How Oz was saved from Tim Burton

Wait, you thought I knew how?

Actually, I have no idea.

It is beyond my imagining that Tim Burton is not the director of Oz: The Great and Powerful. How were we spared this awful fate?

Again, I have no idea.

The fact that there is a sequel -- or prequel, or whatever -- to The Wizard of Oz is an awful enough fate for some people. But let's not forget that this isn't the first time there's been such an attempt to capitalize on the Oz brand. Return to Oz already curdled that particular innocence way back in 1985, taking today's opportunistic remake trend off the hook for the crassness of which it is so regularly and so justly accused.

When it was clear that even sacred cows like The Wizard of Oz would not make it through untarnished, it seemed almost certain that Tim Burton would be the one to tarnish it. Didn't it? I mean, has there been a director in the last two decades more suited to this material, and more specifically, more suited to ruining it?

In fact, as I see on wikipedia, Burton actually was in talks to make this film at one point, and in that iteration of Oz: The Great and Powerful, Johnny Depp was indeed set to star. In that perfectly deadpan and non-gossipy way that it has, wikipedia gives no explanation for the following sequence of events, only listing them as facts:

"Robert Downey Jr. was Raimi's first choice for the part of Oz. When Downey declined, Johnny Depp was linked to the role of Oz with Tim Burton attached to direct. By the end of February 2011, James Franco was in final negotiations to star in this film."

Which is, of course, what ended up happening.

I love the implication in these three sentences that Depp and Burton were a package deal. If you wanted Depp to play Oz, you had to get Burton to direct. Apparently, Raimi could not direct Depp, and Burton could not direct Franco. Thankfully, one of the two of them -- Depp or Burton -- caused the idea to collapse before it could gain any traction. Either that, or someone at Disney looked past the bundles of cash Burton made them with Alice in Wonderland and decided that they just couldn't bear to see the soul sucked out of Frank L. Baum's marvelous world by the erstwhile Mr. Helena Bonham Carter.

Having Raimi as director gives me significantly more hope. He's one of a number of directors -- among them Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro -- who should really be given the opportunity to save some of Burton's many mistakes before he makes them.

Why am I talking about this now, when Burton has a movie in theaters (Frankenweenie) that may actually be both original and good?

Well, I saw the Oz trailer a couple weeks ago and have been thinking about it since then. Also, Dark Shadows wiped out most of my merciful impulses toward the man, such that even any good will generated by Frankenweenie is too little, too late.

The trailer certainly looks good in some ways. But the truth is, whoever's directing it, Oz: The Great and Powerful will probably be a lot closer in quality to Return to Oz than to The Wizard thereof.

A reprieve for Depp and Burton?

If I were to choose the two biggest whipping boys throughout the history of The Audient, it would have to be Tim Burton and Johnny Depp.

Or more specifically, Tim Burton in all contexts, and Johnny Depp as his work relates to Burton's.

(And I have yet to even see Alice in Wonderland. It has more value to me as something unseen that I can assume is terrible, than something that I might end up liking if I actually saw it.) 

None of my previous references to the collaborations between Depp and Burton (and Helena Bonham Carter) have prepared me for the fact that I'm really, really excited to see Dark Shadows.

That's two "really"s, people.

In fact, after Dark Shadows, there isn't a movie I'm this excited to see until Prometheus, which comes out nearly a month from now.

How did this happen?

I'd say the biggest factor in my excitement for Dark Shadows is that it's not a property I'm already very familiar with. It's been nearly ten years since the last Tim Burton movie I really liked, which was Big Fish -- also the last movie of his I would describe as "original." In the interim, he's "put his stamp" on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Alice in Wonderland. The first two were enough to convince me I didn't want to see the third.

But this? This seems delightful. A vampire comedy set in the 1970s. And so what if it started out as a TV show. I'd never even heard of the show, let alone been familiar with it, so as NBC used to say about Thursday night reruns you hadn't seen, "it's new to you." (Or in this case, me.)

Then I think points have to go to the character design, specifically as it relates to Depp. One of the things I have found most off-putting about Burton's recent films is what they've done to poor Johnny Depp. The worst offender was of course his Willy Wonka, a misguided conception of that character if there ever was one. I didn't have a problem with the character design of Sweeney Todd per se, but it was a step backwards again with the Mad Hatter. (And I don't have to have seen the movie to pass judgment on the character design.)

