We Can't Wait #10: Big Eyes

[Editor's Note: We Can't Wait is a Team Experience series, in which we highlight our top 14 most anticipated films of 2014. Here's Julien Kojfer on "Big Eyes"]

Big Eyes
A drama centered on 50’s painter Margaret Keane, whose husband claimed credit for her works after she achieved phenomenal success.

Talent
Tim Burton is directing a starry cast including Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Jason Schwartzman, Krysten Ritter, Terence Stamp and Danny Husto. 

Why We Can't Wait
Sure, the perpetually disheveled auteur famously lost his mojo at the turn of the century, when his unique style suddenly froze into a soulless brand of manufactured gothic whimsy, and his name sadly became synonymous with lazy adaptations, predictably misshapen aesthetics, and the obligatory casting of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in cadaverous makeup and improbable wigs.

Which is precisely why no one who’s ever loved Burton could fail to be excited by Big Eyes, because it doesn’t sound like anything he’s made since the 90’s. An adult drama free of fantasy elements with a female protagonist, starring actors resolutely out of his comfort zone - one a five-time Oscar nominee who’s at the very peak of her career, the other a two-time Oscar winner badly in need of stretching his (considerable?) talents. With no Depp or Bonham Carter, to boot? Count me in. And if you’re still worried that this might turn out to be Tim Burton’s Lovely Bones, consider this: the original script is the work of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who wrote such idiosyncratic biopics as The People vs. Larry Flynt, Man on the Moon, and what many of us consider to be Tim Burton’s greatest film: Ed Wood.

But We Do Have To Wait
A marital drama set in the 1950’s art world, starring Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz? Sounds like classic Oscar material to me, so that means we’ll probably have to wait till the end of the year.

Previously: #11 The Last 5 Years | #12 Gone Girl | #13 Can a Song Save Your Life |  #14 Veronica Mars | Introduction

Movies that go bump in the night

Happy Halloween, everybody! It’s Tim, here to celebrate the high holy night of horror movies, when even the most squeamish can steel themselves up to watch a scary movie, and scary movie lovers stock up all our best and blackest to watch in marathons of unendurable dread.

But let’s not go prattling about every random horror film that comes to mind (which is, I’m a little sorry to admit, the way that I assembled my movie playlist for the night). Instead, I’d like to ask everybody to pitch in their suggestions for a question always on my mind this time of year:

What movies best capture the spirit of Halloween?

That question already has a lot of wiggle room baked into it – do we mean Halloween as a night of ghosts and witches, Halloween as a night of trick-or-treating and costumes, Halloween as a night of crisp autumn air and fallen leaves? I don’t know, and that’s why I want to throw it out to all of you. But before I do that, I want to offer three suggestions of the movies that best capture what enters my head when I hear the word “Halloween”. (And I’m not including John Carpenter’s Film Experience-endorsed slasher film Halloween. There’s such a thing as too damn easy).

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Absolutely not a joke. The third of the seasonally-arranged film’s four chapters takes place in its entirety on Halloween night, and there’s not a film out there that better evokes a the feeling of dressing up and hunting for candy on a cool fall night. Not many directors in Hollywood history ever had a better grasp of what to do with color than Vincente Minnelli, and in this sequence, he and cinematographer George Folsey gorgeously capture the variations of browns and yellows that dominate the landscape during a Midwestern October (in fact, Carpenter and his DP, Dean Cundey, looked to this film as the inspiration when making Halloween). The warm nighttime lighting is just spooky enough to evoke the feeling of being a child who secretly wants to be scared, and it all couldn’t be more pleasantly nostalgic. Bonus: one of only two films that’s both a terrific Halloween movie and a terrific Christmas movies (the other, of course, is The Nightmare Before Christmas).

Kill, Baby… Kill! (1966)
Because, first, I’d be falling behind in my mission if I didn’t use an article about horror films as an excuse to talk about Mario Bava and the wide world of visually florid, narratively bonkers Italian horror cinema. And second, because my Halloween always needs a stop-over in foggy cemeteries and decaying, haunted Mitteleuropean villages, and some of the absolute best ever put to celluloid can be found in this story of a ghostly little girl making life awful for an isolated Carpathian town has some of the best. The normal rules of Italian horror apply: if you’re hunting for mood and blissed-out color cinematography, this will do you up right, and if you need a tight piece of storytelling… but hey, look at that cinematography! Still, there’s probably no place that approach is more objectively defensible than in a ghost story, where the uncanny and inexplicable is part of the fun. Nor do many movies about ghosts understand so well the primal, bedtime story impact that a good Gothic set can have when it’s been lit to be this creepy.

