Helena Bonham Carter on "Alice," Burton

The Guardian asks actress Helena Bonham Carter about her career thus far, Alice in Wonderland, how her life has change since meeting Tim Burton, and much more. Also included are pictures from a Wonderland-inspired photo-shoot. You can read the entire article here, but here are some notable excerpts:


'I’m ­often criticised for what I wear. That’s my main label in the press now: disastrous dresser!'
Photograph: Gustavo Papaleo

Helena Bonham Carter discussed her exagerrated, tyrannical role in Alice as the Red Queen. "I've brought myself. It's me... in Alice," she says. Holding up a cardboard cutout of her character, she explained, "She's got Tourette's. She just says, 'Off with their heads!' all the time."

Bonham Carter has worked with Tim Burton in six films so far. Alice in Wonderland has gathered tremendous hype (and cost a bundle, too -- $250,000,000), but the actress revealed that she has not seen the film yet. No one has. The movie has been kept top secret. Then again, she may never see it. She and co-star Johnny Depp cannot stand seeing themselves on screen. "Johnny doesn't watch ­anything he's in. That's slightly comforting. You think if Johnny Depp can't watch himself..."

It doesn't help that Burton seems to dress her up in outrageous characters, either. "No, I can never rely on Tim to make me pretty."


'We do dress up at Halloween.'
Photo: Gustavo Papaleo


But playing such extreme and quirky characters has been working just fine for Bonham Carter. Prior to meeting Burton in 2001, she was mostly relegated to posh, corset-wearing roles in period dramas. She first emerged with a proper role in film at age 19 in A Room With a View, and went on to be a poster girl for EM Forster, English roses and the corset ­industry. Since then, her resume has altered dramatically.

"Ageing has helped hugely," she says. "There's no question I'm a better actor, and you leave ­behind a certain typecasting. I was like the corset bimbo." She stops, has a slurp of smoothie, a bite of toastie and starts again. "Well, not quite bimbo, but you know what I mean. The corset sex symbol, I suppose. Now I'm not going to be the sex symbol, I'm going to be the granny." She changes her mind by the mouthful. "Well, not quite granny."


Does Tim have a key to her house? 'No… He always visits, which is really touching.'
Photo: Gustavo Papaleo

Bonham Carter had had plenty of boyfriends, ­including Kenneth Branagh, but had never lived with anybody. "I remember I did think, 'Wouldn't it be nice if Mr Right moved in next door?'"

Eventually, he did. During the filming on Planet of the Apes in 2001 (with Bonham Carter as the female lead, the human rights advocating chimpanzee Ari), she met the director, Tim Burton. At the time, she barely talked to him. The only thing she remembers him saying to her is that he knew he wanted her as one of his apes, and that he had once lived in Hampstead and it was the only place in the world he'd felt at home. When the film was completed, they began their relationship, when she was 35, and he bought the home next door to hers in Hampstead. Today, they have two children, six-year-old Billy Ray and two-year-old Nell.

After meeting Burton, her acting work and wardrobe changed. "I'm ­often criticised for what I wear. That's my main label in the press now: disastrous dresser!" she exclaimed. "Sometimes it's really offensive, but it's kind of affectionate now. We're like the 'bonkers couple'."

Another common label that is tagged on her is 'goth,' but Bonham Carter is uncertain that it's an appropriate adjective for herself. "I don't like the music particularly, I've got no goth records. Is it the predominant black? The make-up? And the whiteness? The white thing. Yes... Tim sometimes puts grey make-up on for the press and he doesn't tell me, so afterwards I'm like, 'You're ill!' He goes, nah, it's the grey make-up. Heeheeehee!"

Burton gets similar descriptions in the press, but she was equally skeptical about that description. "He doesn't like the music, either. But we do dress up at Halloween." Do they just stay at home in their make-up, or go out? "No, we go out and play. I don't know... well, he likes death... It's not that he likes it, but he's considered it in his work."


