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On Movies: Into the surreal world of filmmaker Tim Burton

"If his work seems to inhabit an identifiable Burtonesque world, it's probably because Tim is compelled by his imagination to dwell in a place for which only he has a map."

"The Art of Tim Burton" is a coffee-table book that surveys the artist/animator/filmmaker’s career. This illustration is of Sally from "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas."
"The Art of Tim Burton" is a coffee-table book that surveys the artist/animator/filmmaker’s career. This illustration is of Sally from "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas."Read more
    by By Steven Rea, Inquirer Columnist | Columnist
    Published 

"If his work seems to inhabit an identifiable Burtonesque world, it's probably because Tim is compelled by his imagination to dwell in a place for which only he has a map."

That's Rick Heinrichs, the production designer, talking about Tim Burton, on one of the 434 pages of The Art of Tim Burton (Steeles Publishing, $69.99), a lavish coffee table tome jam-packed with doodles, scrawls, sketches, puppet designs, storyboard panels, portraiture and gatefold fantasmagoria culled from decades' worth of the artist/animator/filmmaker's work.

Think of it as a map - an unwieldy, clothbound, hard-cover, 11" x 12" map - that lets readers into Burton's uniquely surreal, whimsical, macabre world.

From Burton's '80s shorts "Vincent" and "Frankenweenie," through the features Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Planet of the Apes, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Burton costume designs

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Contact movie critic Steven Rea at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com. Read his blog, "On Movies Online," at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/onmovies/