The Tim Burton Collective - Shopping Guide

In this article I will be giving you some helpful tips on buying Burton related merchandise which should be interesting to any Timmy B. fan. You may use it as a shopping guide for your Burton loving friend, or just use it to explore new things you haven't had the pleasure of experiencing before!

The backbone of every Burtonite's collection are of course the movies themselves.. All of Burtons feature length movies have been released on dvd all around the world, so you wont have trouble finding them.

Out of all of the Burton dvds, the best one is undoubtedly the Nightmare Before Christmas Special Edition dvd. It has a nice selection of extra features about the making of the film, and it's also technically very high quality. The best part of this dvd, in my opinion, are Burtons early short films Vincent and Frankenweenie. These excellent shorts were Burtons key to bigger productions, and they are required viewing for any Burtonite.

If you want to dig into hours of interesting extra material, you should get the 2-disc set of Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes. Filled with documentaries, commentaries, extended scenes, pictures and multi angle features, this is easily the most extra filled dvd-release of a Burton movie so far.

Sleepy Hollow and Pee-wee's Big Adventure are other high quality dvd releases of Burton films. Unfortunately many of Burtons Warner Brother movies have only been released as bare bones dvd's, such as Batman, Batman Returns and Mars Attacks!. There are rumours that Warner is working on new Special Edition dvd versions of both Batman movies, but there are no exact release dates yet.

After a long wait and several delays, the Ed Wood Special Edition dvd has now been released in North America. The dvd features a commentary track, behind the scenes footage, making of material and other interesting extras. For the best deal, you might want to buy it from DVDSoon. If you are interested in the movies of the real Ed Wood, I also recommend the new Ed Wood dvd Collection, which contains his 5 best movies, as well as a documentary about him.

Tim Burton's latest movie, Big Fish is also out on a fine dvd release. There also exists a Korean Limited Edition version of Big Fish, which includes a book, a film strip and a magnet. The dvd itself in this Limited Edition is the same as in the regular release.

For more information about the movies themselves, check out the Movies section of our site.

On top of being a praised filmmaker, Tim Burton has written and illustrated a well loved collection of poems called The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy : and Other Stories. It tells 23 winsomely macabre stories about boys and girls who don't fit in. Their bodies are misshapen, their habits are odd, and their parents are appalled by them. But they do try hard to be human, like poor unwanted Mummy Boy, who's "a bundle of gauze": he goes for a walk in the park with his mummy dog. (borrowed from Amazon.com review). Many of the characters have lived on and became legendary among Burtonites, and some of them can even be found gracing the pages of our Tim Burton Collective, such as Mummy Boy who can be often seen hanging around on the top left corner of our pages. On my personal opinion, Melancholy Death... is one of the greatest poem collections ever, and should be on the bookshelf of every person who loves Tim Burton.

There's also a big bunch of biography books written about Tim Burton. Perhaps the most well known is Burton on Burton, edited by Mark Salisbury. In Burton on Burton, Burton talks to Mark Salisbury about his training as an animator at Disney, the importance of design in his films, and the recurring themes present in his work. This book also features lots of Tims original artwork and sketches, and is an all around great read.

Another great book is Tim Burton (Virgin Film) by Jim Smith and J. Clive Matthews: Featuring a range of old and new interviews with key figures, contemporary criticism and a look at Burton's forgotten surfing masterpiece, "Luau", this offers a useful reference guide for both Burton's fans and anyone interested in the creation of unortodox mainstream cinema.

Other books written about Burton: Tim Burton: A Child's Garden of Nightmares, Tim Burton (Pocket Essentials), Tim Burton : An Unauthorized Biography of the Filmmaker.

Of course there is also a large selection of books about individual movies Tim has made. We are going to include reviews of all of these in the Collective in the future. If you need urgent information about any book or item, just ask in our Discussion Forum.

One of the most important part of any Tim Burton movie is the music, almost always composed by Danny Elfman. Picking out the best soundtrack from the lot is very difficult, but my favorites would probably be the Nightmare Before Christmas and Batman Returns soundtracks. To hear non-Elfman Burton music, get the Ed Wood soundtrack, composed by the Lord of the Rings composer Howard Shore. It is also a great soundtrack (as Shore's work always is), and offers a nice change to Danny Elfman.

Other great Burton soundtracks available: Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks! (currently out of print, but you can find copies from Amazon marketplace) , Planet of the Apes, Big Fish.

The world is literally filled with toys from different Tim Burton movies, and there are even toys based on the characters from his Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy book. I will be updating this soon with information about the best toys out there.

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