Happy new Year!!
Johnny-Depp.org wishes you, Johnny, your family and friends, and you, affiliates and daily visitors, a happy new year – may all your wishes come true!
Total Film, January 2008 – Sweeney Todd: Burton and Depp do a Springtime For Hitler…
Title: Sweeney Todd: Burton and Depp do a Springtime For Hitler…
Author: Jamie Graham
Publication: Total Film
Issue: January 2008
A musical about a barbarous barber who slits his patrons’ throats, grinds their carcasses into claret-worms and packages it all as the tastiest meat pies in Old London town? Even Ed Wood would baulk at that one.
Not Tim Burton, though. A fan of Stephen Sondheim’s schlocking stage musical (it debuted on Broadway in 1979; Burton caught a London performance in the early ’80s), he rightly compares it to “an old horror movie” – the creeps and creaks of silent suspensers rinsed in organ music, the mournful poetry of Universal’s monsters and the lush dissonance of Bernard Herrmann’s orchestral assaults.
It’s therefore to be expected that Burton’s sixth collaboration with Johnny Depp – here wielding scissor hands to more violent effect – is a closer fit to Son Of Frankenstein than, say, Oklahoma!, the gothic architecture and cobbled streets atmospherically lensed in blacks and greys. It’s a murky, malevolent backdrop, all the better to offset the Grand Guignol flourishes: silver razors glinting in sodium moonlight; the waxen skin of Todd’s face threatening to split like paper as he delivers a flicker-lipped sneer; blood burbling down white shift fronts and arching across grimy skylights (in one memorable kill, the red stuff even washes over the camera).
That there’s so much claret is a real shock.
Total Film, January 2008 – Burton, Barbarism and the All-Singing All-Slaughtering Johnny-Depp
Title: Burton, Barbarism and the All-Singing All-Slaughtering Johnny-Depp
Publication: Total Film
Issue: January 2008
Mrs. Lovett’s subterranean hake-house looks like a surrealist nightmare Hieronymus Bosch might have painted. To our side sits an enormous meat-grinder overflowing with feet, hands and assorted body parts… to the other is a huge, walk in oven spilling an orange glow onto the dank, stone floor where several corpses lie. their throats slit, heads squished like over-ripe tomatoes — a consequence of being dropped down a chute from Sweeney Todd’s barber shop, two floors above.
Yet the most hellish sight of all is Todd (Johnny Depp) kneeling down beside one body, his face contorted with anger, anguish and madness, his pallid complexion. dark clothes and black hair — with its dominant skunk like while streak (a nod to Humphrey Bogart in The Return Of Doctor X) drenched in blood. He looks up towards Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), his eyes burning into her. Music suddenly booms out, filling the room with a bowel trembling Bernard Herrmann inspired rumble. After a beat, Depp stands and starts towards Bonham Carter, his right hand wrapped around the handle of a cutthroat razor. His blade drips bright crimson, as first she, then he begin to sing, “Now come here my love,” cries Depp, to the playback, arms open wide, bloody hands beckoning her to him. “Not a thing to fear, my love…”
Welcome to the crimson-soaked,
Fangoria, January 2008 – Sweeny Todd: Singin’ in the Pain
Title: Sweeny Todd: Singin’ in the Pain
Author: Mark Salisbury
Publication: Fangoria
Issue: January 2008
Secreted below her Pie Shop on London’s Fleet Street. Mrs. Lovett’s bake house is a brick-walled, arch-ceilinged vision of hell, a catacomb for cannibals, packed with bloody cadavers, dismembered remains, piles of bones and an enormous meat grinder overflowing with arms, legs and sundry other body parts. To one side stands a walk-in oven, a huge iron furnace that flickers and roars as Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), wearing a black-and-white-striped dress, pulls open its heavy door, blasting heat and an orangey-red glow into the dark, gloomy space.
On the stone floor he several dead bodies, their throats slit wide open, their heads like squashed tomatoes—a consequence of being dropped down the chute that links Sweeney Todd’s barbershop, two floors above, to this place. Most are male, but there’s one woman whose limp, lifeless corpse is picked over by a distraught Sweeney (Johnny Depp).
After a beat, Sweeney looks up, his dark-rimmed eyes churning with anguish and anger. He gets to his feet, and starts toward Mrs. Lovett, his pallid visage, shirt and waistcoat—and thick mane of wavy black hair with its dominant skunklike white streak—all drenched in blood.
In his right hand, he grasps the handle of a cutthroat razor, its blade dripping pearls of bright crimson.
