Tim Burton, Nicolas Cage, the Muppets and John Travolta feel the love at D23 Expo

That pirate guy was the showstopper on Day 2 at the Walt Disney Co.'s inagural D23 Expo in Anaheim, but there was a whole lot of show before him at the presentation led by Dick Cook, chairman of Walt Disney Studios. There were famous faces, some great music (and some not-so-great music) and way too many "Old Dogs" puns by Cook during the 100 minutes or so that he promoted the upcoming slate of live-action films from the Mouse House in front about 4,500 cheering fans. Some of the highlights:

* Tim Burton may have gotten the second-biggest ovation (how can you really measure these things in memory?) and, really, he probably deserves a share of the applause that greeted his frequent muse, Johnny Depp, since Burton has shaped so much of Depp's collective screen persona. Burton makes stylish and quirky movies about outsiders and in the hyperbolic corporate Disney setting he seemed like a bit of the sly and smart oddball himself. The "Alice in Wonderland" director came out on stage and immediately corrected studio chief Cook, who had said Burton had got his start as a Disney animator. "I was an in-betweener," Burton said, instead of just letting the error slide. Cook asked the filmmaker why he wanted to adapt "Alice," and Burton answered that one big reason was his disatisfaction with every movie version to date. "Sorry," Burton added, looking at Cook, "I know Disney did one." Cook is a suit, Burton is an autuer, and it was funny watching their clashing rhythms. I can just imagine this is how they talk in meetings, too. Cook asked Burton why this version has been such a challenging production and the director shrugged. "Me." They could do this all day, folks...

* Cook also announced as news that there will be a full-length feature film version of Burton's "Frankenweenie,"  the short film from his early 1980s career, which folks have been writing about for months, but now I guess it's more official.

* John Travolta, wife Kelly Preston and their daughter Ella Bleu Travolta got a warm reception as they came out to promote "Old Dogs," a comedy featuring the whole family and starring the patriarch and Robin Williams as well Seth Green (who, by the footage I saw, gets hit in the testicles quite a lot in the film), Justin Long and Matt Dillon.The movie doesn't look like my kind of film, but I have to say when Travolta put his arm around his daughter with obvious pride and talked about her acting debut in this film, you could feel a surge of emotion in the room. This is a family that has suffered a brutal loss with the death of 16-year-old Jett Travolta and it's hard not to root for them on some level.

* John Travolta had an oddly arched (or perhaps ironically grandiose) line when Cook mentioned the actor's string of success with Disney. "I always appreciated the audience love for me."

* Miley Cyrus sang her hit song, something about climbing or overcoming life challenges with lots of hair-flipping and overwrought vibrato. I don't get it.The crowd didn't seem especially moved by it either, although to be fair I should note that there weren't a whole lot of under-20 consumers in the audience (it is a school day) and I suspect there is not a lot of crossover between Burton's core consituency and the most passionate 'Hannah Montana" fans. At one point, a Cyrus project was mentioned right before a "Wild Hogs 2" reference and the geezer-on-bikes comedy got a more robust ovation. I'm not sure what that says, I'm just passing it on.

* There was a live orchestra playing to a long montage of film moments (more than 20 minutes) from the Disney library and it was pretty fantastic to see and hear. Much better than Miley. The singers on hand were great, too, whether singing to "Mary Poppins" or "Sister Act."

* Director Robert Zemeckis came out to talk about "Walt Disney's A Christmas Carol" and he was wearing a navy-and-powder-blue Hawaiian shirt under a sports coat. Interesting look. Later, the Muppets came out on a three-story riverboat that glided across the stage during a great musical number. I noticed Gonzo was wearing a crazy shirt that suggests that he shops at the same store as Zemeckis. The musical number was great, with about two dozen Muppets aboard the boat crowned with small American flags and blinking white lights. Kermit appeared at the end on top of the old Mark Twain paddle-wheeler and, with his banjo, sang "Rainbow Connection." I got misty -- seriously. Cook said that "very soon" there will be a new feature, "The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made." I thought that was a bit of executive humor, but apparently it's not.

* The most compelling footage? That's easy, it was "Ocean," the Disney Nature film that is simply staggering in its wildlife documentation. It opens on Earth Day. I know I'll be taking my kids.

