Pop Culture Round Up: Some date to some later time

I don't know, I just found this here.

Sound and fury | The Australian

Why Roger Ebert Loathes Top 10 Film Lists - WSJ.com

CBC News - Music - Lady Gaga course coming to U.S university

Brow Beat : Don Draper Says, “What?” I Say, “Is Jon Hamm a Good Actor?”

How Back to the Future made incest fun for the whole family. - By Juliet Lapidos - Slate Magazine

Zapping the Brain Improves Math Skills : Discovery News

Norway Tops Nations in Quality of Life : Discovery News

CBC News - Film - Depp, Burton team up for Dark Shadows film

Art believed destroyed by Nazis found in Berlin - Yahoo! News

Move to rescue obscure words | Books | The Guardian

Fly, Ryan Murphy! Be Free! | The House Next Door

Half the Time Everyone's Thinking About Something Else | Smart Journalism. Real Solutions. Miller-McCune.

Prolific humour writer nominated for lit award - The Globe and Mail

Why Beckham, Aniston, Winslet and A-Rod Earn So Much - WSJ.com

How Hollywood killed the movie stunt - Film Salon - Salon.com

Spillcam, vuvuzela are top words of 2010

2010's Word of the Year: 'Refudiate'

Why Flops Are Vital to Cinema

Why Hollywood Doesn't Do Working-Class

Study Tracks How Online Comments Spread News

Philip Glass Writing a Second Kafka Opera

Are Women Artists Finally Getting Their Due?

How Stunt-Casting Jumped the Shark -- New York Magazine

Producers Forbidden to Use Adrien Brody's Image to Promote Movie He Stars In

Party Lines: Vampires Paul Wesley and Denis O’Hare Swap Fan-Biting Stories at Elling Premiere -- Vulture

Pop Culture Round Up: March 6 - 19

An Omnipotent Enemy Comforts Us

Could This Deleted Scene, Set in Outer Space, Have Won Up in the Air an Oscar?

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, Johnny Depp's latest adventure in gender-bending.

TV Host Silvano Vinceti Probes History's Coldest Cases

Sony to start selling 3-D TVs in June

What Critics Talk About When They Talk About The Nose

Animals Commit Suicide, Too (And Not Just Lemmings)

Shakespearean Insulter

‘Mad Men’ Dolls in Barbie’s World, but Cocktails Stay Behind

Da Vinci gets action film treatment

Pass the Camera: Many Directors Shoot 1 Star-Studded Comedy

How a romantic breakup affects self-concept

Hoax Shakespeare play Double Falsehood turns out to be the real McCoy

Why do I find some of the melodic themes “playing” in my mind for several days after a concert?

More (whingy) songs about film critics and paying work, and a dirty little secret

Talking Back to Your TV Set, Endlessly

Objectification Hinders Some Women's Cognitive Ability

Babies 'born to dance' says York University research

The importance of being vague

Lifetime achievements: Saluting Betty White and other seasoned seniors

Remaking foreign-language films in English

Sigourney Weaver Enters The Fang Club

Pop Culture Round Up: June 6 - 12

How dare you tell us how to commence!

At first I thought there was only one series in this gallery that I would want to see rebooted, but there were actually quite a few I wouldn't mind seeing a modern spin on.

I gotta say, I agree with the screen size and quality objections.

"The Pillars of the Earth, an eight-part series starring Donald Sutherland and Ian McShane, is to screen in 2010." I have no idea what that is, but I want to watch it.

"Does it matter that George Orwell pinched the plot?" Yeah?

I have no idea what many of these things mean.

30 ROCK is a rip-off of THE MUPPET SHOW! The headline really says it all.

Oh, thank goodness. Also, set your PVRs.

One of these will work on me.

I know that they're taking a mocking tone, but that's kind of awesome.

I need to start planning my vacation now.

Read the article on which Saturday Night Fever was based.

That's a good point.

Very true. Now when does she wear that t-shirt?

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

Premise: Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) wrongfully imprisons Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) in order to get to Barker's wife (Laura Michelle Kelly). 15 years later, Barker returns to London as Sweeney Todd with the assistance of the sailor, Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower). Todd discovers that Turpin is raising his daughter, Johanna (Jayne Wisener), and vows revenge with help from his landlady, Mrs. Lovett (Helene Bonham Carter).

*Tim Burton should teach a master class in how to adapt stage for screen. I realize that John Logan, who wrote the screenplay, should get some credit here as well, but come on. I think we know Burton when we see it, don't we?

Listen, this isn't just a filmed version of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's musical. This is something else entirely. Logan and Burton don't just open it up. Under Burton's deft hand the movie has room to soar. He fills his Gothic masterpiece with whirling, twirling fantasy sequences and fantastic bloodletting. Raoul would be proud. A number of songs get dropped (most notably "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd"), but it's all in the service of making a better film. If you can show, why would you tell?