'In the six weeks when you’re up for an Oscar, there’s a little ­window where you’re offered everything. Seventh week, when you haven’t got it, you’re fucked. Forget it.'
Photo: Gustavo Papaleo

Burton is still considered an oddball, and their aesthetics do differ from the Hollywood conventions. Bonham Carter speculated that Burton might have Asperger's Syndrome in the past, but she now says she tends to get such observations incorrectly. "All the auties love Nightmare Before Christmas." Again, she apologises, this time for the word ­auties. "I played Jacqui Jackson, a single mum with children on the autistic spectrum, and I feel partly it's OK to talk like that because I know her, know that world, and she calls them auties." It makes perfect sense what she says about ­Burton. "I think he felt very isolated in Burbank where he was born. Edward Scissorhands is a ­version of where he was brought up. It is a bit ­Alice In Wonderland – I don't belong here." Whatever he may or may not be, there is no doubt that Burton is a unique, creative person. "He's someone who's very creative and has a mad ­exterior, but he is funda­mentally very sane and ­practical. I don't think we're crazy at all, to be honest," Bonham Carter said.

They're practical in domestic arrangements, too. Needing their independent space, she has one house, he has ­another and the children have the third to play in with the nanny. Do she and ­Burton see each other much at home? "He always visits, which is really touching. He's always coming over." Does he have a key to her house? "No, the houses are joined. We have a throughway. Journalists think there's an underground tunnel, gothic. It's ­actually quite above ground, lots of light." Do they sleep together? "Sometimes. There's a snoring issue... I talk, he snores. The other thing is, he's an insomniac, so he needs to watch ­television to get to sleep. I need silence."

In the interview, she went on to show some family photos on her mobile phone. "That's Bill as a pirate for his pirates party. He's so ­unbelievably patient. Nell's two, she's going to destroy everything. He's­ ­introvert, she's extrovert. He's very tender, she's much more traditionally masculine."


'I feel more sexy than ever, not because I’m sexually attractive, I just feel I’ve grown into my body.'

Hair: Carol Hemming. Make-up: Louise Constad at Mandy Coakley Represents using Benefit.
Photo: Gustavo Papaleo.


She thinks she has changed since being with ­Burton. "He's made me more aware. He thinks I overact all the time. He's got a thing about me having a very mobile face. Tim has often said I've got hyperactive eyebrows – he calls them the dancing cater­pillars. He's all for minimal ­expression. He likes to simplify things, I ­complicate them. I think we can do this or this or this, optionitis, then I get frozen because I don't know which one."

Has she changed him? "People who know him say I have, and I feel really flattered. Made him talk more. He didn't ­really talk before. He's much shyer than me. Every ­sentence was ­unfinished. I used to say he was a home for ­abandoned ­sentences. Now he actually finishes them." She sounds so chuffed, as if the thought has struck her for the first time. She is often ­described as Burton's muse, but that makes her uneasy. She says she would not be upset if in future he didn't cast her; there's always going to be a film for which she isn't right. "You can't take it personally." But what if he decided he no longer wanted her in any of his films? "Well, if it's obvious that I'm right for it, I probably will take it personally. I'll let you know when it happens." Could their ­relationship survive that? "It will be interesting. It's not without its pressures, working with Tim. It worked on Alice. Sweeney was very stressful, very hard on our relationship." Is he a boss or partner on set? "No, he's a partner in our private life, but when he's directing, he's the boss. And maybe I confuse that."

At age 43, she feels adult for the first time in her life, and capable of playing almost any role. "I feel more sexy than ever, not because I'm sexually attractive, I just feel I've grown into my body." Did she feel sexy when she was a ­beautiful young thing? "No, absolutely not. ­Totally uncomfortable. It took me ages to grow into being a woman, into being happy with it. When I was young, I believed in being androgynous, you can't flaunt it, you can't use it. The whole thing was just something yuck, to be ­embarrassed about. And now it's just like, 'Hey, enjoy it!' Now I feel fine about shapes and things. It's nice to have curves. To be a woman."

"I suppose I'm just a late developer."

Colleen Atwood on Burton, "Alice": "It's Going to Be Amazing"

Renowned award-winning costume designer and frequent Burton collaborator Colleen Atwood sat down for an interview with MovieLine.com, and discussed how she met Tim Burton, how new technology has affected her method of designing costumes for Alice in Wonderland, what we can expect from Burton's upcoming Alice in Wonderland, and much more:

You’ve worked with Johnny Depp many times now.

I have … Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow … Let’s see … Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland …

It must be a treat to design for an actor who can disappear so seamlessly inside his characters.

He really is a chameleon, and he takes on the character in the clothes. They don’t ever look like costumes on him; they look real, and that really helps my job.

