Chinese language - US director Tim Burton receives career Golden Lionin Venice

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ENTERTAINMENT / Movies






US director Tim Burton receives career Golden Lionin Venice


(AFP)
Updated: 2007-09-06 10:37





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US director Tim Burton poses with his Golden Lion for lifetime
achievement award before the screening of "The Nightmare Before Christmas
3-D" during the 64th Venice International Film Festival at Venice
Lido.[AFP]

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US director Tim Burton, the master of the macabre, became the youngest
recipient of the Golden Lion for career achievement at the Venice film
festival on Wednesday.

"This is the most amazing experience," the 49-year-old said upon
receiving the award. "It's such an honour." The Venice festival has
"always been about movies, not business," he said. "It's always had a
special place in my heart."

Burton may be the youngest winner of the award, "but I'm older than I
seem," quipped the creator of "Beetlejuice" (1988), "Edward Scissorhands"
(1990) and "Sleepy Hollow" (1999).

Burton's frequent collaborator Johnny Depp bestowed the award ahead of a
screening of a 3-D version, created by Henry Selick, of the 1993 runaway
hit "The Nightmare Before Christmas," in which the Pumpkin King of
Halloween tries to take over Christmas by kidnapping Santa Claus.

"He is a rare breed in today's cinema," Depp said. "He is a true original
-- a true artist. ... He's my favourite director and friend."

Viewers also were treated to the first eight minutes of Burton's next
creation, a film version of the Stephen Sondheim musical "Sweeney Todd,"
a Broadway hit in 1979 that enjoyed a revival in Britain in 2004.

Depp stars with Helena Bonham Carter in the story of the legendary London
barber who murdered his customers by slitting their throats.

Burton, who created the 2005 remake of the fantasy adventure "Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory" based on the classic Roald Dahl book, scored his
first box office hit in 1985 with "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure."

Meanwhile, the festival's "surprise" entry, "Mad Detective" by leading
Hong Kong director Johnnie To along with Wai Ka Fai, was screened late
Wednesday.

Despite the standard plotline of a rookie cop teaming up with a former
officer to hunt down a serial killer, "the film challenges story
conventions and audience expections," To said in programme notes.

Last year's surprise entry, "Still Life" by Chinese director Jia Zhangke,
won the top honour here, the Golden Lion.

Also Wednesday, Japanese director Takashi Miike presented his raucous
take on the spaghetti western, "Sukiyaki Western Django," alongside a
retrospective on the genre at this year's festival.

The title of Miike's film refers to Sergio Corbucci's 1966 cult classic
"Django", which starred Italian actor Franco Nero.

Miike's film is packed with references to the work of both Corbucci and
Sergio Leone, who directed a trio of Clint Eastwood films that helped
make spaghetti westerns an international phenomenon in the mid-1960s.

Classic lines (such as "Give it up, Yoichi. The strong and the brave gets
the woman") are delivered unself-consciously, if haltingly, in heavily
accented English by actors none too familiar with the language of
Shakespeare.

Meanwhile a demonstration is planned against the presence of French
actress Fanny Ardant, starring in Italian director Vincenzo Marra's
"L'Ora di Punto" about corruption and greed in Italy, to be screened
Thursday.

Ardant stirred up passions last month by describing the founder of
Italy's disbanded Marxist-Leninist group the Red Brigades, Renato Curcio,
as a "hero" in a magazine interview. She apologised amid the furore, but
the family of a victim has filed a suit against her.

Curcio was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in jail. Red Brigades
members kidnapped Italy's former Christian Democrat prime minister Aldo
Moro and murdered him 54 days later.

With three days left until Venice's all-director jury returns its
verdict, the French film "La Graine et le Mulet" (Grain of Life) by
Tunisian-born director Abdellatif Kechiche enjoys the lead among Italian
film critics.

The unique Bob Dylan biopic by Tom Haynes, "I'm Not There" was also well
received, as well as the US film "Redacted" by Brian De Palma about the
rape and murder of an Iraqi girl by US soldiers.

Dylan is conspicuously absent but omnipresent in the kaleidoscopic "I'm
Not Here," but Cate Blanchett, who most closely resembles Dylan at the
height of his stardom, seems set to triumph here as best actress.

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