Happy birthday Vincent Price and Christopher Lee!

Today marks the 110^th birthday of the great Vincent Price, and the 99^th of the equally great Christopher Lee. A good time to pay respects to these legends of the movie industry!

Obviously, Tim Burton was a huge fan of both actors, and was extremely lucky to cast both in his movies. Vincent Price was first, narrating Tim’s early break through short film Vincent (1982), which told the story of a young boy who dreams of being just like the real Vincent Price.

8 years later Price and Burton got to work again, with Price appearing in a small but important role in Edward Scissorhands (1990). Playing the Inventor who created Edward, Price was already old and frail when filming the movie, making his few scenes with Johnny Depp all the more bittersweet.

Later Tim Burton started working on a documentary about Price, Conversations with Vincent, but sadly Mr Price passed away on 1993, before it was released. Tim Burton would never go on to finish the project.

Meanwhile, Christopher Lee had been appearing in quite a patchy string of movie roles through the 1990’s. His roles in comedies such as Police Academy: Mission to Moscow (1994), and The Stupids (1996) must not have been his personal favorites, but on the other hand he was very proud of his performance in the biopic Jinnah (1998).

But quite unexpectedly, in 1999 at the age of 77, Christopher Lee would appear in a hit movie, which would mark the start of a remarkable 10+ year run of roles in the very biggest of Hollywood blockbuster hits. This 1999 movie was of course Sleepy Hollow, where Tim Burton cast Lee in a small but powerful role as the Burgomaster who sends Johnny Depp’s Ichabod Crane on his fateful assignment to the town of Sleepy Hollow.

Lee followed this by appearing in The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars prequel trilogies, whose directors Peter Jackson and George Lucas were, like Tim Burton, childhood fans of Lee’s early works in the horror genre. In 2005 Lee and Burton got to work again in two movies; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Corpse Bride. Lee’s final appearances in Burton movies came in Alice in Wonderland (2010), and Dark Shadows (2012), in more minor roles.

Both Price and Lee worked with Burton towards the ends of their careers, which partly resulted in their roles being relatively small. But however limited their screen times might have been, they did offer very memorable and powerful performances within those moments. And for the lifelong fans of these two gentlemen, even just the thrill of seeing their names on the always beautiful opening credits of a Tim Burton movie was always a treat.

Each of the 6 feature length movies that Burton did with either Price or Lee had the same main star, Johnny Depp. Somehow this feels fitting, perhaps because Depp seems to possess some of the same ageless celluloid charisma as the old masters.  It’s also interesting to see Price as Depp’s creator/father in Edward Scissorhands, and then Lee as Depp’s father in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Perhaps sometime in the future Depp might return to the limelight, as an elderly character actor, playing a Price/Lee type of role in a Tim Burton movie?

Of course the careers of Vincent Price and Christopher Lee spanned decades and included dozens of memorable roles, much more than I could list here. I will just conclude by listing a few of my favorites, which I urge everyone to seek out.

a few Vincent Price favorites:

The Three Musketeers (1948)

The Baron of Arizona (1950)

House of Usher (1960)

The Masque of Red Death (1964)

Witchfinder General (1968)

The Abominable Dr. Phibes & Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1971-1972)

a few Christopher Lee favorites:

The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)

Taste of Fear (1961)

The Devil Rides Out (1968)

The Three Musketeers (1973)

The Wicker Man (1973)

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

Video: Tim Burton Masterclass

On Monday, March 5th, a masterclass with filmmaker Tim Burton was held at la Cinémathèque française in Paris. In the conversation, Burton took questions from the interviewer and from the audience, explaining his inspirations, various films he's made, making his works personal, his creative processes with his long-time collaborators, childhood movies and rare films (such as his unreleased documentary, Conversations with Vincent), and much more.

Here is the original english version:



And here is the french language version:

25 Years of Elfman and Burton: From "Pee-wee" to "Alice"

Tim Burton and Danny Elfman have worked together for 25 years, making one of the most memorable director-composer duos in film history. Wired spoke with the acclaimed composer, and discussed the connections and common influences Elfman and Burton share, Elfman's earliest (and traumatic) encounters with Alice in Wonderland, and the pair's long working relationship, working on thirteen feature films from Pee-wee's Big Adventure in 1985 to Alice in Wonderland opening this weekend.

