Screenhead

People Magazine picked one of my favorite actors Johnny Depp as this year’s “Sexiest Man Alive.”

Depp, who is 46, won in 2003 is being called “iconic status in terms of sexiness.” That is a mouth full.

People representative also said, “Johnny Depp was someone who was sexy 10 years ago. He’ll be sexy 10 years from now. He’s someone who appeals to multiple generations of women.”

Brad Pitt, Richard Gere and George Clooney also hold the honors of being a double winner.  

Check out the issue of People Magazine if you ladies want to see more sexy men of 2009.

Johnny Depp may join Angelina Jolie in The Tourist, a film that is experiencing many, many casting and directing changes – yet is set for production this February.   

If Depp joined Jolie, he would play an American tourist drawn into a web of intrigue and danger by a female Interpol agent (Jolie) as she attempts to locate a criminal who was once her lover.

You may be asking yourself, wait…I thought Sam Worthington was playing this part or Tom Cruise.  You’re thoughts are correct but changes happen in the film biz fast and furious.  Even Charlize Theron was attached to play Jolie’s part.

I am not sure about all the directors, but Alfonso Curaron is at the head of the line to take on this juicy and plum gig.

I like the idea of Depp and Jolie working together on a spy thriller. Don’t you?

(Source)

Fresh details have recently emerged about the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean installment, On Stranger Tides, and they’re actually pretty interesting.  In fact, it’s possible to glean an admittedly rather tenuous concept of the plot at this point, based on earlier reports and the current news.

They’ve optioned a book which is also called On Stranger Tides, but the book’s actually about a puppeteer that turns pirate, Jack Shandy by name, who’s out to stop evil pirates (is there really any other kind?) from taking over the Fountain of Youth.

Remember how, earlier, there was some talk that Johnny Depp might not be back for part five?  Well, what if this Shandy character ends up taking over?  They’d need Jack Sparrow to handle four, which is planned to be thus, but five could be handed over to Shandy without much trouble.  Would people follow Shandy?  That depends on how well he handles things in four.  But that’s a definite possibility–even if we’ll have to wait a while to see how it all comes off.

Disney is falling all over itself to frantically reassure everybody within hearing distance of a Disney mouthpiece that, yes, Johnny Depp WILL be in for Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides.  Leave aside the bizarre comments Depp made following the sacking of Disney head Dick Cook–he will be back.

Of course, his involvement in Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Whatever The Hell We’re Going to Subtitle This Thing is best described as “unlikely”.  This is okay, because absolutely no part of Five has been greenlit and thus is all still very much up in the air.  My guess is they’re going to pick from their enormous array of teen stars to supplant him.

Zac Efron, maybe.  Bet he’d look all right mincing around in eyeliner and saying looney things.  And by the time Pirates 5 actually comes to pass I’ll bet they’ll have a whole stable full of guy stars they can tap to take on the Sparrow role, or whatever role they want.

This is a gem of an interview with Geoffrey Rush who plays Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean.   He puts everything in perspective and knows what we want — fresh material —  ”not going to just sausage-machine out something else.” 

But, what are these rumors about Johnny Depp? He’s not excited about On Strangers Tides anymore since Disney studio chef Dick Cook is no longer at Disney.

No, seriously.  Really.   I don’t even know where you people get these rumors.

I’m faking that last bit of indignation, because frankly, I don’t know where it came from myself.  I hadn’t even heard Depp might possibly have been up for a role in the first place, and now I’ve got negative confirmation on it.  Well, I guess it could be worse…in fact, you know what?  Let’s  MAKE it worse.  Let’s take a run at our OWN outlandish Batman rumors.  How about:

The next Batman villain will be the Clock King, and he will be played by Wallace Shawn. That freaks me out just thinking about it, because a. Wallace Shawn would totally nail the part and b. no one cares about the Clock King in the first place.

Christian Bale out, Viggo Mortenson in. That one also gives me the creeps because it’s so very plausible.  But seriously, at this point, does anyone think they’re going to change horses midstream?

The next Batman installment will be a cartoon, and all the actors will be strictly voice actors.  Oh, come on–like that couldn’t happen?  They’d save vast quantities of money and still make huge bank opening weekend.  They could have Christian Bale stare at the walls for the first half of the movie and STILL make monster bank.  That’s the kind of force this franchise has now.

See?  This is just all kinds of fun!  Try making up your OWN outlandish Batman rumors and post them in the comments section.

Yes, I know that The Ninth Gate has been around for some time now, and reviewing it may seem a little out of the ordinary, but it’s getting a re-release on Blu-Ray, so it’s an opportune time to go back and visit this collectible from the vault.

Featuring Johnny Depp as unscrupulous (it’s the perfect term for him because they actually CALL him that in the movie) chain-smoking rare book dealer Dean Corso, who’s been contracted to find the last copies of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, a book that reputedly has the power to summon the devil himself.

This is not hyperbole.

That’s actually the plot in a nutshell right there, and in true Roman Polanski style (yes, he actually directed a Johnny Depp movie), it will be incomprehensible and occasionally frightening.  The Ninth Gate is an extremely dense work, and if you’re not big on rare books, chances are this is going to go skating right over you.  This is Cigarette Burns for the literati.

