I just noticed the double meaning of "tax hike."

Reading this article about Johnny Depp moving out of France because it raised taxes.

Because of a tax hike, he took a hike, a tax hike.

"What’s wrong with Johnny Depp playing an Indian?"

"Nothing now, because he is an American Indian. If the Comanche say it, then it is so."

... Now that he’s one of us, he’ll need to learn more to help us.

"Unbeknownst to reporters, the State Dining Room had... been transformed into a secretive White House Wonderland."

According to the new book by Jodi Kantor.

Tim Burton decorated it “in his signature creepy-comic style. His film version was about to be released, and he had turned the room into the Mad Hatter’s tea party...

“Burton’s own Mad Hatter, the actor Johnny Depp, presided over the scene in full costume, standing up on a table to welcome everyone in character.”

ADDED: And:

The president's aides decided the party would send the wrong message at a time when the Tea Party was on the rise with its message against Washington's excesses and unemployment had risen sharply to ten per cent.

"White House officials were so nervous about how a splashy, Hollywood-esque party would look to jobless Americans or their representatives in Congress, who would soon vote on health care that the event was not discussed publicly and Burton's and Depp's contributions went unacknowledged...."

"You know Hunter [S. Thompson] typed 'The Great Gatsby'?"

"He'd look at each page Fitzgerald wrote, and he copied it. The entire book. And more than once. Because he wanted to know what it felt like to write a masterpiece. He was so hungry, yeah. Innocent, and yearning."

Says Johnny Depp, who's played the part of Hunter S. Thompson in 2 different movies now.

I'm thinking maybe that would be a good practice for all of us who presume to write. Pick one book, the book that exemplifies the best writing for you, and type it out, to see how it feels, to learn something elemental in that mysterious eyes-to-fingertips interplay.

What's your book?

"Walt Disney Studios has shut down production of 'The Lone Ranger,' a big-budget film starring Johnny Depp as Tonto..."

Johnny Depp as Tonto. Weird. Possibly... fascinating. I guess it wasn't working out. We're told it was getting too expensive. My guess: The whole thing depended on the Johnny-Depp-as-Tonto angle and they could see it wasn't going to work and cut their losses.

"Her Majesty. Brenda."

How Keith Richards referred to Mick Jagger, who, he writes, became "unbearable," beginning in the early 80s.

In other celebrity tidbits... Richards was in the presence of Johnny Depp — a friend of his son's — for 2 years before he recognized that the guy was Johnny Depp. One night, he looked across the dinner table and suddenly thought "Whoa! Scissorhands!"

The Sexiest Man Alive.

According to People Magazine. I agree about the top choice — even though he'd be even better if he shaved.

Also, Adam Lambert gets an honorable mention, which is pretty ridiculous.

"Nobody has ever loaned me money. I mean, I was going to die on a few occasions. Johnny Depp gave me CPR on one."

"That’s as close as I ever got. I was watching that movie where he plays Dillinger, and I was like ‘Motherf***er, I never had myself any JD except CPR."

Yeah, Depp's adorable.

"The first film I worked on was Mommie Dearest. I used to measure people nipple to nipple. The first line I heard from Miss Dunaway was: 'Who is that fat girl in my eyeline?' I was terrified."

I don't really know what "I used to measure people nipple to nipple" means but that seems like an amusing thing to say. To do.

Anyway, the speaker is Courtney Love. Here she is reminiscing about her daughter, Kurt Cobain's daughter, Frances:

"[W]hen Frances was about nine, there was an awards ceremony that Michael Stipe, her godfather, was singing at, and Bono was picking up an award. “Frances was holding Stipe’s and Bono’s hands and she goes, ‘You guys are jealous of each other, aren’t you?’ It was the craziest moment. It was so brilliant. Genius. I was so proud of my child at that moment.”

The 3 Stooges movie will have the perfect Larry.

Sean Penn!

(Jim Carrey is Curly and Benicio Del Toro is Moe.)

IN THE COMMENTS: Balfegor said:

Why would someone even think a 3 Stooges remake would be a good idea? It would be like remaking something by Buster Keaton, or Charlie Chaplin -- the pleasure isn't in the concept or the plot or witty dialogue, it's in who's doing it, and their skill at slapstick and physical comedy, no?