There's something wonderfully mod about his character in Dark Shadows, especially as demonstrated in the poster above. (And how about the Warhol-esque, pop art nature of that poster? Even if it's a collection of the single-head one sheets they are using to promote the movie, rather than an actual poster they are using, it's still very aesthetically pleasing.) The alabaster skin, the spiky hair styled just so, the rectangular shades. Okay, everyone in that poster has alabaster skin. But that speaks to the production design in general. Each of the characters seems to be a fascinating, eye-popping creation who fits perfectly into the stylized environment. The environment has Burton's stamp, for sure, but it's different enough that he doesn't just seem to be resting on his laurels.

And speaking of those other characters, the actors playing them certainly have something to do with my excitement level. There's of course Chloe Grace Moretz, who is just about the best thing going for actors under 18 (either gender). But I'm also really excited about what they've done with Eva Green, who you may remember as Bond's love interest in Casino Royale. She's looking all big-eyed and angular, approaching the kind of thing Burton had going on with his ex-girlfriend Lisa Marie. You may remember her as the Martian girl in Mars Attacks! The similarity is no coincidence.

Mars Attacks! is no masterpiece, but it's a really fun movie that represents Burton in his waning glory days.

If Dark Shadows gives me a little bit of Mars Attacks!, I'll be plenty happy.

And then maybe I'll put away the whip for awhile as far as Burton (or Depp or Bonham Carter) is concerned.

A Kentuckian who can't play a Wisconsonite

The funniest thing to me about The Tourist, opening Friday, is that Johnny Depp plays a widowed math teacher from Wisconsin.

In what universe?

With his gaunt, fashion-magazine looks, his artfully bedraggled hair and his neatly cropped beard and soul patch combination, he looks a lot more like the playboy son of an Italian billionaire than a guy who might wear a piece of cheese on his head at a Green Bay Packers game.

But then, if he looked like a real widowed math teacher from Wisconsin, he wouldn't be a very good match for the equally inaccessible hotness of Angelina Jolie. They asked, but Kevin James just wasn't available.

What a long way for a boy from Kentucky to come.

And that's what's so funny about it -- Johnny Depp is not the progeny of French beatniks or Spanish guitar players or some other combination of exotic, beautiful people who would explain his oh-so-continental feel. Nope, he was born in Kentucky to a waitress and a civil engineer. And though they were/are probably beautiful people -- they produced Depp, after all -- they weren't fancy. In fact, if they hadn't moved a bunch, ultimately ending up in Florida, we might know Johnny Depp as having a southern twang.

But this Kentucky boy has come so far that not only does he no longer seem believable as a character from the midwest, he barely even seems believable as an American. Someone European, maybe -- someone from an out-and-out fantasy world, much more likely. And this is not a knock on Depp or his acting abilities. It's just that he has so associated himself with otherworldly roles that he has become kind of an otherworldly person.

And in this sense he is the perfect person to play opposite Angelina Jolie, who is becoming increasingly less able to play a human being. Jolie's best role these days is a kind of android, a mannequin come to life -- perfectly beautiful, and incapable of expressing a human emotion. Has Jolie done good work in her career? Definitely. She's been convincing from time to time. But she has become so synonymous with international stardom and glamor and beauty that she is not really capable of playing a sympathetic human anymore. There's something cold and robotic about her. It's kind of the same problem that Megan Fox has -- she's too beautiful to be accessible.

But I actually do have minor hope for The Tourist. Not enough to see it in the theater, especially not during a busy movie season that figures to get a whole lot busier in the coming weeks. But hopeful enough, and that's based mostly on the director with possibly the longest name in the history of movies: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (that's 29 letters), who directed the 2006 best foreign film winner The Lives of Others. The big Hollywood gloss of this film does not necessarily resemble the smaller scale of that film, but we generally give people the benefit of the doubt when they've made one great film, thinking that those same sensibilities could produce another.

And Johnny Depp could also convincingly play a midwestern math teacher, but I have my doubts.

Boycott!

I'm late! I'm late!

For a very important boycott!