Your partnership with Tim Burton — how did the two of you first come together?

I was recommended to him on Edward Scissorhands by a production designer — Bo Welch — who I’d work with prior to that. So I met Tim through him, and we clicked in our own way, and we’ve managed to have a long run together and still enjoy working together. I just went to Tim’s show at MoMA last night, and it was fantastic. Really amazing.

Do you conceive of the costumes together through sketches? I know he frequently begins on paper.

There’s something that he captures that is kind of the soul of the character on paper, and there’s often costume elements, but we’re not married to that at all. I mean, for sure on Edward Scissorhands, because there was so much involved with that, but with the Mad Hatter, with Sweeney, with those costumes, he really doesn’t give me a drawing and say, “This is what I want.” I think it’s because he knows the other people working with him are artists, so he gets very excited and enthusiastic when we show him what we have. He has a wonderful eye himself, and so he’ll a little magical touch to something.

How did the new 3-D technology he used in Alice in Wonderland affect your designs?

I did a lot of the computer animated costumes — I knew what the animated world was going to be, and I knew a bit about 3-D anyway, and so I sort of tried to make stuff that you could play with in 3-D. Stuff that pops in and out. We ended up physically making a lot of the other stuff and it would later end up being animated. It really helped Tim to see things as physical costumes first, and it gave the animators a lot of help as far as depth and texture and things like that. I think what we’re going to see now is the mixture of live and animated people and costumes in an animated world. It’s going to be a really amazing, fun thing for the audience.


I know he wanted to depart with the traditional narrative. How tied were you to the original illustrations, and what were you reference points for designing a new Alice in Wonderland?

It was really freeing, because there’s Lewis Caroll’s own drawings, of which there aren’t very many and they’re quite simple. As Alice went through various eras, there’s classic references for them. Because this is so different from what people are going to expect — Alice isn’t a ten-year-old girl, she’s a young woman — there’s a nod to the classical need for that. But once she goes into Wonderland, we took it to another place. The Hatter has a hat and the recognizable elements, but we explored the world of hat makers in London in the period. So we pulled from that for inspiration more than the previous illustrations, and Johnny used that for his character. They called hatters “mad hatters” because they used these toxic glues and dyes all the time, and they were actually quite mad, a lot of them. So it was quite cool to read about that business in that time, and that they were actually quite in demand and made a quite decent living at that period.



Now when you do something historically accurate and less fanciful than something like Alice in Wonderland, such as Public Enemies, how much research goes into it before you even sketch your first drawing?

In a story like Public Enemies, it’s about people who existed, so you go to that trough, using what few images of them existed. Actually when I do period work, I really like to read about the period as much as I like to look at pictures, because sometimes the written word is much better at conveying what their lives were really like and how much they had, and where their clothes came from. Because a lot of time, people dressed in their Sunday best to pose for a picture. They didn’t take snapshots until much later — there certainly wasn’t much of that going on in the 1930s.

For most of these guys, it was mugshots and prison entrance and exit clothes, but I had a lot of people do online research, and Michael Mann of course had been on the project for a long time and had very deep research and was quite specific. The production designer usually starts a show before I do and they usually have a depth of research. So it’s a combination of all that.


You have some TV credits as well, such as The Tick. Did you design The Tick’s costume?

Yeah. The pilot.


Is it true The Tick’s moving antennae cost $1 million to produce?

Not the ones I did. Maybe later when they did the series they spent more money, but I did the pilot. I remember the amount that costume cost, as a matter of fact, and the budget for that kind of TV pilot is usually much higher. I didn’t have the kind of R&D you get when they decide to really go for it.


What was the most expensive costume you’ve ever made?

I’d say probably the most expensive costumes I’ve ever made were the costumes in The Planet of the Apes, because of the research and development that went into them and the amount of layers. I got the cost per costume down, but because it involved so many processes, with sculpting, and bodysuits, and cool suits, and oversuits, and helmets, and footwear, and handwear, that had to work for action and look like monkeys, that was probably the most expensive per-unit costume ever. The period stuff I spend a lot of time on, I have good textile artists. They’re not cheap, but they’re not out of control expensive either, because you have to make it work.




Speaking of making it work, do you watch Project Runway?

I have watched Project Runway, but I’m not a devout watcher of it. But I think it’s a great show, what I’ve seen of it, and I think Tim Gunn is a very positive, amazing guy.


