Dry Ice Factory

Still sick, but my mood is a lot better today after sleeping for much of yesterday. Feeling like the anti-Thomas Covenant; i.e., unclenched.

The only movie I ended up watching yesterday was Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which was on TV. Despite the commercials, it was just the kind of braindead spectacle that I needed in my braindead state. Still think Jack Sparrow is one of Depp's best roles, and I love the production design of these movies too (by Rich Heinrichs, who has an interesting filmography that includes Fargo and The Big Lebowski as well as another Depp film, Sleepy Hollow.) One thing I noticed this time is that the film ends with both Jack Sparrow and Barbossa looking for the Fountain of Youth, so it would appear that the idea of adapting Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides was already in their minds. Or maybe somebody warned them about the book after they started going down this road, although it has always seemed to me that the first movie owed a lot to Powers' book to begin with.

I started coughing at the end of the day, but it hasn't gotten too bad yet. Staying home to see if more sleep will get me through the worst of this.

So I saw Sweeney Todd a second time at a matinee today. The opening credits really are brilliant, following the trail of blood into the cogs of the machine, telling the story in a completely symbolic form right up front. I love the look of the movie, and they did a good job telling the story and adapting the music -- which is of course gorgeous stuff, lyrical and dark, although perhaps missing too much of the dissonance of the original. I love how at the margins of the story, the city looks like a storybook, like a paper pop-up city, unreal. The ending is perfect, as I said before. Truly poetic; maybe the most poetic thing I've seen in a movie in the past year.

However. (Did you feel the "however" coming?) The two leads are a problem for me. It took me two viewings to be sure, but I don't even like Johnny Depp's performance very much. That's coming from a huge Johnny Depp fan, too. It's not just that I don't like his singing, although it's true that I don't like his singing. It's possible this is in fact the core of the problem, because so much of the story and character in the musical are conveyed in the songs. But basically Depp is not believably demonic or monstrous or malevolent. There's nothing threatening about him. He does a great job at staring into the abyss with black eyes out of a German Expressionist nightmare, but he can't sell the murderous rage boiling in Sweeney's character. At least not to me.

Another problem is that he doesn't connect well with Helena Bonham Carter's Mrs. Lovett. The byplay between them lacks energy, even in things like "A Little Priest" where Sweeney lets his defenses down and conspires with her against the world. Again, this is at least partly due to the fact that neither of them can sing well enough to put the song across, but it has seemed to me before that Depp has a hard time connecting with the female leads in his movies. Perhaps that's why he's such a great fantasy figure, because we can all fantasize that he's holding himself back for us.

Sacha Baron Cohen is terrific as Pirelli, as is Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford, in an unctuous, vicious performance. Rickman is also really good as Judge Turpin, although also not a great singer. Actually, most aspects of the movie are really good, except for the two lead performances. But as they are the lead performances, that's a pretty big problem.

Still, as a gothic theater of blood, it is a lot of fun. That compensates for a lot. And Sondheim's music covers a lot of sins as well, even toned down as it is. Lots of geeky visual nods to other movies, too, from Murnau's Nosferatu (the ship coming into port out of the fog at the beginning) to Corman's The Pit and the Pendulum (the oven looks a lot like the iron maiden in which Barbara Steele is trapped in that one) to the completely gratuitous camera plunge through CGI alleys and byways that appears to be lifted directly from Baz Luhrman's Moulin Rouge. That latter is a serious misstep, I think, but it's brief.

There is a rumor that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are going to do an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's dark musical, Sweeney Todd. Don't know how reliable the rumor is. It's also harder to get enthusiastic about it after the disappointment I felt at Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But Sweeney Todd is one of the great musicals of all time, and it seems like prime material for Burton & Depp (although so did Charlie.)

Then again, I didn't much care for Sleepy Hollow when I saw it in the theater, and I've come to love it on DVD. Maybe the same will happen with Charlie.

Can Johnny Depp sing? I think I've heard he was in a band, but that doesn't prove anything.