* The "Prince of Persia" footage looked good but not great to me and "Sorcerer's Apprentice" looked like a movie I might have to skip. Nicolas Cage, looking dapper, came out and spoke warmly about "Fantasia" as "the most beautiful movie ever made" and added that he watches it every year. That was nice, but Cage also made a somewhat strained linkage of this new revival and today's date -- he says he feels a duty to "keep our children smiling all over the world" when he considers the tragedy and dark fears stirred by Sept. 11. Hmm. Okay. Well, let's hope they don't catch a trailer for "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans." Cage got a strong cheer from the crowd and there was a major surge of applause when he said he would be "absolutely" interested in another "National Treasure" film. 

-- Geoff Boucher

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Photo: Matt Lucas stars as Tweedledee and Tweedledum in Walt Disney Pictures' 3-D fantasy adventure "Alice in Wonderland." Credit: Disney Enterprises Inc.

Tim Burton's graveyard cabaret -- career highlights for the filmmaker who turns 51 today

Happy birthday today to Tim Burton, who long ago pulled filmgoers down into the rabbit hole into his own singular imagination.

Burton is 51 today and enjoys a rare status in Hollywood as one of very few contemporary directors who are as big as the films they make and truly unique in the sensibility and vision they put on the screen. Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen and Quentin Tarantino, in their own ways, would make that list, as would Guillermo del Toro and Hayao Miyazaki, but none of those masters has made blockbusters on the scale of Burton. (The 13 Burton-directed feature films to date have grossed $1.3 billion in the U.S. alone.)  Love his work or hate it (and there are plenty of outspoken advocates for both points of view), it's impossible not to recognize a Burton film at this point and anyone who loves film pays attention to each of his releases.

Burton is back next year with "Alice in Wonderland" (check out the trailer if you haven't already seen it) but today we're taking a look back at some of his previous work. Since this is the Hero Complex, let's start with Burton's highest-grossing film, "Batman" from 1989, and its underrated sequel, "Batman Returns." Hard to believe it has been 20 years since Jack Nicholson brought the Joker to life and even harder to believe that it's now only the second most-celebrated portrayal of the greatest comic-book villian ever. Ever wonder what Burton thought of "The Dark Knight"? I asked him, and his surprising answer is here.

 

My favorite Burton movie? I know this is going to be jeered by many of you, but I adore "Ed Wood." There's a spirit to the film that is so playful and loving and bittersweet -- I think it may be the most human of all his films. Depp is amazing in the movie, and it has the role of a lifetime (and an Oscar winner) for the great Martin Landau. Along with Woody Allen's darkly sublime "Crimes and Misdemeanors" in 1989, this gave Landau two marvelous touchstone films in the third decade of his career, which got an early jump start with Alfred Hitchcock's "North By Northwest" in 1959. Burton, Hitchcock and Allen? Pretty good directors there, Mr. Landau. "Ed Wood" was a commercial bomb and I remember that I coaxed a group of friends to go see it at late show and (after too much beer) a few of them were dozing off by the end. I don't care, I thought it was genius that night in 1994 and I still think so today.

Burton likes to stick with actors who understand his vision. Apparently, no one understands it better than Johnny Depp, who has been in six of Burton's films and stars in "Alice" as the Mad Hatter. Here are the trailers for their first collaboration, 1990's "Edward Scissorhands," and the most recent, 2005's "The Corpse Bride."

Not every Burton movie works. I thought "Mars Attacks!" was, well, unwatchable, and the ending of "Planet of the Apes" still has me scratching my head. When they click, though, they can be magic. Take a look back at "Beetlejuice," which (along with the "Ghostbusters" films) really created the template for special-effects comedies that would follow, among them films as varied as "Men in Black" and "Night at the Museum." I was never fully won over to the idea of Michael Keaton as Batman (although he was a good Bruce Wayne) but he was perfect in this ghost movie that has become one of my kids' favorite films despite the 21 years since its release. (And look how skinny Alec Baldwin was!)

What do you think, what's Burton's best film? Leave a comment or, better yet, a birthday wish. I know Tim has checked out the blog in the past and he may see your message.

--Geoff Boucher

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CREDITS: Tim Burton in 2006 at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, photographed by Ricardo DeAratanha/Los Angeles Times.Tim Burton and Johnny Depp photo by Liz O. Baylen/Los Angeles Times.

