The Films of Tim Burton: Animating Live Action in Contemporary Hollywood

New
Illustrated
2005
$35.55

Most Tim Burton films are huge box-office successes, and several are already classics. The director's mysterious and eccentric public persona attracts a lot of attention, while the films themselves have been somewhat overlooked. Here, Alison McMahan redresses this imbalance through a close analysis of Burton's key films () and their industrial context. She argues that Burton has been a crucial figure behind many of the transformations taking place in horror, fantasy, and sci-fi films over the last two decades, and demonstrates how his own work draws on a huge range of artistic influences: the films of George Melies, surrealism, installation art, computer games, and many more. The Films of Tim Burton is the most in-depth analysis so far of the work of this unusual filmmaker - a director who has shown repeatedly that it is possible to reject mainstream Hollywood contentions while maintaining critical popularrity and commercial success.

Synopsis

Most Tim Burton films are huge box-office successes, and several are already classics. The director's mysterious and eccentric public persona attracts a lot of attention, while the films themselves have been somewhat overlooked. Here, Alison McMahan redresses this imbalance through a close analysis of Burton's key films () and their industrial context. She argues that Burton has been a crucial figure behind many of the transformations taking place in horror, fantasy, and sci-fi films over the last two decades, and demonstrates how his own work draws on a huge range of artistic influences: the films of George Melies, surrealism, installation art, computer games, and many more. The Films of Tim Burton is the most in-depth analysis so far of the work of this unusual filmmaker - a director who has shown repeatedly that it is possible to reject mainstream Hollywood contentions while maintaining critical popularrity and commercial success.

$35.55

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10 in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 276
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: Continuum
Published: 01 Sep 2005
ISBN 10: 0826415679
ISBN 13: 9780826415677

Media Reviews

McMahan's verbal lucidity is as impressive as the visual designs of Burton's films, and much more accessible. From Burton's early campy stop-action tribute to Vincent Price (Vincent) through his blockbuster films like Batman, the author paints this director's oeuvre as an intertextual, idiosyncratic, and fascinating set of projects. However, what is unique about McMahan's approach is her larger cultural and contextual concerns with animating live action in contemporary Hollywood, considerations that inform and direct her lively analysis. She is as interested in narrative, marketing, mythmaking, CGI and SFX, and the music of Danny Elfman as she is in the individual films. She closes with an invitation to consider other alternative postmodern directors such as Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black). Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers; all levels. - Choice, January 2006--Sanford Lakoff CHOICE

Author Bio

Alison McMahan is a Mellon Fellow in Visual Culture at Vassar College. From 1997 to 2001 she ran the MA program in film and television studies at the University of Amsterdam, where she taught early cinema and new media. She has published widely on early cinema and has carried out research for documentaries such as The Lost Garden: The Life and Work of Alice Guy Blache (1995, National Film Board of Canada) and for the Emmy-award winning Into the Light ('State of the Arts' series, New Jersey Network, 1995). She was interviewed as an early cinema expert for the documentary Reel Models: The Women of Early Film which first aired on the American Movie Classics Channel in 2000.