Word: depp
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...about Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Tim Burton's film version of the 1979 Stephen Sondheim musical. He wondered if Helena Bonham Carter was up to the vocal challenge of the Mrs. Lovett role. She's excellent, I replied; but aren't you anxious about Johnny Depp as the mad barber? He's not a trained singer. "Oh," Victor said with a knowing laugh, "Johnny Depp can do anything...
...director assured some measure of audience sympathy for Sweeney by handing the role to Depp, a magnificent star at the apogee of his powers. Depp's voice may be on the reedy side, but he's a true singing actor, making every note as persuasive as his words and gestures. Sporting an Elsa-Lanchester-as-the-Bride-of-Frankenstein streak of white in his full dark hair, Sweeney is, in a way, the monster created by the Judge's turpitude. Benjamin is effectively dead; Sweeney is his remorseless spirit, the deft hand of fate wielding a razor - shouting, "At last...
...sees it. Beetlejuice, the dead (Sweeney and his victims) dwell just above the living (Mrs. Lovett and her customers). Sweeney is a figure of pathos with a sure tonsorial touch: Edward Scissorhands, meet Edward Razorhands. As in so many of his films, and all the ones starring Depp, Burton celebrates oddball outsiders who create their own rules, and often perish by them. The new movie also gives a darker - retrospectively - hue to the seemingly innocuous Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Same director, same actor, different food supply...
...land with a sickening squishiness when they slide down the chute from Sweeney's parlor to the basement -the more sensitive may avert their eyes and turn from the movie. But this is gore with an agenda. Having seen where Sweeney came from, and the artistry Burton and Depp bring to his tale, we must keep watching. Horror has its own panache, its internal, infernal beauty. And nothing we see is as terrifying as the scar's on Benjamin Barker's soul when he devolved into Sweeney Todd...
...Best Actor awards could go to actual movie stars: Clooney, with his glistening likability and hunkitude, in the Drama category, and Depp, who's even dreamier (and murders and sings), in Comedy-Musical. But we never ignore Daniel Day-Lewis, making only his third film in a decade and, as the oil magnate in There Will Be Blood, giving another of his super-intense, bite-the-head-off-live-rats, I'm-mad-inside-too performances...