I ask because they’ll often dismiss something on the show as looking “too costumey,” and I’m wondering if you take offense to that.

No, because I think the street world that it’s in is different. People like to stir up the fashion vs. costume world, and I think what they mean by “too costumey” is that it’s too much, or not real enough for everyday wear. You couldn’t say that about John Galliano’s shows, right? I mean they’re awesome and they’re total costume. It’s just a different thing. They do like to slag off costumes a bit — not on that show, but in the fashion world. I don’t know why they feel they have to compete.


Are you ever tempted to, or maybe you do, design your own clothes?

You know, it’s strange. Like, I’ve designed my Oscar dresses and my people have made them for me, but my own clothes per se that I wear? No — but I do a lot of fitting. Like I’ll buy something and completely recut it. I’m so used to thinking that my clothes are fairly neutral, it’s other people’s clothes I like to design.


Next up you’re working on yet another Johnny Depp film — The Rum Diary. What’s the look you’re going for there?

Well, it’s real. It’s a guy that goes to Puerto Rico in 1960, who’s kind of like an average guy. He shows up with very few clothes. There’s contrasts in the story, between the haves and the have-nots, the Union Carbides vs. the locals, so I pushed that side of the contrast a bit. But it’s very research-oriented and real clothes a lot.

Q&A with Tim Burton

Metromix covers a lot in their Q&A with filmmaker Tim Burton. In the interview, Burton talks about the various films that he's working on (and even mentions the status of the stop-motion adaptation of Frankenweenie), his thoughts on the Oscars, the current state of animation in the film industry, and much more:


You came aboard 9 as producer after Shane Acker had made his short film. How'd that process work out?
I liked his short film, and he had a certain sensibility that I felt close to. Because I had gone through the process and made animated films…I always know what I wished I'd had, which was somebody to bounce things off of: first cut, the first draft of the script, some design notes.

What drew you to the story?
I liked the short film. It just seemed like a piece of a larger picture. It just needed to be fleshed out. The thing about a short is, you can keep the kind of mystery and the kind of personal quality to it. And I think the key was to keep that feeling, but on a bigger scale. You see a lot of personal films, but you don't see a lot of personal animated films.

Well, the number of Oscar nominees for Best Picture has now been bumped up to 10…
10?!

10!
Wonder why they did that? I had heard talk of it but didn't know they actually did it. Wow.

With more nominees this year, people are predicting that a film like Up could land a spot as the first computer-animated Best Picture nominee.
Animated films…they're films! I think it's good that now, most people are not looking at them as [just] animated. They're looking at them as films, like the Pixar people. You can categorize [animation], but it shouldn't be limited by that.

But the Best Animated Film category is still there. Do you think that ghettoizes these movies?
Maybe it does. But at the same time, most people recognize—certainly the studios recognize—the economic potential of animated films. Family films, animated films—[they're] much more of a sure thing than any type of film at the moment.

What's your favorite animated film?
[Long pause] I'd have to pick something that had a lot of impact, which was Jason and the Argonauts [by] Ray Harryhausen. That really had an impact on me. The stop-motion animation and the kind of reality and scale of it at the time when I saw it was really amazing.

Would you ever want to remake that film? They're remaking Clash of the Titans.
[Chuckles] I know. Nah, I think it was good.

How are things coming along with Dark Shadows?
I haven't really started that at all. I still have to finish Alice. So that's a big job ahead of me. It's way too early. [Laughs] Probably in a year's time.

Any ideas that you've already been thinking up for it?
Well, just to try to capture the tone. It was a strange show, it has a strange vibe to it. And that's, I think, key to it.

Alice has been all over the place, with photos and trailers and you guys at Comic-Con.
Usually I don't talk about something before it's done. So it's been an odd situation because I [still] have so much work to do. I'm not scared of [all the special effects], per se, but I'm a bit daunted by the time and the unknown quality of it. But that makes it exciting as well.

What about Frankenweenie?
Still early. Like I said, the focus I have is Alice. It's hard to think of anything else that requires a large amount of work.

But that's on the table.
Oh yeah, afterward, yeah. Exactly. Slowly get started.

I saw the latest "Harry Potter" last night, which stars your partner, Helena Bonham Carter. She makes a pretty mean baddie.
[Jokes] Yeah, she's a good witch. She had a lot of practice. She's good at that.