Sleepy Hollow (1999)
I can remember as vividly now as the day after it happened, the first time I saw Tim Burton’s last completely successful movie and thinking to myself, “That’s it! That’s autumn!” Not bad for a film shot entirely on a soundstage, without a whisper of natural lighting, for which we can credit both Rick Heinrichs’ just-exaggerated fairy tale woods, and Emmanuel Lubezki’s absolutely gorgeous lighting palette, beautifully evoking the yellow haze of light filtered through dying leaves (Heinrich won an Oscar, Lubezki was nominated. Frankly, the visuals would be enough to secure the movie a spot on my annual Halloween-time viewing schedule even if it wasn’t a pretty great ghost story, or didn’t have its own Halloween scene with quintessentially Burtonesque jack-o’-lanterns flickering in the background. There’s an atmospheric creepiness to the film that has everything to do with setting and place, not with plot (which, given the things the plot does, is for the best), and few things have ever colonized my feelings about walking in the woods quite so effectively.

What about the rest of you?

What's your favorite Halloween movie? Let us know in comments!

"Beetlelink! Beetlelink! Beetlelink!"

If you say it three times, a link roundup appears from the other side!

By now you've heard that Tim Burton and Michael Keaton are prepping a sequel to the 1988 comedy classic Beetlejuice, largely because Burton has long since run out of ideas and better a sequel than another remake, right?! If they name it "Beetlejuice 2" instead of "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" I will be disappointed in their mundanity. I love that movie but honestly if this project does not star Winona Ryder I hope whoever deigns to see it will sit in the theater alone... *utterly* alone... because the rest of us should boycott. Noni was the best thing about the original aside from its playfully smart comic visuals including the Oscar winning makeup.

Now a few links...

E! Online reactions to the awful Parks and Recreations hiatus news
Women and Hollywood on male directors and depictions of female sexuality: Chile's awesome Gloria and France's buzzy Blue is the Warmest Color discussed 
Film School Rejects on the short film Next Floor by Denis Villeneuve. You should see it. It's so good and Villeneuve is having a prolific "moment", what with the 1-2-3 punch of Incendies, Prisoners and Enemy.

Curio: Film Devotionals

Alexa here.  This Easter/Passover time of year is always replete with biblical references; for me, most are tied to film.  For instance, my main understanding of the significance of Passover is through my repeated childhood viewings of The Ten Commandments.  As one of the heathen mob, I am more likely to light a candle to mourn the loss of Ryan Gosling from the screen than ask saints for intercession. Religious or not, I thought TFE readers would enjoy some curios that aid in the practice of film idolatry, like these devotional candles from this etsy shop.

Who would you light a candle for this year?

More false idols including Tim Burton, Steve Buscemi and The Avengers after the jump... 

Click to read more ...

Linkhead

USA Today no, Jennifer Lawrence did not have a wardrobe malfunction despite all visual evidence to the contrary. That's just the dress!
Filmdrunk uncovers the MTV promo that got JLaw her SAG card - she mentioned it in her speech last night.
In Contention wonders where Ang Lee is in all the who will win Pic/Dir confusion
i09 do you want a documentary about the ill-fated Tim Burton / Nicolas Cage Superman movie? I sure do! Schadenfreude for days on end!
Pop Elegantarium awwww a new Film Experience baby. Congratulations to mom Alexa (who writes the Curio column right here)
EW Hunter Foster on Bunheads with real life sister Sutton Foster. Gah. I ♥ them both
MNPP superheroes working it
Pajiba Celebrity friendships you probably didn't know about. I knew a few but some really goodies unearthed here. Some of these are really surprising (Kyle Chandler & Lorenzo Lamas) others shouldn't be surprising but somehow I didn't know (Matt Bomer & Lee Pace are best friends?) and others are just delightful as in 'they stayed close after filming!' (Christian Bale & Winona Ryder?) but anyway, read it. Fun finds.
Wired Is Glee stealing arrangements from indie musicians? My god I'm so glad I gave up on that show when I did and have never been attempted to return. This story is so sleazy awful. 

And I'll leave you with an old video of Emma Stone shaking it shaking it shaking it.

This makes me want to watch Easy A and Crazy Stupid Love on loop right now.