The question of course is, how game are you for a gigantic treasure hunt where the treasure is the most evil book known to mankind and the road to get it is littered with dead bodies.  As a horror movie, it’s not that scary, and as a thriller, there’s not much thrill here. It’s really rather sedate, for the most part, and won’t be throwing a whole lot of shocks at you.  But it does do a bang-up job of sheer foreboding, and in that sense it succeeds admirably.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, therefore, assigns the resurgent Blu-Ray title a seven out of ten for being a rather cold thriller that does still deliver, just not so much.

When I first saw ads for Johnny Depp’s Public Enemies, I was intrigued.  The last time I’d seen a good gangster movie was back around The Untouchables.  Bringing the notoriously suicidal Melvin Purvis into things was an interesting stroke, and as we’re all well aware, Johnny Depp is a fine actor who brings class and a compelling performance to whatever he touches.

So why, when I actually saw Public Enemies, was I so spectacularly bored by it?

First, the plot–Johnny Depp plays John Dillenger, one of the most successful and most famous bank robbers of the early twentieth century.  During the height of the Great Depression, Dillenger and his cohorts tackled hundreds of banks.  Of course, when Dillenger wasn’t robbing banks, he was off eating dinner with friends and enjoying his passions in life: baseball, movies, fast cars, good clothes, and recent addition Billie Forchette, a coat check girl from Indiana who’s part Indian.

As the movie continues, Dillenger and Forchette will grow closer together, the world will steadily change around them, and bank robbers will actually become a liability to the mob as new laws threaten their operations in turn. So what will happen, in the end?  Well, you all know exactly what will happen because John Dillenger didn’t live to a ripe old age with his girlfriend in tow in real life.  No sir or ma’am as the case may be–he died, shot to death by police.  And no, that’s not a spoiler, because it actually happened.  If you didn’t already know it going in you can’t accuse people of spoilering for interjecting discussion about real life.

Anyway, the biggest problem with Public Enemies can be summed up by the use of one common gaming term:

LESS QQ, MOAR PEW PEW!

This is the perfect explanation of both what’s wrong with Public Enemies and also how to fix it. For those of you not already familiar with the term, some explanation is in order.  QQ is, essentially, a reference to crying eyes.  Also used to describe things like relationship drama and other similar phenomenon, it’s a derogatory term.  Its converse is “pew pew”, or the sound sci-fi laser weapons make when fired.  It’s essentially an exhortation to action via shaming the target into stopping behavior that’s seen as overemotional and getting their head back in the game.

The biggest problem with Public Enemies is that it focuses so much on the relationship between Dillenger and Forchette that it seems to forget that it’s supposed to be a movie about bank robbers.  Occasionally, Public Enemies will remember its roots, and in these moments makes a downright entertaining movie.  But meanwhile, the movie is so wildly overcommitted to exploring this relationship between two characters that it A. has several other characters available for use and B. was supposed to be an action crime drama, not a romantic drama with occasional bank robbery.

The movie is CALLED Public Enemies, not Two Schmucks Who Fall In Love.

Even worse is that this nightmare of a movie has a run time well in excess of two hours, meaning that the sheer amount of time they’ll spend on the romance aspects will weigh on what little action there is like an anchor around the movie’s neck.

Essentially, this movie is profoundly boring.  Stay away from it unless you’re desperate for a good romantic drama.

With the summer usually filled with entertaining blockbusters that focus more on fun than anything deeper, it comes as a surprise to see this month see the release of Public Enemies, the story of infamous gangster John Dillinger. But is the film a real insight into a criminal whose reputation lasted far beyond America’s 1930’s, or just another forgettable gangster flick?

The film sees two of Hollywood’s biggest names face off against each other. Johnny Depp plays Dillinger, as we follow him for a year or so of his violent life. He is being pursued by Agent Melvin Purvis (played by Chrsitian Bale), recently assigned head of the FBI, under pressure to catch the criminal due to the FBI’s need to prove itself to gain further funding. Dillinger hooks up with moll Billi Frechette (Marion Coutillard) but finds himself in a changing world, in which his speciality of bank robberies is no longer the priority of the gangster underworld, while the Feds close in.

Directed by Michael Mann, the film feels like either an overlong and restrained action film, or a dramatic thriller that lacks depth. As the former, the film only succeeds in part. Mann has a habit of obsessing over the minutiae of shoot outs while avoiding huge explosions or slow-motion (see Heat). One scene in particular works, in which Dillinger and his cohorts try to flee from the Feds through a forest at night. But most of the time they drag on, the clacking of tommy-guns soon wearing our patience thin. And as a drama the film completely fails, for it is unable to provide any sense of life beneath any of its characters. Read the rest of this entry »

Latin Review posted a wonderful Q&A between Johnny Depp and online Internet sleuth Fred Topel during a press conference today for Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, Depp was asked about playing The Mad Hatter, his upcoming return to the character of Captain Jack Sparrow and playing Tonto in The Lone Ranger. Depp’s answers were very flippant but guarded about  playing these characters. Click Depp’s gun  to read the interview.