Does she ever come to you for tips on how to channel all that darkness?
No, she keeps it all personal. She keeps it all for her own uses, yeah. Witchcraft uses. [Laughs]

New York's Museum of Modern Art is doing an exhibit on you later this year. That was a little unexpected.
I feel like it's a weird dream—I'm not sure that it's real. But it's very exciting. That's probably more scary than a film, in a certain way. It feels a bit more exposing. I'm trying not to think too much about it. I'm trying to remove myself a bit from it—a bit of an out-of-body experience.

Your films have such a consistent, dark vision. Do you ever wake up wanting to do something crazy like a romantic comedy?
[Chuckles] No. Well, I thought Sweeney Todd was a romantic comedy in my mind. So, I think I've already done it. [Laughs] But not the way you're thinking, because that would be scary. But some of those are so scary, they're like horror movies anyway. They don't need my help.

"Ed Wood" at the Aero Tonight

Martin Landau
(Getty Images)

American Cinematheque will be showing Ed Wood at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, California tonight.

Martin Landau, who earned an Oscar for his performance as Bela Lugosi in the film, and screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski will be at the screening.


Wednesday, November 5, 7:30PM
$10
Aero Theater, 1328 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica
310-260-1528

OFFICIAL: Depp in "Wonderland"

After months of speculation, it has been made official: Johnny Depp will play the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland.

Dick Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Studios, has confirmed this on Wednesday.

In addition to Alice, Depp will also be in two other upcoming Disney films: he will return as Captain Jack Sparrow in the fourth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and as the Lone Ranger's sidekick, Tonto, in a new cinematic adaption of the western serial (Depp is part Cherokee in addition to his German and Irish ancestry).

It has also been declared that Oscar-winning VFX supervisor Ken Ralston (who won awards for Robert Zemeckis' films Forrest Gump and Who Framed Roger Rabbit) is on set in London as the senior visual effects supervisor, working with Sony Pictures Imageworks on the animation. David Schaub is the animation supervisor and Sean Phillips and Carey Villegas are visual effects supervisors for Imageworks.


But after all of this talk about Alice in Wonderland, some of us are still wondering about Tim Burton's other film in his two-flick agreement with Walt Disney Studios: a feature-length, stop-motion animated version of Frankenweenie.

The fact is, no big recent news has come up, but it is still in the works (Burton confirmed this on the new DVD release of The Nightmare Before Christmas). Production will commence on the stop-motion adaptation as soon as shooting for Alice is completed (right now, pre-production is going underway). Both Frankenweenie and Alice in Wonderland will be released in theaters presented in Disney Digital 3-D (as will many of the studio's other future projects).

No word on whether Depp will provide his voice for Frankenweenie yet, though.

2008 Oscars Results

The winners from the 80th Annual Academy Awards have all been announced. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was nominated for three awards, and won one Oscar for Best Achievement in Art Direction. Italian production designer Dante Ferretti and his wife, Francesca Lo Schiavo, who was the set designer on the horror-musical, each won an award.

Here are the acceptance speeches by the pair (and more information on their nomination history in this link):

Dante Ferretti:
Thank you to the Academy. And thank you to Tim Burton, fantastic director. Thank you to Richard Zanuck. Thank you to everybody, thank you to my team, all the department, everyone. Thank you, Johnny. And I'm sorry, i forgot something, but I'm very -- thank you anyway.

Francesca Lo Schiavo:
Just i would like to say, this time, thank you, thank you to the Academy. I'm so happy, so grateful. And thank you to Tim Burton. Great director. Johnny Depp and all the actors, Everybody, for this fantastic movie.

Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo hold their Oscars
for their work on the art direction in Sweeney Todd (OSCAR.com)

You can watch a "Thank You Cam" video of the two on the official Oscars website.

Colleen Atwood's costume designs for Sweeney Todd were also nominated, but ultimately lost to Alexandra Byrne's costumes used in Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Johnny Depp was also nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role. However, Daniel Day Lewis, who was predicted as the front runner for the award, received the Oscar for his performance in There Will Be Blood. Previous Burton collaborator Marion Cotillard (who played Josephine in Big Fish) won Best Actress for her performance as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose (a.ka. La Mome). Neither Tim Burton nor Helena Bonham Carter were present at the awards ceremony. It is likely that they were with their children in London at the time.