I'm late because if I had really wanted to organize a successful boycott of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, I would have started weeks ago. Oh, I wrote negative things about it on my blog exactly two weeks ago today. But if I really wanted my boycott to have any effect on this weekend's box office, I would have taken out advertising in the newspapers, hired a skywriter, and had a get together at my house to construct picket signs, where I would have ordered pizza and served homemade cookies to all my volunteers.

Because if we don't boycott Alice in Wonderland, and the movie makes more than $80 million (that's what I'm expecting) at the box office this weekend, won't that just encourage Burton, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter to continue murdering classic stories by sapping them of all their inherent joy?

I have to stop here to acknowledge that Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a book with a significant amount of darkness in it. I wouldn't expect, nor would I want, some dopey G-rated version that was about as insightful and hard-hitting as Disney's latest Winnie the Pooh movie.

But does this movie have to look so dingy and depressing?

Yes, it does, because Tim Burton made it. "Dingy and depressing" is his one and only speed these days.

I say "these days" because there was a time when it was different, wasn't there? When Burton was acquainted with the actual concept of joy? I consider Beetlejuice to be quite joyful, in its way. Same with Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, and especially Big Fish, which is the most recent time Burton has done anything approaching watchable, in my estimation.

But maybe I'm wrong about this as well. Maybe this is the way Burton has always been, and what's changed is my ability to tolerate it. Maybe I've reached my personal saturation point for dark and depressing fairy tales starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

There's evidence to support this, and it has everything to do with old Burton movies seen for the first time by people I trust. For example, I have a friend who only just saw Edward Scissorhands for the first time within the last couple years. It didn't have the magic for him that it had for me. In fact, quite the opposite -- it was just more proof to him that Tim Burton may never have been good. And the only reason that someone like me thought they fell in love with his movies was because I was 16 when Edward Scissorhands came out, I probably had something of a wicked crush on Winona Ryder, and Burton's twisted world view spoke to my over-developed teen angst. It's the same reason a 16-year-old might go see Alice in Wonderland this weekend and think it's the greatest movie ever made.

Hence this attempt at a boycott.

And when you come to think about it, I had my own experience like my friend's Edward Scissorhands experience with Burton's first movie, Pee Wee's Big Adventure. I only just saw this in 2005 for the first time. I considered my viewing long overdue, because friends had raved to me about it for years. So when I finally did watch it -- with my then-girlfriend, now-wife, who had also never seen it -- I was completely underwhelmed. "That's it?" I remember thinking. What I assumed should have been a gleefully unhinged and eccentric experience was, instead, a gloomy and joyless one.

"Gloomy" and "joyless" are, of course, synonyms for "dark" and "depressing."

Like I said, I wouldn't want to turn Tim Burton into Robert Rodriguez, who has kind of the opposite problem -- there's too much weirdly amped-up joy and color in the movies he now makes. But Burton's unending gray palettes are also wearying.

Where's the wonder, Tim? Where's the sense of childlike awe?

So yeah, I'm boycotting. It certainly helps my resolve that I'm trying to save money right now, and that if I weren't specifically boycotting this movie, I'd probably feel compelled to shell out $16 for a screening in IMAX 3D. I'd rather only give Alice in Wonderland whatever negligible amount of money it will eventually cost me to rent it.

Because I'll have to eventually see it, right? How else will I have enough ammunition for my next Tim Burton rant?

Fruitful partnerships -- and those that aren't

I had a couple different possible approaches to discussing Shutter Island, first and foremost being that it seemed like an unusual movie for Martin Scorsese to be directing. So unusual, in fact, that the studio didn't hesitate to bump it out of the fall release date it was plenty ready for, a release date enjoyed by every Scorsese fiction film since The Last Temptation of Christ in August of 1988. You have to go all the way back to The King of Comedy in February of 1982 to find a Scorsese non-documentary released in any of the months between January and July.

Simple reasoning: Movies released in the fall get considered for Oscars; those released in the winter, spring and summer usually don't. Scorsese has been nominated for six Oscars as director, but Paramount was reasonably confident there wouldn't be a seventh in the offing for Shutter Island. Not that it's bad, probably -- I hope to find out for myself this weekend. Just that it's a genuine genre picture, something that might usually go to a hot young foreign and/or music video director, not someone of Scorsese's stature and career achievements. In fact, in ways, it doesn't look like a Scorsese picture at all.

