THE TOURIST

Written by Florian Henckel von Donnersmark, Christopher McQuarrie and Julian Fellowes

Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmark

Starring Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany and Timothy Dalton

Frank Tupelo: You're ravenous.

Elise Clifton-Ward: Do you mean ravishing?

Frank: Yes, I do.

Elise: You're ravenous.

Some poor sap of a math teacher from Wisconsin is sitting on a train en route to Venice from Paris when it happens. A devastatingly beautiful woman enters his car and spots the empty seat in front of him. Her gaze throws him completely off balance and from the moment she sits down, he doesn’t stand a chance. Who is she? Why would she sit with him when she could sit with any man she wanted? You just know that by the time they get off the train, their lives will be desperately intertwined. This is how Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, two of today’s biggest stars, meet in German director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmark’s first American foray, THE TOURIST. It’s all so old Hollywood but sadly it’s also all so transparently so.

Sometimes star power can have a blinding effect. The wattage can burn so bright that you don’t necessarily see how distracting it is from the actual film. And with stars as big as Depp and Jolie in your picture, it isn’t surprising that von Donnersmark, the man behind Oscar winner, THE LIVES OF OTHERS, didn’t notice that they were not necessarily the best choices for their roles. Depp, with his beautiful hair and instinctual charm, is anything but a believable sap. Still, that charm inevitably saves him from coming off farcical and his decidedly anti-Bourne jaunt across shackled rooftops is certainly amusing. Meanwhile, Jolie seems to have been directed to walk around like a fembot of sorts, cold and false, from her perfect walk to her supposedly British accent. They are stars for a reason though and before long, the impossibly pretty people in the pretty foreign place lull you into comfortable and classical state of intrigue.

The setup for THE TOURIST is straight out of a Hitchcock movie. All the elements of a tantalizing mystery are there but all the goods are given away upfront so there is nothing left to guess at. Of course, seeing as how we don’t live in classical Hollywood, modern necessities like twists and surprises must occur and they are neither twisted nor surprising but at least they aren’t insulting. And so like a real tourist on a mediocre vacation that promised to be so gorgeous in the brochure, the stay is acceptable, at times even enjoyable, but we are happy to know we are going home when the credits roll.

ABC: E is for EDWARD SCISSORHANDS

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS
Written by Caroline Thompson
Directed by Tim Burton
Starring Johhny Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest and Alan Arkin


I can’t say how many years it has been since I last saw Tim Burton’s EDWARD SCISSORHANDS but I can say that I wasn’t prepared to have it come over me the way that it did when I watched it again recently. There I was, just sitting in my living room alone one night, taking notes on this variation of the “Frankenstein” story, and before it ended, I was crying. I was fully moved by the palpable love that was emanating from my screen and then I remembered something … This is a Tim Burton movie and I’m overwhelmed with love. Hmmm …


In case you’re not familiar, this 1990 film, tells the story of Edward, a man-made man who was unfortunately unfinished at the time of the inventor’s death. He had a head, a heart and a soul but he had no hands. In their place, he had scissors. Having scissors for hands and no interaction with anyone for an undetermined amount of years left Edward detached from society and, without the reassuring touch of another human being, he felt incapable of connecting. He lived in peace, albeit lonesome, atop a hill in a mansion that overlooked this quaint suburban Burbank neighborhood, until one day, when none other than Peg, the Avon lady, knocked on his door. When Peg (Dianne Wiest) saw that Edward (Johnny Depp) needed so much more than cosmetics, she decided to take him home with her. What she didn’t anticipate was how a supposedly normal society would react to such a supposed freak.


Burton considers EDWARD SCISSORHANDS to be one of his most personal works and, when you consider it to be the birthplace of so many recurring Burton themes and motifs, it is easy to see why. Burton himself grew up in Burbank and, although I cannot personally attest to his accuracy in recreating it, I can certainly feel what it must have been like for such a unique artist to have grown up in this type of environment. Edward, with his pale skin, unkempt black hair and, well, scissors for hands, is at first the object of total fascination in this community that consists of cookie-cutter houses that vary in pastel exteriors. Inside these houses are men who all leave for work at the same every day and their wives, the originally desperate ones, who need the drama of the neighborhood to give their lives meaning. With everyone playing house, there is no room for different and no reference as to how to deal with it.


Being the outsider, being misunderstood, being dark and having people wrongly equate that with evil – these are all themes that Burton is obsessed with and certainly also themes that spring directly from his own experiences with society. EDWARD SCISSORHANDS allows him to put himself out there and allows the viewer to see what he presumes to be how a wider audience will react to him. And so, his expectation is that they will embrace and admire his differences at first but eventually come to revile him for them. A burst of excitement is all these rutted people crave but they learn quickly that they prefer the comfort that ruts also often offer. Of course, Burton’s onscreen representation is exaggerated by Depp. At this stage in his career, Depp was seen as merely a teen idol, which was not meshing with how he wanted to be seen or where he wanted his career to go. With his sweet face covered in makeup and scars, Depp was able to show audiences his Keaton-esque side – his humour, his empathy and his charm.


At one point, Edward is on a daytime talk show and one of the audience members asks him if he would have his scissors replaced by hands if that were possible. Edward doesn’t hesitate and says, “Yes.” But then, the lady in the audience points out, he would be just like everyone else, that there would be nothing special about him. This is where this unexpected Burton-esque optimism fills the screen. Peg, sitting next to Edward, says that he will always be special. In that moment, we are all Edward. We all have something unique about us that, if we cannot hide, ostracizes us from everyone else. When you live your life removed from everyone, you do not know the healing qualities of human touch. And when no one has touched you in a long time, you can lose the confidence to reach out and touch someone else. You may even think that you are not even capable of it.


Behind the scissors that keep everyone at a distance, Edward is just a man and, like any man with a sensitive heart, he simply wants to love. And what could be more lovely than the image of a young Winona Ryder spinning freely underneath the snow-like shavings of an ice sculpture that Edward is carving just for her? With EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, Burton shares this wonderful gift with his Edward, with his audience and with himself. Suddenly, the Burbank boy that always felt different knows what its like to touch the hearts of others.

Remembering the year 2004

I’m a sensitive guy but I don’t cry very often. Usually, the only time I find myself crying is at the movies. For me, crying is a beautiful release and when I’m watching a movie and it comes over me, I always let it out. I figure if the hard parts of my life don’t bring me to tears, then I’d better let them out whenever the opportunity presents itself, even if I’m not completely sure what it is about the image on the screen that is moving me so deeply. When I first saw FINDING NEVERLAND, it was a matinee showing. There weren’t too many people in the theatre and that suited me just fine. This way, I got to sob profusely while still maintaining some sense of privacy. When the film was released to own, I brought it home and, to my surprise, cried just as much as I did the first time I saw it. When I watched it again recently to prepare for this piece, I was concerned, at first, that it wasn’t as good as I remembered it in my mind. But then, before I could get across the room to get my box of tissues, I was weeping once again.

Based on Allan Knee’s play, “The Man Who Was Peter Pan”, FINDING NEVERLAND is something of a tear-jerker that seems deliberately designed for boys. This is Peter Pan after all and what man cannot identify with the age old tale about not wanting to ever grow up? Certainly not this one anyway. That said, I don’t think this is what gets me crying each time; that would be too simple an explanation. No, it is something inherent in the story itself that speaks directly to this boy’s heart. FINDING NEVERLAND is a story about feeling inspiration and fostering your imagination. Without either of these, Neverland could never be found. James Barrie (Johnny Depp) is the author of “Peter Pan” and the film gives us the chance to see the very real components that would become one of the most timeless children’s classics in history. As a writer, especially one who struggles to find the words from time to time, seeing that they can come from everything transpiring right in front of me was truly freeing.


Historically, Barrie met the Llewelyn Davies family in London’s Kensington Gardens in 1897. In the film, it unfolds exactly the same way, only the man of the family, Arthur, has already passed away and, of the family’s five young boys, only four make the film for fear of overcrowding. The mother, Sylvia (Kate Winslet), is simply enjoying her time in the park with her boys when Barrie suddenly becomes a central figure in the boys’ game. From that moment on, he never stops playing with them. It isn’t quite so joyous for all the boys though, what with their father recently passed. No, young Peter (played by Freddie Highmore in the role that turned him into a child star) finds himself facing adult realities that are far too harsh for him to process, let alone preserve his innocence. Barrie steps in as a father figure but the healing does not begin so easily. Barrie must remind the boys that their imaginations can take them anywhere they want to go, any time they want to go there. As he unleashes the power of his imagination in hopes of rekindling theirs, he finds something completely unexpected – Peter Pan.


Director, Marc Forster, whom I have a love/hate relationship with (basically, I love this film and hate most of his other work), does his best to do to his audience that which Barrie is determined to do for his lost boys. FINDING NEVERLAND flows back and forth between scenes of hardship (loveless marriages, financial woes and terminal illness) and magical escapes, from pirate ships in the backyard to children bouncing from their beds and taking flight. “Neverland” is a place where one never has to grow up and it is always just on the other side of our conscious minds waiting for us to visit whenever we need to or just plain feel like it. All any of us has to do to find it is believe that it is there. At no time does it feel like FINDING NEVERLAND is encouraging us to ignore our responsibilities so that we can play whenever we want. It is quite the contrary really. Forster and friends are just trying to help us find it in ourselves so that it can help us get through all the tears.



Black Sheep's 2004 Top 10
(in alphabetical order)

BAD EDUCATION, directed by Pedro Almodovar
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, Michel Gondry
FINDING NEVERLAND, Marc Forster
GARDEN STATE, Zach Braff
THE INCREDIBLES, Brad Bird
KILL BILL VOLUME 2, Quentin Tarantino
MARIA FULL OF GRACE, Joshua Marston
THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, Walter Salles
TARNATION, Jonathan Caouette
VERA DRAKE, Mike Leigh

PUBLIC ENEMIES

Written by Ronan Bennett, Michael Mann and Ann Biderman
Directed by Michael Mann
Starring: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard and Billy Crudup


John Dillinger: We’re here for the bank’s money, not yours. Put it away.

Though John Dillinger’s story took place over 70 years ago, the manner in which the media and government branded him “Public Enemy #1” is not so dissimilar to the way modern lawbreakers are vilified today. And in many ways, Michael Mann’s PUBLIC ENEMIES is not so dissimilar to his highly regarded modern cops and robbers movie, HEAT (1995). Robert Deniro and Al Pacino have been replaced by Johnny Depp and Christian Bale; semi-automatics have been replaced by tommy guns; and flat out fiction has been replaced by a fictionalized account of true events. Mann may be telling a familiar story (the Deniro character actually has the exact same line of dialogue quoted above in HEAT), but his experience with the topic, coupled with the rich nostalgia he creates for simpler times, make PUBLIC ENEMIES all the more engaging and gripping. And just because Dillinger and his boys walked around in suits and fedoras, it didn’t mean they were any less raucous than the guys in HEAT.


While I never truly felt that PUBLIC ENEMIES exploded off the screen with excitement and tension, I was consistently floored with how impressive nearly every element of the film was. Mann’s direction is concise and assured. He takes us from Dillinger’s first jail bust in 1933 through a barrage of different bank robberies and past his arrest and second seemingly inevitable jail bust that followed. He does so as though on a mission but never in any hurried fashion and though we may or may not know how it is all going to end depending on our familiarity with the subject, every new sequence is entirely unexpected while still completely logical. PUBLIC ENEMIES is a technical triumph. Between Dante Spinotti’s cinematography (incidentally, he also lensed HEAT), Jeffrey Ford & Paul Rubell’s editing and Patrick Lump & William Ladd Skinner’s art direction, I don’t know which is most impressive. I do know that they all culminate to create a tone that is seamlessly mesmerizing. The image is constantly moving and cutting and yet it is never so dizzying that we cannot appreciate how meticulously detailed it all is.


For the most part, the acting is just as impressive as the technical aspects. I have never found Depp to carry a lot of depth in his performances (pardon my pun). He is always solid and easy to look at but when he isn’t cookying it up for Tim Burton or donning his pirate gear, I find that what we get is a lot more Depp than it is character. As Dillinger though, you can see in his eyes that he is always thinking; you can feel that Depp is taking care to balance Dillinger’s thin interpretation of what is lawful and what is unacceptable. He does so with an assured control that I find is lacking when he is playing so naked a character. His chemistry with 2007’s Oscar winner for Best Actress, Marion Cotillard (MA VIE EN ROSE), as his romantic interest, Billie Frechette, is seductive without ever slipping into oversimplified sap. Frankly, Cotillard could not have asked for a better role to mark her English language debut. The whole supporting cast is solid, including an amusing turn by Billy Crudup as J. Edgar Hoover. It is in fact only Christian Bale, as Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent responsible for hunting Dillinger, that disappointed some, luckily with no major impact on the film. He wears a permanent sternness on his face but I never once bought his conviction.


Albeit a serious film, and a potentially serious awards season contender, PUBLIC ENEMIES is inherently playful, thanks to the very nature of Dillinger’s story. Technically, he is the bad guy here. He may have no interest in robbing from the common people but he is still a thief and yet he is our hero after all. We are led to side with him and how could we not when Depp is so easy to admire? He was the most wanted man in all of America and yet he would just walk the streets as though he knew nothing of it. Depp nails Dillinger’s disdain for authority and we love him for it because we all hate the “man”… with Michael’s exception, of course.

BLACK SHEEP'S WEEKLY NEWS WRANGLE

FESTIVAL SEASON ANYONE?
The 65th Annual Venice Film Festival opens on August 27 with the world premiere of the Coen Brothers' follow-up to NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, last year's Oscar winner for Best Picture, BURN AFTER READING. The pic stars Coen regulars George Clooney and Frances McDormand as well as Coen newbiews, Brad Pitt and Tilda Swinton. Like the Cannes festival, the line-up is short on American fare due to the wrtier's strike that halted productions that would have ordinarily been ready for festival season. Other high profile Hollywood pics include Darren Aronofsky's THE WRESTLER (starring Mickey Rourke), Kathryn Bigelow's HURT LOCKER (an Iraq war film with Ralph Fiennes) and Jonathan Demme's RACHEL GETTING MARRIED, starring Anne Hathaway as a struggling addict who goes home after ten years. The latter two will go on to screen at the Toronto Film Festival days later and all four titles find themselves in competition for the Lion d'Or.
Source: Variety

WHITE KEYS BOND
It has already been reported that Alicia Keys had been tapped to sing the theme from the upcoming Bond feature, QUANTUM OF SOLACE. This week, more information about the song itself has surfaced. The song, entitled, "Another Way to Die", was written and produced by White Stripes frontman, Jack White. White also plays drums on the tune which happens to be the first Bond theme duet in the franchise history. The soundtrack will be available October 28 and the film itself hits theatres November 7.
Source: Billboard

THE MARTIAN IS LANDING
Warner Brothers has given the green light to a movie based on the popular Looney Tunes character, Marvin the Martian. The project, which will be specifically aimed at the prepubescent crowd, will be a mix of CGI and live action. Marvin will make his way to earth with the intention of destroying Christmas, only to find his plans foiled when he gets trapped in a wrapped present. There is no word yet on who will helm the project nor whether Bugs Bunny will be making a cameo.
Source: Variety

TIM AND JOHNNY DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE?
Last week, Tim Burton confirmed that he has cast his Alice in his upcoming mixed CGI/live action remake of ALICE IN WONDERLAND. The actress is young, Australian, Mia Wasikowska. She might now have her Madhatter. In what would be a seventh pairing between director and star, Johnny Depp is reumoured to be in talks to take on this iconoclastic character. Burton and Depp first worked together on EDWARD SCISSORHANDS in 1990.
Source: Internet Movie Database

WHATEVER, WOODY
Woody Allen's 40th feature, VICKI CHRISTINA BARCELONA, is about to hit theatres but news regarding his 41st feature, currently in post-production, is already starting to surface. As per usual, details are scarce but Allen has revealed the title to be WHATEVER WORKS. The story itself supposedly centers around a relationship between Larry David (61) and Evan Rachel Wood (21). Gotta hand it to Woody .. he never shies away from exploring his own demons.
Source: JoBlo

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET

Written by John Logan
Words and Music by Stephen Sondheim
Directed by Tim Burton


Sweenney Todd: I can guarantee the closest shave you’ll ever know.

When the ensemble harmonizes the unsettling baritone with the glass-shattering soprano parts of “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” at the opening of the stage production, SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET, the tone is not only announced but adamantly affirmed. You are in store for a truly bizarre tale that is the epitome of madness and you are being introduced to man burnt by an unjust system, robbed of everything and everyone that ever meant anything to him, who has now returned for his due vengeance and has brought with him a very unhealthy bloodlust. It would seem that there could be no one better suited to translate this haunting story to film than master of the dark and champion of the disenfranchised, director, Tim Burton. Burton begins by hastily deciding to skip the ballad and go straight to what he knows best. Bright red blood drips down walls and slips between the gears of a giant meat grinder, Stephen Sondheim’s potently explosive score driving everything forward. But just as the ballad foretells on stage of unbelievable vocal histrionics to come and amaze, Burton’s decision to remove it in favour of score and visual gore confirms that he will be relying on what he knows in fear of the daunting music he has failed to grasp.


For a director who has built his entire reputation on his creative visual style, it is genuinely surprising to watch SWEENEY TODD unfold in such an unimaginative fashion. It does not seem so at first. In fact, it is quite a twisted treat to dive in to the cobblestone streets of yesterday’s London, tainted blue and gray by cinematographer, Dariusz Wolski, to a saturation point that makes the patrons appear as though they are just waiting, if not begging, for their dull lives to end. Who can blame them really? The light of day rarely seems to rise on London as it is constantly shrouded in heavy cloud. And while the camera hints at the scope of London by weaving from the picturesque rooftops to a dizzying maze of streets, it quickly ceases to a halt on one particular street corner, home to Todd’s barbershop. Despite having so much room to move, Burton traps us here and allows the claustrophobia to set in. This is a fine way to make people uncomfortable but it also makes for some rather limited musical staging. Burton rushes through the musical numbers by slicing lines out (unfortunately some of the more hilarious ones) so that he can get to the action because he knows that their stunted staging slows the pace. Subsequently, he leaves us with nothing more than a bloody mess on the floor.


Further proving the unimportance of technical mastery in this musical is Burton’s decision (with the perplexing blessing of Sondheim himself) to cast untrained singers in the demanding leads. The character of Sweeney Todd requires a voice so powerful and fierce that it resonates fear through the bodies of all who hear it. Johnny Depp surprises with how well he can handle the material but his capable performance never ignites the passion of a mad man. Meanwhile, Todd’s counterpart in scheming evil, Mrs. Lovett, a woman so conniving and desperate that she will say or do anything to make sure her man is content and by her side, is played by Helena Bonham Carter, a woman whose voice is so weak that she is barely capable of communicating any of the colour in the character. Each actor carries the same drab expression on their face throughout the film as though they are bored or just completely unsure of themselves. They each have their moments but neither successfully demonstrates the depths of their treachery or the heights of their dark wit. As they watch each step, careful to avoid each other’s toes, Burton guides their performances into characters with soulless shells that barely frighten each other, let alone the audience.


