I saw Terry Gilliam's "Brothers Grimm" and Tim Burtons "Corpse Bride" yesterday.

I'd say Terry Gilliam's [i:4758989c52]"Brothers Grimm"[/i:4758989c52] wasn't bad at all, contrary to all the people who told me it was a dissapointment... Maybe not expecting too much was a benefit.

If you see it as a piece of fantasy with no connection to historical people or events at all, it's just that: an entertaining fantasy movie.
There were lots of scenes which reminded me of "Sleepy Hollow", and trying to put in all kinds of fairy tale references was a bit overdone.
Some moments were really nice... The gingerbread child was optically well done, really creepy, even though the "Gingerbread man" isn't usually assorted with the Grimm brothers. There was also no explanation that made it coherent, within the story's logic, why every child had to dissapear "fairy tale style", other than to make it more interesting and give the authorities a reason to suspect there were "colleagues" of the Grimm brothers at work.
I had the impression that Gilliam cut out on a lot of bizarre ideas which might actually have improved the film, just to make it look smoother. (Maybe it wasn't his decision, I've red somewhere that there was a lot of quarrel about the final version.). A lot of the characters were a bit stereotypical - the amazon woman as the love interest, for example.

For me, it was also interesting to see how, in a film where, for a change, the French were the bad guys, there was still that picture of irrational, dark Germany. Of course, there wasn't anything close o history either. The French didn't occupy Germany until 1806, even though they had gained a lot of political control over it by then (the film plays 1796 or something, but at the end of the 18th century anyway), and even after 1806, only West of the Rhine was really "French" territory. But that only as a side note...


[i:4758989c52]"Corpse Bride"[/i:4758989c52] was really nice to watch. It was a film for the eyes mostly, without a too complex story- though a touching one, very romantic stuff- but on that visual level, I thougth it was brilliant! The interaction of the animated figures was high above any of the computer animated film I've seen so far.
I particularly liked the scenes where the living lost fear of the dead and started to recognized their loved ones in them... The grandfather-scene, the old couple etc.