Tim Burton welcomed in L.A. by hundreds of fans — and one savage review << new cosplayers

Selasa, 31 Mei 2011

Tim Burton welcomed in L.A. by hundreds of fans — and one savage review

Tim Burton welcomed in L.A. by hundreds of fans — and one savage review: "
[lat-gallery]

A jet-lagged Tim Burton hit Los Angeles this weekend and Los Angeles hit back — well, more precisely, the art critic for the Los Angeles Times hit back with a brutal review of the huge new exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that is titled, simply,”Tim Burton.” Critic Christopher Knight essentially gave the exhibit a review so harsh that it might even have made the ever-optimistic Ed Wood cringe.

Knight wrote: “Tim Burton,” the big, poorly organized traveling show from New York’s Museum of Modern Art that surveys the genesis and development of the Hollywood director’s distinctive visual style, opened Sunday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It should be effervescent. Instead, the show is a monotonous plod.” The critic also weighed in on the exhibit’s propensity for props: “In an art museum, do we really need to see baby Penguin’s black-wicker pram from “Batman,” Catwoman’s shredded polyurethane cat suit or the fluffy angora sweater used as a fetishistic prop in “Ed Wood“? Such dark or peculiar items are often outward signs of their character’s concealed inner life; but that’s catalog essay interpretation, not exhibition material. You get the feeling they’re only here to satisfy the paying movie fans. Sometimes the display looks like the Arclight Cinema lobby on steroids. Toss in assorted puppets and a few toy-like sculptures, such as a suspended flying-saucer carousel illuminated by black-lights, and the quotient of celebrity self-indulgence climbs.”

Ouch. Well, Burton, who lives in London, got a far warmer welcome on Saturday from hundreds of fans who turned out to see him during a promotional visit tied to the exhibit. Gina McIntyre, the resident black-clad Burton expert here at the Hero Complex and the assistant film editor for the Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times, was there to report on the scene and sit down with the filmmaker. Here’s an excerpt from her cover story in Monday’s Calendar section:

The line for autographs snaked eastward down Wilshire Boulevard on Saturday afternoon, even though representatives from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art warned that some fans waiting in line to meet Tim Burton, the artist and filmmaker who’s the subject of the museum’s new exhibition, would probably go home disappointed. The scene outside had the hallmarks one might expect — patrons carrying black umbrellas, dressed in pinstriped or Gothic-inspired finery or even more elaborate costumes. But inside one of the museum’s offices, Burton, wearing a black suit jacket, red-and-black-striped socks and dark tinted glasses, just looked slightly overwhelmed, battling jet lag and general fatigue.

Tim Burton at LACMA exhibition. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

McIntyre did a great job with the lengthy feature (especially on a tight turn-around deadline), here are some of gem quotes from the story…

On the interest in the exhibit:

“It’s shocking, really. Certainly not anything I ever expected or anything like that. It’s really nice, though, because it’s more important than anything really, when you connect with somebody or the work you do helps connect to somebody — I find it incredibly moving and very special and it makes me almost want to cry sort of. If I think back to how I felt as a younger person, how lonely and isolated I felt, now when you meet people and feel a connection it’s really amazing. Certain people seem to feel the pain of life a bit more. I think everybody feels those things; some connect with it more than others.”

On his fascinations:

“I just like making things. It’s fun. That’s why I like making movies or I like drawing, just making things. I think when I stop making movies, I can imagine myself living in a trailer out in the desert making weird things … It’s an important form of therapy for me, even just doodling something helps me to think. I was not a very verbal communicator growing up so it was a form of communication for me. I can communicate a little bit better verbally, but it’s still a process for me. [Drawing is] kind of a calming thing for me, it’s a Zen kind of thing. It’s important for my whole thought process.”