Of course, in other ways, it looks exactly like a Scorsese picture, and that's what I want to talk about today. Specifically, the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio has become almost a direct tip-off that Martin Scorsese was behind the camera. Scorsese hasn't made a movie without DiCaprio since Bringing Out the Dead in 1999. More tellingly, DiCaprio -- who, as an actor, works more regularly and promiscuously -- has worked with Scorsese in four of his last eight films.

It's pattern behavior for Scorsese, who made Robert De Niro his muse in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. And it's a successful pattern. Just as we never got sick of seeing De Niro appear in Scorsese films, even people who don't generally like Leonardo DiCaprio have to admit he's been a force working alongside Scorsese. In fact, you could almost say that DiCaprio has Scorsese to thank for gaining a reputation that exceeded "Titanic pretty boy and generally decent actor." Of course, the mainstream quality of Titanic was really the exception rather than the rule for DiCaprio, but those unfamiliar with his early work knew him only from James Cameron's recently dethroned box office champ. The triumvirate of Gangs of New York (which, for the record, I did not like), The Aviator and The Departed established DiCaprio as someone who deserved to be compared to De Niro, and in fact helped refocus Scorsese into a new stretch of highly effective filmmaking, after he'd meandered off the path with Kundun and Bringing Out the Dead.

But we all like variety -- me especially -- so it would be fair to greet Shutter Island with proclamations of outrage over their apparent mutual artistic laziness. "Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio together again?" Maybe you're saying that, but I'm not. I'm looking forward to both this and the next two collaborations they've announced.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same thing for a different set of collaborators, who have truly come to define what it means to be artistically lazy. And they are -- you may have guessed it by now -- Tim Burton, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

With the release of Alice in Wonderland two weeks from now, Depp will have appeared in seven films directed by Burton, and Bonham Carter will have appeared in six. Both actors will have appeared in four straight Burton movies. As it just so happens, those are four straight terrible Burton movies. Okay, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride wasn't terrible (but it was pretty bad), and the verdict is still out on Alice in Wonderland. But I can say with absolute confidence that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Sweeney Todd were both rotten, rancid abominations. It's those two movies in particular that make me wonder why any of the three of them keep going back to the same poisoned well. It's like Tim Burton is doing his best M. Night Shyamalan impersonation -- he keeps making bad movies (with many of the same actors), and they keep giving him more money to make more bad movies, in which those same actors participate.

But I'm going to save most of my vitriol about Alice in Wonderland for two weeks from now. That kind of thing deserves its own post, don't you think?

Depp vs. Bale

There's a grudge match going on in theaters this week, but it's not between John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent trying to reel him in.

Actually, it's a showdown between Hollywood's two biggest stars.

And, it's only in my head.

But don't tell me I'm the first one who looked at the cast of Public Enemies and thought "Damn -- there's no one bigger in Hollywood than those two."

Seriously, who would you slot in ahead of them? I'll give you a moment. Still nothing? That's because these guys are it, the be-all and end-all when it comes to Hollywood stars.

Times sure have changed, haven't they?

It's a sign of the Hollywood we live in now, where the stars are not STARS like they used to be, in capital letters. Just ten years ago it seemed like we needed only a single name to identify our biggest stars: Tom, Arnold (but not Tom Arnold), Bruce, Julia, Mel, Harrison, Denzel. Okay, maybe you'd have to clarify which Tom you were talking about -- Cruise or Hanks. But there was little doubt about who was on top of this heap.

Now? It's not quite so clear, is it? We've slowly transitioned into an age in which the most bankable names don't seem like larger-than-life personalities. Sure, if you're Johnny Depp, you can't get this far just by being a wallflower. But doesn't it still seem like he's kind of quiet and unassuming, the kind of guy you still sort of feel should appear only in indie movies?

And speaking of indie movies, what about Bale? This guy once had indie cred all over the place. You're talking about a guy who played Patrick Bateman in American Psycho and Trevor Reznik (for which he lost 63 pounds) in The Machinist. Sure, now we think of him as Batman and John Connor, but don't we have to look back, scratch our heads and wonder how we got to this point? I mean the guy is weird.

