Word: themes
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...very notion that a fluffy summer action movie should be headed by America's most beautiful serious actor (or seriously beautiful one) paints a flummoxed smile on the faces of Depp's admirers. This is, after all, a film based on a Disney theme-park attraction--not a cool thrill machine like the Tower of Terror or a camp classic like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride but the staid Pirates of the Caribbean. For this project, Depp put aside the nutsy-greatsy auteurs of his past (Tim Burton, John Waters, Terry Gilliam, Jim Jarmusch) to team up with Gore Verbinski...
...tennis. At the spring 2004 menswear shows in Milan last week, Gucci designer Tom Ford introduced a chic take on the tennis bag in crocodile and a Stan Smith-style sneaker with croc trim. At the menswear shows in Paris, meanwhile, Louis Vuitton featured tennis whites as a major theme. Over at Wimbledon, where tennis was actually being played, Venus Williams was serving up her new look on Centre Court: a Diane Von Furstenberg-designed Reebok tennis dress with corsetlike lacing up the back. Anna Sui's current line includes "a tennis dress, pleated miniskirts, sweater sets and tube socks...
...both films are indictments of the paralysis in organizations where unchecked power and conflicts of interest are endemic. Forget the murderers and terrorists?the upper echelons of state officialdom are, in many ways, the real villains. For a country feeling increasingly betrayed by the gerontocracies of government ministries, this theme has a particularly powerful resonance. "You can replace the police force with the government," says actor Kotaro Koizumi?whose father swept to power two years ago on a reform agenda and has battled the same demons in reality that his son faces on screen. "The movie shows all the things...
...world, and Hollywood feels fine. Pop culture knows that people love nothing more than imagining their own demise. It's not that moviegoers want to die; they just want a theme-park ride through Armageddon. Thinking about what happens after Judgment Day is too disconcerting, like waking up from a nightmare into a worse one. That's why there are many more movies about the world saved from destruction, like this week's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, than about the messy business of surviving an apocalypse, like the new Brit horror film 28 Days Later...
Director Jonathan Mostow delivers pretty cool chases, if you like seeing the destruction of innocent cars, buildings and telephone poles. But the movie isn't a patch on the earlier Terminators or Terminator 2: 3D, the gnarly multimedia assault at Universal's theme parks. T3 is best seen as a $175 million campaign ad for Schwarzenegger's bid to be California's next Governor. Tough, buff Arnold helps kids, keeps bad machines from despoiling the environment and saves the state, all without spending the taxpayers' money...