Tim Burton’s Gallery of the Weird and Wonderful

Check out the awe­some new gallery over at www.TimBurton.com, which is a teaser to pro­mote upcom­ing limited-edition book The Art of Tim Bur­ton.  The book will con­tain over 400 pages fea­tur­ing 1,000 illus­tra­tions from the imag­i­na­tive (and lov­ably twisted) mind of Tim Bur­ton.  The gallery is com­pletely flash ani­mated, and is one of the coolest and most cre­ative uses of Flash I’ve seen.

Vis­i­tors are invited to user their mouse or key­board to nav­i­gate Stain Boy, the on-screen char­ac­ter who guides you through the gallery.  Kinda like play­ing a video game, you can move Stain Boy through doors, get close-up views of art­work hang­ing on the “walls”, and occa­sion­ally he’ll do some kooky things.  Oh, and be sure to turn your sound up to catch the whim­si­cal Sugar Plum Fairy music.

If you sign up with an email address, you’ll get access to the Pri­vate Gallery, which fea­tures addi­tional Burton-esque good­ness.  Sign­ing up will also get you on the mail­ing list to receive news and updates about The Art of Tim Bur­ton. I imag­ine there’s going to be huge demand for this book, so bet­ter keep your beady lit­tle eyes on this one.

With the first trailer for Burton’s Alice in Won­der­land released ear­lier this week and the announce­ment that both Bur­ton and Depp will begin work on a Dark Shad­ows movie, this is shap­ing up to be one hell of a good week for Tim Bur­ton fans.  Thanks to @simplyburton for shar­ing the gallery news!

5 Reasons Why the World of Warcraft Movie will Suck

Despite yesterday’s major geek­gasm news that Sam Raimi will be tak­ing up reigns as direc­tor of the highly-anticipated movie World of War­craft, I remain pessimistic.

The World of War­craft movie will suck, and here’s why:

1. First, let’s get the obvi­ous out of the way.  As a gen­eral rule, movies based on video games suck.

   Need proof?
   – Super Mario Bros. sucked
   – Res­i­dent Evil (all of them) sucked
   – House of the Dead sucked
   – Silent Hill sucked
   – Laura Croft: Tomb Raider 1 & 2 sucked
   – Dou­ble Dragon sucked
   – Mor­tal Kom­bat 1 & 2 sucked
   – Street Fighter (both of ‘em) sucked

   …I could go on, but this post would get very long very quick.

2. The actual World of War­craft sucks nowa­days.  And things are only going to get worse as Bliz­zard scram­bles to main­tain its revolv­ing door player base.  Bliz­zard may claim to have some­where in the neigh­bor­hood of 11 mil­lion sub­scribers, but for all the new peo­ple sign­ing up, there’s a whole lot of vet­er­ans and hard­core gamers leav­ing Aze­roth, who are dis­en­chanted with many of Blizzard’s recent “fuck you” deci­sions that tend to favor its own pock­ets over those of pay­ing cus­tomers.  With the new Star Wars MMO loom­ing on the hori­zon, Bliz­zard knows it must milk the WoW cash cow for all its worth–in the form of paid fac­tion trans­fers and over­hyped expansions.
3. I like Sam Raimi, I really do.   But just watch Spider-Man 3, and var­i­ous other films Raimi has fucked up.  When it comes to direct­ing, he’s kind of a hack who’s for­tu­nate enough to have cult status/geek cred with the Evil Dead fran­chise.  Sure he makes some damn enter­tain­ing pop­corn hor­ror movies, but is he capa­ble of pulling off an epic fan­tasy film?  I hope his work on Leg­end of the Seeker isn’t an indi­ca­tion…  Check out Raimi’s over-saturated IMDB page, where he’s cur­rently listed to have over 20 projects in pro­duc­tion, includ­ing Spi­der­man 4.
4. It will be told from an Alliance per­spec­tive.  Snore.  I guess even out­side the game the Horde gets no love.  That aside, there are a zil­lion pos­si­ble sto­ry­lines in the World of War­craft upon which to base a movie.  Why choose lamestream Alliance?  I guess two mil­lion Night Elves can’t be wrong.
5. Last year, I included the long-rumored World of War­craft movie on my list of Top 5 Most Antic­i­pated Fan­tasy Films of 2009, which up until recently, Bliz­zard has main­tained would be the film’s year of release.  (I hope they didn’t really expect us to believe that! ) So it wasn’t at all supris­ing to hear that World of War­craft: The Movie is now slated for release in 2012.  TWENTY TWELVE!  Will WoW still be as pop­u­lar three years from now as it is today?