Well, now, wait. What about this?



The original:

Gratuitous bathtub scenes.

Back on December 15th, I wrote:

I'm slightly obsessed with the prominence of bathtubs in the movies. You'd think the most interesting thing in the world was a woman in a damned bath. "Australia" has the conventional lead actress taking a bath for no good reason. Hmm... 2 characters have to have a conversation. Let's put the woman in the bathtub. Depending on what rating you want, it will either be a bubble bath or it won't. It's embarrassing.

Ever since then, Trooper York has had a daily gratuitous bathtub scene. And, really, I'm flattered. But how does he get all those hilarious photographs? I tried a Google image search for "bathtub," and got a lot of empty bathtubs. So I tried a search for "bathtub woman" — yes, I know, not very creative — and this came up first. I mean, come on!

What's the trick? "Bathtub movies"???

"Gilliam... was standing outside a restaurant in Soho when a car backed into him. 'Yes, a man can fly,' observed a bystander as he flew past."

Hilarious assholes they have in England, it seems.

He broke his back, but seems fine now, despite a cracked vertebra and dislodged disc. "Yeah, I'm a lizard," he says, cackling.

From an article on Terry Gilliam's seemingly cursed movie "The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus." Other problems: The producer died suddenly. And so did the star — Heath Ledger.

"It just isn't possible that he's dead," [said Gilliam.] "There's nothing he can't do, it just flows out of him with ease and grace. He lifted everybody. He wasn't like Marlon Brando or James Dean or any of the more neurotic actors, his was all positive energy. I knew he was tired but that Saturday he had been doing all his own stunts, he was leaping off wagons, indestructible. On no level did his death make sense.... "

We're not all flying men/lizards.

"I ... looked at how to do the remaining scenes without Heath, and realised that, since his character goes through a magic mirror three times, we could get three actors to play the role."

He got Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell, who are all donating their compensation to Ledger's 3-year-old child Matilda.

Other interesting things in the linked article:

1. George Harrison believed that the soul of The Beatles transmigrated into Monty Python when The Beatles died.

2. Monty Python broke up because the guys "got bored of each other."

3. "[Gilliam] renounced his American citizenship in 'disillusionment' with the Bush years, but he retains a pigtail which makes him look like an ageing hippy." You know what I don't understand? The role of "but" in that sentence.

4. Gilliam has never taken drugs, out of sheer fear of losing the distinction "between fantasy and reality." "It was only 15 years ago that I discovered I couldn't fly. I have such a 'sense memory' of flying around the world at the height of a table that when someone asked me to show them, I really thought I could do it."

5. In lieu of drugs: Dali, Ernst, Breughel, Bosch, and Mad magazine.

"I never wanted to be the guy people looked at. I felt I could only be myself when I was alone, that I turned into some kind of novelty."

"The only way I could get through that time was to drink. I poisoned myself with alcohol for years but I've never been into drugs in the way it was sometimes made out."

Oh, the exquisite pain of being Johnny Depp -- a pain endured in the company of Kate Moss and the guys in Oasis. "I've never been into drugs in the way it was sometimes made out"... makes you wonder about all the ways of being into drugs.

And how can you not want to be the guy people looked at yet still become an actor? Actually, I think it's easy to penetrate that conundrum. He wanted to be an actor to hide inside characters that were invented by someone else. He could be in the world without having to be himself. Ah, yes:

"I was a million percent in love with Edward Scissorhands," Depp says of his 1990 film persona. "I remember looking in the mirror on the last day of shooting ... and thinking how sad I was to be saying goodbye to Edward."

Here he is attempting to talk about it, back in 1991 (when everyone, it seems, looked and acted completely different:

The Farmers and Merchants Union Bank in Columbus, Wisconsin.

This was the one Louis H. Sullivan building on the "Wright & Like" tour this year. Here's the view from the interior balcony, which is a little museum:



I was thinking: They should do a movie here. In fact, the moviemakers for Johnny Depp's "Public Enemies" came to Columbus to scout out this location, but they ended up picking the bank across the street! Huh? How can there possibly be a better bank across the street? Well, there isn't. But the movie makers rejected this location, the bank manager told me, because there wasn't enough space for the equipment. He was glad, he said, because you don't want your bank used as a set for a robbery scene.

