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Johnny Depp searches for the perfect Puerco Pibil in Once Upon a Time in Mexico by Rico Torres for The Providence Journal.

While watching Once Upon a Time in Mexico, an action movie starring Johnny Depp, my son called me to join him, insisting I see something special. Now I already watched that movie and totally hated what the bad guys did to Depp, surgically removing his eyes, so I didn’t need to see it again, ever. But it was a special featurette my son didn’t want me to miss. It was called Ten Minute Cooking School.

In this short DVD extra, writer/director Robert Rodriguez, a young, hip guy wearing a ski cap and three days of beard growth, shows viewers how to make Puerco Pibil, a slow roasted pork dish from the Yucatan region of Mexico.

There is preparation required for making this dish. You’ll need a gadget – a spice or coffee grinder to make the spice paste. Rodriguez suggests that putting hot spices in your usual coffee grinder is a very bad idea. He offers options: add heat by leaving in the seeds from the habanero peppers. And he makes one very appealing dish. He also explains you can buy prepared achiote paste which is what you are making but that’s not as fine as making it from scratch.

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ’S PUERCO PIBIL
5 tablespoons annato seeds

2 teaspoons cumin seeds

1 tablespoon black peppercorns

1/2 teaspoon whole cloves

8 allspice berries

2 habanero peppers

1/2 cup orange juice

1/2 cup white vinegar

8 garlic cloves

2 tablespoons salt

Juice of 5 lemons

Generous splash of tequila

5 pounds pork butt,

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Writer Amy Longsdorf covers the film industry for Impulse
and recently sat down for five minutes with actor Orlando Bloom.

Impulse: Both “Kingdom of Heaven” and “Elizabethtown” flopped. How much did that sting?

Bloom: Not much, really. Hopefully, whether my movies fly, fail or float, whatever they do, I’ll enjoy making them. Johnny Depp once told me, “I’ve made a career out of making movies which are failures or considered to be failures.’ And he’s had one of the most courageous, exciting, spontaneous careers to date. So sometimes you have to take the knock.

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MORE THAN 11 years ago, in one of my first columns for this paper, I said of Johnny Depp that “he has just what it takes to revive that dodo bird of the American cinema, the swashbuckler.” By Joe Morgenstern for the The Wall Street Journal.

How could I have foreseen, way back then, his performance in “Pirates of the Caribbean”? Well, I couldn’t, and didn’t.

What his sudden ascension means for the studios is clear — a mad competition for his services, now that the second installment of “Pirates” is a staggering success, and the third one is already in the can. What it means for movie lovers, especially those who care about actors and acting, is equally clear. Stardom isn’t always synonymous with interesting acting — Robert Redford and Keanu Reeves come to mind. Yet every Depp performance holds out the promise of surprise, and he delivers on the promise more often than not.

Everyone who has seen “Pirates” can readily recall Jack Sparrow’s quirks — the slyness, the blitheness, the woozy feyness that slides in and out of genial gayness. Even those who haven’t seen the film seem to be aware that the model for this unlikely hero was Keith Richards, although an earlier stage in the character’s evolution may well have been that aforementioned Don Juan, who wore eyeliner and, in a fantasy sequence, sported a mask and bandana as a typhoon survivor washed up on the island of Eros.

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This article is courtesy of the Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition, whose publicist allowed me to add it to the site. Credit goes to them, and the full article can also be found here

How Johnny Depp keeps defying expectations
August 5, 2006; Page P4

More than 11 years ago, in one of my first columns for this paper, I said of Johnny Depp that “he has just what it takes to revive that dodo bird of the American cinema, the swashbuckler.” How could I have foreseen, way back then, his performance in “Pirates of the Caribbean”? Well, I couldn’t, and didn’t. The subject was a seriously underrated comedy called “Don Juan DeMarco,” in which he plays, with a droll Castilian accent, a delusional New Yorker who claims to be the world’s greatest lover. I came across this piece of pseudo-prescience in the course of thinking about Mr. Depp’s hugely popular portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow, and his new real-life role as king of the Hollywood hill.

What his sudden ascension means for the studios is clear — a mad competition for his services, now that the second installment of “Pirates” is a staggering success, and the third one is already in the can. What it means for movie lovers, especially those who care about actors and acting, is equally clear. Stardom isn’t always synonymous with interesting acting — Robert Redford and Keanu Reeves come to mind. Yet every Depp performance holds out the promise of surprise,

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It’s tempting, as some have done, to call Johnny Depp the king of the weirdo actors writes Michael Sragow, the Sun Movie Critic for the Baltimore Sun.com. He adds that anyone surprised at Depp’s outre buccaneer Jack Sparrow in his Pirates of the Caribbean movies needs to know it’s just Johnny Depp doing what he does best: trying to make an old character “interesting and different, and push him as far as you can go.

…Depp famously drew on Keith Richards for Sparrow — and Richards will play Sparrow’s dad in the third Pirates movie. In the current Rolling Stone, Depp also credits his wide reading in pirate lore for some of Sparrow, such as a study called Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition (“I wasn’t exactly going for that with the character. … It was more that I liked the idea of being ambiguous”) and a book by a French sailor who said that he’d keep going as a sailor “because the horizon is always there.” In fact, he mined that idea for the first film’s last line, “Now, bring on that horizon.”

Visit the Baltimore Sun website to read more about the stories behind Johnny’s characters.

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Rolling Stone
July 13, 2006
by Mark Binelli
Photographs by Albert Watson, Matthew Rolston

On the path to Hollywood glory, Johnny Depp veered off course. So how did he tame his wild ways to become one of the world’s most bankable leading men?
On a recent summer afternoon, Johnny Depp walks into a luxury suite at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. Oddly, he is dressed like a pirate. A faded paisley do-rag is tied around his head. Smaller strips of cloth are braided into his hair, and he has gold caps on several teeth. His loose white T-shirt, with its blue horizontal stripes, may be more sailor than pirate, but it’s definitely in the nautical family.