Hope I’m wrong!

Tim Burton Confirms ‘Dark Shadows’

My name is Vic­to­ria Win­ters. My jour­ney is begin­ning. A jour­ney that I hope will open the doors of life to me and link my past with my future. A jour­ney that will bring me to a strange and dark place, to the edge of the sea high atop Wid­ows’ Hill — a house called Collinwood. A world I’ve never known, with peo­ple I’ve never met. Peo­ple who tonight are still only shad­ows in my mind, but who will soon fill the days and nights of my tomorrows.

These are the words of Vic­to­ria Win­ters, and the open­ing to Dark Shad­ows, one of the most mem­o­rable TV shows of all time.  Today, vam­pire mania has sunken its fangs deep into pop­u­lar cul­ture.  Shows like True Blood dom­i­nate tele­vi­sion, while The Twi­light Saga is one of the best­selling book series.  But the Bill Comp­tons and Edward Cul­lens of the world owe their exis­tence to a vam­pire named Barn­abas Collins.

Dark Shad­ows is one of those old shows that makes you feel uncool if you’re unable to remem­ber it when it was on TV.  That’s totally me.  I was born in 1981, 10 years after the last episode of Dark Shad­ows aired.  Being drawn to all things hor­ror, cult, and vin­tage, I dis­cov­ered Dark Shad­ows some years ago dur­ing one of those casual “have you seen any­thing good lately?” con­ver­sa­tions with my par­ents, whom I am grate­ful for hav­ing passed down their good taste in movies and TV shows to me.  If there’s one true thing I can say about myself, it’s that I am never bored, because I always have a nev­erend­ing list of inter­est­ing things to watch, read, or play—and never enough time to do it all.  So some­how or another, through the fond sec­ond­hand rec­ol­lec­tions of my par­ents and at the rec­om­men­da­tions of oth­ers, Dark Shad­ows found its way onto my list.

And a few months ago I begun the long and ardu­ous (but highly enjoy­able) task of watch­ing all 1,225 episodes of Dark Shad­ows.  Yeah, you read that correctly—ONE THOUSDAND TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE!  For any­one else crazy enough to do the same, Net­flix has the entire Dark Shad­ows col­lec­tion on DVD.  I think I’m some­where in the early 300’s, but I can’t be sure.  And I am lov­ing every dark, shad­owy, and weird moment of it!

So I am absolutely THRILLED to learn that Tim Bur­ton has just con­firmed to MTV News that he will begin shoot­ing Dark Shad­ows next year, a fea­ture film based on the TV series.  And, shock­ing to no one, Johnny Depp will star as self-loathing vam­pire Barn­abas Collins, con­firm­ing rumors that have been cir­cu­lat­ing amongst Dark Shad­ows & Bur­ton fans for a long time now.  Both Bur­ton and Depp are known to be huge fans of the show, hav­ing grown up with the gothic soap opera.  I think Johnny Depp will be amaz­ing as Barn­abas Collins, and Burton’s campy, gothic style is per­fectly suited for the beloved TV show that was so deli­ciously strange.  Now if we can just get Danny Elf­man to score, I will be one happy (newly-initiated) Dark Shad­ows fangirl!

Harry Potter and the Half-way Decent Movie

So it’s like 3:30 a.m., and I just got home from the mid­night show­ing of Harry Pot­ter and the Half-Blood Prince.  I could go to bed, but I had to get a few things off my mind first while my mem­o­ries are still fresh.  Legili­mens!

First, the good.  This movie was a LOT of fun.  As one of my Twit­ter pals put it, Half-Blood Prince felt like return­ing to high school and see­ing all of your old friends.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione have always been at the heart of every Pot­ter film, and HBP doesn’t devi­ate from this win­ning for­mula.  The film doesn’t waste any time get­ting right down to busi­ness, and it’s action-packed from start to fin­ish.  From a plot stand­point, it had a lot of ground to cover (as all the Pot­ter films do) and those two and a half hours just seem to fly by.  Over­all it was a solid Pot­ter film, and I’m sure it will hold up to many sub­se­quent view­ings, which are no doubt nec­es­sary to catch all the things you might have missed.  There was just so much going on in this movie it was almost overwhelming.