I suppose I would get sued by the estate of Brad Pitt if I did not mention him in this conversation. But I think even Brad may have been surpassed by these two meteoric stars in terms of his ability to put asses in the seats.

Meanwhile, they've all got to watch their backs for Shia LaBeouf.

Shia LaBeouf? Who ever thought one of the biggest stars in Hollywood would have such an inaccessible, French-inflected name? And be barely 20 years old? Yet ladies and gentlemen, I give you Shia LaBeouf.

We can't forget either about the box office king, Orlando Bloom, whose films have (I believe) grossed more than anyone else, compliments of the Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean trilogies. I think Sam Jackson might be nipping at his heels courtesy of the last three Star Wars movies and, well, the fact that he appears in 14 movies a year. But yeah, Orlando Bloom -- a fey Englishman who looks like a stiff breeze might knock him over.

Who else you got? What about women? Jennifer Aniston? Angelina Jolie? I'm not really sure.

So what exactly is happening here? Are we going through a star outage, or are we just becoming more sophisticated in our tastes? Ask anyone ten years ago, and they couldn't have told you that a movie starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale being released on July 1, 2009 would contain Hollywood's two biggest stars. But the facts themselves are indisputable.

And to me it seems like a good thing. It represents moving away from muscles (in the case of Depp) or traditional good looks (in the case of Bale), though I guess many a person would retort that Depp can be plenty muscular and Bale plenty handsome.

But they just don't seem like the top names in Hollywood. They're guys who have shunned the spotlight rather than courted it, though let's also admit that's mostly an act -- the very regularity of a person's involvement in the film industry makes anonymity impossible. But their act has convinced us that they are reluctant stars, whose $20 million paychecks are less interesting to them than the idea of doing good work.

And they're both opening in Michael Mann's Public Enemies today.

But should we expect a stratospheric, Transformers-sized box office this weekend? I don't think so. Maybe it's the x-factor of the period piece. Maybe it's the lack of a bankable female lead. (Let's just say that a lot of ticket buyers find themselves more acquainted with Transformers' Megan Fox than Enemies' Marion Cotillard).

Or maybe, if the cash doesn't roll in, maybe it will be an indication that big stars really have lost their drawing power. Maybe there are fewer and fewer people we'll see these days just because they're in something. Maybe we care more about reheated nostalgia and the ever-improving visual effects used to support them, than we do about stars.

After all, who needs the real Arnold Schwarzenegger when you can put a digital one in Terminator Salvation?

With that terrible movie, which just so happens to star Bale, not yet having stumbled to $125 million at the U.S. box office, this weekend could be a bellweather indeed about the status of Hollywood's newest standard bearers.

Hollywood's least creative thinker

One of the least surprising things I learned in the past year was that Tim Burton is filming his own adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Starring -- you guessed it -- Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

Of course he is.

You see, Mr. Burton may once have been considered one of Hollywood's most creative talents. But now he has to be considered one of its laziest, not to mention one of its most predictable.

Watching Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street on Saturday night was a pretty good reminder of that.

Disagree? Well, let's consider the man's career on the whole if we want to follow his dispiriting trend downward. Not only has nothing in his recent films sprung from his own mind, as he's gotten himself involved in an alarming number of adaptations of famous works originated by other people, but even when his source material is not directly apparent, he's busy alluding to his own previous works.

Without further comment, I shall begin.

Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985). So much for my whole "Tim Burton used to originate his own ideas" theory. His feature debut was the big-screen version of the beloved TV show starring a pre-scandal Paul Reubens. And though I probably saw this for the first time too recently (2005) to have "gotten it," it's among the favorite movies of some people whose opinions I respect.

Beetlejuice (1988). This is what I will always consider the consummate Tim Burton film -- that is, if I'm speaking nicely about the man. If I'm speaking ill, that honor might go to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and represent something entirely different about him. Anyway, this film established the "Tim Burton style" that would become our template for what to expect from him -- and ultimately, a creative crutch that would keep him from testing his own boundaries.