We should note that Depp has not come directly from the set of his latest film, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, where he will reprise the role of flamboyant pirate captain Jack Sparrow. Nor has he come from the cover shoot for this magazine. When I mention this fact to Gore Verbinski, the director of both Pirates movies and a third installment already in the works, he professes no surprise. “That’s the Johnny I know,” Verbinski tells me. “He’s always half-Jack.” Depp says, “With all of my characters, it’s just depressing to leave them. With Captain Jack, when we finished shooting the first movie, I had a feeling I’d see him again. I didn’t feel like I was saying goodbye. By the end of the third movie,

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The rum-swilling Captain Jack Sparrow is back, and Johnny Depp couldn’t be happier writes Hanh Nguyen of Zap2it.com. The selfishly charming raider created by Johnny Depp and director Gore Verbinski is based loosely on real life rock and roller Keith Richards and the amorous cartoon skunk Pepe LePew.

CAPTAIN JACK SPARROW

LOS ANGELES – The rum-swilling Captain Jack Sparrow is back, and Johnny Depp couldn’t be happier.

He’s been playing outlandish characters for years, but it wasn’t until his turn as the selfishly charming raider in 2003’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” that he earned his first Oscar nomination. The popularity of his character was a vindication of sorts since the studio was initially nervous about his quirky portrayal, which was based on the oddball combination of rock legend Keith Richards and the amorous cartoon skunk Pepe LePew.

“I mean, bless ’em, [the executives] did panic on the first one, and probably to some degree for good reason,” says Depp. “I think it’s a prerequisite to become an executive: you have to have that capability to panic instantly and do your best to resolve it as quickly as possible. But really it was a case where the audience, the viewers, actually came in and they were the ones that saved me.”

Now Depp’s returning the favor with the eagerly awaited sequel “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.” Jack Sparrow is no mere imaginary friend for a man who was sad to finish shooting the original film because of “separation anxiety.”

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Who is the bigger box-office champ: Johnny Depp or his fictional alter ego Jack Sparrow? – By Anthony Breznican for USA Today.

“There are people out there who love Pirates but don’t like Johnny Depp, particularly, and don’t have an interest in seeing him in other things, but they like this particular character,” Poland says. “And there are other people who go to see every Johnny Depp thing. And then there are people who will now go see Depp’s other movies because of this.”

Depp is crucial to Pirates’ success, but “you can’t sell him in something people don’t want to see,” Poland says.

Whatever the case, Depp’s Sparrow is getting the credit for this huge debut, from both audiences and the film’s studio, Disney. A survey from online ticket-seller Fandango found 63% of audiences said Depp was a main factor in their decision to see the movie.

Depp has acknowledged that he sometimes clicks with fans and sometimes doesn’t. “You should be pushing yourself to the absolute brink of failure, in terms of like, ‘Boy, if this don’t work, it’s going to be real bad. And if it does work, it might be great,’ ” he said in an interview before the movie opened.

With the two Pirates films, and last summer’s blockbuster Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Depp’s idiosyncratic performances hit the right note with mainstream audiences.

This latest success probably will bolster Depp’s ability to take on other curious,

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After years of proving his versatility as an actor without ever starring in a gold-plated box-office blockbuster, his talent was finally acknowledged by cinemagoers and critics alike through his performance as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates Of The Caribbean three years ago – By Steve Pratt for The Northern Echo

Public adoration of Captain Jack, the fact that people took to the character and supported him, came as a pleasant surprise. “At a certain point some of the better dressed people at Disney were having a difficult time with my interpretation of the character. The fact that the audience came in and supported me was a win-win situation,” says the actor with a degree of satisfaction.

Executives’ worries were understandable when you consider Captain Jack’s mincing swagger and mangled, effeminate English accent. His body language is all to do with the weather, explains Depp. “It came from extreme heat. I went to a sauna, locked myself in – by the way, I don’t recommend that. Out on the open seas for a long period of time, he’d obviously be subjected to the elements. So what happens when you lock yourself in a very hot place? It starts to affect the way you move, that’s kind of how Jack’s movement was born.”

The combination contrives to remind you not only of Keith Richards but also Captain Birds Eye and Julian Clary. The two sequels are being filmed back-to-back, with Depp and the rest of the cast reuniting to complete filming next month.

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Like most Hollywood actors, his particular journey has been something of a rollercoaster ride and right now he couldn’t be higher off the ground by LAWRIE MASTERSON for the Sunday Mail.

Depp admits that even his mother, Betty Sue, was impressed when he landed on the cover of Newsweek recently and his star power drew comparisons between him and Tom Cruise.

But while Cruise, 44 on July 3, routinely tops lists as Hollywood’s most powerful and bankable star, it’s 43-year-old Depp who has the acting credibility, the reputation for uncanny choices of material.

And while Cruise’s personal life has taken turns towards what some regard as bizarre in recent years, Depp, who certainly had some wild days early in his career, now is the epitome of the happy family man. He is the father of Lily-Rose, seven, and four-year-old Jack with his partner of the past eight years, French singer and actor Vanessa Paradis.

“Even before the ride took this particular turn (with Pirates) I never really went out much, so nothing has changed in that regard,” he says. “My kids have a super-normal life. They do their school, they play with their friends.

“OK, they get to go to Disneyland maybe a little more often than other kids, but that’s part of the gig.”

Depp and his family divide their time between homes in Los Angeles and the south of France and, having spent more than two years in the Bahamas making the three Pirates movies and earning about $A47 million for the two sequels,

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