Saturday, May 7, 2011

Johnny Depp to Be the Great and Powerful Oz



Johnny Depp is no stranger to portraying iconic literary figures, and his next role is going to put him at the end of the yellow brick road. Depp is in talks to star in Oz the Great and Powerful after the studio's last choice for the part, Robert Downey Jr., dropped out.


Depp will play Oz in the prequel, which follows the regular man who becomes a wizard (the wonderful wizard) after dropping in on the magical land visited by Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Can you see Depp as the man behind the curtain - and do you think he's a better choice than Downey?



Johnny Depp and Isla Fisher at the Rango LA Premiere







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Johnny and Isla Make a Hot Duo at the Rango Premiere




Johnny Depp and Isla Fisher were side by side at the LA premiere of Rango last night. The duo showed off their animated movie after promoting together over the weekend at a press junket, where Johnny talked about his love for making kids' movies. It was rumoured that Johnny would replace Robert Downey Jr. in Oz the Great and Powerful, but now it's reported he's passed on the role and the next candidate could be James Franco. Isla, in a bright blue strapless dress, had the night off from mum duty for the event, though judging from the trailer, little Olive probably would have enjoyed the show.



Keep reading for more photos!

This Week's Fun and Funny Celebrity Twitter Photos!





Celebrities were busy on Twitter this week sharing personal photos from award shows and holiday adventures. Taylor Swift and her entourage dressed up in Japan and lucky Renee Bargh got to meet Johnny Depp at the Rango premiere. Snooki gave her followers a kiss for Valentine's Day and pregnant Jessica Alba travelled with a friend. Click through to see all the snaps and follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for the latest exciting celebrity news!




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Watch More From Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides



When we got to to see the first trailer for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film, On Stranger Tides, it felt like there was a little bit of the franchise's magic missing. Now we have trailer number two, and it's a bit more exciting than the first. As expected, it has more of Johnny Depp's one-liners as Captain Jack Sparrow, along with some sexy sparring with co-star Penélope Cruz. More importantly, we also get to see a bit more of the mermaid factor, and why they're such a big part of this sequel. One is needed to help the Captain Jack and his rival Blackbeard (Ian McShane) to get to The Fountain of Youth - the thin but interesting objective of the movie. Watch this new trailer and see if gets you any more excited for the latest Pirates installment when you read more.


Keep reading to see the trailer!

Video: Johnny Depp Has Sweet Words For Penélope Cruz



Penélope Cruz received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame today, as the sexy men in her life looked on. Penélope's husband Javier Bardem came out to support his gorgeous wife, while her Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides co-star Johnny Depp took to the podium to say a few sweet, funny words about the actress. Hear Johnny's speech!



A Look Back at the Kids' Choice Awards Through the Years!





The Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards roll into LA tomorrow and we're getting ready by taking a look back at the show's most memorable photos, from Britney Spears' famous backstage run with Brad Pitt to Tom Cruise's moment in the slime light. Click through to see all the exciting pics from the fun and colourful show's past!




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New review: Public Enemies



Public Enemies (dir: Michael Mann)


An honest to goodness grown-up epic in the season of adolescent fantasies and overpriced empty action spectacles, Public Enemies is Michael Mann’s take on the gangster glory days of the depression, when the most flamboyant and notorious bank robbers became the outlaw heroes of the day. That makes Johnny Depp great casting as John Dillinger, whose spree of daylight bank robberies and daring getaways between May 1933 (when he was paroled after serving an almost nine-year prison stretch for armed robbery) and July 1934 got him branded “Public Enemy Number 1″ by the FBI and made him a folk hero to many Americans.


Johnny Depp is John Dillinger

Johnny Depp is John Dillinger


Mann plays on that mystique in Public Enemies. Depp’s Dillinger is a charmer and a cagey media player. He targets banks not just because that’s where the money is, but because in the depths of the Depression, many dispossessed Americans saw banks as the enemy and Dillinger as a kind of Robin Hood figure getting some back for them. And while he has no compunctions about taking civilian hostages as human shields, he acts more like a host than a kidnapper, sharing jokes with his temporary captives and turning their ordeal into an adventure that they’ll be able to tell the papers and newsreels. Depp gives Dillinger a natural geniality born of confidence and courage that borders on thrill-seeking. He seems to thrive on the charge of executing a heist, whether it be a bank or a prison break. He’s cool and cagey, keeping his emotions in check on the job but for a cocky little grin that he lets slip when things are going his way, while off the job he lets himself fall for Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), a beautiful hat check girl that becomes the love of his outlaw life.


