Isn’t it time Burton fell in love with another actor? His perpetual casting of Depp is getting tired. Or perhaps Depp in white make up is getting to be tired… no doubt Mz Bonham-Carter-Burton is in there too.

Ah well Bateman. Now we (already?) get into the tricky business of what constitutes an Irish film. I was involved in a critics’ poll last year on Irish film and a substantial minority of my colleagues felt Hunger was not a domestic product. A substantial majority felt that In Bruges could not reasonably be called Irish.

It’s a slippery one. But you could — with apologies to Mr McDonagh’s parents — argue that the only thing Irish about Bruges is its two stars. Certainly the Irish Film and Television Academy felt Hunger was in and In Bruges was out. So does IMDB, which lists Hunger as UK/Ireland and In Bruges as UK/USA. I have to say I think that seems accurate.

I’ve never quite understood the cult of Burton. Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Ed Wood and Nightmare… are all solid films.
But Sleepy Hollow is a bit of a mess, Planet of the Apes is a cinematic stillborn and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is stupefyingly creepy in not the intended way. Depp’s Willy Wonka felt like a character from the Murphy Report.
The one that baffles me most is Sweeney Todd. It was vile. Aside from the dodgy music, it took one clever joke (ooh, didn’t think he’d slice his neck so suddenly) and recycled it like a recent Simpsons episode. Any director who can cast Timothy Spall (one of the most talented of actors around at the moment) and reduce him to a hissing, cane-stroking goon is beyond help.
Alice looks pretty, but I won’t be surprised if it ends up a mess. And the trailer in 3D did very little for me.

Oh, and as for the top Irish films, the exclusion of In Bruges was strange I thought. And at the risk of being disowned by my countrymen (and more importantly, my fellow Dubliners), Intermission is a joke of a film. No idea of what it wants to be, and it pretty much fails at being a film. It also contains the single worst use of flashback in the history of cinema. There, I feel much now!

thanks for the clarification Donald. who knew it was so difficult to make a purely irish film.

Point taken Donald, I am suddenly reminded of an argument many years ago in which my brother called Braveheart a “Scottish film”.

adam and paul was the best irish film i saw. Garage was pretty good too. When is Ireland going to produce a more sophisticated cinematic movement though? Dogme 95 – for all its shortcomings – would never happen here.

hated intermission really, thought it was shot horribly. would have loved to have seen it photographed like robert elswit does for pt anderson, especially as I suspect the makers were aping those kind of sprawling disparate films that both him and altman do so well. (I mean, look at the poster).

I agree with most of the misgivings about Mr. Burton. As with Guillermo del Toro, I reckon he has a talent for art direction but not for much more. A willed naivety may prevent him from achieving anything significant beyond the technical. His association with Mr. Depp will ensure that he will never clear the fences of the ersatz corral he has created for himself, as Mr. Depp increasingly seems to consider that smirking at the absurdity of acting constitutes an acceptable performance.
I don’t necessarily share Mr. Griffin’s Lewis Carroll fatigue, although I can appreciate his exasperation, as recourse to the Alice books as a convenient source of surrealist ideas is often taken as an easy, lazy option. I reckon films derived from comics are more representative of Sloth, (and Greed), these days, although it would be interesting to see some poor unfortunate try to bring ‘Pongo Snodgrass’ or ‘The Leopard of Lime Street’ to the cineplexes.
As to the best Irish films, emphatically ‘yes’ to ‘Hunger’ and ‘Adam and Paul’, a more qualified assent to ‘Intermission’, haven’t seen ‘Pavee Lackeen’ but ‘Once’…the nicest thing I could say about it would be that as a promotional video for a suite of dull songs it was entirely appropriate. I reckon the video for ‘Should Have Known Better’ by Jim Diamond provides more emotional bang for one’s buck.
P.S. I understand the difficulty in defining a film as Irish, however am a tad aggrieved by the omission of ‘Flight of the Doves, ‘Taffin’, ‘The Fantasist’ and ‘Rawhead Rex’ from the list.

I agree with Joe Griffin that the whole Alice thing is rather jaded at this stage and that camping it up is unlikely to breath new life into a concept that has been so oft adapted. As a matter of fact the best adaptation I ever saw was in the Helix a couple of years ago (Landmark Productions) – a suberb and sober dramatisation with an excellent cast and brilliantly concieved set design. All the CGI in the world won’t displace it in my affections. I have fond memories of the books but am not sure I’ll ever read them again – too many books, too little time.

For the record I really enjoyed Intermission. Loved Colm Meany and the whole Celtic mysticism bit and laughed long and loud and often. So there.

D. Neary: “Aside from the dodgy music.” You are generosity in person. Tim Burton is,perhaps, the most “unbalanced” directors around.