Disney's D23 Expo in Anaheim may be the start of something special

FOR D23 EXPO DAY-BY-DAY SCHEDULE GO TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST

This is a longer version of a story I wrote with Dawn Chmielewski, the business writer who covers Disney for the Los Angeles Times. Our story ran on the cover of the Calendar section this morning...

Will the success formula of Comic-Con International work for a Mickey Mouse operation?

The leadership at Walt Disney Co. hopes so as it moves forward with the D23 Expo, a four-day event next month in Anaheim that will celebrate -- and sell -- all things Disney with celebrity appearances and slick sneak previews of upcoming films, television shows and theme park attractions.

The approach is pure Comic-Con, the pop-culture festival that has become one of Hollywood's most potent megaphones by providing hard-core fans with insider-access experiences that turn many of them into Internet apostles for movies, television shows and other projects.

Last month, more than 126,000 people attended Comic-Con in San Diego, and films such as "District 9" and "Avatar" enjoyed a strong surge in public awareness after putting stars and filmmakers in the same room as fans hard-wired into Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

Disney was a key player at Comic-Con with Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton appearing before a cheering crowd to promote their 2010 release "Alice in Wonderland," but now the company is looking to separate itself by throwing its own pop-culture party in Disneyland's shadow.

Robert Iger, Disney's president and chief executive, said that the company has, more than any other entertainment outlet, enjoyed decades of support from "very passionate, very ardent" über-fans, but now, in this digital age, that constituency has greater expectations as well as newfound tastemaker power.

"We will be much better served by serving them better," Iger said. "We live in a world where digital communication enables people to express their opinions about things to a much broader set of people. We call it the combustion of digital world of mouth . . . their ability to communicate with others is unlike anything we've seen at any time before."

It's a good time for Disney to reach out to fans -- the recession has been bruising, even for a company with a market cap of $49.8 billion. Disney's profits declined in the most recent quarter with tough times for television advertising, DVD sales and domestic theme park attendance. The film studio posted its first operating loss since 2005, despite the success of Pixar's "Up." Disney's ABC has also struggled, with declines in summer prime-time viewership landing the network in fourth place.

Still, company leaders are sunny about the potential of D23, which is a chance to preach to their most devoted choir, the fans who are true believers in the Disney marketing message, that the company creates touchstones, not just entertainment properties.

The event at the venerable Anaheim Convention Center will be a chance for Disney to promote feature films such as Burton's "Alice," "The Princess and the Frog" and "A Christmas Carol" but also will serve as a big tent for Disney's varied empire. Attendees will not only be offered the chance to buy new teen-pop CDs and vintage animation cels, for example, they also will be pitched travel packages for the Disney Cruise Line.

ABC Entertainment Group President Steve McPherson and stars Patricia Heaton, Kelsey Grammer and Ed O'Neill will be part of a major presence for the network, which has a screening room and an exhibit dedicated to "Lost."

The expo's schedule aspires to be all things to all Disney fans. The Disney Channel will bring the cast of "Wizards of Waverly Place," screen an upcoming episode and stage a musical performance. Pixar fans will be more interested in the final day's slate of events: a presentation by animation guru John Lasseter, a special "Toy Story 3" preview and a digital 3-D screening of the first two "Toy Story" films. There will also be an exhibit devoted to Captain Eo, the sci-fi fantasy collaboration between Disney and the late Michael Jackson. 

The expo will also try to stir interest in Disney's California Adventure, the struggling Anaheim venture that is undergoing a $1 billion reworking and will, in 2012, have a new 12-acre attraction based on Pixar's "Cars." It may also be used to announce the major upgrade to "Star Tours," the somewhat creaky Disneyland ride based on "Star Wars." One thing that won't be there? The Lone Ranger revival (with "Alice" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" Depp as Tonto) is too far off and "is not on the agenda" at the Expo, Iger said, adding that the projects that will be presented will be those that have enough completed visuals to make for an exciting presentation. 

The D23 Expo (the name alludes to 1923, when founder Walt Disney arrived in Hollywood) will begin Sept. 10 with an Iger speech about the future of the company. Iger may take the opportunity to share a favorite anecdote about a fan who stood up at a Disney shareholders meeting in New Mexico and said the company should give its most passionate fans more respect and special access.

