Tag: johnny depp

#rsrh The media is most to blame for this Depp/White House/Halloween story.

Background: it’s more or less just coming out now that in October of 2009 the White House hosted an Alice-in-Wonderland-themed party put on by Tim Burton and Johnny Depp – which was, to quote Jodi Kantor, author of a new tell-all book (The Obamas), deliberately not publicized: “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…”

More here, here, and here.  To get this out of the way… yes, the White House was correct: it would have looked bad if it had come out at the time.  It looks a good bit worse now – frankly, hiding this was stupid.  As is the flailing about trying to pretend that this was never a big deal in the first place; which it might not have been, if they had just admitted that the Obamas had a couple of Hollywood people over to throw them a themed Halloween party.  Then again, obviously the White House knew that this was a bad idea from the start, which is why they felt the need to cover it up. Continue reading #rsrh The media is most to blame for this Depp/White House/Halloween story.

Pirates of the Caribbean 4: I don’t know what to think. Seriously.

I mean, when I read that the chance of it happening may have been wrecked by Dick Cook getting fired (Disney muckety-muck), I was relieved. I was very disappointed by the second and third movies (the first, of course, rocked on toast). And heck: I didn’t even know that they were planning to make a fourth film.

But then I read the working title.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

On. Stranger. Tides.

As the Onion AV Club noted:

A 1988 Tim Powers novel called On Stranger Tides concernes pirates, a character called Jack, and the search for the Fountain Of Youth. And as POTC fans may recall, Jack and Barbosa ended At World’s End hinting that they planned to get their Ponce de Leon on. A compass couldn’t point us in a straighter direction.

So now I’m stuck.  Johnny Depp starring in a reboot of a franchise that takes its plot from a FREAKING TIM POWERS NOVEL.  There will be nothing mediocre about the result: it will reach Iron Man / Star Trek levels of awesomeness, or it will suck utterly.  There can be no middle ground.