US director Tim Burton, the master of the macabre, became the youngest recipient of the Golden Lion for career achievement at the Venice film festival on Wednesday.

"This is the most amazing experience," the 49-year-old said upon receiving the award. "It's such an honour." The Venice festival has "always been about movies, not business," he said. "It's always had a special place in my heart."

Burton may be the youngest winner of the award, "but I'm older than I seem," quipped the creator of "Beetlejuice" (1988), "Edward Scissorhands" (1990) and "Sleepy Hollow" (1999).

Burton's frequent collaborator Johnny Depp bestowed the award ahead of a screening of a 3-D version, created by Henry Selick, of the 1993 runaway hit "The Nightmare Before Christmas," in which the Pumpkin King of Halloween tries to take over Christmas by kidnapping Santa Claus.

"He is a rare breed in today's cinema," Depp said. "He is a true original -- a true artist. ... He's my favourite director and friend."

Viewers also were treated to the first eight minutes of Burton's next creation, a film version of the Stephen Sondheim musical "Sweeney Todd," a Broadway hit in 1979 that enjoyed a revival in Britain in 2004.

Depp stars with Helena Bonham Carter in the story of the legendary London barber who murdered his customers by slitting their throats.

Burton, who created the 2005 remake of the fantasy adventure "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" based on the classic Roald Dahl book, scored his first box office hit in 1985 with "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure."

Meanwhile, the festival's "surprise" entry, "Mad Detective" by leading Hong Kong director Johnnie To along with Wai Ka Fai, was screened late Wednesday.

Despite the standard plotline of a rookie cop teaming up with a former officer to hunt down a serial killer, "the film challenges story conventions and audience expections," To said in programme notes.

Last year's surprise entry, "Still Life" by Chinese director Jia Zhangke, won the top honour here, the Golden Lion.

Also Wednesday, Japanese director Takashi Miike presented his raucous take on the spaghetti western, "Sukiyaki Western Django," alongside a retrospective on the genre at this year's festival.

The title of Miike's film refers to Sergio Corbucci's 1966 cult classic "Django", which starred Italian actor Franco Nero.

Miike's film is packed with references to the work of both Corbucci and Sergio Leone, who directed a trio of Clint Eastwood films that helped make spaghetti westerns an international phenomenon in the mid-1960s.

Classic lines (such as "Give it up, Yoichi. The strong and the brave gets the woman") are delivered unself-consciously, if haltingly, in heavily accented English by actors none too familiar with the language of Shakespeare.

Meanwhile a demonstration is planned against the presence of French actress Fanny Ardant, starring in Italian director Vincenzo Marra's "L'Ora di Punto" about corruption and greed in Italy, to be screened Thursday.

Ardant stirred up passions last month by describing the founder of Italy's disbanded Marxist-Leninist group the Red Brigades, Renato Curcio, as a "hero" in a magazine interview. She apologised amid the furore, but the family of a victim has filed a suit against her.

Curcio was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in jail. Red Brigades members kidnapped Italy's former Christian Democrat prime minister Aldo Moro and murdered him 54 days later.

With three days left until Venice's all-director jury returns its verdict, the French film "La Graine et le Mulet" (Grain of Life) by Tunisian-born director Abdellatif Kechiche enjoys the lead among Italian film critics.

The unique Bob Dylan biopic by Tom Haynes, "I'm Not There" was also well received, as well as the US film "Redacted" by Brian De Palma about the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl by US soldiers.

Dylan is conspicuously absent but omnipresent in the kaleidoscopic "I'm Not Here," but Cate Blanchett, who most closely resembles Dylan at the height of his stardom, seems set to triumph here as best actress.