Tim Burton, born in Burbank, California in 1958, is another curious American artist of the fanciful and student of the arcane and eerie. Crane moves to Sleepy Hollow and becomes involved with a local girl, only to encounter the ghost of a Hessian mercenary soldier decapitated in battle but still terrorising the local byways. Irving connected several elements of local lore for ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,’ including the history of the locale during the Revolutionary War, as he created the story of the timorous schoolmaster Ichabod Crane. His two most famous stories were both first published in a collection entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. During that sojourn Irving first encountered Sleepy Hollow, a small town founded by Dutch settlers. The roots of Irving’s most famous labours went back to his teenaged years, when a yellow fever epidemic caused his parents to send him to live with a friend in upstate New York. Amongst Irving’s random, still-resonating achievements ranked coining the phrase “the almighty dollar” and the nickname “Gotham” for New York, publishing the Francis Scott Key poem that became ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ popularising the false notion medieval Europeans thought the world was flat before Columbus, and having one of his pen names inspire the name of the New York Knicks. Born in New York in the early years of the republic, Irving, after struggling as a merchant, found success in his twenties as a writer, journalist, and editor, and later pursued a career as a diplomat, serving for a time as ambassador to Spain. ![]() I still laugh when Chopper is utterly unconcerned at the first stabbing he receives in prison, merely inquiring mildly: “Bit early in the morning for kung fu, isn’t it?” There’s his dismissal of Keithy’s blood-splattered agony: “Whinge, whinge, fuckin’ whinge.” And then his lofty refusal to turn against his friend Jimmy for stabbing him – on grounds of loyalty: “If your mum stabbed you, you wouldn’t get upset …”Ĭhopper is released on 25 March in cinemas.Screenwriters: Andrew Kevin Walker, Kevin YagherĪlongside his own ‘Rip Van Winkle,’ Washington Irving’s story ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ is probably the best-known work of American literature from before the time of Poe and James Fenimore Cooper. Well, who cares? Chopper is a great film. A few years back, Bana was hinting at a return to standup – but still nothing. But why hasn’t Bana, evidently a great comic, gone more into film comedy? Did he think that comedy was something he’d outgrown? Did he want to avoid Chopper/larrikin typecasting? Maybe – and maybe the roles haven’t been there for him. I don’t think anything he has done has matched the toxic thrills and the hideous laughs he got as the scary joker and monstrous non-charmer. ![]() ![]() Chopper was the dilithium crystal that powered the 20-year-plus career in movies and television that Eric Bana has gone on to have as a perfectly plausible lead in straight roles some are interesting, but not like Chopper. It’s a performance you could compare with Joe Pesci in GoodFellas, and actually appreciably better than Tom Hardy’s performance as the comparable British convict Charles Bronson in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson from 2008, which surely took some inspiration from Chopper.Īs for Bana himself, I said at the time that if he could do an American accent, he was all set. In every scene – cell, courtroom, dodgy club, sordid flat – Bana holds your attention effortlessly, often getting big laughs. Bana is simply superb, both as the clean-shaven moon-faced young sociopath we encounter first of all, and then as the chubbier, gold-toothed, moustachioed headbanger he turns into.
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