What more is there?? If more people acted like he does the world would be a much nicer place.
Sorry for my ranting.. will stop now..
Kim

I understand about the Oompa Loompas, I really do. But maybe Gene Wilder also influenced you as a child – he was just plain creep as Willy Wonka, in my opinion. Shame he was so resentful of the new movie, too.

Laurie – an awful lot of people feel the same way, especially having met him. He’s just one of those guys who make you want to be a better person. On the other hand, he does seem to trigger thoughts of adultery!

And you know, it’s not just Johnny’s acting ability, which is incredibly unmatched, but the “off camera” man, as a person. His humility, kindness and integrity should be an example to all of us. He is the type of person that we should all aspire to be.

Kim

That scene where a thousand Oompa Loompas show up.

Help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Kim

It must connect to something I have buried so deeply that it will remain buried.

But, and I know this sounds hyperbolic, I find it nothing short of horrifying.

Wonka and, especially, Oompa Loompa.

Ed Wood: Someday I may do a post about it. It features a whole host of grotesques who were smack dab in the middle of the life of any kid who, like me, grew up in 1950s and 1960s Los Angeles.

Of course, Johnny was sublime. But when the film gave cameos to Criswell (I predict) and to the long forgotten Korla Pandit, an exotic and silent Indian organist (who, it was revealed many years later, was actually an African American) I was ecstatic.

My producer fantasy? I give Tim Burton and Johnny Depp $10 million (a tiny amount in the world of feature film), lock them in a room, and tell them they have a limit of 8 hours to come up with a completely new concept, story, and film treatment that could have only two cast members — Johnny Depp and a “to be determined” female.

Furthermore, part of their task in the 8 hours would be to come up with a list of 10 possible female actors to cast. This list could not include Helena Bonham Carter.

I adore her, but — in this producer fantasy — I imagine myself looking for a new Depp/somebody combination.

I have truly lost my mind.

I’m not sure I could pick out my favourite performance, since they are all so different. I have a handful of favourites; Sweeney Todd goes without saying, and John Wilmot (Libertine) has to be among the top few, even if the film itself wasn’t perfect. I also love his Willy Wonka (charlie and the Chocolate Factory – priceless!), William Blake (Dead Man), and Sam (Benny & Joon).

But my all-time favourite character is Fred Abberline (From Hell). I can’t explain why, he just ‘grabs me’.

Ed Wood.

As to how he produced this particular stunning performance, you may or may not know that his daughter Lily-Rose suffered a life-threatening e-coli infection during the filming of Sweeney Todd. He took time off filming – and production was halted – so that he could be with her in hospital, and he says that that experience came through in his performance. It’s easy to see how the near loss of his own precious daughter could affect his interpretation of a man who had lost his family.

But of course, not every actor would have been able to pull all that emotion out of the hat and inject it into the singing as he did.

Seriously, this was the kind of performnace that lead me to a complete rethinking of music as a form of dramatic expression. I have have sung in opera choruses and even had a solo in a student opera at Columbia a long time ago. I appreciate opera. But that’s always been my problem: I APPRECIATE it.

I have rarely been able to go from appreciation to deep emotional engagement. The singing style, while a remarkable craft, was simply not of my generation. I could not allow myself to be completely immersed in a story or a characater. I could — for example — feel pain listening to Dido’s lament from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. But in no way did Dido live and breathe as a character.

And then came Depp.

Where did this voice, this pain, come from? I wish I had the language to describe just what he was doing. You, Jay, have come close and so did Anthony Tommasini.

At times I thouight I was hearing a new hybrid form in which his voice had a life separate and apart from his acting, bypassing any conscious acting choices and streaming from soul (his) to ear (mine).

But of course no actor really does this. They are artists and creaftsmen who make artistic choices and create characters. But what a illusion.

I hate “who is the best?” questions and prefer “who is your favorite?

Besides, who could reasonably choose between other master craftsmen like Sean Penn, Alvin Epstein, Pacino, Bruce Dern, Merryl Streep, John Glover, William H. Macy, Bruno Ganz, Frances McDormand, Jack Lemmon, Simone Signoret, Seymour Philip Hoffman, Harry Dean Stanton, and all the others?

I’ll take Depp.

The only pity is that the marketing tried to hide the fact that it was a musical. Why? I’ll never know, but it did mean some people came away disappointed. Me, I LOVE it! His Todd is vivid, tragic, beautiful, sexy and funny, all at the same time.