Frankenweenie has been pointed as the best Tim Burton work in the latest ten years and this is being assured now with the awards season. The film just got a nomination to 2013 Golden Globes Awards as Best Animation Feature Film!
The movie has won already at the New Yok Film Critics, Los Angeles Film Critics and Boston Society Critics, and a nomination at the Sattelite Awards and Annie Awards!
Congratulations to cast and crew!
The Sunday Times Culture Magazine: 14.10.12
“Winona has been animated at last…”
She changed the way cinema depicts women, then disappeared. Reunited with Tim Burton on a new cartoon, Winona tells Jonathan Dean what it’s like to be lost.
The slow crawl to Disneyland, on roads such as Magic Way, is lined with palm trees. At two in the afternoon on what the radio announces is the second day of autumn, they’re the only shelter other than Buzz Lightyear banners or the vast foyer of the Grand Californian Hotel. The latter is accomodation designed by fans of The Shining: floral chic, cobwebbed, brainwashed staff. Kids in swimming costumes run around in Mickey Mouse ears. I head staright for the lift.
Why is a thitrysomething man hanging out in Walt’s kingdom all by himself? The answer, oddly, is the icon of early-1990s cinema, the goth poster girl for the alternative nation, Winona Ryder, who is waiting in a suite on the hotel’s fourth floor. I’m also going to spend the half-hour with Martin Short, but I haven’t really told anyone that. He’s lovely telling me about a recent family reunion in London with his “fabulous” politician cousin, Clare, but you don’t fly 11 hours to meet Martin Short. He was hilarious in Father of the Bride, but, with the best will in the world, he has never changed the way people make films. Ryder, though, did.
Dressed in loose black trousers, a black jacket and a white T-shirt, with her hair tied back, she talks with a quiver in her voice, brown eyes darting, eager to please or, maybe, just nice. Short is in a casual suit, reclining on a sofa, staring at me like an ever-watchful chaperone. Yes, Ryder shoplifted back in 2001, but for anyone who wants to continue to laugh at that, there’s the internet. Besides Hollywood has worse. People still work with Roman Polanski. Ryder’s hero, Jodie Foster has a close relationship with Mel Gibson. This is an industry that rewards sinners who aren’t contrite. Ryder has constantly said she’s sorry.
It was released last November 06th Ben Lee: Catch My Disease, the documentary on singer-songwriter Ben Lee.
The movie — written, directed and produced by filmmaker Amiel Courtin-Wilson — is described as a “playful yet deeply intimate portrait of Lee” and “the issues of celebrity and spirituality that arise when launched into the spotlight,” according to the producers.
Among those interviewed are ex-girlfriend Claire Danes and friends Jason Schwartzman, Michelle Williams, Beastie Boy Mike D, Zooey Deschanel and Winona Ryder.
I’ve been trying to find it on iTunes or Amazon but it seems it’s not available, but you can find on Barnes & Noble. Or check on their Facebook official page for more links.
Watch the trailer below:
This is not Winona related, but I think it will be nice to have it posted since I got a few emails/tweets regarding it. No, the site isn’t abandoned. Well, a little maybe, but it’s not going anywhere. I’m currently in a very busy agenda, with some family issues re: health, and I barely have time to be online. I’m sorry if I am missing some news and pictures, I promise to try keep it updated as soon I have some free time.
I usually don’t post personal notes here, because you all came here to be informed about Winona, but due the amount of emails/messages I got, I believe it’s an easy way to keep everyone informed. Thanks once again for your visit, and keep checking, hopefully things will be back to normal soon.
AMERICAN rock band The Killers are in Blackpool yesterday to shoot a video for their new single.
The Las Vegas chart toppers are in the resort with legendary Batman and Planet of the Apes director Tim Burton and Hollywood star Winona Ryder.
The band have been filming inside Blackpool’s legendary Tower Ballroom.Excited fans took to social networks late last night after the band – fronted by Brandon Flowers – were spotted at Blackpool’s Odeon cinema where they watched the new James Bond film Skyfall.
Flowers took time out to pose for pictures with staff and customers. Samantha Sinclair, manager at the cinema, said: “It was really exciting.
“They were happy to have photos taken with locals. It was their bassist, Mark who took our photo for us.
