WOODY ALLEN
Allen Stewart Konigsberg was born on December 1, 1935 in Brooklyn, New
York, to Nettie, a bookkeeper, and Martin Konigsberg, a waiter and jewelry
engraver. His father was of Russian Jewish and Lithuanian Jewish descent, and
his maternal grandparents were Austrian Jewish immigrants. Woody also has a
sister, Letty, who was born in 1943.
He has become an American film
director, screenwriter, actor and author. He is best known for his
romantic comedy films and for writing characters for his female stars.
Woody Allen changed his name to Heywood Allen when he was 17
years old. Allen started writing monologues and performing in comedy places
while still he was in high school. He broke into show business at 15 years when
he started writing jokes for a local paper. He later moved on to write jokes
for talk shows but he felt that his jokes were being wasted.
He attended New York University in 1953. He had become to study a course in
motion picture production. However, discouraged he dropped out of school and
soon began writing for television. His most popular show was Your
Show of Shows of Sid Caesar with which he won an Emmy Award nomination.
Nevertheless, Woody was bored and soon tried his hand at stand-up comedy,
becoming popular in the New York City comedy club circuit.
After performing on stage for a few
years, he was approached to write a script for Warren Beatty to star in ¿What’s New, Pussycat? (1965) and
would also have a moderate role as a character in the movie. During production,
he gave himself more and better lines and left Beatty’s movie. It was from this
experience that Woody realized that he could not work on a film without
complete control over its production.
As a good writer and director, he
often appeared in his own plays and films. After the Beatty’s movie, his first
play was Don’t Drink the Water, on Broadway the following year. He made
his directorial debut in 1966 with What’s Up, tiger Lily? However, his
career really began with Take the Money and
Run in 1969. Throughout his career, Allen wrote humorous short pieces. Some
of them were published in the New Yorker
magazine.
The most famous movies of Woody
Allen are Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan
(1979). With the first one, his career came in 1977. He starred
directed and co-wrote the movie with Marshall
Bickman, and it went on to win four Academy Awards, including for best
picture, best director and best screenplay. It is a movie with has both
pleasure and pain. It is a comedy about a romance that ends sadly. This movie
was followed with Manhattan, both of
which were more serious than comedic.
Annie Hall also marked the beginning of a
nine-picture collaboration with movie cameraman Gordon Willis. He continued to use different moviemaking techniques
to create a new style for each new film. Moreover, he imitated the style of
Italian director Federico Fellini in
his next film Stardust Memories which he consider that is the best film he
ever did.
Today he continues to write and direct many movies. You can look at his
official website where there are his projects: http://www.woodyallen.com/
TIM BURTON
Timothy William Burton was born on
August 25, 1958, in Burbank (California). Famed director, producer and
screenwriter he was engrossed with the classic horror films of Roger Corman. After
high school in 1976, he attended the California Institute of Arts where he also
developed a penchant for drawing and enrolled at the Institute of Arts. After
this, upon his graduation, he began working as an animator for Walt Disney
Studios for less than a year.
However, Burton did not enjoy being
an animator because the work requires talented artist, but they cannot deviate
from the structured manner of drawing the characters. Although he found that
the mainstream Disney movies he worked on (such as The Fox and the Hound)
were far removed from his own sensibility, Disney let him have the freedom to
work on his own personal projects.
His first film was the six-minute
animated black-and-white Vincent (1982). The stop-motion
animation illustrated a poem about a boy who dreams he is horror movie veteran Vincent Price, living within a horror
movie. It even featured the voice of Price himself, Burton’s mentor.
In 1984, he created the only version
of the Frankenstein story with the live-action short Frankenweenie.
Due to the success, Paul Reubens commissioned Burton to direct the
inventive comedy Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985). It was a successful movie which
brought him a lot of opportunities, including the ghost story Beetlejuice
that is one of the most famous fantasy and horror Burton’s movies. This film was
an even bigger hit, and led to Warner
Bross, offering Burton the job directing an eagerly awaited comic book
adaptation that had been years in the planning.
Burtons used his new popularity to
get an extremely personal project, Edwar Scissorhands made, which is
another of his success, greently by 20th
Century Fox. For the first time, he had full creative control,
having written the story and also produced the film. He was awarded the
distinction of film artist. This was the first time that Burton used Johnny Deep in one of his films, a relationship that has continued until
this day. It also marked the beginning of Burton being taken seriously as an
artist.
Later, he formed his own production
company in which he directed the Batman production in 1989. It was
the first movie to sell $100 million in the first 10 days of release. In 1992,
Burton reteamed Batman sequel, Batman
Returns.
Another important production was the
animated musical Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas that was created
with the painstaking process of stop-motion animation. An affectionate tribute
to the supposed worst moviemaker of all time, it was not a hit at the box
office, but won Burton the best reviews of his career, as well as two Oscars. It was followed by an
indirect homage to Wood’s movies, Mars
Attacks! The movie was a disappointment at the box office but has
gained a cult status over the years. Burton made something of a comeback three
years later with his first real horror movie, Sleepy Hollow.
In 2001, Burton remade the classic Planet
of the Apes, on the set of which he mat Helena Bonham Carter, who is
now her couple.
Burton did not use to do personal
movies because they are not always rewarded with great box office success.
However, after his parents died in quick succession, Burton made Big
Fish (2003), the story of a man trying to reconnect with his dying
father.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory included Depp and Willy Wonka, and
proved one of the most successful blockbusters of 2005. It was followed two
months later by the release of the stop motion animated movie, Corpse
Bride. Both movies generally received good reviews, and the second one
was even nominated for an Oscar for Best
Animated Feature. In 2010, Burton followed the animated feature p with the 3D Alice
in Wonderland.
In 2012, Burton reunited once again
with Depp for the adaptation for the popular television show Dark
Shadows. The same year, was also
memorable for him because he finally had the opportunity to turn his short (27
minutes) Frankenweenie into a full-length feature film.
There are rumors that he wants to
take time off to be with his family. However, he has no less than eight movies
currently in development, either as producer and/or director.
In addition to his movie work, Burton exhibited over 700 drawings,
paintings and other artwork at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. For more
information visiting his official website: http://www.timburton.com/
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