In what will hopefully be his last musical outing, Burton breaks a golden musical rule. The musical numbers should never be rushed. That’s why we’re there – to appreciate the beauty of Sondheim’s layered and dense masterpiece. Only that isn’t why Burton is there. Clearly, Todd’s penchant for slashing throats is what most fascinated the man at the helm of this horror story. And while the blood gushing out and splattering against the camera and the walls is both disgusting and exhilarating at the same time, it amounts to very little more than gorgeous torture porn. Who knew that SWEENEY TODD would be so maniacal that even the insane genius of Tim Burton could not fully comprehend the man himself?

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END

Written by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio
Directed by Gore Verbinski



Pintel: Slap me thrice and hand me to Mama. It’s Jack!

Have you ever noticed how both good and bad things are said to come in three’s? The month of May at the movies this year does nothing to answer that question but it does take the entire superstition that much further, by making it so when things, good or bad, come in three’s, nothing else comes at all. The big commercial theatre where I saw PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END was playing only three films on its dozen or so screens. This summer’s other high profile third chapters, SPIDERMAN 3 and SHREK 3, joined it. With these three films monopolizing every screen, how can any other film come to matter or register a dent in the consciousness of filmgoers? One could conclude that the theatre is just giving the people what they want but how accurate is that? By the time the third part in a series rolls around, people seem to be tired of the whole thing and just ready for it to be over. Given how much bile has been spilled over all three of the aforementioned films, it appears as though it has become cool to turn on those that have provided so much entertainment in the past. Luckily for Hollywood, the trend has done nothing to stop the money from rolling in.


I didn’t care for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST. I found it to have had its comic moments but to be overdrawn and tedious at times, lacking the spontaneity and energy of the first film, THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL. As a result, I didn’t have much of an interest in AT WORLD’S END. The PIRATES series falls into a category of trilogy where the second and third installments were not specifically intended when the first was conceived. What was once a complete story must be expanded into a longer series. Some storylines are given back-story while others are stretched so thin that it becomes distracting to actually grasp how everything is connected. In AT WORLD’S END, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) needs to be brought back from the dead, known here as Davy Jones’ Locker. With a variety of selfish motivations, Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) make the dangerous journey along with their regular crew. Once back, Jack and company must defeat Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander) and his fleet, who intend to rid the world of all pirates. Along the way, a number of other sub plots find some screen time but find themselves ultimately left ashore. Having already seen the first two films, I found it somewhat difficult to piece the muddled puzzle together at times so I can only imagine how lost one would be coming into this film without any previous pirate experience. Overly complex stories are almost inevitable though when you expand a story that was never intended to be expanded to begin with.


The PIRATES series has relied increasingly on visual effects as the series has progressed. While the transitions between pirates and the undead in the first film were sleek and engrossing, the film itself struck with viewers thanks primarily to the wild and unpredictable performance of Johnny Depp. Depp has been just as consistent at being inconsistent in the two latter films but there’s only so much further the character can go. Subsequently, the visual aspects needed to step it up to deliver that which a summer blockbuster is expected to deliver. Back for a third time is director Gore Verbinski, taking a decidedly darker, more surreal approach to the pirates he made famous. When a film opens with mass hangings and the announcement that a number of citizens are being robbed of their fundamental rights, you know that fluff is not about to follow. Only here, it does. What ensues is a ride that bounces back and forth between varying visual motifs that leave the viewer lost at sea. That being said, I don’t think I will forget that close-up of Depp’s nose traveling along the screen, sniffing for a peanut, for a very long time.