The film opens on a carefully executed prison break masterminded and personally guided by Dillinger. He’s never rushed and won’t even break into a run when making for the getaway car, but as the guards fire on them, Dillinger spins, digs in and blasts back with a spray of machine gun fire as if he’s marking his territory. Unnecessary but satisfying. In contrast the vibrant and charming Dillinger is his FBI counterpart Melvin Purvis. As played by Christian Bale, he’s the loyal officer in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, all tight restraint and modest behavior, just as cool as Dillinger and far more patient. He gets his introduction chasing Pretty Boy Floyd through the rural countryside into an orchard. As Floyd huffs in a panicked escape, Purvis stops to set himself and take careful aim with his precision rifle, never rushing, never giving in to emotion. And as Floyd lies bleeding, there no gloating, no arrogance, just a respectful silence as he watches solemnly over the dying man. His entire being is devoted to the FBI and Mann’s screenplay (co-written with Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman) doesn’t give him a life outside of his job. In the battle of wills, Purvis may be stronger but Dillinger is far more fun to watch.


Mann is a director who loves to dissect the details of men at work and admire the professionalism of his characters in action, whether it’s the mechanics of a successful prison break or the systematic efforts of Purvis and his squad to patiently gather evidence and tail suspects until he pieces enough together to find his man. This is Mann’s world to be sure, for every missed opportunity or thwarted engagement is the result of someone failing to follow the plan. As Dillinger is forced to work with less and less reliable characters (teaming up with sociopath Baby Face Nelson is surely one of his worst decisions), you can see his reign at the top unraveling. Mann’s focus is intensified by his continued use of digital cameras, which gives the film a crispness that sometimes feels out of sorts with the era but also gives it a clarity that seems to carve the characters out of the darkness. (The screening I attended had distracting graininess to a few scenes and bright bursts of light that would blow out on the screen like cheap video; I haven’t found similar problems mentioned in other reviews so I’ll chalk it up to bad projection.)


Public Enemies is a thinking man’s gangster film, less about thrills than the mechanics of Dillinger’s heists and Purvis’ investigation, which he executes with his usual precision. But it’s also about end of the gangster era, shut down not just by the efforts of the FBI but the increasing power of the mob syndicate as it leaves violent crime behind for the less public activities like gambling. Dillinger and his cohorts are bad for business. Mann doesn’t pretend that Dillinger is any kind of hero. He’s a ruthless bank robber who thrives on violent crime, but he’s genuinely loyal to his partners and brave to the point of recklessness. He makes a show of never robbing the civilians in the banks and only taking money from the vaults and the tellers cages and makes a point of not hurting civilians. It’s all part of cultivating his image, to be sure, something he carefully grooms by playing to the media and to the public’s hunger for anti-heroes, but it gives him a gravitas that the other machine gun punks of the era lack. In the era of live fast, die young and leave a bullet-riddled corpse, he is the gangster rock star, a machine gun-toting thug as pin-up acting out the anger that everyday Americans feel. His genius was tapping into those feelings. His downfall was his arrogance in thinking it could go on forever.


Also reviewed at the Seattle PostGlobe.



Photos From the Kids' Choice Awards Show







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DVDs for 12/8/09 – John Dillinger, Harry Potter and Brigitte Bardot



Public Enemies (Universal) is Michael Mann’s take on the gangster glory days of the depression, when the most flamboyant and notorious bank robbers became the outlaw heroes of the day. Mann plays on that mystique in casting Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, a charmer and a cagey media player who was careful to maintain his folk-hero status as a kind of Robin Hood figure taking on the system (the banks, the cops, the government that failed America) in the depths of the depression. And while he has no compunctions about taking civilian hostages as human shields, he acts more like a host than a kidnapper, sharing jokes with his temporary captives and turning their ordeal into an adventure that they’ll be able to tell the papers and newsreels.


Johnny Depp as John Dillinger

Johnny Depp as John Dillinger


Mann is a director who loves to dissect the details of men at work and admire the professionalism of his characters in action, whether it’s the mechanics of a successful prison break or the systematic efforts of FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) and his squad to patiently gather evidence and tail suspects until he pieces enough together to find his man. And this is a thinking man’s gangster film, less about thrills than the mechanics of Dillinger’s heists and Purvis’ investigation, which he executes with his usual precision. But it’s also about the end of the gangster era, shut down not just by the efforts of the FBI but the increasing power of the mob syndicate as it leaves violent crime behind for the less public activities like gambling. See my feature review on my blog here.


