Tim Burton

Tim Burton

Fill in the gaps in this biography of Tim Burton

Tim Burton was  born in 1958, in the city of Burbank,California.

He remains without question one of the most original film makers working in the movie industry today.

Indeed, his talent and originality have kept him at the top of the profession where he occupies a very special place, somewhere between the mainstream and the avant-garde, in that region of cinema occupied by artists ______ worldview is _______ unconventional that it attains popular appeal.

In 1989, Tim Burton directed the hugely known Batman which, although his less personal film, was one of the most famous movies of all time and gave him unprecedented succes in Hollywood, considering the originality and adventurousness of his earlier films (for example Beetlejuice in 1988).

Edward Scissorhands (1990), another hit, saw him at the peak of his directing powers and established a fruitful working in partenership with actor Johnny Depp who played in his 2005 film version of Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and who became one of his most esteemed parteners since their first film together.

In 1992, Batman Returns was a much darker film than the original, a reflection of how much cinematographic freedom Tim Burton had won (it is said that Warner Bros were reputedly unhappy with the final result).

And even in his film Ed Wood (1994), his loving tribute to the life and work of the legendary ‘Worst Director of All Time’ Edward D. Wood, Jr., was a box-office disaster, it got some of the best critics of Burton’s career.

In fact, Tim Burton is famous  both for his dark, quirky-themed movies like Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, or Dark Shadows (2012) and for blockbusters such as Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Batman, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland (2010), one of his most  famous films, which became the fifth highest-grossing film of all time.

Burton has directed 18 feature films as of 2014, and has produced 12 as of 2012  (among which the very nice Chrismas tale called The  Nightmare Before Chrismas in 1993).

All in all, Tim Burton’s films consistently challenge the spectator’s mind, push forward the industry of filmmaking and bring to life previously unthinkable characters/ movies (like Edward Scissorhands).

Taken as a whole, his work resides on the confrontation between the fantastic and the thriller, and the consequences of these two worlds intermingling.

Big Fish, Burton’s 2003 effort, is no different. And meanwhile , somehow, it is not really the

same.

On the surface, it would appear to have all the aspects of a classic Burton film: a magic screenplay, fairy-tale characters, flights of imagination, forces of nature (as well as the supernatural), far-fetched situations and vastly imaginative visual style and imagery. The movie is, in fact, entirely packed with fanciful episodes that it begins to feel like a loose adaptation of The Odyssey, told from the mouth of an aging character named Ed Bloom, a story-teller and dreamer who sees the world with beautiful eyes.

No Guns Allowed

It feels like just yesterday I was made the post about Snoop Lion's song "Lighters Up" and relating it to one of the four notions. And yet here I am again with a diferent song from Snoop "No guns allowed". But before we talk about the song I will tell you a little bit about the the various artists that made this song. First off is Snoop which is a famous rapper who comes from California, he started his career as a rapper but then became a reggae singer and now came back to rapping, so even if in this song he sings I am going to refer as him as a rapper. The second rapper in the song in Drake, Drake is also a very famous rapper from Toronto that is much younger than Snoop and even if they are both rappers they don't have the same rapping style , Drake's style is trap rap and Snoop's style is egotrippin' rap. And last but not least, the chorus singer in Cori B. , she actually is Snoop's daughter and this song is their second collaboration. 

Now let's talk about the song, their is one main message that the artists want to forward , and this message is that they want peace. But their are also some other messages that are also very important.

In the first verse, Snoop says "Money makes a man and that's a crime" , this small verse is actually very important because it's one of the secondary messages in which Snoop wants to critizise the fact that society doesn't consider poor people like real people just because they are poor and treat them like dirt and THAT'S A CRIME.

To understand what comes next we have to remember that Snoop has had a gang affiliated carrer in which guns and violence where part of his daily life. But now that Snoop has 3 children he doesn't want them to have to grow up in a violent world as he did ( let's not forget all the east coast - west coast gang wars there was at that time).Then Snoop says to put the music up because he needs to hear his toughts , for Snoop music is not only a way to express yourself but also to relax and to think about your problems.When Drake takes over he raps about the shootings in Toronto ( where Drake was born) and about the two kids, Shyanne and Joshua that where killed in the shooting. Drake dedicated a tweet in their memory and in the song he expresses how sad he was when he learned about the shooting but couldn't go to Toronto to console the families of the victims.

This song can easily be related to the "notion of progress" because the song is about social progress and not only between the rich and the poor but mostly about peace , because it is something that almost everyone wants but that is very dificult to acheive.

Pop art exhibition

Today I'm going to talk about the "Pop art Myths" exhibition that took place from June 10 to September 14, 2014 in the Thyssen- Bornemisza Museum located in Paseo del Prado, 8, Madrid. Even if the exhibition is no longer available in the museum , you can still visit it virtualy on their official website.

Paintings from many artists where present at the exhibition, some are not very famous but some others are the most famous of the pop art movement such as Andy Warhol and Liechtenstein who are not only the most famous but also the most present artists in the exhibition . These two artists' paintings are simple but very interesting, some such as Look Mickey, 1961 painted by Lichtenstein or Double Mickey Mouse,1981 by Andy Worhol. These two paintings are very simple but in the same time have hundreds of interpretations.