And now the not-so-good.  I don’t know if this is a byprod­uct of hav­ing been forced to wait an extra 9 months for its release and hav­ing inflated expec­ta­tions or what, but HBP def­i­nitely had its short­com­ings.  The down­side to cram­ming so much stuff in is that there’s quite a bit left out.  And I’m not even one of those book Nazis that insists all movies must be 100% faith­ful to the book; not even close.  I just didn’t under­stand some of the logic behind the deci­sions made in this film’s case.  They had time to throw in a bunch of lengthy scenes that never hap­pened, but they didn’t have time to include the ones that actu­ally did?  I would rather see a film where they’re forced to leave things out due to time con­straints ver­sus just mak­ing up what­ever the hell they want to.  With­out giv­ing any­thing away, the first 10 min­utes of this film is a prime example.

Many parts of this film just didn’t feel like a Harry Pot­ter movie at all when com­pared to the pre­vi­ous five.  I think a lit­tle too much lib­erty was taken, to the point that some of the things that make Pot­ter movies feel like Pot­ter movies was lost–which is really sur­pris­ing, because I felt Yates did such a fan­tas­tic job with Order of the Phoenix.  Maybe I’m expect­ing too much; it’s just Harry Pot­ter after all.  Or maybe I’m just get­ting too old for this shit.  I cer­tainly felt old dur­ing the romcom-y bits when 90% of the the­ater was squeal­ing like giddy school­girls.  It could not have been more appar­ent who this film’s tar­get audi­ence was.

Speak­ing of get­ting old, when did the stu­dents of Hog­warts all turn 30?  I real­ize Daniel Rad­cliffe and com­pany have aged quite a bit since the first film, but I don’t think I saw any younger stu­dents at all in HBP.  You know what else I didn’t see?  Any infor­ma­tion about the Half-Blood Prince what­so­ever.  I feel bad for any­one who has never read the books that tries to watch this film; you will be hope­lessly lost.

For the rest of you–the ones who’ve read the books–despite my pithy com­plaints, there’s a lot to love about the film ver­sion of Half-Blood Prince:

(Warn­ing: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.  Beware!)

Things I liked:

• The bits about Harry & Hermione’s friend­ship, par­tic­u­larly Dumbledore’s “curios­ity.” So cute.
• Jim Broadbent’s turn as Slughorn; great job!
• Aragog’s funeral and Hagrid’s sub­se­quent drink­ing binge.
• Snape bein’ all Snape-ish as only Snape can.
• Happy to see Tonks & Lupin together, how­ever brief.
• Both kids who played Tom Rid­dle (age 11 & age 16) were fantastic!
• Michael Gambon’s Dum­b­le­dore was much bet­ter played this time around.

…And of course,  there were some things that needed improvement:

Things I could have done without:

• Jessie Cave as Laven­der Brown.
• Pan­der­ing to the HP fan­girl set.  Yes I real­ize HBP is the “O.C.” of all the Pot­ter books, but the teen romance por­trayed in this film was just over the top, to the point where I felt like the roman­tic sub­plots over­shad­owed the main one.
• Ran­dom black woman who comes on to Harry in a cafe.  Seri­ously, what is up with ran­dom black char­ac­ters appear­ing in the Pot­ter films?  It’s almost like the direc­tors throw them in there for diversity’s sake.
• The heavy-handed direc­tion.  I swear in some shots you could almost feel Yates think­ing “Hmm, what crazy cam­era wiz­ardry can I do to make this scene look cooler?”
• The Weasley’s house burn­ing down.  Um, WTF??
• Fen­rir Grey­back.  Although an impor­tant char­ac­ter in the book, his pres­ence added noth­ing to this movie.

Things I missed:

• The “feel” and spirit of Hog­warts just wasn’t there for me this time around.
• Did they even bother to put the main char­ac­ters in uni­forms dur­ing classes?
• Where the hell were all the younger stu­dents?  I don’t think I saw even one.
• Dumbledore’s funeral.  I won­der if we’ll see it in the begin­ning of Deathly Hal­lows? I felt the end­ing in gen­eral was kind of a cop-out.
• Cho Chang. I thought we’d at least see her in the back­ground or something.
• Any back­ground infor­ma­tion what­so­ever about the Half-Blood Prince.

P.S.  Did any­one else almost pee a lit­tle bit when Dum­b­le­dore (whom J.K. Rowl­ing pro­fesses to be gay) starts telling Harry how he’s been fond of him since he was a lit­tle boy, and that they need to fig­ure out the deal with the closet??  Unin­ten­tional hilar­ity FTW.