"Some of these fans show up at those meetings," Iger said, "because, other than going to our parks, it's been the only way they can feel truly connected."

D23's corporate heritage sets it apart from Comic-Con, which started in 1970 as a scruffy merchant show in a hotel basement. Now bursting at the seams, it has become a world's fair for fanboys.

Conventions in New York and Chicago are cutting into the San Diego event's supremacy as far as Hollywood programming, and it's reasonable to wonder if Disney will also scale back its participation if it finds success in Anaheim. The D23 Expo is $37 a day (or less with multi-day passes) -- for programming that runs from 10 a.m. past 11 p.m.

Disney is not the first corporate entertainment power to create a major dedicated expo aimed at giving fans an insider experience. About 35,000 people attended Star Wars Celebration in 1999 in Denver, organized by LucasFilm, and there have been six editions of the event since, including a 2007 staging at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Lucasfilm is entertaining civic sweetheart deals now for a 2010 encore.

Like "Star Wars," Disney has a world-class array of toys and collectibles, and there will be 20,000 square feet at the expo devoted to merchandise new and old. A Disney Treasures exhibit will feature more than 100 rare items, among them artifacts such as Annette Funicello's sweater from "The Mickey Mouse Club" and Fess Parker's coonskin cap from "Davy Crockett." Iger said he was stunned during a warehouse tour of the pieces, especially a "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" prop of the Nautilus that he called "a jewel."

Iger said some components of D23 may eventually travel beyond Anaheim -- perhaps those vintage items, considering the success of the touring "Harry Potter" exhibit -- but overall the expo is viewed as an annual Anaheim tradition in the making.

The D23 brand goes beyond the expo. It's a new $75-a-year paid-membership fan club that launched in March to provide "a high-end, elite-level access" for intense Disney fans, according to Steven Clark, head of the initiative. It includes a glossy quarterly magazine and members-only special events and advance screenings.

The passion Disney is hoping to tap into is the same one that powers hundreds of blogs that obsess over Disney lore, theme park doings and daily corporate life of the company employing more than 150,000.

The D23 community got off to a slow start, according to Al Lutz, editor of the independent Disney blog MiceAge, but the expo seems to mark a turning point. "To their credit, they have really come to the ballpark," he said. "They've been responsive and listening to the fan community."

Kevin Burk, a 44-year-old Disneyphile living in Papillion, Nebraska, joined D23 on the first day. He plans to spend four days at the Expo in Anaheim – actually, he will arrive a day early, so that he can visit Disneyland.  He’s hoping it will afford him the opportunity to bump into Roy Disney, nephew of company founder Walt, or one of his favorite classic Disney stars.

“If I was to ever run into Julie Andrews, I told my wife that’s the one person I’d probably faint in front of,” Burk said.
 
Burk hopes to catch  the presentations of by Iger and Lasseter. “I’ll see what I can get into,” Burk said. “It’s going to be 8 am to midnight for four days.  You have to pace yourself a little bit. Sugar and caffeine will only carry you so far.”

For Burk, it’s classic Disney and Pixar, for younger fans it may be the special  that Depp or Zac Efron might be among the promised surprise guests. Iger said the fans today demand a deeper experience and D23 will aim to give it a wide number of them.
 
“This is all about – and I hate to sound clichéd – but it’s about making their wish come true,” he said.

-- Geoff Boucher and Dawn Chmielewski

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THE SCHEDULE FOR D23 EXPO IS BELOW...

Tim Burton on past 'Alice' films: 'There wasn't anything underneath them'

Hero Complex contributor Gina McIntyre sat down with director Tim Burton Friday afternoon in San Diego to talk about the very busy schedule the filmmaker is keeping these days. He's just produced the dark, PG-13 rated animated fantasy "9," due out Sept. 9; he's in post-production on his elaborate adaptation of the works of Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"; and he's looking to bring vampire Barnabas Collins to the screen with a "Dark Shadows" movie starring Johnny Depp. Part two of the conversation follows... 

G.M. How challenging has it been for you on 'Alice in Wonderland' since you're marrying several technologies to give the film its unique look? But also, how liberating has it been to utilize these new tools?

