, Burton’s first full-length directorial outing for Walt’s mouse factory.

For those familiar with the original half-hour short (which starred The NeverEnding Story’s Barret Oliver as Vincent, Shelley Duvall and Daniel Stern as his parents, with a very young Sofia Coppola), available as an extra on some editions of The Nightmare Before Christmas, the plot is basically identical and a joyous lift from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but expanded with another good hour’s worth of incident, drama and delightful detail. Burton went back to his original drawings but worked to a new, witty but emotionally resonant screenplay by John August (whose work with Burton includes Big Fish and Corpse Bride). It is, indeed, potentially upsetting for small children, what with the horribly dead pet, the schoolroom frog dissection, creepy characters, scary monsters and an enraged, torch-wielding mob chasing the corpsified creature to kill him and all.

Unfortunately, the fact that it might be distressing is particularly so because the host of classic horror films referenced, paid homage to and lovingly pastiched in the monster mash-up that is Frankenweenie are no longer a staple of Saturday afternoon television. Some immortal dialogue (“It’s A-LIVE!”) and the joys of characters who are modelled on Universal and Hammer icons (like Igor, every mad scientist’s favourite hunch-backed laboratory assistant) or the oeuvres of Peter Lorre, Christopher Lee (here seen in live-action Dracula clips on the Frankensteins’ telly) and the priceless Vincent Price sadly will go right over a lot of oblivious heads these days. The terrified guy unwisely seeking refuge from a stomping, chomping thingie in a temporary loo à la Jurassic Park may ring a bell.

But for horror buffs this is constant fun in a string of inspired chuckles. The Igor, by the way, is a slobbering Lorre-lookalike kid called Edgar ‘E.’ Gore (Edgar for Poe, geddit?) voiced by Atticus Shaffer, who plays Brick in sitcom The Middle and does a disturbingly good performance as a mini-maniac. The numerous nods to the Frankenstein franchise itself include the girl next door named Elsa van Helsing (Winona Ryder, one of several Burton alumnae in the voice cast, returning to the fold for her third film with him) for Elsa Lanchester, the original Bride Of Frankenstein, except it’s little Elsa’s poodle whose poof acquires the white lightning streak.

At its heart, though, you don’t have to have ever seen a horror film to see that this is firmly a boy and his dog tale, in which a lonely, misunderstood child’s loss of his only friend, faithful companion and cutely comical star of his home movies is sufficiently heart-rending to prompt everything that follows. The boy’s clumsy needlework, tacking together parts of his dog after it has been run over (and buried) and the desperate insertion of the Boris Karloff neck bolts/spark plugs are more strangely touching than mad.

The design of the town evokes an Edward Scissorhands-like sunny suburbia that is more sitcom cosy than fright flick, making it all rather endearingly real, if oddball. Burton, August and the entire team who turned Burton’s drawings into three-dimensional silicone and latex sculptures, dinky puppets constructed over intricate metal skeletons and coiffed with real hair, and beautifully dressed sets — great in 3D — seem to have kept in mind that all the kooky consequences and frightful fairy-tale misadventures stemming from Victor’s “science project” are just part of the one big idea: creation, art, giving life to something lifeless, making something out of nothing, is a passionately personal expression of love.

Verdict
Very sweet, very funny, really quite touching and exquisitely handmade, by a film lover with humour and a heart, for a like-minded audience.


Reviewed by Angie Errigo

After reading Empires review on Frankenweenie it has proven that the relationship between Disney and Burton were  organically not appreciated by Disney as it wasn't Disney standards as Burton's imagination was too dark for Disney however they have worked with him in the end although "anxious minds at Disney dispense with the services of 26 year old animator" and that it was "too scary for children" and that Burton's unique style was "too dark"  for "the magic kingdom" because of Disney audiences but "28 years later" Disney were "so keen to be in partnership with their one-time weirdo apprentice" but what comes to mind is why now?, maybe it's because they realized that The Nightmare Before Christmas was so popular that Burton may of had potential to help Disney because they gained more fans from Burton's style of work, although the reviews on the film started off negative but then become positive as as an film it was beautiful "constructed".

The Nightmare Before Christmas Empire Review

Review

Everything we have come expect from the variable Goth-hued imagination of Tim Burton as presented in stop-motion form: thus it squeals with visual delight, strewn with loveable-morbid creations, ornate Danny Elfman compositions and has a story that runs out of juice halfway through. We are lazily encouraged to just sit back and soak up the rickety gleam of its grotesquery of inspiration — dashing Jack himself is a xylophone-boned, pin-stripped lounge singer-type, his dog, Zero, has a ghostly glowing nose, while his great love Sally is a rag doll who can wilfully unthread limbs — and ignore the deficiencies in its storytelling.

It’s the schizophrenia of Burton, although the main duties of directing slow-slow process of stop-animation went to Henry Sellick, he’s less a Brother Grimm than an Edward Munch. Energy and art abound everywhere, especially in the glorious whirligigging dance scenes, except in the momentum of tale-telling. The characters are cool but limited, just more Gothic filaments for this black gown knitted for kiddiewinks with death obsessions. There’s plenty of smart referencing: German expressionism to Cure videos, but it lacks the warmth, and social detail of Nick Park’s Claymation. Park’s worlds are reflections of reality, Burton/Sellick’s is a lawless sprawl of dreams.
Verdict
All gothicky, christmassy, romantic and Burtonesque. Worth a look.


Reviewed by Ian Nathan


 After reading the review of The Nightmare Before Christmas on Empires movie review it has been astablished that this film only gained a 3/5 star rating however in my opinion I think that this film deserves more credit as it's become a loved and well known classic Burton film, they described the movie as it "squeals with visual delight" considering it was a three year project you'd hope that the visuals within this film are outstanding as it took a long period of time and determained team to create this magic stop motion animation, they've also described the film to be a "loveable-morbid creation" considering how unique the film is.
 Further more Empire mentioned "It's the schizophrenia of Burton" which suggests that Burton's imagination is abnormal and schizophrenia relates to hallucinations and delusions but this just proves that Burton's creations are one of a kind as they should be, but overall they rated the film to have "energy and art abound everywhere especially in glorious whirlgigging dance scene"

Frankenweenie

Frankenweenie was released in 2012 however was an early story creation of Tim Burton's imagination and is based around the story of a young boy named victor who decides to create a science experiment to bring his dog sparky back to life, during an early developed of Frankenweenie in the book Tim Burton interview on page 5 explained how the original film was "scheduled to be paired with a re-release of Pinocchio but negative feedback at a test screening caused studio heads to change their minds" as "they claimed the film was too violent" but Burton explained the only part within the film was when sparky get hit by a car however this was shown off-camera.

 

 This film was also a stop-animation film which was originally developed from a short black and white      film Burton had created in 1984 and was produced with Buena Vista Distributio, here is an example of  this short film, skip to 5:54; as the first part of the video contains one of Burton's short stop motion called Vincent.

Here are two trailers
 of Frankenweenie 2012: