Charlie and The Chocolate Factory
rootlesscosmo
12,848 Posts
Anyone seen this? Just peeped it.Danny Elfman brings some heat on the soundtrack. (showtune - no ayo - madness for the new millenium; the fat german kid song is probably the hottest for the club but when Veruca Salt(y) gets got - that joint has the most MTV appeal.)Depp freestyles at one point, going so far as to ask the kids to give him topics to flow on.But there's a scary squirrel scene that's gonna give me nightmares.Not Tim Burton's finest.Peace
Comments
I guess some people told Johnny they thought he was trying to act like MJ! Tripped him out.
Pasty face dude in funny suits with a high voice that hangs with little kids in a playground compound that few are admitted to. I don't see the connection.
Me and wifey went to go see "Charlie" and left really disappointed by how lifeless the whole affair was, despite moments of cleverness. It just never really came together in the way it should have and frankly, the new additions to Roald's original story were dumb as fuck. Wonka doesn't need a father to explain him being crazy. Why can't he just be fucking crazy?
By the way, am I the only one NOT remotely excited by the idea of Wes Anderson doing "The Fantastic Mr. Fox"? After watching "The Life Aquatic" the other weekend on DVD, it only confirmed that he's one of the most overrated of the supposedly "hip/smart" directors out there. God help me - I'd sooner take P.T. Anderson any day over Wes.
And to Michael Bay: ha ha, no one wanted to see "The Island."
Well, in all fairness, it's not like GVS goes around tooting how bad ass and critic-proof he is. I don't mind that Bay's movies are aimed at the lowest common denominator - I actually LIKED "Bad Boys II" - but he's an arrogant prick about the fact that he can mint gold out his ass so when his movie, by all measures, TANKS right out the gate...you gotta take some pleasure in that. A GVS film doing poorly - eh, it's not like he was making "Good Will Hunting 2: The Stanford Years".
Oh, I don't know anything about Van Sant or Michael Bay, just figured while we were talking movies, I'd mention that Last Days was a giant turd of a movie and I would strongly recommend anyone considering seeing it to do the opposite. Two hours of Kurt Cobain (but not really Kurt Cobain, just a depressed, scraggly blond-haired rock musician living in a castle in the woods in the Pacific Northwest who is crumbling under the pressure of his fame and then kills himself... but isn't Kurt Cobain!) walking around looking bored and mumbling and struggling to make macaroni and cheese. It's such an unrewarding thing to sit through. If he killed himself 15 minutes into the movie vs 90 minutes into it, it wouldn't have made an ounce of a difference to me.
Icing on the cake: as we were leaving the theater, we overheard someone asking a theater employee about the movie. During an earlier showing, they had somebody vomit and several people leave.
Sayin. First Planet of the Apes (whack) and now this. Never saw Stainboy though.
I agree that burton's last few films have not quite hit the spot, will still go & see it though, johnny is always watchable.
I had no idea wes was doing fantastic mr fox. That was one of my favourite books as a kid so I'm intrigued.
I realise Wes may be too hip for his own good but I've enjoyed all his films (apart from bottle rocket) & actually watched Life Aquatic last night. Thought it was good.
Another childhood fave book was Mrs Frisby & the rats of nymph which was also made into a film. Watch it with some young folk.
Umm I felt that BIG FISH was dead the fuck on!
Maybe cause of the father son connection thing for me, me having a son and certain situations with my dad as of late. But I felt the story and the visuals were on point!
i did see chocolate factory with the lowest of expectations and actually enjoyed it, everything except johnny depp who basically was jacko in overkill mode. he really got on my nerves. you can't hold a candle to wilder. period. way more charisma, simulatenously creepy & pleasant, and he had that sweet hypnotic stranger-with-candy voice that made the kiddies think he was harmless.
i did like the score, i could hear a lit bit of oingo-boingo elfman in some of those oompa numbers. i thought this bucket & his family was actually convincing emotionally more so than the original, so burton surprised me there. i also thought burton's was pretty funny and more fleshed out than the musical version. everyone besides bucket looked like either cadavers or flawless mannequins which is truer to roald dahl's aesthetic. i guess you shouldn't really compare it to the wilder version because that was a musical. dahl's story is so dark. although there are really disturbing parts in the wilder version (did anyone ever notice that projection of the chiken's head being chopped off when they go through the tunnel?) i read somewhere that chocolate factory should be interpreted as a horror movie for children. sentimental prejudices aside, the original had it's flaws and so does this one. i enjoyed both for different reasons.
p.s. i couldn't finish life aquatic
agreed. i saw this w/ extremely low expectations as a tag-a-long. was entertained through the first half although it took way too long to get moving. but Johnny Depp was estremely irritating.
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BIG FISH. burton accomplished exactly what he wanted to with that film. and it worked. for all who complain that it was too cheesy/shmaltzy, it was supposed to be - it was a fantasy/fairy tale. and a complex and visually beautiful one at that.
HEY HEY HEY now little lady
Don't go expectin' no thinkin' to be goin' on in no movie' the-A-ter now. Shallow and messageless is what American media was founded on and it's certainly not going to be changed now by someone who uses words like "schmaltzy" and "whimsical". Psshh.
-magic(little-dude)jackson
I agree with Audrey about Burton - when I was younger, he was just refreshingly different and colorful but these days, I feel like he's making "Tim Burton movies" you know? Like he's biting his own steez. Dude's a one trick pony of late, though I haven't seen "Big Fish" yet.
Anyone see "Wedding Crashers"? I hear that was actually pretty entertaining.
That's interesting. I just had a short conversation with a friend about his films yesterday and we both felt that he's improved on storytelling but gone downhill with character development.
On a side note, why do I keep hearing people talk about how Wes Anderson's films aren't as smart or intellectual as people claim? Does he (or anyone else) claim these are intellectual films? That's not a rhetorical question, I just never heard anyone say they were.
I don't think Wes' films are "intellectual" in the formal sense of the word but I think people put that on his films more because they're clever in a vaguely literary way (yeah, ok, that was really not clear. Sorry). To put it another way, he's not blowing shit up but he's also not strictly art house either. I think his fans would like to say that he makes films for people who like to think while being entertained. Mostly, he's known for quirky characters that are vaguely comical yet have some layer of pathos attached to them too. He's what Alexander Payne aspires to be but usually fails. He also wishes he were Spike Jonze but also fails. Not that Jonze is perfect but he knows how to tell a story (it helps that Charlie Kaufman writes them) and develop interesting characters. And miraculously, he can do all this without employing either Owen Wilson or Bill Murray (I like Murray, really I do, but he's increasingly overrated as the "go to" aging actor that everyone wants to champion as some underrated genius. He wasn't THAT good in "Lost In Translation" and people are acting like he's fucking Brando crossed with Chaplin. Whatever.)
But yeah, his films aren't intellectual per se. They're more like some perverse cinematic warping of an episode of "This American Life" on NPR.
- spidey
I guess I see what you're saying, but I've still enjoyed everything he's done so far. Now the Coen brothers... seriously overrated!
(Bad Boys II = *****)
how in the fuck you gonna hate on Bill "Ghostbustin ass" Murray...
That's just the way it goes with films. One man's genius is another's overrated tripe. (However, I was mainly referring to Fargo and The Big Lebowski.)
It is. I went with the whole family to see it. We didnt stop laughing. Tears down our faces.