It’s hard to say goodbye to anything that has been with you for so long. It’s even harder for studios to imagine never seeing the size of treasure that Jack and crew haul in with each of their adventures. Hence, even as this trilogy comes to its intended close, further pirate plots are being cooked up by studio heads that will likely plow ahead with them with or without their regular cast. That doesn’t stop AT WORLD’S END from ensuring that every possible audience satisfaction is met before the credits role. Characters say their goodbye’s almost as if they were the actors themselves saddened by the end of their own experiences together. The film suddenly seems to be fully aware of its own significance in the pop culture fabric. The problem here is the film is giving itself more credit than it likely deserves as it seems these days that more people flock to trilogy closers out of obligation and not anticipation.

TIM BURTON'S A CORPSE BRIDE

Written by John August, Pamela Pettler and Caroline Thompson
Directed by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson

A tiny, blue butterfly flutters about after being set free from the clasp of two frail, pale hands. It flies aimlessly up the streets and down the alleys of the fictitious British city of yore that is the setting of “Tim Burton’s ‘A Corpse Bride’”. It is a tiny burst of colour in an otherwise dark and gloomy (read: typical for Burton) city and consequently dark and gloomy life of Victor, who has just set this creature free after having immortalized it with paint and paper. Victor, voiced effetely by Johnny Depp, is to be married to a woman he’s never met the very next day in order to increase the stature of his family; A fate equivalent to keeping the beautiful butterfly under glass until it’s inevitable death.

These nuptials must go according to plan as much is at stake for both families involved. What fun would all this be if that’s what actually happened? While trying to get a grip on his pre-wedding anxiety in the forest just outside of town, Victor meets Emily, The Corpse Bride. Emily’s story is the stuff fairy tales are made of. Once in a love with a rich, handsome type that her parents did not approve of, she made the decision to elope. Only her fiancé had other plans. To be more specific, he killed her and ran off with her dowry. Not one to be deterred from her quest for true love, Emily decided to stick around the forest until a gentleman came along who would love her the way she deserved and for the rest of her afterlife.

Who hasn’t been there before, more or less? Jilted by love one too many times, we wait for the perfect someone to come along and find us sitting there, sweeping us away with promises of forever. Like Emily, we might end up waiting a while. Are we as good as dead if we just sit and wait for love to find us? I know we’re tired and broken but we’re certainly not proactive if that’s our approach.

Being dead isn’t so bad in this town though. In fact, the underworld is a hell of a lot more swinging than the one up on the ground. Skeletal folk living it up, singing of love, in vivid, wild colour while the living focus on their bank balances and inappropriate behaviour at the dinner table. This contrast could have ended up being terribly blatant but Burton and Johnson aren’t satisfied with leaving it so black and white. Victor and his intended bride-to-be are actually in love. Thus there is something worth fighting for, something worth living for, something ripe with possibility that grows amidst the drab, dark despair of this supposed life.

To both push this story forward and kill some time, Burton and Johnson rely heavily on misplaced musical numbers, the opening song is promising but so much time goes by without another song popping up that you forget you’re even watching a musical. And despite my reluctance to make obvious comparisons, I can’t help but miss the jubilant and disturbing soundtrack to Burton’s previous, more cohesive stop-motion film, “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. Thankfully, the characters are both animated and voiced so symbiotically that the visual feast is more than enough to keep your stomach from growling with discontent. In fact, it was mostly during scenes where no one was singing that I was hungry for more.

Hope always manages to make its presence known in the demented world of Burton films and, in the case of “The Corpse Bride”, it carries you through to the end believing in love and the sacrifices one must make to let that love grow. One character asks, “Can a heart still break once it’s stopped beating?” The answer is found in the awesomely lively eyes of the already decaying Corpse Bride herself, a woman subjected to understand that if you try to keep life locked under glass, be that yours or someone else’s, death is the only inevitability.