Posts Tagged ‘Johnny Depp’

Short Take: Amusing and apropos, but lacking in substance

Director: Bruce Robinson

Screenwriter: Bruce Robinson; Hunter S. Thompson (novel)

Cast: Johnny Depp, Aaron Eckhart, Giovanni Ribisi, Amber Heard, Michael Rispoli, Richard Jenkins

Length: 2h

Synopsis: American journalist/aspiring novelist Paul Kemp (Depp) is desperate for a job, so he takes one at a small fledgling newspaper in Puerto Rico as an odd job reporter and amateur horoscopes writer. The decade is the 1950s and the island of Puerto Rico is in political flux, with locals constantly protesting about one issue or another and big wigs working to capitalize on hotel properties and U.S. government contracts. One such big wig, named Sanderson (Eckhart), stumbles upon Kemp and decides he’s the man with the suitably buttery words needed for a PR campaign needed to sell the proposition of building several new island resorts. Kemp accepts the offer, but a complication arises by the name of Chenault (Heard), Sanderson’s mistress. Meanwhile, Kemp struggles to focus on assignments for the bogus paper, seemingly incapable of averting his attention from booze, his roommate Sala’s (Rispoli) insanitary nightlife, or Chenault’s under-table flirtations. Such distractions consequently lead to problems with Sanderson, but more importantly they serve to actually awaken Kemp to bigger problems within and about his surroundings, as well as his own life.

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Short Take: More pirates, less politics and romance. The best since "Black Pearl."

Director: Rob Marshall

Screenwriters: Ted Elliot and Terry Russio, Tim Powers (On Stranger Tides novel)

Cast: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Penelope Cruz, Ian McShane

Length: 2h 17m

Synopsis: Jack Sparrow… er, Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp) is in London trying to recruit a crew and commandeer a vessel. Concurrent to this is someone posing as Jack, unbeknownst to him, doing the same thing (and a lot more publically as well). The imposter, it turns out, is a woman named Angelica (Cruz), whose past has intersected with Jack’s on several occasions. She, like him, is in search for the Fountain of Youth and is working with her father to find it. His name: Captain Blackbeard (McShane). Meanwhile Captain Barbossa (Rush), having lost the Black Pearl to Blackbeard in battle, has joined the Royal Navy of all things and is likewise in search for the Fountain, and eager to exact his revenge on the infamous pirate. As it so happens, using the Fountain requires a special procedure that includes elements not easily collected. Naturally, Jack tries to use both groups’ efforts to his own advantage, necessitating death-defying stunts and improvisations of incredible finesse. Savvy?

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Short Take: Not as intellectually stimulating as Lewis Carroll's books, but still fun

Director: Tim Burton (Big Fish, Charley and the Chocolate Factory)

Screenwriter: Linda Woolverton (The Lion King, Homeward Bound); based from characters by Lewis Carroll

Cast: Mia Wasikowska (Amelia), Johnny Depp (The Pirates of the Caribbean), Helena Bonham Carter (Sweeny Todd), Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married), Crispin Glover (Charlie’s Angels)

Length: 1h 48m

Synopsis: The same Alice that we’ve come to know from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass is back, only this time she’s 19. As a young lady of moderate social status and peaking beauty she is expected by her family and peers to wed a Lord and secure her financial future. However before she offers an answer of “yes” or “no” she becomes lost down a familiar rabbit hole all over again, and finds that those in Wonderland have been waiting for her to fulfill a different destiny. Read the rest of this entry »

Freddy's back April 30th

ShockTillYouDrop.com published their findings of when they visited the set of the new Nightmare on Elm Street remake. The film is meant to reboot what had become a tired franchise, which was launched with Wes Craven’s career-defining 1984 film of the same title. Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes production studio is the creative entity behind the movie, which also helped create The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake back in 2003 as well as the recent Friday the 13th remake.

The set visit documents various aspects of the new film, from the look of the actors, the attitude of the creative minds behind the project, and the differences between this picture and its original. One feature of the film that its director Samuel Bayer stresses was how it’s trying to be legitimately scary, not “fun horror” like the remake of Friday the 13th.

The article includes many quotes from director Bayer and producer Bradley Fuller, which do well to explain exactly what their aims are with this film. According to the article, Bayer was pursued feverishly by Platinum Dunes and Newline Cinema because of his knack for being a visual storyteller (almost all of his credits are for directing numerous music videos). As Spike Jonze has proven (Where the Wild Things Are, Adaptation, Being John Malkovich), a background in directing music videos is not a bad one.

The article overall proves very revealing – so much so that if you’re not one for spoilers then you might want to avoid it. Likewise, if you can’t get enough information about this remake (which opens April 30th) then you’ll want to check it out ASAP.

Also See…

ComingSoon.net interviews Johnny Depp about his role as the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, as well as some other upcoming roles. The film opens March 5th.