Ye Shaadi Nahin Ho Sakti – Murda Dulhan ke Kaarname
For Joe Ranft
It turned out a long wait, for little reason.
As the rain receded, we spilled out of the rainbow-lab.
The air was reassuringly warm,
But moist with the frown of the moment.
It reigned over us, playing an unreleased Gilbert & Sullivan in vain.
Infection. Mystery. Rage.
Soon, it was all gone,
In the prime of the moment.
Not a second to replay no more.
Overheard in a fund-raiser for the flood victims,
“So, which title do you think is more romantic…an affair to remember, a walk in the clouds, or was it a walk to remember….hmmm….four weddings and a funeral, may be(!)…..no?……hmmmmm….let’s see…..sleepless in seattle?….god!….hum aapke hain koun?!!!!…..!!!
OK, FORGET romantic. Think Musical….or it could be both….A Romantic Musical…or or….A Musical Romantic.”
“That is all fine, but how do we establish the ‘MARRIAGE’ element?”
“Well, I guess we will have to marry the extremes then.”
ENTER CORPSE BRIDE
Like a marriage of two worlds, at extreme ends of sanity, we enter the world of CORPSE BRIDE. The one she inhabits, and the one she doesn’t. Dark and whimsical at first, The Land of The Dead is the place to be. While The Land of The Living wastes its moment away by being uptight, repressed, stonewashed for good, and well, Victorian, the former is a scream. Well, with some music, of course.
“Why do you want to go up there, when people are dying to get down here?!” – Elder ‘I got crows in ma’ chest’ Gutknecht
Victor Van Dort, is the man from the stingy land. But he sure makes the cut.
“I wish you had seen it without furs..”
He knows not what he wishes for, but the desire hangs like drooping shoulders on the moonlit city streets, in the bland and lonely nights.
Victoria Everglot, is the other end of the spectral, but demonstrates the same lack of spirits.
“I guess in present circumstances, you could call me Victoria.”
The word ‘scrawny’ explains many a things, of this grammatically incorrect world. And its ways. The wedding rehearsal looks delightfully doomed from the word Harryhausen. It is indeed a marriage, of skewed social motives, and surrendered ambitions.
“…our family shall be elevated to the hallowed heights of the society.”
It is a terrible idea to get married on this fateful day. I mean look at the low-hanging clouds for Victoria’s sake!
Every tiny, little thing, every microscopic thing, MUST GO, ACCORDING TO PLAN.
Like an otter in disgrace, we all must resign to the merciless fate. And yes, it must all go according to the bloody plan.
(mutters profanities)
There is something unique about Tim Burton’s direction, or his overall command over the film craft, strangely fair to the original idea, all washed in sanctity of its inspiration. Watching each of his films feels like watching a masterpiece. If not for the trade, his works would be a separate planet of their own.
– H O P S C O T C H –
EVOLUTION OF 18641
He was born in 1958.
He completes 51 on 25th August, 2009. That gives us a 51.
Days to apocalypse= 14.
Every year has 365 days, leap years have 366.
He survived long enough for the apocalypse. But how long?
12X366+39X365+14=4392+14235+14=18641.
The proverbial romance starts at the notes of a vintage piano, not to be played but admired, revered. OK, to be played.
“What impropriety is this?!!”
Maggot: You don’t know me, but I used to live in your dead mother.
“Do you not wish to be married, Mr. Van Dort?”
So, it was bound to happen(excuse the high pitched humiliation)…
YE SHAADI NAHIN HO SAKTI! Iski taiyyari ke bina!! Young man must learn his vows first. -Pastor Galswells
And pop goes the Town Crier…
FISHY FIANCE GETS CANNED!
The Face that started it all
Helena Bonham Carter is what a self-respecting goth-lover’s dreams would look like, if they came real. She screams through the dead exteriors of the Coprse Bride. Timid. Innocent. Someone who lives in eternal hope, someone who was not given the right piece of pie.
She waited for years, in chilly nights and painful brights. Near the oak tree. And in classic Burton style, the screen craves for the silhouetted imagery of the star-crossed lovers against the fiery gloomy night sky.
Bonejangles: Hit it, boys. Hey! Give me a listen, you corpses of cheer/ Least those of you who still got an ear/ I’ll tell you a story make a skeleton cry/ Of our own jubiliciously lovely corpse bride!
Bone Boys: Die, die, we all pass away/ But don’t wear a frown ’cause it’s really okay/ And you might try and hide/ And you might try and pray/ But we all end up the remains of the day/ Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Yeah yeah yeah
Bonejangles: Well our girl was a beauty known for miles around/ When a mysterious stranger came into town/ He was plenty good lookin’, but down on his cash/ And our poor little baby, she fell hard and fast/ When her daddy said no, she just couldn’t cope/ So our lovers came up with a plan to elope
Bone Boys: Die, die, we all pass away….
