‘Oh, the film is never as good as the book’ – how many times have you heard that? How many times have you said that? Well, we at MostlyFilm have taken that bull by the horns; contemplating the films we’d really like to see, matching directors to novels and novels to directors to get the perfect mix and, just maybe, make a film to beat the book…
Continue reading The MostlyFilm Director and Novel Supermatch Game
by Gareth Negus
Among the many things for which Tim Burton can be held responsible is the fact that I am writing for this website. His second feature, Beetle Juice (1988) was the one that, more than any other, ignited my interest in film. I’m not suggesting it’s the greatest film ever made (that would be Tremors, clearly), but it was among the most imaginative and unusual I had seen up to that point in my life. It introduced me to the idea that filmmakers could take a melange of influences and craft something new and personal from them, and sent me out into the street thinking: I want more like that. (It also introduced me to Winona Ryder, something else for which I remain grateful.)
Continue reading It’s Alive!: Tim Burton’s creative resurrection
by The Tramp
When I was little the witches of fairy tales were frightening creatures with warty hooked noses, long straggly grey hair, impractically long, shapeless black dresses who were fond of turning the broomstick into flying vehicles (obviously they had bums of steel – no comfy sofa flights for them). But not so the witches of movies and television. With the exception of the green faced wicked witch of the west (the original www) and the odd Disney moment, witches are alluring, sexy women with men issues. Because even witches, with their magical powers and their broomstick toughened posteriors are really driven by the male sex. Boys, it’s always all about you.
BY VIV WILBY
I said when it came out that Tim Burton’s film of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Sweeney Todd was his best for a long time. Maybe I got carried away in the moment. A couple of years on, I’m coming round to the view that most of what impressed me was down to Sondheim and not Burton.
I didn’t know the show at all before I saw the Burton film and I’d always been somewhat prejudiced against the whole Sweeney Todd thing. I was scarred by my experience of a dreadful schools’ musical version of the tale (I’m Sweeney Todd the bar-ber, An evil soul I har-bour, I run a little business cutting hair and other things) with which we occupied a couple of ‘music’ lessons in the third year. The few songs that I’d heard sounded difficult and discordant, full of tricky rhythms and rhymes. ‘The Worst Pies in London’ is not a song that makes a whole lot of sense shorn of context and live performance. Continue reading Sweeney Todd
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