1. Tim Burton
2. Train of Thought
3. Ed Wood
4. Leftovers
I. Tim Burton
Somehow last evening Ms. S. and I found ourselves contemplating Tim Burton for a while. We had become deeply dissatisfied with him. Recently we watched ‘Dark Shadows,’ which was, to be generous, an uninspired muddled mess. ‘Sweeney Todd’ was passable but uninspired.
I actually have his ‘Planet of the Apes’ on DVD. And have watched it multiple times. But I also have ‘LadyHawke.’ And have watched it more.
When was Burton last “good”?
II. Train of Thought
Johnny Depp and Tim Burton … perhaps we got there via Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. We might have been thinking, too, of Tarantino’s upcoming ‘Django Unchained.’
We were thinking of Tarantino for a while. He’s a good writer of women — see: The Bride — but his casting is usually surest with men. The exceptions are Uma in ‘Kill Bill’ (and the other women there) and Pam in ‘Jackie Brown.’ You cannot really imagine his men being cast otherwise. Even or especially Kurt Russell in ‘Death Proof.’ No matter when he made that film, he would have cast Kurt Russell and Michael Parks, but look at the women: a year or two or three earlier or later, they wouldn’t have been on the radar, except perhaps Zoë Bell. But this was a digression. Again, the casting in ‘Inglourious Basterds’ was spot-on. And it’s also a matter of Samuel L. Jackson being in everything of his except ‘Reservoir Dogs.’ Which brings us to ‘Django Unchained’ and Leonardo, whom Ms. S.’s father does not like at all.
I avoided Leonardo for a while because of ‘Titanic’ (a matter of vague terms like ‘overrated’ or ‘too popular’, etc.). Then I saw ‘The Beach,’ large parts of which he more or less had to carry on his own, not that it’s his best outing or just about him (hello Tilda Swinton!), but it allowed me to reevaluate him … as I had done with Johnny Depp, who for the longest time I associated only with ’21 Jump Street.’ But back to ‘The Beach’ … ah, Robert Carlyle, which took us to ‘Trainspotting’ … but that’s Danny Boyle … as is ‘The Beach.’
Which made me think of Boyle in connection with (1) P.T. Anderson and (2) Michael Winterbottom, two directors who, in my opinion, never make the same film twice. They don’t do sequels, they go off and do new types of projects. And except for ‘Ocean’s 12’ and ‘Ocean’s 13’ I throw Soderbergh in the same group. Others fit, too, of course; I’m just painting with a broad stroke. Anderson is a bit different because even though in terms of setting and story and such all his films are quite different, there’s something in terms of style, more nebulously just ‘feel’ (which is wrong, as with ‘feel’ you feel you can touch it, grasp it … here you can’t, but again I digress).
Back to Johnny Depp, which gives us Burton.
And Ms. S. realized — once ‘Beetlejuice’ (1988) was brought up — how much of her childhood (and in a way that of any child of the 80s or late 70s) was defined if not dominated by Tim Burton. There’s ‘Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.’ ‘Beetlejuice,’ as mentioned. Two Batman movies, which still hold up. And then ‘Edward Scissorhands.’
Was it downhill from there? Perhaps we’d gotten to Burton via ‘Mars Attacks,’ and that in connection to something else … perhaps ‘The X-Files.’ I know that after episode two, “Squeeze,” we were thinking a bit of Doug Hutchison, whom I knew only from that episode before his tabloid-hot-mess-marriage; Ms. S. knew him from ‘The Green Mile,’ which I’ve not seen. So perhaps it was a discussion of people whose careers peaked a long time ago that led us to Burton, to Depp, to DiCaprio, to Tarantino … I know the links but not the direction. In any case: was it all downhill after Edward?
Surely there were good movies yet to be had, and both Ms. S. and I will defend ‘Mars Attacks.’ But whereas my first instinct was to find the peak with Edward, she saw it in another Ed: ‘Ed Wood.’
Which I’d never seen.
III. Ed Wood
I went to bed after midnight; Ms. S. stayed up later, much later. Her sleep schedule and mine rarely sync. I awoke at 5:30 to feed the cats; she was still up, now at the computer.
When I got up ‘for real’ later and checked Teh IntarWebs, I noticed FaceBook updates indicating that she’d watched ‘Mars Attacks’; my collection of DVDs resting on the spare bed served as further evidence. Before going to bed she left me a note: “You must watch ‘Ed Wood.'”
And so later in the day we did. And I was greatly amused, greatly entertained. An irrelevant side thought that struck me deals with the order in which we watch things. In the case of ‘Ed Wood,’ it’s a mid-career Burton I just saw now after many of his earlier and later pieces; it’s something I saw after coming to appreciate Johnny Depp (and now I feel as if I need to put on ‘The Ninth Gate’ later tonight’); and it’s something I saw after watching five season of ‘Mad Men.’ Watching ‘Ed Wood’ now, one almost gets the feeling that Vincent Kartheiser based his portrayal of Pete Campbell upon Depp’s Wood. The mannerisms are nearly identical in so many scenes.
Of course, I am not the first to draw such a comparison:
- Mad Men Fridays: Season One, Episode Nine “Shoot”
- Nice Young Lady of the Week: Alison Brie
- Finally Placed Pete …
IV. Leftovers
The great thing about a big batch of baked mac & cheese is having leftovers days later. And some things get better after they sit a while … and casserole-y things are often like that.
I made a loaf of bread for Thanksgiving, and I’m down to the last few slices of that, too. Today it was great as part of a chicken breast sandwich, and this evening it was just buttered toast (cooking in the pan with my brussels sprouts, the last of the pound I bought last week).
The cranberry sauce is now gone.
Tomorrow we’ll go to the theater.
