Posts Tagged ‘Johnny Depp’

Alice? Alice?

There are some novels that cannot, or should not, be filmed – Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World springs to mind, and Tim Burton’s archetypally dark, visually stirring but emotionally hollow adaptation of Lewis Caroll’s journey down the rabbit hole seems to prove that Alice in Wonderland belongs in the same category.

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Unless, of course, you know different?

Some actors are just so good that we can forgive them their little peccadillos – let’s face it, George Clooney is a top bloke, but not all of his films are great, and not all the roles he casts himself in are well-advised. And Johnny Depp – for every Donnie Brasco (1997) there is a Secret Window (2004) (come on – I love JD, but this one was crap). Here, then, Picturenose celebrates the fact that our favourite actors can be as screwed up as the rest of us when a large amount of cash is waved in their direction.

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Dilligent on Dillinger

He’s one of America’s finest directors, but his previous film, Miami Vice (2006), was a huge disappointment. So, how has the collaboration of Michael Mann with two of the younger generation’s leading actors, Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, worked out in Public Enemies (2009)?

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Having returned after taking a few days off from, well, from everything except eating, drinking and sleeping, I come back to the news that not very much has been going on in Tinseltown or anywhere else for that matter. There are a few stories worth an honourable mention in this news round-up, so I’m going to ease myself back in by summing them up in as few words as possible. This is either an exercise in minimalist journalism, or sheer laziness. It’s your call.

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Aaaarrrgh!

For this reviewer’s pieces-of-eight, while it is perhaps pointless to nitpick at one of the greatest trilogies in summer blockbuster history, director Gore Verbinski’s second stab, Dead Man’s Chest (2006), is now officially the Pirates of the Carribean franchise’s finest hour. When a sequel was this good (remember the treats we had? An incredible sword-fight on a loose rotating water wheel, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) doing the nasty on poor old Captain Jack Sparrow (he wishes), Bill Nighy as ‘ol Squid Face Davy Jones and his pet Kraken, and, of course, the surprise comeback of Captain Barbossa, the magisterial Geoffrey Rush), it was always going to be very difficult to top.

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Dreaming awake

An eclectic, whimsical and charming character study from Sarajevo-born director Emir Kusturica who, unsurprisingly, has gained quite a reputation as a maker of eclectic, whimsical and charming movies (see his more recent Life is a Miracle (2004) by way of example).

We’re going back to 1993 – everyone’s favourite actor/auteur Johnny Depp, who plays rebellious-but-happy dreamer Axel Blackmar, making his living in New York, tagging fish as a naturalist’s gofer, is looking somewhat younger. His old pal Paul (Vincent Gallo, charming as a slick would-be actor, with a fantastic slant on North-by-Northwest) arrives to take him (under duress) to Arizona for the wedding of his uncle, Leo Sweetie (Jerry Lewis). Not that Axel doesn’t love Leo dearly, you understand, but he sees straight away that it’s a ruse to get him into the family car-selling business.

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