As a senior student in literary studies I think Pop art is a very interesting movement , which doesn't mean that all the paintings are masterpieces but most of them are really interesting, In the Thyssen museum exhibition, there was a painting that really caught my eye, Still Life #·34, 1963 painted by Tom Wesselmann.

Still life #34

1963

Tom Wesselmann

Aquavella Galleries

This painting was painted with a regular technique which is acrylic and collage on panel , but what I think is special about this painting is it's shape, it's circular with a 120.7cm diameter. I think the size tells us a bit a about the painting before we see it, because the paintor didn't chose a precise size he just cut a circle on panel and painted it , also with the fact the painting is round unlike others that are usually rectangular. The fact that the painting is round and it's bright colors is what made this painting get my attention at first but then after looking at it for several minutes it is also what is painted that interested me a lot. The pear, the milshake, the cigarret pack, the Coca-cola, the nuts and the flours are all daily american life objects but which one by one make nothing but together they form a (in my opinion) very beautiful painting which maybe doesn't really have a secret message that it wants to forward exept that with daily life objects we can make something amazing. After all I think that's pop art's main objective, to show that anything can be transformed into art, from daily life objects or habits to comics.

If you live in Sydney, Australia and you want to check out a pop art exhibition , well YOU'RE IN LUCK because for $20 you can see the exhibition in the Art Gallery NSW until March 1st 2015. 

Hope you liked my review and hope to see you soon in a new review. Cherio!

Review 1:

Despite some small stutter steps, Collapse Into Now is easily the best R.E.M. album since the trio lost its way.

Review 2:

If you like REM because of the songs "Man of the moon", "Electrolite", "Imitation of life", "Everybody hurts"... then don't go for this album. Fast electric guitar songs which aren't high-quality. Only the last two tracks and tracks 3,4,5 are worth listening

http://www.metacritic.com/music/collapse-into-now/rem

R.E.M. marked the point when post-punk turned into alternative rock. When their first single, "Radio Free Europe," was released in 1981, it sparked a back-to-the-garage movement in the American underground. While there were a number of hardcore and punk bands in the U.S. during the early '80s, R.E.M. brought guitar pop back into the underground lexicon. Combining ringing guitar hooks with mumbled, cryptic lyrics and a D.I.Y. aesthetic borrowed from post-punk, the band simultaneously sounded traditional and modern. Though there were no overt innovations in their music, R.E.M. had an identity and sense of purpose that transformed the American underground. Throughout the '80s, they worked relentlessly, releasing records every year and touring constantly, playing both theaters and backwoods dives. Along the way, they inspired countless bands, from the legions of jangle pop groups in the mid-'80s to scores of alternative pop groups in the '90s, who admired their slow climb to stardom.  http://www.allmusic.com/artist/rem-mn0000325459/biography

My own review: 

I had never heard about R.E.M. before yesterday, but as soon as the song started a I had a bad feeling about it , I'm not a rock/punk fan but I still do like some of them, but this song , It may have been one of the worst songs I have ever heard. Hell! It's the worst song I've ever heard after "Hot problems"(www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQHx_GPKccY). The singer is just awfull, the lyrics don't make any sense. 

And don't even get me started on the video clip, it's just a compilation of home made videos of wierd

 people doing wierd things. Either the group members are all drug addicts or they have some big issues.

 I recomend you to never watch the video and mostly to never listening to the song.

Relation with the four notions:

worksheet

The Irack

A brief History of communication

This video as the title says,is a brief history of communication, it starts by showing us how people use to communicate through face to face communication and finishes by showing us how people communicate today via computers and smartphones.
Communication is an essential thing in the development of mankind, since the dawn of time humans have been searching for ways to communicate faster and more precisely. Let's travel back in time, as we said before mankind could only communicate by face to face contact, and now we can communicate with people thousands of miles away with just pressing a button. But from one to another what happened? Men learned that by drawing on walls they could transmit messages and keep them there for a very long time( e.g. we can still find today in some caves drawing from cavemen). Then men trained pigeons( and many other birds as hawks) to travel hundreds of miles to take a message which made messages more intimate and the author could choose who would see the message. After this , humans created smoke signals which where a lot faster than pigeons but less discrete. Man then changed the history of communication with the Morse language. With the Morse code men could secretly transmit messages (and this was like all forms of communications are at first, a military project) secretly and at a very high speed and best part is that these messages are coded so the enemies (in military cases) could not know what the messages meant even if they intervened them. From the Morse code which you could only send letters came the telephone booth in which the first time ever , you could have a instant voice conversation with someone miles away. From that was invented the radio in which a person could make thousands of people hear him, which was replaced in the television where someone could make people watch things and hear them. After came an invention which could seem a throwback but is actually a machine which let people send pictures and documents almost instantly , this machine is called the fax. And finally the two most used machines nowadays where invented, the computer and cellphones which now evolved into smartphones because they give us all the qualities of a cellphone combined with the ones of a computer.

Communication is so important and nowadays we can communicate with whoever we want and even when we want and almost for free, just by having an internet connection at home we can Skype with anyone we want around the world as long as they also have an internet connection and a smart device which let's them access Skype. We can also share pictures and any type of document we want with anyone we choose. That is the biggest advantage of technology nowadays , thanks to it's development we can now cover the two issues of communication, which are for it to be fast and discrete as before communication was either fast or discrete and that caused lots of problems.

To sum it all up, I think that the video was very well done because it was very simple but in the same time shows very well the history of communication and the fact that the video is short is just shows us how fast communication has evolved and how fast technological progress is.  

WHEN TECHNOLOGY IS TOO MUCH... OR MISSING

WHEN TECHNOLOGY IS TOO MUCH OR... MISSING

MY COMMENTARY ON BOTH VIDEOS

 

Description

This video is structured around two main narrative voices and a character illustrating what the voice-over says while a singer often merely repeats or comments on what's just been said (as in a Greek chorus).

The setting is a Christian home and church, so this particular context is very meaningful. We can also see the man at work, by doing this the video shows us the usual places where an american usally is, at work, at home and finally in church.

We can notice on various occasions that the main character is addicted to high-technology products, mostly smartphones.

He is shown as a family man unable to communicate with his wife, except through texting.

He is also shown as a church-goer incapable of attending worship without all his phones vibrating all the time, making him look like he's full of the holy spirit.

Finally, he is depicted as a computer geek whose life has become extremely complicated instead of having been simplified. 

 

Interpretation

Basically, this video means that high technology has become a religion for many people, even Christians who are not supposed to be materialistic.It is a humorous way specially with the voice over or for example when the man write to several people on different phones to exaggerate and to show the abuse of technology which is used on excess. 

Then, in a Christian lifestyle, quite a few church-goers and believers tend to focus more on materialistic issues rather than spiritual ones.

We can add that technology reigns supreme for many people who revere it as a God enlightening his followers.We have lost human contact because the guy prefers texting his wife than talking to her face to face. There is no longer communication that is not virtual, we do too many things at the same time, we live in a virtual world. This document shows and talks about the idea of progress. We are part of a generation that lives with the new technologies and it can be a bad things if we dong use it correctly, they create addictions and dissociate men from their families,friends...

The question is, is this a real progress for humankind ?

 

 

2

 

Description

Two people are stuck on an escalator in a place that seems literally empty/deserted which is really wierd because they seem to be in a mall and if they really are in a mall there are two nonsense because first there are always people in malls and because people don't go trought a mall to go to work. The man looks upset/annoyed. He might be an office worker walking to his job. The woman claims that she is already late, so for her, this is the last straw. At one point, she's about to cry and asks for a phone, then she screams for help. In short, they both look helpless, clueless, powerless and even hopeless.

 

Interpretation

 We can relate this situation to a fairly common one in real life : getting stuck in an elevator. The difference however, is  that in this situation, people have the right to panic/freak out/feel panicky whereas on an escalator, there is no reason whatsoever to be scared.

This video points out the increasing dependence of human beings on technology. If it goes missing, it is as if a crutch had been taken away from them, so these two people cannot even walk up the stairs, which would be the normal thing to do. We could think that technological progress makes humans lazy or at least less prone to take initiative and think by themselves, less inclined to make efforts.

The Fanatic Geek

The cartoon above is called " The Fanatic Geek" . It was drawn by  Patrick Chapatte in 2008 and was published in the International Herald Tribune. This cartoon deals with the issue of technological progress which can interfere with the movie business.

The first thing we spot in the cartoon is the caricature of a fan getting an autograph from a movie director or an actor ( also caricatures). Then we see the speech bubble with the quote :" I love your movies. I've pirated them all! ". We can also see a Cannes logo in the top left corner with underneath it written "CANNES". On the right we can see a police officer retaining fans from going on the red carpet on which the star is, with his partner and one fan. Also on the left we can see two stars saying goodbye before entering the inside of the festival and finally we can see some journalists on the center left taking pictures of the stars.

With this cartoon the cartoonist wants to criticize the fact that because of modern technology everyone pirates movies and watches them for free instead of going to the movies. The fact that people don't go to the movies anymore has an impact on the movie business ,which is very negative. The cartoonist wants in this fun way to make people become aware of the fact that what they do ( which is illegal) is also killing the movie business.

The cartoon is very well designed and carefully thought-out but I think it's not convincing because people just don't care anymore, and people don't want to pay 10€ to go see a movie ( let's not include snacks & beverages) when they can just watch at home for free and they can even pause and start the movie whenever they want. But it's not the cartoonist's fault that the cartoon is not touching enough it's just that people nowadays have a different way of thinking than they had in the 20th century. Bottom line I don't even approve the message because the movie business is never going to stop and even if the fact that people pirate their movies , the movie business is as good as always and stars are still as rich as always so money is not the problem. With that said I still think that a good movie should be seen at the movies not only for the visual and audio quality but also for the good old times.