Catching Up Some More
Where was I? I covered Walking tall (stunk,) Jarhead (good/not-great,) and Crash (better than I expected and recommended,) which leaves the Burton Remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (hereafter: CCF.) From the opening (CG long-take) shot this movie screamed, “DON’T FORGET TIM BURTON DIRECTED THIS!!” Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as he was starting to get away from his hallmark visual cues. Johnny Depp was unsurprisingly excellent and the rest of the cast was un-noteworthy. The highlight of the whole production was, without a doubt, the musical numbers. Surreal and utterly frightening, the Oompa Loompa songs showcased Danny Elfman’s pop sensibilities in a way we haven’t seen since Oingo-Boingo. The film also featured a constant barrage of pop-culture references, and I’m not quite sure I fully grasped their meaning. Any insight into why Burton touches on everything from vintage TV ads to Kubrick’s 2001?

Did I ever talk about the new(ish) Franz Ferdinand album? If I did, ignore my ravings here. It is really, really good. On par with the new Fiona Apple album, (we are seeing her play in a week!) which is also really good. We just got the new Madonna album and though I haven’t really had a chance to listen to it yet I will say it sounds exactly like dance-remixes of Madonna songs that I’ve never heard.

Finally, I never posted a post-mortem of my Attack of the 50-Foot Reels film. The screening went really, really well! My piece came out better than I was expecting and I’m quite happy with the results. I should get my copy in a week or two, and maybe I’ll actually get to posting it on the web this year. Russell’s film, which I photographed, also came out great! There was a brief, (though at the screening it felt anything but brief) segment that was severely under-exposed and had a weird strobing-flash on the right of frame. But I guess that is what you get when you are shooting a “dead” format on 30+- year-old cameras. At any rate I was really happy with my camera-work and can’t wait to shoot something else. Now, if I only had the time and energy to WRITE…