T.B.: I don't feel liberated yet, no, only because it's a very strange process and I like what I like. That's why I like stop-motion. On a live-action, you've got actors, you've got sets and that's what I like. This is almost the opposite of that. You've got a lot of pieces and not until very late in the game do you see a finished shot. I think I've yet to see a finished shot. It's quite a scary, daunting process. It's exciting but it's the opposite of what I'm used to. You see a piece of a shot and it's like a puzzle. You're trying to hope and make sure it gets to the right place but you're only seeing one piece at a time.

G.M. Did the process change how you worked with the actors?

 

T.B.: No. Because it's such a long  big process, the key with that is to try to keep that as energetic as quick and moving as possible because otherwise you just get bogged down in technology. We just didn't worry about the technology to begin with and just started to shoot so the actors could keep their energy and their focus. With these kinds of things you're acting against an animated character or something that's not there, so there's a lot of that kind of stuff. 

G.M. The sets and the costumes that Disney has on display here are just beautiful. 

 

T.B.: We had some reality to hang onto there a little bit. It helps, believe me. This is the first time I've dealt with a lot of green screen and it drives you nuts. After a while you start to get kind of jittery and crazy. It's a weird phenomenon. I'd never really experienced it to this degree. The thing is, you can't really deal with Method actors in that scenario. They're in trouble. That was part of the thing, you're going to be working in a void and you're going to be dealing with people who aren't there and you try to suss that out before you work with somebody. You can kind of tell when you meet somebody if they're going to go for it and I like those people anyway. I worked with some new people that I hadn't worked with and they were all great.

 

G.M.: There's so much 'Alice' material. How did you go through and select what to include in the film.

 

T.B.: Linda [Woolverton] the screenwriter, that was the thing I thought she did well and it was a hard thing to do. As books, [the story], it's very episodic, this story, that story. She ended up kind of using a lot of the vibe of the Jabberwocky poem, the weird language, that figures into it. You can't have every character but we tried to keep the few iconic ones, the Hatter, of course, and the Cheshire Cat and the White Rabbit and the March Hare and Red Queen, White Queen, that fit within the story that Linda wrote. Obviously there are a lot of characters that aren't in it. It was more important to take that material and try to make it a movie. Every other version I've ever seen I've never really connected to because it's always just a series of weird events. She's passively wandering through, [meeting] this weird character, that weird character. It's fine in the books, but the movies always felt like there wasn't anything underneath them. That's what we tried to do. Instead of the Hatter just being weird, is get some kind of underneath him, some kind of character underneath him. That's the goal is to give the Alice material a little more weight to it. 

G.M.: That notion of making her less passive is very interesting. Was that something that you talked about with actress Mia Wasikowska?

T.B.: What I liked about her is she's not a big demonstrative actor. She's got that old soul quality, somebody you can see has an internal life and intelligence and a gravity to her and kind of a slightly disturbed quality, which fits into the material. You've got to believe that she's got an internal life. That's what a lot of these stories are, characters kind of working out their issues or problems. You like to find somebody and they don't have to say anything or do anything, but you look at them and you know there's something going on, they have some kind of gravity. 

G.M.: Was that a difficult quality to find in a young actress?

T.B.: I met lots of good actresses but [Mia] just had something different about her that I liked. She's very quiet. It's not even something that you can put into words. I like those kinds of things were you can't necessarily identify it in a verbal or specific way. It's more of a feeling. 

G.M. How long is the post-production process, one year?

T.B.: Well, it comes out in March, so that's when it will end. It will go all the way up to that. It's the kind of project, most of these that use this kind of technology take probably a couple of years longer than we have. I don't mean that as an excuse. In some ways there's something kind of good about just having to do it, but in reality I wish there were more shots done than where we are at this moment. It's been daunting. If you saw how much was missing, you'd be nervous, too. [laughs]

G.M.: Would you do something this technically complex again?

T.B.: Right now it's hard for me to say. Usually you talk about a film, even at the end it's hard, I don't like it. But at this stage all I can think about is how much I've got to do. It's hard to say. I don't really know what the outcome's going to be. Any film you do, you just kind of finish and you wish you could spend a little bit more time on this or that. I don't yet know how much at the end of this I will have felt that I've compromised or not. It's a hard call to know. I don't even think I'm that much of a perfectionist, but it's hard to let go of anything. It's tricky. This one could be pretty rough way I don't know.

