Does Any Film Maker Plagiarise Himself More Than Tim Burton?

           

            Rain was forecast for late Sunday afternoon on June 5^th and so I used that as an excuse to not take a bike ride because I was so behind on my journal posts. It didn’t rain at that time after all, but I took a rain day anyway.

            I’m about halfway through watching the first season of “Have Gun – Will Travel”. I enjoy the character of Paladin, however unrealistic it is for a hired gunfighter to get wealthy from offering his services while travelling through the Wild West. On top of that he’s highly educated, cultured, well read and has good taste. I noticed that four of the episodes in a row were written by Gene Roddenberry, though they didn’t really stand out in terms of the plots in the same way that Robert Altman stories for “Bonanza” and the Sam Peckinpah screenplays for “Gunsmoke” did.

            For the last month or so I’ve seen the posters for the film “Through The Looking Glass”. I think it’s extremely sad when a director gets so stuck in a style that one can tell just from the imagery of the promotional ads for one of his movies that directed it. I would never be able to discern from the poster of a Milos Foreman film that he was the one behind it, unless his name was on the poster, because all of his movies are different. I can’t think of a single director, even among the bad ones, that plagiarizes himself as much as Tim Burton.

            I wrote the above and then looked the movie up, only to see that it was not directed by Tim Burton after all, but rather by James Bobin. But just as I was feeling like I’d put my foot in my mouth, I saw that it was produced by Burton and since it’s a sequel to a movie Burton did direct, it’s a rehashing of the visual world that Burton created. So my criticism stands untarnished and James Bobin is a puppet.

            On the Monday, June 6^th, there was a shower in the late afternoon and another at around dusk. I wasn’t sure if I was going to go to the Tranzac because I didn’t fancy getting wet on the way there. It’s not as bad on the way home, but that’s no picnic either.

            At 20:30 it was raining, so decided not to get ready. It’s nice to go there on a nice night. When it’s pleasant out it’s almost okay to be going home after midnight. I had writing to do anyway.