TSPDT

Key Production Countries: USA, UK
Key Genres: Fantasy, Fantasy Comedy, Children's/Family, Horror, Costume Horror, Gothic Film, Science Fiction, Superhero Film, Children's Fantasy, Comedy, Animation, Adventure
Key Collaborators: Danny Elfman (Composer), Chris Lebenzon (Editor), Johnny Depp (Leading Actor), Helena Bonham Carter (Leading Character Actress), Richard D. Zanuck (Producer), Rick Heinrichs (Production Designer), Michael Keaton (Leading Actor), John August (Screenwriter), Denise Di Novi (Producer), Stefan Czapsky (Cinematographer), Philippe Rousselot (Cinematographer), Bruno Delbonnel (Cinematographer)

"Although in the last resort I find his work more distinctive than distinguished, Tim Burton compels interest and attention by the way in which he has established within the Hollywood mainstream a cinema that is, to say the least, highly eccentric, idiosyncratic, and personal… Credit must be given to Burton’s originality and inventiveness: he is an authentic artist in the sense that he is so clearly personally involved in and committed to his peculiar vision and its realization in film. What equally demands to be questioned is the degree of real intelligence underlying these qualities. The inventiveness is all on the surface, in the art direction, makeup, special effects. The conceptual level of the films does not bear very close scrutiny." - Robin Wood (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 2000)

"Johnny Depp once said that no one so obviously out of place in Hollywood fits in so right as Burton. Maybe that explains why misfit director Burton remains in the unique position of a chameleon whose movies appeal to mainstream and cultish fringe audiences alike." - Ernest Mathijs (501 Movie Directors, 2007)

"Burton has sometimes been compared to Steven Spielberg, because of their affinity for the child's-eye view (and, perhaps, their limited engagement with the opposite sex), but the work is of a very different temperature. More intuitive, less sentimental, Burton has none of Spielberg's sense of the rightful order of things. Indeed, storytelling is not his forte. His movies get by on atmosphere and curiosity rather than narrative drive or manipulation." - Tom Charity (The Rough Guide to Film, 2007)

"Taking inspiration from popular culture, Tim Burton has reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking as an expression of personal vision, garnering for himself an international audience of fans and influencing a generation of young artists working in film, video, and graphics." - The Museum of Modern Art, 2010

"Burton is the most clear-cut example of the movie brat made by an age of horror, fantasy, animation, and effects. There is not really a hint of the straight world in his films, and those who miss such things should face the possibility that Burton (and his contemporaries) have never noticed such a thing. In other words, photography for him is only a way of making effects. He does not understand that it was ever reckoned as way of recording nature. Everything in a Burton film expresses the distorted feelings of a resolute, inescapable loneliness - his world is constitutionally warped and explosive." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)

"Despite his contrarian artiste nature and indie filmmaker persona, director Tim Burton helmed some of the biggest blockbusters in Hollywood history. With his roots in drawing and animation, Burton crafted over his career distinctly designed films that reflected the gothic horror influences of his youth." - Turner Classic Movies

"Burton has made his name in the past 15 years with dark fantasies, putting a comic slant on things that go bump in the night, and creating weird worlds of his own." - David Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)

"The imaginative designs (often echoing German expressionism) and quirky conceptualisations of his films are often betrayed by narrative incoherence and a reluctance or inability properly to confront the thematic implications of his nightmarish scenarios; despite a maverick sensibility, he perhaps remains too much the Hollywood entertainer to delve deeply into his unsettling preoccupations." - Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)

"I've always loved the idea of fairy tales, but somehow I never managed to completely connect with them. What interests me is taking those classic images and themes and trying to contemporize them a bit. I believe folk tales and fairy tales have some sort of psychological foundation that makes that possible." - Tim Burton