Burton is aided ably, as always, by long time collaborator Depp. Only Depp could play these deranged levels of blood lust and destruction and still let heartbreak bleed through his performance. He's not a singer, and he didn't train as one for the role, but he can sing nonetheless. He doesn't have pipes, per se (if this were Broadway, he'd never hit the cheap seats). He is good enough to let a snarl creep into his voice when necessary, and, with his powdered complexion, Rogue-streaked fright wig, and deep eye liner, his face does the rest.

Bonham Carter makes a lovely Mrs. Lovett, equally deranged but not as equally driven. When they hit upon their plan to bake his victims into her pies and begin waltzing around the shop with weapons behind their back, they make the perfect pair. She plays slightly obsessive, unrequited love so very well.

Rickman is wonderfully menacing, Sacha Baron Cohen a brief delight, Campbell Bower has the best voice in the house, and Kelly looks like Kate Hudson. My favourite, though, is probably little Ed Sanders as Toby, the nipper Mrs. Lovett takes on to help her around the shop. Kid's got a big career ahead of him. His Toby is grown-up, naive, sweet, mean, too big for his britches, innocent, and protective. He's the mixed up jumble that real kids tend to be, and that's tough to play. And he can sing. Love him.

With additional music by Sondheim himself, it feels like a stamp of approval on the whole production. And why shouldn't it? It moves along at a good clip, trust its audience not to be stupid, and showcases amazing performances. It's a morality tale with an antihero at its centre that features cannibalism. It's got something for everyone. A

Now, where can I get that bitchin' leather jacket?

*Do we still have to put director here? I feel like everyone should know that by now. You guys, Tim Burton is a director. I'm glad we had this talk.

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

Premise: After fumbling his vows at the wedding rehearsal, Victor (Johnny Depp) sets out in to the woods to practice. When he places the ring on what he assumes is a twig, he accidentally marries the Corpse Bride (Helena Bonham Carter) instead. Victor tries to get back to the land of the living, while his fiancée, Victoria (Emily Watson), appears increasingly insane when she tries to explain what has happened to Victor.

As you well know, I try to live spoiler free. In fact, unless it's to warn me off something so awful it approaches ancient Macedonian proportions, I don't want to hear it. All I want to hear from someone who sees something in the theatre before I get the chance is that they think I will like it.

So imagine my chagrin when two people who spread falsehoods about seeing the picture with Sarah and I, went to see it without us, and proceeded to bad-mouth the movie to our faces, despite my protests of "I don't want to hear this" and "Stop talking the movie." Personally, I think those a pretty clear statements. Unfortunately, it was not enough to shut one of them up.

Well, Emily and Andrea, you can just cram it with walnuts the next time you want to behave like insensitive clods. Or filberts. Those were also suggested.

Although I highly doubt it, gentle reader, in case you happen to be suffering a moron attack of Em/Andy proportions, this movie includes musical numbers much like every other animated feature you've ever seen. Five numbers do not a musical make. And since the numbers are so delightfully written and staged (I love you, Danny Elfman!), you really have no cause for concern. Instead, you have cause for delight.

Let me state for the record that the technical aspects of stop motion animation with puppets made out of stainless steel armatures covered with silicon skin are beyond me. Trust me when I say that the two foot puppets looked amazing, and that the opening town sequence alone puts the similar Beauty and the Beast one to shame.

Well, to gothic romance shame. I do love that Burton never seemed to grow out of that early adolescent obsession with all things dark, dusty, horrific, and sexual. He's a great guy, that Tim Burton. Just great.

He assembled a crack team of people he's collaborated with in the past: co-director Mark Johnson, and screenwriters John August, Pamela Pettler, and Caroline Thompson. They went to town in this gothic fairy tale of lost love and the underworld. How they managed to capture Depp's nervous nuances is truly phenomenal.

A delicious and hilarious take on marriage and love as a wedding gift for his lady muse, Burton has chosen once again to treat his audiences to something refreshing, clever, and adorably off the wall as well. Keep up the excellent work, Tim. A

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

I don't really need to give you a plot summery, do I? Oh, alright, for the handful of you who have a DSL line under your rock:

Reclusive candy maker Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) inserts five golden tickets into his chocolate bars, which entitle the barer to a tour of his factory, accompanied by one adult. The winners are: Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz), a German chocolate addict; Violet Beauregarde (Annasophia Robb), a gum chewing and karate champ; Veruca Salt (Julia Winter), a rich snob who gets everything she wants; Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry), a video game head; and Charlie (Freddie Highmore), who's just lucky to be there.

Happy now? That was really hard and took a long time. Meanies.

I like the symmetry of the kids getting themselves into trouble in the order in which they find the tickets, which I just realized. Sometimes I'm a little slow, okay?

I was reading something the other day about how remakes are unnecessary unless the original movie wasn't very good and needs retelling. Movies are remade, however, because the original was commercially successful, and the remake hopes for similar profits with little to no creativity going into the process.

Say what you will, but I think the masterwork of Tim Burton (director) and John August (writer) falls into the former category. I found the 1971 Mel Stuart version horrifying. Gene Wilder's Wonka was sociopathic - I kept waiting for him to snap and try to kill the kids with his bare hands.