Michael Mann provides a thoughtful commentary track focused on his efforts to evoke the people and the place: “Not just how 1933 looked, the cars and clothes, but how people in 1933 thought.” He pauses often for long breaks, however, throughout his solo track. The single-disc DVD also includes the ten-minute “Larger Than Life: Adversaries,” with Mann and stars Johnny Depp and Christian Bale discussing their characters and their research (actors love to show off their research – did you know Depp was born about 60 miles away from Dillinger’s birthplace?). The “2-Disc Special Edition” includes four more featurettes, including the twenty-minute overview “Michael Mann: Making Public Enemies” and the nine-minute “Criminal Technology,” a tribute to Mann’s exacting attention to period detail and the actors learning the tools of their characters’ trade, plus a digital copy of the film for portable media players. Exclusive to the Blu-ray edition is a picture-in-picture track of brief featurettes that you can bring up at key moments in the film or jump to via an interactive timeline, a gangster movie quiz and the usual interactive functions for BD-Live players.



It’s Harry Potter Mania this week, timed very nicely to the Christmas gift-buying season. In addition to the DVD/Blu-ray debut of the sixth film of the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Warner), there is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: Ultimate Edition (Warner) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Ultimate Edition (Warner): newly expanded special editions of the first two films in series.


I like the direction that director David Yates has taken the series. His background directing character-based TV drama has come to the fore in keeping the focus on the characters and their place in the unfolding drama. The first films were very visually colorful and narratively dramatic, with big things happening and characters rising to heroic levels. By Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, it feels like we’re seeing these characters live through this story, rather than acting out an adaptation. The story flirts with young love (and love potions) at Hogwarts but also moves into a darker and more adult direction and Yates follows suit with a film that is more intimate and somber. The effects are excellent but secondary to the character drama. There is less rollercoaster action and splashy set pieces and more focus on the people at the center of the action.


Where the later films move away from the painstakingly literal translations of J.K Rowling’s increasingly sprawling novels, these first two films are perfect replicas created with a kind of funhouse spectacle of the wonders of the magical world come to life. Looking back on the original Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), a lush, lavishly produced introduction to Potter’s world and the wondrous delights of the magic castle of Hogwarts, we can see that Steve Kloves’ script condenses scene after scene to essentials (of character revelation as well as plot necessities) and director Chris Columbus’ admirable desire to put the novel onscreen in all its detail ends up favoring events over people. It’s also a reminder of how the young stars have grown up through the films and how the sense of wonder has turned more ominous over time. Daniel Radcliffe has grown already by Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) and his presence benefits greatly from his increased confidence and maturity, and Kenneth Branagh is perfectly cast as the guest wizard, a glib, ego-maniacal author who spends more time preening that practicing spells. Columbus continues to delight in the phantasmagoria of the magical details (like the Whomping Willow) but, sadly, this film marks the final appearance of the late great Richard Harris as the paternal Headmaster Dumbledore. The sets feature both the original theatrical cut plus an extended version of each film, a digital copy of the film for portable media players and bonus discs of supplements. See below for details.



The Brigitte Bardot Classic Collection (Image) – Brigitte Bardot was never much of an actress, but she didn’t need to be. The shapely, fleshy starlet was all sex and innocence that radiated from the screen, even in complete fluff. This new set from Image packages together three films previously released on DVD by Home Vision early in the decade, including two such early, unambitious vehicles that offer the girlish sex symbol in her prime. In Plucking The Daisy (1956) she’s a young provincial woman who runs off to Paris to become a famous writer and winds up in a striptease contest (a nonchalant flesh pageant of sexy French misses), much to the consternation of her conservative father. The silly bon-bon of romantic travails and mistaken identities by Marc Allegret is an often overbearingly chauvinistic sex comedy that survives solely on Bebe’s charms: Sex bomb Bardot flutters her eyes in coy flirtation and come hither stares while squeezed into tight blouses, shrink wrap dresses, and lacy negligees. The Night Heaven Fell (1958) is her second film with husband/director Roger Vadim, who made her an international sex kitten in the 1956 And God Created Woman). In this arch, unsubtle melodrama set in the steamy Spanish high country, she’s a convent girl who moves in with her kindly aunt (Alida Valli) and sleazy, sex-crazed Uncle, and becomes entangled in a deadly erotic triangle when she falls for local tough guy Stephen Boyd. Vadin sells the picture by getting his wife out of her dresses and into lingerie, nighties, and less as often as possible. Sex sells, and the French know how to package a gift like Bardot. Vadim shoots it in earthy color and CinemaScope and the disc preserves both in an anamorphic widescreen transfer. Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman (aka Don Juan 73, 1973), Bardot’s final feature, rounds out the collection. The implicit answer to the title is that if Don Juan were a woman, she would be Brigitte Bardot, which sounds like an idea that now-former husband and director Roger Vadim would warm to. His salacious drama is about the sexual exploits and conquests of a woman who has spent her life devouring and destroying men, all told in flashback as she confesses to her priest and cousin.