Batman (1989). All hail Tim Burton! Everyone loved the man when he brought the caped crusader to life in a way utterly free from the camp that had characterized his previous screen incarnations. (Unless you consider Jack Nicholson's glorious vamping to be "camp"). His dark and twisted Gotham City was what we wanted from Gotham City, and who knew the jesterly sprite from Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) could be so pensive and brooding?

Edward Scissorhands (1990). Another home run. This is what I consider Burton's best film. His first of an increasingly ridiculous number of collaborations with Depp was a deeply sensitive consideration of "otherness" in a pastel alternate-1950s universe full of sameness. Also, who knew Anthony Michael Hall could play a buff jerk? A masterpiece that manages to be whimsical and downbeat at the same time. What may be most impressive in terms of total responsibility for the creative vision was that Burton also served as a screenwriter on this film, the only such time he has done that, despite a few "screen story" credits, which is not the same thing.

Batman Returns (1992). Some considered this to be even better than the original Batman -- not me, but some. (I guess I was the only one who thought Michelle Pfeiffer was over the top in this, and not in a good way, like Nicholson was). It proved that Burton still had it, finding new life in familiar territory (which can be hard, but which has become his pattern), and it was the rare sequel that was pretty much as well received as the first movie. What's more, Burton had the good sense to get out of this series and let Joel Schumacher destroy it. Today's Tim Burton probably would not have done that.

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). While Burton only produced this film, leaving the directing to Coraline director Henry Selick, this was as Tim Burton-y as any Tim Burton film out there (and definitely hearkens back to Beetlejuice). He also got credited for the screen story and the production design. While I don't love this film the way some devoted fans do, I recognize its singular creative vision. I found it a little too dark for children in spots -- Santa Claus on a torture rack? -- but I don't for a moment doubt its supreme historical significance.

Ed Wood (1994). This might be characterized as his most ambitious/mature film to date, as it dealt with a real historical figure who could not be totally molded to fictional whims. I don't have a real distinct memory of Ed Wood, but I remember it being a triumph, and of course it earned Martin Landau an Oscar.

James and the Giant Peach (1996). Producer for Selick again. I thought this movie was a mess, but I thought I should mention it because I mentioned The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Mars Attacks! (1996). Burton's first genuine love-it-or-hate-it film. I guess I can say I loved it, though I recognize this movie is majorly flawed. Still, those Martians were a wonderful creation -- ack ack ack ack! -- and the film was much more gruesomely violent (in a good, sometimes even chilling way) than I thought it would be. A gloriously tactile spoof of 1950s alien movies. But since it's a large, expensive, special effects-laden satire, it was never going to be everybody's cup of tea.

Sleepy Hollow (1999). Burton's starting to lose some people at this point, but not me. Like Bram Stoker's Dracula, this movie was all about the production design for me. I loved the powdered wigs, the quill pens, the sprays of arterial blood as heads were chopped off, and the entire look of the village of Sleepy Hollow. The story was a bit goofy, but I didn't care. You might say this was a preview of future failings in terms of story.

Planet of the Apes (2001). And Burton drops off a cliff. Okay, it wasn't that bad. But it was pretty bad. However, you could say that Burton kind of went outside his comfort zone with this one. Yeah, it's still Burton-y material, but there's a serious lack of gothic stylings on a planet of apes -- no moldering mansions, no obvious visual components to accompany perpetual collaborator Danny Elfman's score, no characters with the skin color of white pancake makeup. Maybe it was the inclusion of Mark Wahlberg that made it feel so little like the Burton we'd seen before, which at this point was still a quality we desired from his films. Another disturbing note is that this is his second straight update of previously created material. I see a trend forming.

Big Fish (2003). And the good Burton is back again. Though I willingly acknowledge that it could just have been me hanging on with him longer than I should have. While I had a very good first impression of this film -- and will admit to getting teary at the end -- I have a sense looking back on it that it probably emotionally manipulated me. I'm not immune to emotional manipulation. Still, who better to interpret the tall tales of the world's most embellishing storyteller -- or is he? -- than Burton? You are free to disagree on this one.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). Isn't it amazing how quickly someone becomes a total hack? I recognize there are disagreements out there. But this was now Burton's third remake in his last four films, and what a garish, ugly and dispiriting remake it was. During the first 20 minutes, when we were introduced to yet another moldering city, I at least thought it was a handsome enough moldering city, and I had high hopes. But once foot was set inside the chocolate factory, this movie went completely off the rails. Everything that was good about the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was forcibly driven out and beaten into some kind of twisted obscenity. Depp is terrible as the freakish, purple-suited Wonka, not the gleeful (but still mildly twisted) Gene Wilder, but some kind of inscrutable mental patient divorced from space and time. If you like this film, you might argue that Burton was intent on extracting the true darkness that's always been present in this story. But if you are attracted to the lightness and charm of the original tale, you will find it nowhere here. And the songs ... such woeful replacements for the originals we know and love.

