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Articles about Johnny Depp in
Tim Burton's
The Corpse Bride
VENICE -- In Tim Burton's ghoulish but hilarious animation movie "Corpse Bride," the world of the dead is full of color, music and fun while the land of the living is black, white and oppressive.
For his latest film showcased at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday, the director used painstaking "stop-motion" animation techniques with models, setting it apart from the more common computer generation used in hits like "Shrek" and "Toy Story."
The film which took Burton 10 years to bring to the screen is not in competition for the Golden Lion this year, but the thunderous reception it received at a preview for the press and critics late on Tuesday suggested it may have been a contender.
When Victor, the bumbling hero voiced by Johnny Depp, wanders into the woods outside his town, a twist of fate takes him to life beyond the grave.
The surprise arrival of a "breather" in their midst prompts skeleton band The Skeletones to strike up, a severed head scuttles across the bar at the Ball and Socket pub and a general with a cannon ball-sized hole in his chest knocks back a glass of wine.
Emily, the decomposing damsel who believes she is betrothed to the living Victor, has the unfortunate habit of losing an eye whenever the worm inside her head pops out to make a point.
Based on a Russian folk tale, Corpse Bride also features the voices of Helena Bonham Carter as the corpse bride and Emily Watson as Victoria. Christopher Lee is the authoritarian pastor and Richard E. Grant the sinister Barkis Bittern.
TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES
Because it could take animators a full day of work to come away with just a few seconds of action, Burton and his team developed new techniques to ease the burden since his 1993 animation effort "The Nightmare Before Christmas."
In that film, facial expressions were achieved using replacement heads on the models.
In Corpse Bride, puppeteers created a gearing mechanism inside the puppets' heads which could be adjusted through the ears or at various points hidden in the hair.
The corpse bride's tattered veil and accompanying tiara alone took 10 months to develop.
"It can be tedious work," said co-director Mike Johnson in the production notes. "It's just the kind of thing that you have to be passionate about and willing to commit to completely." While Burton's film means the attention on the Lido on Wednesday is away from the main competition, two entries get their official premieres.
French production "Vers le Sud" ("Heading South"), directed by Laurent Cantet, is set in Haiti at the end of the 1970s and stars Charlotte Rampling.
"O Fatalista" ("The Fatalist"), an adaptation of "Jacques le Fataliste" by 18th Century French philosopher Denis Diderot, is directed by Portugal's Joao Botelho.
The festival ends with the award ceremony on Saturday.
Bonham Carter is the voice of a ghost in director Burton's epic new film.
Her character comes back from the dead to claim she is legally married to Victor Van Dort, voiced by Johnny Depp, after he puts a ring on the finger of her skeleton as a joke.
Emily Watson, Joanna Lumley, Albert Finney and Christopher Lee also voice parts in the movie.
The pair, who both donned sunglasses for the indoor press conference in Venice, have a 23-month-old son Billy Ray and have set up home in Britain.
Room with a View actress Bonham Carter, 39, said of her California-born partner: "He loves rain. He's the only one in England that loves rain so he's the only true Briton."
Burton, 47, famous for quirky movies like Edward Scissorhands and Beetle Juice, added: "I felt more of a foreigner in the US than anywhere else ... and she (Bonham Carter) teaches me how to make fish and chips."
Burton, who has cast the English actress as a witch, a corpse and an ape in his movies, joked: "Some day maybe she'll play a human being, but Bonham Carter replied "I'm not really interested in playing a human being anyway."
Burton's Corpse Bride follows the release of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which Bonham Carter plays Charlie's mother. Asked about merchandising such as Willy Wonka chocolate bars surrounding the movie, Burton said: "I'm not a huge fan of that sort of thing. I try to focus on the film."
He said of Corpse Bride: "It's not like a normal animated movie. We
tried to give it pace and make it more like a regular movie. In America
they claim that drawn animation is dead because everyone can do it on computers,
but I'm really glad there are still people out there doing beautiful drawn
animation."