High school poetry teacher and aspiring novelist Lance Clayton (Robin Williams) is not quite the World’s Greatest Dad (Magnolia), but his son (Alexie Gilmore) is a real jerk of a teenager, utterly foul and hateful and despised by everyone… until he kills himself and his suicide note and journals (written by Dad) are embraced by his students as the heartfelt cry of a misunderstood artist. It’s a black comedy of our impulse to deify the dead, especially a teen suicide, and Lance’s efforts to rewrite his son’s story is nothing compared to the way his classmates transform this outcast into their best friend. Written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, it’s more clever than smart, but very funny and Williams underplays the part nicely. Features commentary by writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait (recorded while on painkillers – and BTW, Bob, you didn’t talk too much on this track), two featurettes, deleted scenes and outtakes. Also available on Blu-ray.


Blu-ray(s) of the week: Harry Potter Ultimate Editions (Warner). See above for notes on the films themselves. The DVDs spread the films and supplements over five discs while the DVD packs it all into three per set. Each of these lavish editions feature both the original theatrical cut plus an extended version of each film, a digital copy of the film for portable media players and bonus discs of supplements. Along with all the interviews and deleted scenes and interactive activities of the original releases, these sets each include an excellent new hour-long “Creating the World of Harry Potter” documentary (where old and new interviews with the stars show just how they’ve matured over the years), more deleted scenes and other goodies: “Sorcerer’s Stone” features the nine-minute promotional TV special “A Glimpse into the World of Harry Potter” and a new introduction by Daniel Radcliffe and “Chamber of Secrets” includes screen tests of the young stars, a promotional featurette and a gallery of trailers and TV spots. Exclusive to the Blu-ray editions are picture-in-picture audio/video commentary with director Chris Columbus and BD-Live supplements. Each set snugly held in a heavy slipsleeve with a magnetic clasp which also contains an exclusive 48-page photo book and two character cards one thick card stock.


Also new this week: the acclaimed documentary The Cove (Lionsgate), Shane Meadows’ Somers Town (Film Movement) and Lion’s Den (Leonera) (First Run).


For TV on DVD for the week, see my wrap-up here. For the rest of the highlights, visit my weekly column, which goes live every Tuesday on MSN Entertainment, or go directly to the various pages dedicated to New Releases, Special Releases, TV and Blu-ray.




Stars Have a Slimey Good Time at the Kids' Choice Awards!



The 24th annual Kids' Choice Awards brought out tons of stars to the Galen Center on the campus of USC in downtown LA on Saturday. Nickelodeon flew an enormous orange blimp over the event and rolled out the neon carpet for the arrival of young celebrities like Willow and Jaden Smith, Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez. The night kicked off with an energetic performance from the Black Eyed Peas who were joined on stage during dance routine by the show's host, Jack Black. Johnny Depp made a surprise appearance and was the first winner of the evening. He's a veteran of dealing with slime and celebrated his win for Best Male Actor by dispensing a shower of green rain over the audience, and himself. Heidi Klum got in on the fun as well when she opened an envelope that splashed the goo all over her dress, while her presenting partner Nick Cannon managed to avoid the mess. Will Smith kept dry throughout the evening and watched from the front row during Willow's adorable mashup of "21st Century Girl" and "Whip My Hair." Justin Timberlake was on hand to receive the Big Help Award which celebrates stars who give back to the community. Russell Brand took a break from promoting Hop and Arthur to team up with Modern Family's Rico Rodriguez, though Katy Perry couldn't be there to accept her award for Favourite Female Singer as she's currently on tour. Miley Cyrus took home the coveted blimp for Best Female Actress in a floral floor length gown and Kim Kardashian wore a short and flirty mini dress to present the last award of the night.


Keep reading to see all the photos from the show!

The Tourist: Beautiful People, Glamorous Lives, No Chemistry



Tourists...