G.M.: You've talked about doing "Dark Shadows" next. Is that still the plan?

T.B.: I think so, yes. That's the plan. There was something very weird about that, it had the weirdest vibe to it. I'm sort of intrigued about that vibe. It's early days on it, but I'm excited about it. 

G.M. We seem to be in the midst of vampire-mania, what with "Twilight" and "True Blood" and other projects. What do you make of that?

T.B.: It happens. You look at the history of film and whether it's vampires or witches or wizards or whatever, it's like any great fable or fairytale, it's got a power to it. I think that's why people keep going back to it. There's something symbolic about it that touches people in different ways. It's symbolic for something, I'm sure with everybody it's slightly different but it's still powerful. All great stories, there are about five different variations. I grew up on monster movies and it wasn't until later that I realized it's all the same story basically, but the monsters are great and they're all different and it makes it feel like it's all different. The monsters have more personality than the actors around them a lot of times.

— Gina McIntyre

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Photo: Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter; credit: Walt Disney Co.  

Tim Burton, back at Comic-Con after more than three decades

Hero Complex contributor Gina McIntyre sat down with director Tim Burton Friday afternoon in San Diego to talk about the very busy schedule the filmmaker is keeping these days. He's just produced the dark, PG-13 rated animated fantasy "9," due out Sept. 9; he's in post-production on his elaborate adaptation of the works of Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"; and he's looking to bring vampire Barnabas Collins to the screen with a "Dark Shadows" movie starring Johnny Depp. Part one of the conversation follows... 

G.M.: What's your Comic-Con experience been like so far?

T.B.: I haven't been here in many years. I came here as a student in the '70s and haven't been back since. It's quite amazing how big it's gotten. It's shocking really. It's such a positive energy, there's a lot of passionate people, so it's a bit daunting to show something but that's why you make movies. That's what's great about the environment here. People are very passionate about the environment here and that's again why you make movies so it's exciting to be around that energy. I love seeing people dressed up. It's surreal and amazing and beautiful. I just remember last time I was there, it was some booths and stuff, but the builds that they have, it's incredible.  

G.M.: You mentioned during the Focus Features' panel on "9" that you felt you shared a certain sensibility with the film's director, Shane Acker. I can't imagine that's something you experience too often.

T.B.: I don't. Also, too it was different enough from mine, but I felt a connection to it. Having gone through this process myself trying to get films made and done and how much of a problem it is to have that happen, I thought I could help him with that, I thought I could help protect him from the forces of evil and let him focus on making his film.

G.M.: What specifically did you do to help him get the film made?

T.B.: I suggested the screenwriter who I'd worked with before. What I tried to do, I've been an animator, it's a very strange job. It requires a lot of focus and sometimes you can just get so focused on something, so I felt very lucky to not be in there every day and just be able to look at things and have a fresh perspective. Animation takes so long it's hard to have a fresh view of it especially when it's so in your head. It was luck for me and for [producer] Timur [Bekmembetov] that we could [provide] more of an overview, look at things from a fresh perspective and just kind of help that way. I didn't want to be one of those guys, I liked what he did, so there was no wanting to put my own stamp of approval on it. He could use us however he wanted, and he's very open, which is great. There was no weird ego kind of thing going on. I always felt that real artists don't have that kind of insecurity when it comes to taking suggestions or listening to somebody else's point of view. He was very open to it. That made it very easy to be involved. It was always for the benefit of the film. He took the notes he felt good with. But that's the way you want it. Otherwise, you shouldn't get involved with something if you're going to have to put your own stamp on to it.

G.M.: Did you know Timur before this?

T.B.: No. I'd seen his films. It's great to meet somebody like that. It just brought a whole other perspective too. It was a real international film in the sense. We were first looking to do it in Luxembourg and ended up in Toronto, Paris, London, all over the world. 

G.M.: You've said that we're at an interesting creative point in animation right now. Does a project like this still need a name like yours behind it to help get it made?