“Excuse me(splits in half), Thank You.”
Parties have rarely been THAT much fun now. Green, skeletal, trippy, insulting, edgy, satirical.
“…and now, the weather.” – The Town Crier
“We are one groom short for the wedding tomorrow.” – Finis Everglot
Town Crier: In other news… *the dead walk the earth*!
And for some reason, I always tend to believe Burton’s films do not get enough credit for their witty dialog and peculiar sense of satire. Be it Deadly Night Shade or The Ukrainian Haunting Spell, he makes sure you are never short on spells.
If I hadn’t just been sitting in it, I would say that you’d lost your mind! – Maggot-the voice of conscience
And then there is the beautiful dilemma, inflicted by society, inflicted by the decisions taken in haste.
Victor Van Dort: Please, there’s been a mistake. I’m not dead.
The transformations, the transfigurations, the teleportations.
She, in blue, earlier, and he, in pale yellow, get moonlit moonstruck moon-ported into the world they were never meant for.
And she moves, and turns, and twirls. The tragedy of her danse macabre, she falls away, pulls herself together, gathers her pieces, and manages a smile in the blue monstrosity of the Land of the Living.
“Let’s meet your parents. Where are they buried?”
One can always look back at Nightmare and this, and see many auteur connections – the marriage of two extreme worlds, the symbolic rebellion against social clichés(Christmas, marriages), a love that is doomed to fail, Dahl-ish objects and names(Baby’s Breath/Frog’s Breath, The Wine of Ages), an opulent approach to the dance floor, the jive, , the Nouveau Riche pitted against the Aristocracy robbed off its riches, the union of the living and the dead(Alfredo-Gertrude “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!”), and yet there are some differences. Corpse Bride is free from the clutches of cult, it revels in its own charms. It is sombre, and has the silences, the quiet.
“She can’t compare, but she does breathe air!”
“Till death do us apart.”
“Finis, where do you keep the spirits?”
“Be gone, ye demons from Hell!”
“Keep it down, we are in a church.”
The Influences
Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson(Cotton Club, Harlem), Charles Addams, The Grimm Brothers, Vaudeville, Broadway, Russian folktales, Kurt Weill, Fleischer Brothers and St. James Infirmary Blues, Lionel Bart, Edgar Allen Poe…
THE JAR
Oh what is it! What is so enchanting about this mass of the living dead in the Unaesthetic Jar? An ordinary looking, fat, glass jar. It is not for sale, and certainly not for mockery. You can choose to stay mesmerized, or sick in the stomach. You have little but you have to survive.
And something escapes into the blue light.
The Jar is Burton cut to the size of a TV screen, but still has its derivative fun, Happy Kaufman, Danny Elfman, and that ol’ sleepy feeling.
“Next please!” – Dr. Maxwell Payne, D.D.S. Family Dentist(from Stalk of the Celery Monster)
On Animation & 9
An important aspect of Burton’s opus is technology, the craft of putting together visuals, be it live action or animation. And animation is defined and looked at a little differently in Burtonland. Images in the head are put on paper, transformed in a 3-D form, placed in an alternate universe where a story is woven around them, and somewhere along this long, tiring, unbelievable project, magic happens. It has happened with Nightmare, and it has happened with Corpse Bride. Both the films have a decade in between, but the emotion is never sacrificed. Your heart still goes out for the quintessential elements that make his cinema unique. And his love for the old-school, dying art of puppet/stop motion is infectious, and is a reason to look forward to anything that his workshop churns up.
On the special features of CB, one is exposed to these intricate procedures that take to put together such a film- the music(classical orchestras, with the influences mentioned above), the craft(bringing sketches to reality, shooting through a still SLR camera and putting together the stills to create one shot(it takes around 12 hrs of work to create a scene of .5 to 1 second!), rigs, modeling, costumes, working on expressions, working with multiple setups and multiple character models all running in parallel), the supporting technology, like camera, shadowing, going back and forth with actors(VO artists) and models/characters, production designing a Victorian era that appeals to the new generation, and many such interesting aspects.
Animation has hooked me time and again, kind of a love and hate. At times technology overwhelms me, and at times I get humbled by a creator’s imagination and painstaking effort to put it to reality. Our local Burtonman,Shekhar Shimpi is a glaring example. Such stories are inspiring and makes one believe that animation is not restricted to the hallowed studiohouses.