Let's get a clear look at those windows.



I love the colors.

Seen from the outside:



That's the side of the building, with just a taste of the elaborate terra cotta decoration. Go around to the front to see the shameless grandeur bestowed on small-town Wisconsin banking:



The architect wants you to know his name:

Oscar nominations — in a few moments.

Are you excited? Vaguely interested? Actively hostile?

UPDATE: The whole list should be here soon. I'll just say that I loved Julie Christie in "Away From Her" — so I'm glad to see she got nominated, though I hope she won't win just because she played a character whose brain was not functioning properly. (The Academites reward that sort of thing too much.) And I like seeing recognition for my 2 favorite actors — Daniel Day-Lewis and Johnny Depp. Let's make a short list of movies to see before the awards ceremony: "There Will Be Blood," "No Country for Old Men," "Juno," and "Atonement." I doubt if I'll bother with them all. And if they aren't going to put on a big show... well, there's so much less reason to bother.

Two top 10 lists.

What is true about the persons on the first list is the opposite for those on the second list. Try to guess what it is before clicking on the link.

The first list:

1. Johnny Depp
2. Matt Damon
3. George Clooney
4. Jack Nicholson
5. Rosario Dawson
6. John Travolta
7. Katherine Heigl
8. Jay Leno
9. Dakota Fanning
10. Russell Crowe

The second list:

1. Will Ferrell
2. Tobey Maguire
3. Joaquin Phoenix
4. William Shatner
5. Renée Zellweger
6. John Malkovich
7. Julie Andrews
8. Bruce Willis
9. Teri Hatcher
10. Scarlett Johansson

Strangest thing Bob Dylan said on the new "Theme Time Radio Hour" today.

The theme was: Fathers. Toward the end of the show Bob always reads and answers what he says is an email message he's received. Today, he says: "I got an email from Johnny Depp in France. He asks who was the father of Communism?" Bob answers it's Karl Marx and proceeds to say a few things about Karl Marx's relationship with his own children.

Hey, why pick on dear, sweet Johnny? Is it something about this picture?

Memorable songs from today's show:

The Temptations, "Papa Was a Rolling Stone." What a great song!

The Winstons, "Color Him Father." Really touching lyrics:

My real old man he got killed in the war
And she knows she and seven kids couldn't have got very far
She said she thought that she could never love again
And then there he stood with that big wide grin
He married my mother and he took us in
And now we belong to the man with that big wide grin

Think I'll color this man father
I think I'll color him love

Julie London, "Daddy" ("I want a diamond ring, bracelets, everything..."). Before playing it, Bob quoted the lines "Here's an amazing revelation/With a bit of stimulation/I'd be a great sensation/I'd be your inspiration," and I thought that sounded like sequence of rhymes Bob himself would do. But in fact, Bob has only used one of those four words in a song, and it wasn't at the end of a line.

Julie London song that could have been on today's playlist but wasn't: "My Heart Belongs To Daddy."

My father adored Julie London. Growing up, I was deeply affected by album covers like this:

"The number one actor in the world as far as I'm concerned is Johnny Depp."

So says Christopher Lee, in the midst of criticizing the film industry today for casting based on looks and not talent.

"The problem today, and I think it's a very dangerous one for the people concerned, is that there are quite large numbers of very young men and women - boys and girls to me - from 18 to 30, and they are playing very large parts in huge films and they simply, through no fault of their own, don't have the background and the experience and the knowledge to pull if off.

"And it's dangerous for them because if they are in one failure after another, sooner or later people are going to say, 'well, he may have a pretty face but he's not bringing the public in'.

"So many of these good-looking - sometimes even pretty - boys and girls are getting these good roles and it's not fair on them. At some point it's going to catch up."

Of course, no one is better looking than Johnny Depp.

The Golden Globe nominations.

Here.