T.B.: I don't think so. The technology has gotten to the point where people can actually do this, they don't need a studio to get involved. It also helps doing it for a budget where there's not that pressure that you get when you have a bigger budget film. The fact is the studio was fine on this. The kinds of fights I've had in the past on things didn't really manifest themselves on this. I think it helps that we did it and then went to a studio as well, so it was a different situation. I've been through it, Timur's made films, Jim Lemley, the other producer... I think it allowed Shane to just focus on the film, which I think is a benefit.

G.M. Do you still have to have those kinds of arguments?

T.B.: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. At this point, I expected it to go away, but you'd be surprised. There's not a film that goes by where some major issue [doesn't arise]. I like to be a confrontational person. The movie industry it's a very negative aspect of it. They'll only listen if you go completely ballistic, and you just [want to say], 'Can't we not get to that place where you've got to go nuts?' Some are better than others, but you still have these issues because there's so much involved in making the film. It's not going to go easy. If there were no problems, just making the film is enough of a deal. 

-- Gina McIntyre

 

READ PART TWO: Tim Burton on "Alice in Wonderlad"

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Photo: Tim Burton at "9" panel. Credit: Getty Images

Shane Acker's '9' snags audience with its 'stitch punk' aesthetic

A still image from the upcoming animated movie "9." Credit: Focus Features.

Ever since Shane Acker showed his short film in 2005 at Siggraph, winning the computer graphics conference's Best in Show award, buzz has been quietly building within the animation community about the upcoming full-length version coproduced by Tim Burton.

Today, Acker and Burton shared a clip with an audience intrigued by its "stitch punk" aesthetics, similar to Sony's Little Big Planet game for the PlayStation 3 but much darker. The movie from Focus Features is about a small band of nine rag dolls in a post-Apocalyptic world who are hunted by mechanical monsters intent on feeding off their souls.

The movie is voiced by Jennifer Connelly and Elijah Wood, who plays a protagonist thrust into a mission larger than himself in order to save the world from menacing forces (Hmm, where have we seen Wood doing this before?) It's curious hearing the dolls speak since the original short film had no spoken dialogue. Acker had conveyed a full range of emotion using animations and music.

Wood discussed his character, named "9," in a panel discussion with Burton and Connelly:

He is the innocent coming into a world in which he faced with a quest. In 9, there is so much he has to figure out. He throws a wrench into a society that is already established. It's a fear-based hierarchy. He comes into the world innocent, wanting to understand who he is. What are these machines? How do we get to the bottom of things? He asks the questions everyone is afraid to.

The answers will be revealed soon enough when the movie hits theaters on, you guessed it, 9/9/09.

-- Alex Pham

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Meet the cast: Tim Burton's 'Alice in Wonderland'

 

Work is underway on Tim Burton's decidedly un-Disney adaptation of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," and the principal cast has been announced. The latest additions to be made public are Anne Hathaway (pictured above), who catapulted to fame in "The Princess Diaries" and will reportedly portray the White Queen, and Crispin Glover (center), who is coming off of "Beowulf" (and was so memorable in "Back to the Future") and is slated for the Knave of Hearts role. Johnny Depp (right) is the Mad Hatter in a movie that Burton told me he hoped would have "a gravity that most film versions haven't had."

The filmmaker turns to Depp a lot, of course, (this is their seventh project together) and he also is steady in his screen devotion to his partner, Helena Bonham Carter (pictured below, at left) who will be the Red Queen in "Alice." (Burton's movie, like the 1950s Disney adaptation, will apparently combine the Queen of Hearts from "Alice's Adventures" with the Red Queen from "Through the Looking Glass," but that's a conversation for another day.) The title "Alice" role belongs to Aussie newcomer Mia Wasikowska (middle picture, and you can see some photos of her in the role in England in September right here) while British funny guy Matt Lucas (pictured at right, of the U.K. sketch show "Little Britain") will play the rotund dimwits Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Lots more to come on this film....

 

-- Geoff Boucher

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Scream 2008 Awards are a sign of the times

I went to the Spike TV Scream 2008 Awards and have plenty of things to report back from it. First off, here's a story I wrote that was published on the front page of the Los Angeles Times this morning.

The Oscars present Hollywood as it wishes to be -- refined, glamorous and high-minded -- but on Saturday night at the Greek Theatre, the Spike TV Scream 2008 Awards showed the movie industry as it truly is in 2008: obsessed with superheroes, overflowing with fake blood and relentless in its pursuit to sell popcorn to teenagers. And despite a name that sounds like a B-movie convention, the Scream Awards turned out to be so of-the-moment in their target audience that top studio executives, major stars and A-list directors not only attended, they talked backstage about the show as a sign of the times.