And when I turn to the big releases, I am humbled by someone like Burton who goes back to the basics, and puts his influences on priority, much ahead of the tricks of the trade, or the changing times. Digital animation is good, but we will talk about a world we see in our head first.
9 goes back to the same debate and mood, albeit with lots of new energy and hope. Shane Acker says, The design of the short film was inspired by the work of several stop-motion animated masters; Jan Švankmajer, the Brothers Quay, and the Lauenstein brothers. In fact, I originally conceived the short as being stop-motion.
“Nick (Nick Kenway, Editor)was already shaping the movie with me after the storyboards phase. Next came layout, which was the first pass at roughing the environments with the characters in them. After that came the animation phase – which was two parts; blocking, where you rough out the timing and refine the animation, and lighting, where the textures and the characters really come to life. All the while we were layering in music and sound, too – and editing pulls it all together.”
Layout supervisor Brian Foster adds, “We had our own camera rig, which very much mimicked what a camera boom and dolly rig would do on a live-action movie. That makes the world of 9 more real.
“In computer-generated animation, the camera can be moved wherever you envision it. But we showed restraint there, because Shane wanted the camera work on 9 to be handled the way a traditional shoot would be.”
“I had to make sure that what we would plan at the beginning came out consistently through the end; in terms of the lighting and the color keys, it had to relate back to the story’s original intent. I oversaw the crew’s modeling, surfacing and matte painting, through lighting. Wherever we could add detail, we would; we had folders of reference for the junk, the rocks, and so on. Everyone worked so hard, but we were excited because we knew we were creating something that takes animation to new places. The look of 9 came to have more of a painterly feel than we thought it would.”
Supervising animator Charlie Bonifacio says, “The palette is very narrow, and yet there’s a lot of color in it; rose-colored skies and dense red rust in a gray landscape, for example.”
Visual effects supervisor Jeff Bell adds, “We were able to accomplish the shadows-and-contrast look that Shane wanted. In terms of the CG [computer-generated] animation, 9 looks like no other film you’ve seen. It takes place in rich, majestic ‘steampunk’ environments, yet those are backdrops; the characters drive the story.”
Animation director Joe Ksander offers, “When these characters come out of the darkness into the light, it is that much more powerful visually and from a storytelling point of view.”
While 9 was made using CG animation tools and technology, as Acker notes, “It’s not the technology that adds richness to the images, but the artists using the technology.
Acker remarks, “It’s ‘virtual puppetry’ in that the puppets are in the computer system. The poses are locked, the computer stores the data, and it all links together as animation.”
“When you’re doing animation, you’re so close to it that it can be hard to take a critical distance from the work. Working with a team, there’s always people around to see the work in new ways and to bounce ideas off of. All of the amazing artists who have come onto the project have brought so much to it that I couldn’t have by myself. It’s been a tremendous collaborative effort.”
Acker elaborates, “The actors deliver the subtleties of the dialogue, while the animators deliver the performance. We shot video footage of the actors, even when they were sitting around a table, and the animators used that for reference. This way, they could take those qualities that the actors had conveyed and apply them consistently throughout. Every character was distilled down to its vitals.”
“But it’s not just sitting down and moving keys around on a computer. We would also shoot video reference footage of ourselves acting, because there were lots of little things you would need to keep in mind before sketching or animating; studying the weight of a staff in someone’s hands, for instance. Mirrors were stationed at animators’ desks for them to glance into while they were working on their computers, for quick references to facial expressions or saying words. Since #3 and #4 have no dialogue at all, it was up to the animators to come up with those performances entirely; for those two characters, we were inspired by meerkats and silent film actors.”
“We had to make sure to get everything into the time frame we had for the shot, and that meant us doing everything from acting out lines to clambering around – for which we piled up a bunch of office furniture to simulate a junk pile.”
Next edition: Focus on the music behind 9, Who is Deborah Lurie?, and The Doors connection.
Thanks:
Helena World
James and the Giant Peach
The Skeleton Dance
Shimpili The Best
PIXAR Artist Corner – Joe
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
“Chudail ki Suhagraat”
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I knew it, when you comment “The Bride returns soon..”
Love the title of the Article, (I’m going to do Artwork on it)
Neki aur poochh poochh :-)
a nice and well-deserved shout out to Joe Ranft..
and helena bonham carter &&&&& Asia ‘tatooed godess’ argento..
haven’t seen ‘corpse bride’ like it deserves to be.. i remember it had a lot of buzz but it quickly faded off.. some mistake
too bad we couldn’t touch on james and the giant peach.. actually, one of my fav. books of all time
time and place man. it will all happen. anyways, we are young.