Best Pic, Drama
Brokeback Mountain
The Constant Gardener
Good Night, and Good Luck
A History of Violence
Match Point

Best Pic, Musical/Comedy
Mrs. Henderson Presents
Pride Prejudice
The Producers
Squid and Whale
Walk the Line

Director:
Woody Allen, Match Point
George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck
Peter Jackson, King Kong
Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
Fernando Mereilles, The Constant Gardener
Steven Spielberg, Munich

Actor, Drama
Russell Crowe, Cinderella Man
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Terence Howard, Hustle and Flow
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck

Actor, Musical/Comedy
Peirce Brosnan, The Matador
Jeff Daniels, The Squid and the Whale
Johnny Depp, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Nathan Lane, The Producers
Cillian Murphy, Breakfast on Pluto
Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line

Actress - Musical/Comedy
Judi Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents
Keira Knightley, Pride & Prejudice
Laura Linney, Squid and the Whale
Sarah Jessica Parker, The Family Stone
Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line

Actress - Drama
Maria Bello, A History of Violence
Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
Gwyneth Paltrow, Proof
Charlize Theron, North Country
Ziyi Zhang, Memoirs of a Geisha

Actress, Supporting Role
Scarlett Johannsson, Match Point
Shirley MacLaine, In Her Shoes
Frances McDormand, North Country
Rachel Weisz, Contant Gardener
Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain

Actor, Supporting Role
George Clooney, Syriana
Matt Dillon, Crash
Will Ferrell, The Producers
Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man
Bob Hoskins, Mrs. Henderson Presents

I have only seen "A History of Violence," actually. I wrote about it here. Key passage:

Maria Bello is not a good actress. She's interesting to look at, but she can't do what is needed in a film like this. Cronenberg tried to cover for her inadequacies by having her do things like run out of the room and throw up off camera or bury her face in Mortenson's shoulder and cry. We'd watch more of him then, instead of her. And by the way, if there's one thing I would like to ban in movies, it's having a character express emotion by vomiting.

Okay, so I guess I shouldn't trust any of the other nominations.

Another thing. I don't like the way dramatic biopics of musicians screw up the classifications into dramatic and musical/comedy. Joaquin Phoenix, emoting as Johnny Cash, will utterly unfairly overshadow the comic performances that the two-category actor approach is supposed to highlight. Unfair. Moreover: unfair to Johnny Depp. The outrage!

UPDATE: Corrected, after someone in the comments wisecracked "Pretty sorry set of musicals/comedies those actresses were in." I'd cut and pasted from the Oscarwatch site, and they had "Musical/Comedy" as the heading for the "Supporting" actress category. "North Country" and "Brokeback Mountain" are so far from being comedy that even the thought of going to see them makes me feel bad. Another correction: I have seen more than one of these films, not just "History of Violence," but also "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Sorry, Johnny! Don't know how it slipped my mind.

"I went there to live because it seemed so simple."

Johnny Depp wants out...



... of France. "It's insane."

So, in the end, did Depp's Wonka remind me of Michael Jackson?

A while back, based on the preview for "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," I wrote that Johnny Depp seems to have based his Willie Wonka on Michael Jackson.

In fact, try Googling "michael jackson" "willie wonka" -- my post comes up #1! Jeez, maybe Johnny's read my post.... Hi, Johnny!

Anyway, today I actually saw the movie, and my final take on it is that Johnny Depp did not base his character on Michael Jackson. The hair and makeup may have been modeled to some degree on Jackson, but the voice was not at all like his. Jackson's voice is much higher and has a sweet, ethereal quality. The two voices I heard, intermittently, in Depp's characterization were Tommy Smothers and Carol Channing. There was a certain light slurring -- especially saying the word "little" -- that seemed both childish and a bit tipsy. Depp's Wonka is clearly cracked, but he's not abstracted and frail like Jackson. He's weird and confused, but still much more grounded than poor Michael. Depp had a ton of comical and psychological ideas that he deploys in this film. To have imitated Michael Jackson would have been a one-dimensional stunt. Why would this brilliant, brilliant actor do that? The answer is: he didn't!

By the way, the some of the best scenes don't have Depp in them at all. Charlie's house and family, with the four grandparents in one bed, made for some of the nicest scenes. Am I the only one who looked at the grandparents and thought of Hamm and Nagg in "Endgame"? And I adore Helena Bonham Carter, who plays Charlie's mother. There's the beautiful Helena, wearing grimy poverty-teeth for this role. And Freddie Highmore as Charlie is just perfect. Perhaps he is the greatest child actor of all time.

But the greatest actor of our time... that's Johnny Depp!