Esquire, January 2008 – The Continuing Adventures of Tim & Johnny
Title: The Continuing Adventures of Tim & Johnny
Author: Cal Fussman
Publication: Esquire
Issue: January 2008
One time a guy told me that he brought his wife to see Pirates of the Caribbean. She had lost her motor skills. I forget what you call it. It’s not autism. Jesus, they made a movie about it. You know, where you recede and your functions start to go. Anyway, they’re watching the film, and when Captain Jack Sparrow came on the screen, she started to laugh. This guy said he hadn’t heard that laugh in years. And so he took her back to see the film repeatedly. For some reason, Captain Jack made her laugh every time. That’s right up there.
My mother taught me a lot of things. The first thing that comes to mind is: Don’t take any shit off anyone, ever. When I was a little kid, we moved constantly. Bully picks on you in the new place? Don’t ever take any shit off anyone, ever. Eloquent and right.
My life is my life because of Tim. Definitely.
This is Tim Burton in a nutshell: We were doing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and I was on the set. We were shooting, working, working, working. All great. Everything’s cool. One of my pals comes up and says, “Helena [Bonham Carter, Burton’s partner] just called. When you get a moment, she’d like you to give her a call back.”
over 500 magazine scans added
After our dear magazines staffer got into some private trouble and at the end had to quit, the magazines pages of the last year were left very empty. Sorry for that!
Today, I added far over 500 new magazine scans from June 2006 until February 2008 to our magazines section – especially Hiro3’s great Japanese magazine scans.
Sadly, living here in Germany and without scanner, I have only little chance to get the more interesting US and UK magazines into my hands –
PLEASE, if you have scans (scanned by yourself or with the people who scanned it allowing you sending it in), send them in by email to MAGAZINES (at) JOHNNY-DEPP.ORG –
also not only now that you read these news, but every time you have him in one of your magazines. Credits will be given.
comments, ratings, myspace and Charity
What I did not have time enough to finish before Christmas, I did the last days:
the comments script is (im most parts) back up (though I still have to change some things),
and in the movies section, I installed a script, which lets you rate all of Johnny’s movies.
The JDorg myspace got a brand new layout, and Lizzy is now helping there besides Amber.
And Lizzy set up a site with Charity projects.
Review by Amber
This is a movie about two different kinds of people: the squares versus the outsiders (forgot the name of what they were called lol), but one of the squares falls in love with the baddest of bad guys, Wade “Cry-Baby” Walker! It’s a musical comedy that’s definitely a laugh out loud with friends type of movie. Johnny Depp is one of the main characters whom he plays Wade “Cry-Baby” Walker and the girl whom he’s falling for that’s falling for him is Allison Vernon-Williams (Amy Locane). But, she’s already got a boyfriend and there’s no way her grandmother is going to let her hang out with the crowd Wade (Depp) hangs with. In the end after being thrown in jail, Allison and Wade get to be together.
***
Review by Conny
“Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride” honors the life and death of Hunter S. Thompson, one of the most important writers of the past century, and the inventor of “Gonzo journalism” (and shotgun golf).
The film tells the story of Hunter’s life by providing the viewer not only with a biography of the writer and excerpts of his work but, and that is the more important thing, with statements and stories about Hunter, told by personal friends, his wifes Sondi and Anita, colleagues like Tom Wolfe and also celebrities like John Cusack, Sean Penn, Johnny Depp and others. Further, lots of photos also show Hunter’s private side, along with interviews with and clips of Hunter himself. The film makes wide use of the split screen concept, which enables the viewer to see both the interviewees and pictures of Hunter taken during the respective period in his life.
The film starts out from several statements about Hunter S. Thompson, then telling his biography from his childhood days and juvenile delinquency up to his start as a writer for Rolling Stone Magazine and his collaboration with Ralph Steadman, his long-time illustrator from “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” (1970) onwards, the story being told by Nick Nolte. The invention of “Gonzo journalism” gave Hunter’s life a new direction – the beginning of fame and the creation of a cult.
Fame brought with it the inevitable decision to turn Hunter’s works into movies for the silver screen.
Movie Review
Well, I will say right from the start that this movie may be one of Johnny?s least liked films; which may also make me less popular since it is one of my favorites. While seeing Johnny all dolled up in costume may not be something new to most of his fans, hearing him speak in a true period piece may be. Right from the start of the opening shot, Johnny who portrays, Lord Rochester, is larger than life and nasty to boot. That is basically the premise of the whole film; this is a character that Johnny doesn?t WANT you to like!! He is sexiest, rude, crude and downright selfishly mean. Guess what? There?s no upside to him at all. But look, if you love Johnny and you are a true admirer of his work, you just have to sit through this film. Lord Rochester is living in a time where everything is bleak and dreary and everyone feels about the same. He decides to live his life how and with whom he pleases, but who can blame him? Johnny of course shows his gift for revealing true emotion and deep hidden drama. Although some will find him just plain repulsive, its hard to deny that he shows a raw sexual side of himself. Not even shy about it, Johnny sticks his hands where he wants and doesn?t apologize for a second. Even if you hate him, he will be hard to resist as the women in this film show.