"There's a feeling that film and comic books and all these genres that didn't used to get respect are having this truly dynamic moment right now," said Zack Snyder, director of "300" and the upcoming R- rated superhero epic "Watchmen." "Just look around tonight and you get this feeling things are going into interesting places."

The Scream Awards, which will air Tuesday night on the Spike TV cable channel, are hardly a ratings powerhouse, but you wouldn't have known that from the celebrity turnout. Anthony Hopkins, Samuel L. Jackson, Winona Ryder and Gary Oldman appeared to present or receive awards, and two of the most successful filmmakers alive arrived on stage in dramatic fashion -- "Sweeney Todd" director Tim Burton floated in via hot-air balloon like the Wizard into Oz, and "Star Wars" mogul George Lucas entered accompanied by a marching regiment of stormtroopers.

Tim Burton talks about Johnny Depp, 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'The Dark Knight'

EXCLUSIVE

I got Tim Burton on the phone the other day while he was on the set of "Alice in Wonderland" and I had to admit right off the bat that I was surprised that, with the filming just underway, he was taking the time to chat. "Yeah, well, me too," he said in his droll deadpan, and I wasn't sure whether to laugh or apologize and hang up. Then he let me off the hook. "Actually," he said in a sunnier voice, "we're just about to get going so we'll see how things go. Good, I hope."

I'm guessing things will go quite well for the 50-year-old filmmaker, who seems like the ideal auteur to bring Lewis Carroll's surreal 1865 classic "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" to the screen for a 21st century audience.

Young Aussie Mia Wasikowska will be Burton's Alice, while Johnny Depp is the inspired choice to play the Mad Hatter.

I told Burton that it seems as if Depp (who has other upcoming roles as an Old West hero, a pirate and a vampire) approaches his acting choices the same way a gleeful kid rummages through a trunk of dress-up clothes. The filmmaker let out a loud laugh. "It's true. Yeah we have a big dress-up clothes trunk here. We take it with us wherever we go."

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The Hero Complex is officially supporting Viggo Mortensen for the role of mystery man of the Old West because, after seeing "Hidalgo" and the trailer for "Appaloosa," we just think he does the dusty-trail adventure thing with a nice flair.

George Clooney would also give Disney a powerhouse tandem at the top of this hoped-for franchise, as well as some major opportunity for the type of winking humor that gave "Pirates of the Caribbean" its box-office flair. Clooney may be too old, but we still think he has enough silver bullets in his ammo belt. Depp, meanwhile, may be just five years shy of 50 but still approaches his acting career like a kid rummaging through a trunk of dress-up costumes. Not only will the part-Cherokee Depp be wearing the fringed buckskin, he will also be donning the garb of a pirate, a vampire, a gangster and, um, a guy with a funny hat.

The Oscar nominee has a busy schedule, to say the least. On Wednesday at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Disney gathered the press for a preview of its upcoming major releases and announced that Depp will be back in eyeliner as Jack Sparrow, the rummy scoundrel of "Pirates of the Caribbean," which will have a fourth installment with Jerry Bruckheimer back as producer. The franchise has already pulled in $2.6 billion at the box office. (Bruckheimer will also produce the Lone Ranger movie.)

Other Depp projects coming include a turn as the Mad Hatter in a Tim Burton adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland," which will be a 2010 animated release with a motion-capture approach in the same vein as "Beowulf." It will be Depp's seventh major project with Burton -- and No. 8 will be "Dark Shadows," yet another black-cape affair for the movie-making partnership, this one a remake of the baroque soap opera from the late 1960s and early 1970s about an accursed family in Maine that, we suspect, had a lasting effect on a local youngster named Stephen King.

Depp will also be robbing banks as the gentlemen bandit John Dillinger in Michael Mann's period gangster flick "Public Enemies," due in theaters next year. That film also stars Christian Bale.

-- Geoff Boucher

Johnny Depp photo from December 2007 by Liz O. Baylen/Los Angeles Times

Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger and Jay Silverheels as Tonto, from the Los Angeles Times archives.