Danny Elfman recalled that his first encounters with Alice in Wonderland occurred at the tender age of three -- and left quite a dramatic effect on him.

"We had it on the bookshelf," Elfman recalls. "There was a picture of Alice with her neck distended very long. It scared me and actually began what became a lifelong obsession with physical anomalies. I had many nightmares about this girl with an incredibly long neck."

Many years later, Elfman was to compose the score for a cinematic adaptation of the bizarre Lewis Carroll stories. After watching a rough cut of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, Elfman realized that the zany, off-the-wall characters and scenarios would be easy to write for -- it was Alice who came back to haunt him, as the most difficult part to score.

“My score was not going to be about the Mad Hatter or the Red Queen,” Elfman says. “The ‘falling down a hole’ music is going to be wild, crazy falling-down-a-hole music. Two armies meeting — I can almost write that automatically. That’s the easy part. The hard part is Alice’s trajectory. I needed the music to tie it all together as she goes from this kind of confused child to a bewildered young lady to becoming Alice as a hero who finds herself in the center of this big story where she has a huge part to play.”

Although they've been working together for 25 years, Elfman still finds presenting new themes to his director Tim Burton "nerve-wracking." Luckily, they have a lot of similar aesthetic sensibilities and tastes, having connected back in the 1980s, after Burton saw Elfman perform in his wacky avant-rock band Oingo Boingo.

“When we met we had a lot in common because we both grew up on the same kinds of movies,” Elfman says. “We’re both huge fans of Roger Corman and ‘Hammer Horror.’ My idol was Peter Lorre, Tim’s idol was Vincent Price. We were both kind of odd kids who gravitated toward certain subcultural films and imagery.”

At an early age, Danny Elfman found a fondness in spectacular, fantastical film scores. Some of his favorite composers include Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, and his idol, Bernard Herrmann. It was the striking musical compositions of Herrmann mixed with the fantastic stop-motion wizardy of acclaimed animator Ray Harryhausen that made Elfman fascinated by the cinema, in such films as Jason and the Argonauts and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

“The magic combination for me was Herrmann and Harryhausen,” Elfman says. “If a movie had those two names on it, it was going to be my favorite film of the year.”


A scene from Jason and the Argonauts -- a mutual favorite of both Elfman and Burton.

Even in his comfortable Malibu, California home with his wife Bridget Fonda, Danny Elfman still retains his appreciation of the off-beat and macabre.

“In the foyer of my home I have a painting by Mark Ryden of this little girl with blood pouring out of her eyes, and there are two stuffed baboon heads from the 19th century used as paperweights,” Elfman says. “That’s just my way of saying, ‘If this bothers you, please don’t step further in.’”

After Alice in Wonderland, Elfman's upcoming film scores include The Green Hornet (directed by Michel Gondry and starring Seth Rogen) and Forbidden Zone 2: The Forbidden Galaxy.

New "Nightmare Before Christmas" DVDs?!

According to videobusiness.com, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment will launch its first embedded digital copy within the standard DVD and Blu-Ray releases of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas: Collector's Edition on August 26th, 2008.

Special features on this upcoming release include commentary by producer/creator Tim Burton, director Henry Selick, and composer/lyricist and the singing voice of Jack Skellington, Danny Elfman. The original poem written by Burton will also be read by Burton collaborator and horror movie legend Christopher Lee. There will also be a video tour of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion ride, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the stop-motion cult classic, and Burton's original short film from 1982, Vincent, narrated by Burton's idol, Vincent Price, and many other bonus materials.

The Blu-Ray edition will also feature an exclusive introduction by Tim Burton.

This new release of Nightmare will be available as a two-disc standard DVD ($32.99), a single-disc Blu-Ray version ($39.99), and a limited edition Ultimate Collector's standard DVD set ($179.99), states the website.

We hope that this exciting news is indeed true, and that more information will come along in the near future.