The Tourist (Sony)


A cosmopolitan, romantic espionage thriller that channels North by Northwest by way of Charade, with Johnny Depp in the Cary Grant role and Angelina Jolie as the cool, elegant and effortlessly glamorous femme fatale, and an Oscar-winning director getting his first taste of a Hollywood budget. It all seemed like the elements of a perfect big-screen confection. An American everyman (Depp) is picked out of a crowd by the most beautiful woman on screen, followed by police and foreign agents (led by a ruthlessly obsessive Paul Bettany), targeted by international gangsters (under the command of vaguely Russian baddie Steven Berkoff) and batted around by opportunistic Italian cops. And yet somehow this lavish light thriller stumbles through the set pieces and bobbles the star chemistry.


Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others), who adapted the screenplay (based on the French film Anthony Zimmer) with Christopher McQuarrie and Julian Fellowes (or maybe he just did the last rewrites in a long-gestating development process), makes Venice look like the most gorgeous city on Earth and shoots Jolie with the same admiring, idealizing perspective, but has no facility for light comedy, romantic sizzle or breathtaking action. And the script, while cagey in its contrivances, is neither as clever nor intelligent as the filmmakers believe it to be. For all of its Hitchcockian “wrong man” echoes and play with identity and morality, there is ultimately no real risk, no sacrifice, no weight to any of it.


Continue reading on MSN Videodrone



Even Johnny Depp Didn't Understand the Pirates Sequels



Johnny Depp donned his full Jack Sparrow gear to cover this week's issue of Entertainment Weekly. He is, of course, promoting Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ahead of the film's release later this month. Fans of the franchise were a bit disenchanted with the most recent Pirates films, and Depp admits that Dead Man's Chest and At World's End were convoluted and confusing - but he also explains why the newest sequel will be different (and much easier to digest):




  • On why Pirates 2 and 3 didn't do as well as the original: "It was plot-driven and complicated. I remember talking to [Gore Verbinski, director of the first three films] at certain points during production of 2 or 3 and saying, 'I don’t really know what this means.' He said, 'Neither do I, but let’s just shoot it.' This guy is this guy’s dad, and this guy was in love with this broad. It was like, 'What?'"

  • On having more say in the script this time around: "With this one, in terms of story, my involvement was a little more just because I felt if we were going to do a 4, that more than anything we owed the audience a fresh start, without all the complicated mathematics of 1 colliding with 2 and 2 colliding with 3. I felt it was very important to eliminate as many complications as possible."

  • On his mission for the fourth film: "Let’s give them something character-driven. Something fun and irreverent. Hoops of fire and whatnot. New blood, as it were."



Fear and Loathing with Terry Gilliam and Hunter S. Thompson



Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Criterion)


Ralph Steadman cover art


Terry Gilliam’s hallucinatory 1998 adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s classic of gonzo journalism stars Johnny Depp as Thompson’s alter ego Raoul Duke and Benicio De Toro (thrillingly and terrifying unencumbered by any behavioral boundaries) as Dr. Gonzo in the drug-fueled carnival atmosphere of Las Vegas, circa 1971. It was a flop at the time, too dark and weird and unhinged for mainstream cinema, and like many Gilliam films it’s entrancing on a moment-to-moment level, losing itself in the swirls and eddies of the narrative. Sort of like Thompson in Vegas. “The closest sensory approximation of an acid trip ever achieved by a mainstream movie,” wrote Stephen Holden in the New York Times.


Criterion released the film on a deluxe two-disc edition eight years ago. The Blu-ray debut features all the supplements of that release: three commentary tracks (one by director Terry Gilliam, one by stars Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro, and one by producer Laila Nabulsi and author Hunter S. Thompson), deleted scenes with commentary by Gilliam, the 1978 BBC “Omnibus” documentary “Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood” (with Hunter S. Thompson and artist Ralph Steadman), the ten-minute featurette “Hunter Goes to Hollywood,” an audio documentary on the controversy over the screenplay credit, a survey of the marketing campaign, selections from the correspondence between Johnny Depp and Hunter S. Thompson (read on camera by Depp), an excerpt from the 1996 audio CD “Fear and Loathing” starring Maury Chaykin, Jim Jarmusch, Harry Dean Stanton, and Glenne Headly, background notes on Oscar Zeta Acosta (the real life activist and attorney who inspired the character of Dr. Gonzo), and galleries of storyboards, stills, and Ralph Steadman art. The accompanying booklet features a short appreciation by J. Hoberman and reprints of two Thompson pieces (from “The Great Shark Hunt” and “Fear and Loathing in America”).


More Blu-ray reviews (including El Topo, The Holy Mountain and The Scent of Green Papaya) at MSN Videodrone.