Johnny Depp

[creme_ala_creme78]

i started this thread because hes hot and liz wanted me to....

[oceanflower]

I like his acting, too. ;) I liked him especially as Ed Wood, and he was great in What's Eating Gilbert Grape and as Edward Scissorhands. He's a versatile actor. I'm looking forward to seeing Neverland.

[happy]

I must say I like Johnny Depp :) From all points of view. I especially enjoyed Chocolat, which was really a great movie. And of course Edward Scissor Hands. :good:

[ArthurDent]

I only liked him in gilbert grape (Which is also the only movie in which Di Caprio was tolerable [He was actually very good in that movie]) and that's about it...

[creme_ala_creme78]

i liked him in pirates of the caribbean as well. orlando bloom too!

[skye]

i liked him in pirates of the caribbean as well. orlando bloom too!

me too

[superlovezapper]

I can't choose a favorite Depp film, they're all so good! He was so perfect in what's eating gilbert grape, and touching in Edward Scissorhands. I loved Chocholat and Finding Neverland, too. But who can neglect CAPTIAN JACK SPARROW!!!

Anyway, he'll be in Charlie and the Chochlate Factory soon. Do you think he can live up as Willa Wonka. That's some big shoes to fill. If anyone can, I think Depp's the man :cool: .

[oceanflower]

Anyway, he'll be in Charlie and the Chochlate Factory soon. Do you think he can live up as Willa Wonka. That's some big shoes to fill. If anyone can, I think Depp's the man :cool: .

I agree. I think he'll be a superb Willie Wonka!

[Star_Anise]

I think Depp will make a good Willie Wonka, but I'm such a fan of the original movie that they better tread carefully. I'm a stickler for classics.

I never appreciated Johnny Depp until I saw films like Chocolat and Finding Neverland. I also thought he was great in Pirates of the Caribbean. Much better than Bloom - I've never understood what's so great about him.

[superlovezapper]

i think Bloom's performance would've seemed better if Depp wasn't there. Next to Depp his performance was lacking. Of course, I would've spent the money to see "pirates" if Depp wasn't in it!

[Unregistered]

21 Jump Street. Now that was cool.

sis

[oceanflower]

Wow, that was an oldie! I remember when that was first on the tv...I never a watched it, but I remembered lot of my girlfriends talking about how cute Johnny Depp was. :)

[creme_ala_creme78]

im dying to see willy wonka, i cant waitll it comes out!!!!

[Azrael26]

He was especially good in Sleepy Hollow .

[creme_ala_creme78]

havent seen that either :( man, im lacking in my knowledge of movies depp has been in :(

[Star_Anise]

He was especially good in Sleepy Hollow .

I thought Sleepy Hollow ordinary at best. Could have been much more.

[happy]

I've just seen Finding Neverland and Johnny Depp was pretty good. I didn't like the story that much tho, it's kinda too dramatic in the end. But his acting was good, anyway a lot different from the other roles he's had.

[Azrael26]

I thought Sleepy Hollow ordinary at best. Could have been much more.

Tim Burton's style. They seem to get along well (Edward scissorhands was also by Burton) Anyway, I think Depp as Ichabod Crane was hilarious.

[fiveyearwinter]

I want to have the job Johnny Depp's character plays in The Ninth Gate .

[Azrael26]

And pledge allegiance to Satan ?

[fiveyearwinter]

Technically he never did that. Just slept with her.

[Azrael26]

Tecnnically, yes. But wasn't he left with a decision to make ?

[fiveyearwinter]

I suppose you have a point. It was definitely an ambiguous ending.

[oceanflower]

I thought Sleepy Hollow ordinary at best. Could have been much more.

I was disappointed in the movie as well. I had to force myself to sit through the whole thing. I don't blame the actors, though...the material was just below ordinary.

[Azrael26]

I was disappointed in the movie as well. I had to force myself to sit through the whole thing. I don't blame the actors, though...the material was just below ordinary.

I agree. Polanski did a much better job in his mock-horror vampire movies. (called Le Bal des Vampires , in French, I don't know the English title).

[fiveyearwinter]

Depp's in Burton's new claymation, too - The Corpse Bride.

[MaryR]

i've loved everything he's done (that i've seen).

[oceanflower]

I just saw the advertisements for Willie Wonka on tv....it looks great! I can't wait until it opens on July 15....the whole family's going to this one.

[Star_Anise]

I saw the trailer on Tuesday too, and I'm excited! I've heard we won't get it here until September, but I hope that's not the case!

[TariNumenesse]

Said in another thread, but I was almost bursting out of my seat when I saw the trailer at Madagascar. Always been a huge fan of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...
We finally saw him and Kate Winslet on Oprah the other day. I wish they would show Oprah in Australia when the show is relevant. It doesn't help you decide whether to see the movie or not if they show it a year after release!!
As for Sleepy Hollow, I laughed through the whole thing. I don't remember much about the script, but either way Johnny Depp did a good job. He always does.
And Johnny is coming to Melbourne!!!! Yay!!! I hope we have encounters like my uncle did with Nicholas Cage. That was so funny...(Not because I'm some physco screaming fan or anything. :D I would never scream if I met someone famous.)

[oceanflower]

Said in another thread, but I was almost bursting out of my seat when I saw the trailer at Madagascar. Always been a huge fan of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...
We finally saw him and Kate Winslet on Oprah the other day. I wish they would show Oprah in Australia when the show is relevant. It doesn't help you decide whether to see the movie or not if they show it a year after release!!
As for Sleepy Hollow, I laughed through the whole thing. I don't remember much about the script, but either way Johnny Depp did a good job. He always does.
And Johnny is coming to Melbourne!!!! Yay!!! I hope we have encounters like my uncle did with Nicholas Cage. That was so funny...(Not because I'm some physco screaming fan or anything. :D I would never scream if I met someone famous.)

Keep a camera with you at all times, just in case! :D

[oceanflower]

washingtonpost.com (http://www.washingtonpost.com/)

Sorry, Charlie
Johnny Depp's Not Much of a Treat In Tim Burton's 'Chocolate Factory'
By Ann Hornaday
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 15, 2005; C01


What will Johnny do?

That has been the question on filmgoers' minds since it was announced, just after Johnny Depp's triumphant channeling of Keith Richards in "Pirates of the Caribbean," that he would next play Willy Wonka in Tim Burton's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Would Depp channel Michael Jackson this time? Or the role's 1971 originator, Gene Wilder? Or would he surprise the oddsmakers with something completely, characteristically out there?

Depp's Wonka is certainly out there but -- perhaps because of all the speculative hype, perhaps because remake fatigue is setting in -- it's a major comedown. Sashaying through a performance that seems to be more about his teeth than anything else, Depp has chosen some odd spirits to aid him in his journey to find his inner Willy. There's a smidgen of Mr. Rogers here, a bit of Dana Carvey's Church Lady there; the exaggerated top hat, foppish coat and waxy green pallor suggest a creature worthy of Dr. Seuss, and those prosthetic choppers can't help but recall Depp's own performance as the title character in Burton's 1994 movie "Ed Wood." And that hair--a lacquered pageboy with wisps of Mamie Eisenhower bangs -- that hair can bring to mind only one person these days, and that's the currently incarcerated New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

The cumulative effect isn't pretty. Nor is it kooky, funny, eccentric or even mildly interesting. Indeed, throughout his fey, simpering performance, Depp seems to be straining so hard for weirdness that the entire enterprise begins to feel like those excruciating occasions when your parents tried to be hip. If you have to try that hard, you just aren't. Similarly, Burton, whose keen imagination has come up with an eye-popping palette and occasionally brilliant production design, has labored so hard to make Wonka his own -- giving him a tedious back story, replete with daddy issues -- that he's lost all the subtle humor and understatement that made Roald Dahl's original story, and Mel Stuart's 1971 adaptation, "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory," so charming in the first place.

You know you're in Burton's world from the movie's lovely opening sequences, which unfold in a snowy modern-day city that could pass for Victorian London. The place is dominated by a chocolate factory that seems plucked fresh from a Pink Floyd album cover. The look is vintage Burton, from its bold, austere aesthetic to its pristine attention to detail; whether it's the retro-looking Wonka delivery bikes or the catawampus shack where Charlie Bucket and his family live, Burton has created a universe full of vibrant color, imagination and warmth.

Then the faces start to melt off the singing puppets, and you remember that Burton's world can be a very dark place indeed. Those puppets appear half an hour into "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," serving as mechanized greeters at Willy Wonka's mysterious candy business, which Charlie (Freddie Highmore) and four other young winners of Golden Tickets are about to tour. Fans of the original "Willy Wonka" are familiar with Charlie's cohorts: there's the bratty Veruca Salt (Julia Winter), the competitive Violet Beauregarde (Annasophia Robb), the candy-guzzling Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz) and the television-addicted Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry). Shortly after the puppets short-circuit and are promptly engulfed in flames, Wonka himself appears, whispering "Good morning, Starshine" in a creepy, breathy falsetto.

The ensuing downward spiral serves only to remind audiences why the original "Willy Wonka" has been an enduring family hit: It's because Stuart understood that Dahl's story wasn't just a fanciful tour through kids' imaginations but a devastating social satire. Most of the movie's action centered on the media frenzy, bare-knuckled greed and warped ambition that erupted over the Golden Tickets; Wonka's factory tour was a sly commentary -- delivered by Wilder with characteristically mordant understatement -- not just on the gluttony, selfishness, snootiness and laziness the characters embodied but also on the odiousness of kids, and overweening parents, in general.

Despite its title, the kids in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" have been all but lost. They still receive their individual comeuppances -- accompanied by MTV-era song-and-dance numbers by the Oompa Loompas -- but the satirical edge has been dulled in a film that is dominated, and ultimately swamped, by its star's mannered, pixilated performance.

And so many flashbacks there are, from old Dr. Wonka burning young Willy's Halloween candy to Willy's later trip to Oompa Loompa Land, where he discovered the tribe of tiny brown men he would bring back to enslave -- sorry, employ -- as laborers in his candy empire. Reportedly, political activists plan to hand out information at theaters playing "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" informing viewers of the real-life chocolate industry's exploitative labor practices. Considering Willy's paternalistic, post-colonial relationship with his "beloved Oompa Loompas" -- here portrayed as digitized copies of the Indian actor Deep Roy -- they seem pretty ripe for organizing themselves.

But such subtext is much less important to Burton than style, which "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" admittedly has in abundance, from its gorgeous set design (the factory's nut-cracking room is particularly groovy) to Willy's ever-changing wardrobe of Jackie O. sunglasses. Still, the film's strenuous efforts at becoming a camp classic eventually begin to wear thin. "Why is everything here so utterly pointless?" a character wails at one point. As Burton shoves "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" down yet one more digressive, if fantastic-looking, path, viewers may well find themselves asking that very question.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (115 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG for quirky situations, action and mild profanity.


© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[oceanflower]

washingtonpost.com (http://www.washingtonpost.com/)
A Semisweet 'Chocolate'
By Desson Thomson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 15, 2005; WE31




"CHARLIE AND the Chocolate Factory" is a spectacle to be enjoyed, but only as such. It's a masterful parade of inventiveness. With tongue firmly planted in gloom-and-doomy cheek, director Tim Burton takes us on a ride of over-the-top proportions, which entertains us while tacitly scolding our mass consumptiveness. But in a stroke of apparent self-destruction, he has allowed Johnny Depp to interpret Willy Wonka as an unsettling amalgam of Michael Jackson, Edward Scissorhands and Lisa Kudrow's Phoebe from the TV show "Friends."

" Eeoow ," he says at one point, with that tart Phoebe grimace and Valley accent.

Played by Freddie Highmore, the Charlie Chaplin-featured actor who played opposite Depp in "Finding Neverland," young Charlie Bucket lives with his family, including four grandparents, in a Dickensian British home (seemingly designed by 1920s German expressionists). His father (Noah Taylor) makes little money. His mother (Helena Bonham Carter) can only offer insipid cabbage soup to feed the family. And his grandparents lie perpetually in a large bed by the fireside. But they thrive on love and togetherness.

Charlie is obsessed with the chocolate factory that looms above his dirty, industrial town. Run by the reclusive Willy Wonka, its heyday has been over since industrial spies stole Wonka's wonderful candy secrets and he angrily dismissed all his employees. For 15 years, the factory has soldiered on, apparently without workers. But now, Willy has issued a worldwide contest, winners of which will get to see the factory's secrets. One of them, it turns out, will be selected as his heir for the man who has no family. A golden ticket is hidden in five of his chocolate bars, sold around the world. The lucky ones who find the tickets will get a personal tour of the factory.

Charlie's hopes are lit up. But his family can afford to buy Charlie only one candy bar for his birthday. One by one, the winners are announced from around the world: a greedy boy (Philip Wiegratz) from Germany named Augustus Gloop; a snotty, rich Brit girl (Julia Winter) by the name of Veruca Salt; Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry), a violent, video-game-obsessed brat from Denver; and uber-competitive Barbie doll Violet Beauregarde (Annasophia Robb) from Atlanta.

It's a cinch that Charlie will eventually find the fifth and join those brats on the grand tour. And it will come as no surprise that Willy's going to take a liking to the down-to-earth Charlie. But while that foregone conclusion remains unconcluded, we have a whole inner world to enjoy: a technological wonderland of chocolate (churned by waterfall) and candies; an elevator that shoots up, down, sideways and even slantways; and dozens of teeny-tiny people known as Oompa Loompas (all played by Deep Roy), who make the candy and can improvise an impromptu song-and-dance number like nobody's business.

Willy leads the children and their overprotective, competitive parental chaperones through his fantasy universe as he quietly assesses the brats for their likability. But Willy's no picnic himself. He seems to hate children, and he is equally inaccessible to adults, giving them frosty or sarcastic responses to any smart-alecky questions or reactions they have.

Mindful of the need for large-screen entertainment, Burton has outdone himself, from the chocolate lakes and candy-grass banks, in which the abominable Augustus takes a plunge, to the hilarious routines performed by the Oompa Loompas (their songs created by Burton's regular collaborator, Danny Elfman). And he and screenwriter John August have not held back on the darkly humorous spirit of Roald Dahl's book of the same name.

By Burton's standards, "Charlie" is one of his warmest dramas yet, in terms of the family relationships enjoyed by central character Charlie. Burton never was a warm filmmaker. His antiheroes (in such films as "Edward Scissorhands," "Beetle Juice," "The Nightmare Before Christmas," "Mars Attacks!" and "Sleepy Hollow") are frequently cold, tortured or barely human, and their family or social relationships aren't much better. He evades this seeming discomfort with human softness with inspired art direction, macabre humor and other imaginative circuitry.

Which is to say "Charlie" the movie will entertain the kids, for sure. But it still feels frosty to the touch. And here comes the big asterisk. People enamored of Gene Wilder's manic, sweet performance in the 1971 "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" may be disappointed in Depp's oddball eccentricity. Of course, Depp should take things in a new direction, or why bother? After all, Wilder's wacky persona took many liberties with Dahl's original creation. But Depp's Wonka is more avian than amiable. Funny and weird this Willy Wonka may be. But charming and fuzzy? Not quite. It's doubtful that Depp's off-kilter interpretation will have any discernible effect on the movie's success. But it remains the movie's most disappointing aspect. Walk away from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and I wager you'll feel not a glimmer of warmth. You may laugh and like, but you won't love with the same enthusiasm. But in a dismal movie season like this summer, most of us are likely to be happy with any confection that goes down this easily.

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (PG, 115 minutes) -- Contains offbeat humor and situations, and some mild obscenity. Area theaters.


© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[superlovezapper]

i just saw charlie and the chocholate factory last night! i thought it was super cute, but too short. and depp was brilliant as usual.

[~*~Inwë Mithrandír~*~]

So far I've seen almost every movie he's in, and I got almost all of them on dvd. I'm not only a fan of him because he's hot (of course, he IS hot ), but I mainly like his work. He's a very good actor who can play lots of different kind of roles. AND, what's also important, when I see interviews with him on tv, special features of a dvd, ..., I can't help but noticing that he doesn't only have the looks, but also the brains! :)

[oceanflower]

Johnny stars in the movie The Libertine which opens in theaters on MArch 10. Take a look: http://www.thelibertine-movie.com/

[~*~Inwë Mithrandír~*~]

Thank you for the link :) The trailer was quite interesting!