Depp's Wonka, on the other hand, is an effeminate man-child, with deep seated insecurities and hilarious neuroses. I read that Depp was going for a cross between a Howard Hughes-style recluse and a 70s glam rocker. Success! From his bizarre and arrested speech patterns to his deliberate ignorance of the relationship between children and their guardians (he can barely get the word 'parent' out without looking like he's about to vomit), Depp is every bit as reclusive and glamorous as he set out to be. As I have suggested in the past, that has as much to do with the actor's immense and versatile talent as it does with the completely trusting relationship between Depp and the director that allowed him to be something other than a teen idol.

What I wouldn't give to have been privy to the collaborations between August and Burton. Who cares about all those critics who say that Burton can't tell a story? Burton tells the best stories! Part gothic allegory (the decision to give Wonka some back story was a stroke of genius), part comic book, part macabre portrayal of the grotesque realities of everyday (especially suburban) life, Burton is one of my filmmaking heroes. He contrasts dank, stark, nearly black and white memories with the technicolour wonderland Wonka creates for himself in response to his domineering dentist father (Christopher Lee). I can't imagine anyone more suited to tell the story.

Highmore politely did not try to rip my heart out of my chest this time around, and he makes a perfect pair with the spindly, amusing, and doting David Kelly as Grandpa Joe. I didn't really understand the karate thing for Violet since it didn't fit in with her punishment, but it did allow she and Mrs. Beauregarde (Missi Pyle) to sport matching crushed velvet sweatsuits, which I despise. That still didn't explain Pyle's vamp brows. Oh, well, I guess at that point the prosthetics people were just having a laugh.

As much as the prosthetics, sets, performances, and Deep Roy (the only Oompa Loompa) were eye-catching, Danny Elfman (composer) owned this movie from start to finish. His variations on Roald Dahl's own songs, from Bollywood to Backstreet, were works of magnificent proportions, as were his original Wonka's Welcome Song and his mood-altering score. It kind of freaks me out to know that each and every singing voice was merely his own, but I can deal with it. Mostly because I like bopping around singing, "Willy Wonka/Willy Wonka/The amazing chocolatier" over and over again.

You must see it. You must. A+

Although Veruca doesn't sing her "I want it now" song. Pity.

Also, the real cash cow would be whatever Wonka is using to completely arrest the aging process. I'm just sayin'.

Edward Scissorhands (1990)

Premise: After an unsuccessful day selling Avon products door-to-door, Peg Boggs (Dianne Weist) decides to call on the gothic mansion at the top of the cul-de-sac. In the mansion, she finds a young man, Edward (Johnny Depp), with scissors for hands (shock!), and she brings him home with her. Edward's attempts to fit in the suburban mold ensue, from topiary to hair design to falling in love with Peg's daughter, Kim (Winona Ryder).

You know when you read or hear of those reviews that claim some film makes you remember "why it is that you go to the movies"? For example, the way critics felt about Cameron Crowe's 2000 rock ode, Almost Famous?

That's what this film did for me. As I had mentioned, I was stuck in the land of perpetually crap movies, and I began to wonder why I bothered blogging about them.

I had thought I would find a revival/reprise when I went home for Thanksgiving, but my mom no longer gets a wackload of movie channels.

I chanced on Tim Burton's (director, for those of you who are new) bizarre combination of suburban nightmare and gothic fairy tale on Sunday, and I was so blessed to find it again.

Burton takes a lot of slack for not being a "story-teller", and he also is the recipient of a fair number of off-the-wall comparisons. Burton doesn't rely on dialogue to sell his stories (Depp utters a scant 169 words), and there's never a need for an expositionary character. So much the better I say. Burton relies on visuals to convey his meaning in a combination of chirascuro and comic book, and the viewer is the richer for it.

For me, the only comparison worth making is to the Grimm Brothers. I think they would count Burton a kindred spirit if they only knew him.

Caroline Thompson (screenwriter), in her first screen offering, clearly represents what Burton had in mind when he conceived Edward. Her screenplay, pithy and often silent, is a caricature of what we fear and recognize in suburbia. In a way, the suburban plane is the new forest of the fairy tales of old. It is instantly recognizable as the source of power, mystery, and trepidation.

In the role that helped establish him as a serious actor, as well as establish a relationship that many would claim is Burton's film representation of himself, Depp exudes childish intensity and single-mindedness. The costume does a lot, but Depp runs with this opportunity to relieve himself of his pretty face. Depp once claimed that he trusts Burton so completely as a director that he would do anything that Burton asked. Burton should count his luck stars that he could inspire such loyalty from an actor with such breadth.

Weist sparkles as woman completely awed by the negative results of doing the right thing; Alan Arkin is hysterically flawed as her Darrin Stephens-esque husband; O-Lan Jones practically steals the show as the zealous Esmeralda; and even Ryder isn't annoying.

If the rest of the film melted away tomorrow, I would have the same feeling about it if I were left with one scene: Kim dancing in a combination of man-made snow, plastic, and glitter while Edward sculpts the ice, perfectly complimented by Danny Elfman's haunting and much imitated score.

As Rolling Stone summed when the film fist debuted, "pure magic."