Although the famed costume designer did not take home an Academy Award this year, Oscars.com did have a special treat from Colleen Atwood. Atwood filled out a questionnaire. See her personal answers and stories, in her handwriting (click on the image for a closer view):





Information on the other winners and nominees can be read in this link.

Depp on the Oscars, Acting

The Academy Awards occur this Sunday, but actor Johnny Depp expressed that he wasn't too concerned if he did or didn't win this year. Depp has been nominated for Best Actor for his role as Sweeney Todd in Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. But Depp said he wasn't too worried about the awards ceremony, and was more interested in future roles and his body of work in acting, Hollywood Today reports.

"I just want to keep trying stuff," said Depp. "I feel like I've been so blessed to have had these characters presented to me, come in front of me, in my life. I just hope that I keep getting jobs, and especially I hope that [Tim Burton] will keep giving me jobs."



Even after six collaborations together, Burton still finds something new and exciting in Depp's various performances. "I have to say, this was one of my favorite characters that he's done," said the director.

Depp admits that he was originally tentative about taking on the role of the murderous barber, who also had to sing. "It was challenging -- there have been a lot of different Sweeneys over the years," the actor said. "I didn't know if I could sing. I had a feeling that because of my background in music that I could hit a note or two. I didn't know if I could sustain a note. I really didn't know if I could pull it off."

Atwood's "Todd" Costumes Win Award

Last night, the winners of the 10th annual Costume Designers Guild Awards were announced. Among the recipients was Colleen Atwood, who won a best costume award for the period piece category for her work on Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Atwood and Todd are also up for an Academy Award for costume designs.

Elijah Wood Confirms Voice for "9"

Actor Elijah Wood recently confirmed that he has lent his voice for an upcoming computer animated feature film, entitled 9. Here's what Wood said:

[T]here's a movie called 9. It's an animated film directed by Shane Acker and executive produced by Tim Burton. That is actually a fully fleshed-out version of the 9 short film that won Best Animated Short at the Oscars, I believe, a couple of years ago. It's about a post-apocalyptic world, essentially, a world where humanity has been destroyed by the machinery it has created. There are these rag dolls, these mechanized rag dolls, that are the only living thing left and they are trying to figure out who they are, and what they are and why humanity was destroyed. It's sort of (laughs) it's relatively dark fare, but the animation style is extraordinary and the story is quite an adventurous one and quite unique in regards to the animated films that have been released in the past couple of years.



The film is based on a 10 1/2 minute long short of the same name, which was directed by Shane Acker. The short took 4 1/2 years to make. It differs from its upcoming feature adaptation in that the original short did not feature any voices. Instead, an unusual semblance of unique sound effects and music moved the story along. The film was nominated for an Oscar in 2005.

Though it will be made in CGI, the computer animation is said to mimic the movement of stop-motion animation, which Tim Burton is so fond of.

Poster for the original short 9 (2004)

Other actors who have lent their voices for the upcoming project include Martin Landau (who was in Tim Burton's Ed Wood and Sleepy Hollow), Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, and Christopher Plummer. Along with Burton, Timur Bekmambetov, Dana Ginsburg, Jim Lemley, and Marci Levine will produce the movie.

9 is set for a U.S. theatrical release of December 26th, 2008.

Oscar Nominees Announced

The nominees for the 80th Annual Academy Awards have been announced. The official website, oscar.com, states that Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street has been nominated for three categories: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Johnny Depp as the title character), Best Art Direction (art director Dante Ferretti and set decorator Francesca Lo Schiavo), and Best Costume Design (Colleen Atwood, making this her second nomination for her work on a Tim Burton film, with Sleepy Hollow being the first). Click on the links for Academy Award history on each of the nominees.


The Oscar Awards ceremony will broadcast on February 24th, 2008, at 5PT/8ET on ABC in the United States.

Pictures of Burton at AFI Directors Screening in L.A.

Pictures of Tim Burton at last Friday's AFI Directors Screening have been posted, courtesy of Joshua J. Smelser. After a screening of Sweeney Todd, Burton took questions from the audience. A surprise guest introduced the director: Martin Landau, an actor who won an Academy Award for his performance as horror legend Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood and also had a small role in Sleepy Hollow.

Martin Landau and film critic Claudia Puig of USA Today.

More pictures can be viewed here.