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005). And here vanity takes over a bit. Couldn't it have just been called Corpse Bride? There are things to like in this film, the third stop-motion animation movie he's had a hand in. For one, I was glad to see him embrace the stylings of an artist who has clearly inspired him throughout his career -- Edward Gorey. But at its core, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride is like a warmed-over mix tape (forgive the mixed metaphor) of all his previous works, most notably Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas. It probably succeeds on some basic level, but it's as forgettable as Elfman's unhummable songs. It seems strange to level such a charge against a film that obviously required so much work by so many people, but this film is downright lazy.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007). Drudgery. Pure drudgery. So far has Burton retreated inside his world of gloom that there's only one sequence of pure daylight in this entire film. Whereas the sets might have stood out in one of his previous efforts, here they are so poorly differentiated from each other that they blend into the murky grayness of the background. It's Burton embracing his R side again with buckets of blood and an intentional atmosphere of pervasive sorrow. But is it anything other than that? The plot is utterly without interesting developments, and the motivations of key characters are nothing short of bizarre. What's worse, the best songs from Stephen Sondheim's original musical were not even included. I'm not one to quibble with the way an adaptation differs from its source, but I guess I did have high expectations for this based on having seen a filmed version of the Broadway musical, which featured Angela Lansbury in the role of Mrs. Lovett, here played by none other than wife and constant collaborator Helena Bonham Carter. Those expectations were utterly dashed. It's better than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but that's about all I can say for it.

Alice in Wonderland (2010). It's anybody's guess. But really, do you have high hopes?

You might argue that my analysis of Burton's body of work is mostly complimentary, and only on a few films did I really unleash my vitriol. And you'd be right. After all, I felt enthusiastically about a film of his that was released only six years ago. Could it be just a losing streak? Could it be possible that Tim Burton still has a soul?

I don't think so. Yet I have seen every single film he's directed. Aren't many directors I can say that about, but I can say it about him. I keep going. It's like I have the same problem with him that I have with M. Night Shyamalan. I know it won't be good, but I still keep going.

Yet I suspect that my opinion of Mr. Burton is not shared by the general public, or by his peers. After all, wasn't Johnny Depp nominated for an Oscar for Sweeney Todd? And didn't Sweeney Todd actually win the Oscar for best art direction? I could argue that it was the worst art direction in any Burton film. The damn thing actually won the Golden Globe for best musical or comedy, I now see. Eighty-six percent of critics supposedly gave it a favorable review, according to Rotten Tomatoes. Maybe it just means I don't know what I'm talking about.

But I think there are those of you out there who share my pain. Who see a guy who once really captured our imaginations, and now just captures our $12 based on his name recognition.

I'm a guy who loves versatility. One of the reasons I was so blown away by The Wrestler was that it was so different from Darren Aronofsky's previous film, the impenetrable and utterly fantastical The Fountain. You might say Aronofsky couldn't have done more of a 180 in terms of subject matter and fidelity to realism. That's the making of an interesting artist. That's an oeuvre I want to watch.

But why should Burton change his ways if we -- the royal we -- keep throwing awards his way?

For many years, Burton created monsters. And now we've created one in him.

I know I've already taken up altogether too much of your time, but just for fun ...

The Top Ten Films Tim Burton Should Have Directed, But Didn't:

10. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)
9. Frankenstein (1994)
8. The Crow (1994)
7. Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)
6. Interview with the Vampire (1994)
5. Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
4. The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
3. Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
2. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
1. From Hell (2001)

It occurs to me -- how could he never have directed a vampire movie?

I can't wait for Tim Burton's Rocky Horror Picture Show in 2012.