“They were really nice, not very chatty but I know they had to cancel their gig on Tuesday because Brandon lost his voice.”
- Source and also thanks to Chris B for the heads up!
Though it underperformed at the box office, most critics agree that Tim Burton‘s Frankenweenie was the director’s best film in years. Combining his love of the macabre with childlike wonder, heart and humor, it’ll surely be a home video discovery for fresh audiences for years to come. That process will start on January 15 when the DVD and Blu-ray hit shelves and one of the highlights of the disc is a brand new short film called Captain Sparky vs the Flying Saucers.
The short was written by Frankenweenie co-producer Derek Frey and will run two minutes and 20 seconds. That’s all the information that’s available at the moment but it sounds promising. (Hopefully this will be one of the short films the character Victor makes using his dog, Sparky.)
- Source
This busy bee has finally found some free time to do a proper post here, to celebrate Winona’s 41st Birthday, and let our best wishes of an amazing day with her beloved ones. Even if we know she’s scary on internet and probably won’t check your messages, feel free to leave it.
Winona’s biographer, Nigel Goodall, wrote this article for the 25th anniversary of Lucas for a magazine that never ran with it due to re-scheduling of features at the time, and rather than leave it unseen and unread, Nigel has kindly given it to us to publish online, so here it is…
The stylist for one of Winona’s first photo shoots just over twenty years ago knew that Winona would someday be famous. ‘She was just really focused,’ Abby Minot told me in 2002. ‘She had this vision. You could just tell she was going places.’
And of course, Abby was right. Looking back twenty-five years to the opening of Lucas and to the first time the cinema-going public first cast their eyes on Winona Ryder, most agreed that, even though she would only appear in eight scenes and her role as Rina almost seemed like an afterthought, it was enough to get Winona noticed and confirm the kind of character she would play for the next five years of her career: the alienated teenager.
If there was any doubt, one only had to take a look at the press kit for the movie, which described Winona as ‘fragile with a certain poetic justice.’ And the critics agreed. The New York Daily News credited ‘Winona for turning a small part into a memorable one’, and Variety’s Todd McCarthy remarked that Winona ‘constantly but quietly stole all Kerri Green’s scenes.’ Roger Ebert writing in the Chicago Sun Times said it was easily ‘one of the year’s best films’ and doubted if anyone of any age could give a more sensitive and effective performance.’ In fact, there weren’t many critics that didn’t rave about her performance. According to the general consensus, it was ‘deft, remarkable, and fetching.’ So perhaps it is no wonder that Winona had the critics on her side even before the film was released twenty years ago today.
Certainly her performance in her first moments on screen would compound the cinema-going public with general critical opinion that Winona Ryder, the girl with the alert expressive eyes that telegraphed a startling combination of intelligence, gravity and self-possession was indeed someone to watch. ‘There is something strangely magical and wistful about her, that is ultimately reflected in her performance,’ said director David Seltzer at the time, and later observed how ‘she was sympathetic playing a child who thought she would never be beautiful.’ It was, he continues ‘very poignant because she was clearly about to blossom into a beautiful young woman herself.’
I am not sure though, that Winona would agree. The first time she watched the film at a screening with the rest of the cast, she says, ‘I was just really scared to see my face that big. It was such a shock that people had just seen me act.’ In the end though, she went to see it another two times. Once in San Francisco when it opened there at the Galaxy Theater, and once in Santa Rosa, where, recalls Winona, ‘a lady sitting in front of me said to the guy she was with that I looked sad on the screen. I guess she meant the part about being hopelessly in love. I wanted to ask her what she meant, but instead I started really looking at myself on the screen. It’s hard to be objectve about your own performance.’
Lucas opened on 628 screens in the United States on 28 March 1986 and during its opening weekend had taken $1,250,101 at the box office, ultimately its gross topped eight million and earned itself three Young Artist Award nominations.
If you want to read more about the making of Lucas, there is more behind the scenes info in Nigel’s biography of Winona, which is curently available from Amazon as a POD paperback and eBook.
Winona keeps busy shooting scenes for her new movie “Homefront”, and finally we have new pictures! This ones are from yesterday in New Orleans:
A few more pictures of Winona on set for “Homefront” yesterday has been released. Check it:
