“100 Proof” Depp and Cast Highlight Bruce Robinson’s The Rum Diary

I was thrilled to be present at Thursday’s US premiere of The Rum Diary at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to launch their Film Independent screening program! The night kicked off with director Bruce Robinson and cast brought to the stage to quickly introduce this entertaining flick.

Johnny Depp stars as Paul Kemp, a New York journalist who moves to Puerto Rico to write for the San Juan Star. He’s introduced to the paper’s quirky staff and immediately assigned to horoscopes and reporting on the activity at the local bowling alley. He soon moves into a rundown apartment of co-worker Sala (played by Sopranos actor Michael Rispoli) and befriends the paper’s oddball reporter, Moberg (Giovanni Ribisi). To top things off, Kemp also becomes involved in a love triangle with the beautiful Cheneault (Amber Heard) and her rich fiancé, Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart).

The Rum Diary is based on Hunter S. Thompson’s early novel and despite all the rum ingested, it feels like a more sober relative of Terry Gilliam’s film adaptation of Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Unlike Fear and Loathing’s more surreal, hallucinatory aesthetic, The Rum Diary inhabits a more tangible reality. Diary crackles with the colorful energy of late 1950’s San Juan, contrasted with the dark, downtrodden poverty of the city’s poorer sections. Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski  gives the film a natural appearance and editor Matt Chesse keeps the pace fluid and entertaining.

The heart of the film lies with its superb supporting cast. Michael Rispoli plays Sala, Kemp’s roommate and eventual partner in rum who also manages a champion chicken in the local cockfights. Giovanni Ribisi portrays the paper’s nihilistic writer Moberg and Richard Jenkins gives a standout performance as Lotterman, The Star’s editor-in-chief. Amber Heard as Connecticut native Cheneault captures Kemp’s eye (as well as the audience’s) from frame one when she first emerges from under the water like a nymph (and she’s a Pisces to boot!). Aaron Eckhart’s also solid as her wealthy fiancé, Sanderson, who tries recruiting Kemp’s for his company’s shady endeavors.

And then there’s Johnny Depp. Compared to his portrayal of Thompson in Fear and Loathing and the over the top Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean, Paul Kemp is a more sedate change of pace.  Depp nails Kemp’s fish out of water with subtle bravado, especially when reacting to his new surroundings and colorful supporting cast. His character (and the film’s tone) is set up in one of the opening scenes when Lotterman asks him: “How much do you drink?’ and Kemp replies: “At the upper end of ‘social’”.

The Rum Diary was a fun, entertaining diversion that opens in theatres October 28^th by Film District.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Click for larger image.

Jack Sparrow and Barbossa embark on a quest to find the elusive fountain of youth, only to discover that Blackbeard and his daughter are after it too.

Source: DisneyPirates

Update: Deadline is reporting that production will begin on February 6th, 2012.

Depp already has his slate busy with Dark Shadows, The Lone Ranger, and will eventually reprise his role as Jack Sparrow in a fifth Pirates film. However, this role seems to be right up his alley with already starred in roles like the Mad Hatter in Alice In Wonderland. And with Suess being a famous children’s novelist, you can expect to see some fantastical animations such as animed bells and whistles.

Film District premiered the trailer on Movieline, which you can see below, and the film is scheduled to finally hit theaters (after a long delay) on October 28th.

The book begins at the start of Depp’s career and is at first an interesting read, but quickly the book becomes more of an in depth criticism of each movie Depp has been in as well as each relationship. While some some of this criticism is spot on, it is seriously detracting from the real story behind the man that graces the cover of the book. If the title of the book would have been Jonny Depp: Criticizing The Man and His Movies I would have enjoyed it more, but as it stands it is a boring look into an amazing career.

Meikle goes into agonizing detail of what he thinks Depp’s motivations were or how he was feeling after a break up. He chronicles his relationships and outbursts without really saying anything about the man himself. I’m not saying Meikle has his facts wrong, I’m saying it doesn’t sound like he got the whole story or bothered to talk to Johnny Depp himself to get the real meat and potatoes needed to cook up an interesting story.

If your interested in paying to read cold and boring reviews of Depp’s movies, then this is the book for you, but if your looking for a definitive Bio on Depp, this is definitely not it. Absolutely not a killer book.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

The Film:

If you haven’t noticed yet, the Western is back. Over the last handful of years, there’s been numerous stabs at the genre in classical yarns of the Old West, you know, the stuff of Americana. But enter Rango, a loving ode to the Spaghetti Western. It’s influences are obvious. Director Gore Verbinski channels Sergio Leone; composer Hans Zimmer channels Ennio Morricone; and the film’s titled character uses Django as its outline. But like The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly or Once Upon a Time in the West, the film sometimes feels like an endurance test, especially in the middle act, and only half as good.

There’s plenty of stuff here that almost made Rango special. The wonderful voice acting from Johnny Depp, who merges his Captain Jack Sparrow and Hunter S. Thompson together, in his most crazed neurotic yet. The animation is by far the best of the CG animated films, which is no small feat when considering Wall-E and Legend of the Guardians in the conversation. In fact, the film is so photo-realistic, you’ll find yourself drifting in and out of the illusion of if it’s CGI or real animals in cute little outfits. Bravo, ILM. But who is this film made for? With Nickelodeon Films attached, parents would not think too hard about bringing their kids. But with some violence, adult innuendo, language, and some existential sequences, kids will be mind-numbing bored. The goofiness of DreamWorks this is not.

That’s a good thing. Animation’s crutch has long been funny stories with talking animals, and when Rango ventures off across the highway and meets an illusion of Clint Eastwood’s The Man with No Name (voiced by Timothy Olyphant), it’s refreshing seeing something new in the genre. “Who am I?” asks Rango, a chameleon with an identity crisis. Clever. But John Logan’s script never ventures as far as it should, instead of playing it safe in the middle act with slapstick, music, and too many cute secondary characters. It’s humor is dry most of the time, but if you’re in tune with what Verbinski is offering, then Rango is a hit. But its aim is all over the place, making for an interesting experiment instead of the contender Pixar and DreamWorks needed.

The Blu-ray:

Audio/Video: Paramount has perhaps offered us a flawless HD presentation. The video is perfection. The details, colors, clarity, dimension are unrivaled. One of the prettiest and cleanest transfers around. The DTS track is equally as good. Great clarity in the dialogue, nice bass, and of course, superb surround mix. This is one of the better Blu-ray discs I’ve seen.

All extras are in HD.

Commentary: Available on the extended cut only, Gore Verbinski; Head of Story James Ward Byrkit; Production Designer Mark McCreery; Animation Director Hal Hickel; and Visual Effects Supervisor Tim Alexander offer up a thorough decent track covering all the subjects about the making. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted to know about digital animation.

Breaking the Rules: Making Animation History: This is a huge, two-part making-of the film. It goes from the humble beginnings from a neat roundtable chat to the interesting digital creation of this superbly animated film. It runs 45-minutes and covers everything, without being boring.

Real Creatures of Dirt: Here’s an EPK look at the character’s real-life counterparts.

Deleted Scenes that offers some okay scenes; Storyboard Reel is a picture-in-picture track that has the storyboards playing against the theatrical cut of the film; A Field Trip to Dirt is an interactive map where you can click various characters and learn more about them; Digital Copy, DVD Copy, and HD Trailers round out the disc’s extras.

The Film: Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

The Blu-ray: Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Writers are currently being sought out, while Depp finishes another Dan Curtis adaptation in Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows. What do you all think about this? I personally think it’s a little to much having Depp play Kolchak. I don’t know if he would add anything more, other than a spin on his Jack Sparrow character for Kolchak. Hmm.

Johnny lights a cig and stares at them. The Disney exec says, “Johnny, look. We want a Pirates 5 and we need you back.”

“I don’t know, man. The critics were a little down on it, the story was everywhere, what’s left?” Johnny states.

“On Stranger Tides wasn’t the best reviewed film, you’re right, but this holiday weekend, it’s inched past a billion dollars,” Bruck coolly says back. “Name your price.”

And that’s how Johnny Depp signed on for Pirates 5, according to us, but The Wrap is reporting that Depp is like thhhiissss close in signing, making the fifth film inevitable. The source also has said that Depp has made like $325 million from the films as well, as Disney has two of these Pirates films in the billion dollar category. Now, Depp is filming Dark Shadows now, and The Lone Ranger next, so don’t look for Capt. Jack Sparrow until 2013 at the earliest. Thoughts?

The film stars Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Bella Heathcote, Chloe Moretz and Gulliver McGrath. Look for it May 2012.

Now, it looks like his site is saying that Cooper will cameo in Tim Burton’s big budgeted reboot to the campy soap opera in Dark Shadows. “Johnny is in London working on the new Tim Burton movie Dark Shadows, and Alice is rumored to have a cameo part in the film as well..” A rumor? Yet the official site is reporting? Sounds like it’s happening.

Warner Bros. is releasing Dark Shadows May 11th, 2012.

Source: Arrow

Hi-yoo Silver?

We left the bloated At World’s End with our favorite pirate Capt. Jack Sparrow on a new quest for the Fountain of Youth, and as such, that is what On Stranger Tides follows. The film is a grab-bag of some good, fun ideas, and some confusing, boring ones. For the most part, the film is way more streamlined, thankfully, and easier to follow. There’s a few double-crosses – this franchise’s foray – and some great swashbuckling, something missing from the CG-overkill in At World’s End. The new characters, namely the evilest villain in all of Disney in Blackbeard, and his lovely, silky daughter played by Penelope Cruz, are nice additions to a franchise that lost its way of what it is original about: pirates.

When On Stranger Tides fails, it’s mostly because of superficial elements that gloss over more interesting things left unseen. Sometime after the last film, Barbossa lost his beloved Black Pearl and joined up with Her Majesty. Then there’s this prophecy that has sent Blackbeard running scared and hellbent to the mythical Fountain of Youth based on a one-legged man that’s rumored to kill him. These elements are told, not shown, and sound neat enough to actually build a movie on, yet screenwriters Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio just keep the course, steady and true, of Jack Sparrow antics, cryptic musings from Barbossa, and continent hunting quests.

Essentially, as if I need to say it, On Stranger Tides doesn’t fix what Disney felt wasn’t broken, and for the most part, this is a sequel for the fans, who should be quite pleased. It won’t convert any who jumped of the ship in the sequels, but I don’t think it needed too. A sense of family fun is sort of missed here too, as I think Marshall as a director is more of a showman than a storyteller. The 3D is a nice touch, as dimensionality adds to the sets and locations. But if On Stranger Tides wanted to inject a new, fresh attitude in this series, it followed the wrong compass. As Keith Richards remarks, “Does this face look like its been to the Fountain of Youth?”

On Stranger Tides isn’t arrhh-ible, but it is a ride we’ve been on far too many times.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Johnny Depp, Jackie Earle Haley, Eva Green, Bella Heathcote, Michelle Pfeiffer, Chloe Moretz, and Helena Bonham Carter are all set to star in the film, which should be shooting soon to meet that summer date.

Source: Dread Central