Tim Burton's "ALICE IN WONDERLAND" (2010)

He is?

I find his films a visual delight but with barely any substance.

I'm interested to see how this one turns out, too. I'm more eagerly anticipating Elfman's score, though.

that's true, but I'll rent it one time though

I remember one time ever visiting a Burton movie in the cinema, and that was Batman Returns (because back then Batman was inappropriate for children)

I agree with Timmer. 'Form', or style, is certainly a type of substance, but you need a film to succeed in other areas too (which they do, but just not enough for me to be able to call Burton a favourite). For me, Burton's films are always visually entertaining, but I've never really been moved by his films like, say, a Kubrick of Spielberg film.

I definitely enjoy watching Burton's films if I happen to catch them on Tv, but I'm not going to buy any of them on Blu-Ray, I'll put it that way.

I agree films can be explored through audiovisuals, that's the medium after all! But the images and sounds still have to tell a story otherwise its meaningless. I might as well splash some colours on a blank canvas and listen to some pretty music. Clearly that's not what I think Burton's films are like, there's obviously substance there.... just not enough for me to call him a favourite. I could easily live without Burton's films, even though I do appreciate his weird and imaginative style of film making.

Of course it's not meaningless. Art films have been doing that for more than a century. Even within more classical narratives is there a chance to "pause" the story, so to speak, to communicate some idea or feeling strictly through what you see and hear onscreen.

I'm sorry, don't let me interupt in your audiobook....I mean film session.

I used to quite like Tim Burton films, but I can't remember the last one I really enjoyed, and one look at the poster for this (with Johnny Depp on it) completely put me off it.

I'm somewhere in the middle. Plain audio-visual spectacles are plan music video clips to me...they have to have some sort of narrative backbone to make me connect and be emotionally affected by it. Incorporating great visuals in a great story, like in AGORA for instance, always manages to win me over and move me like no other. But i said i'm in the middle 'cause i sometimes fall for films that incorporate great visuals with weak of confused storylines, like in THE FOUNTAIN where i was still able to draw some emotional background in order to connect with it.

Yes! Except that it isn't totally random. There's some purpose to it. A good example is Willem Defoe's death scene in PLATOON. In slomo, he falls to his knees while the bullets of the Viet Cong pierce his body. He reaches up towards the sky while Barber's religious-sounding "Adagio" plays on the music side. It has an obvious Christ reference (Defoe "sacrificing himself", "why have you forsaken me?" etc.) and can be enjoyed for that alone. It's meaning that is created solely out of visuals and music. It's not totally separated from the story, of course, but in that scene, our focus shifts almost exclusively to moment-based meaning and feelings.



No, but he employs an art film aesthetic in a mainstream idiom.



Sure, and I have no problem with that. My beef is only with the underestimation of the film medium's abilities BEYOND the storytelling aspect, which has always been one of my "agenda issues". Heck, I even wrote my Ph.D. thesis on that. That's why I'm coming through a little more forcefully than usual on this issue.

So no then. That was exactly my point! As long as there's purpose to it, then I don't mind. It would seem odd to include a completely random piece of audiovisual in the film, which was purely an exaggeration I used to make a point that anything inside the film needs to be connected to the story in some way. Again, though, that's not what I'm trying to debate here, and I'm certainly not underestimating the film medium's ability at all, I'm just saying I don't like Burton as much as you do. That's it.