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"The mistake lies in seeing debate and discussion as secondary to the recovery of meaning. Rather, we should see them as primary: art and literature do not exist to be understood or appreciated, but to be discussed and argued over, to function as a focus for social dialogue. The discourse of literary or art criticism is not to recover meaning, but to create and contest it. Our primal scene should not be the solitary figure in the dark of the cinema but the group of friends arguing afterwards in the pub."
-Don Fowler (1996) "Even Better Than The Real Thing"

Thursday, December 23, 2010

The Tourist - KDJ


I have absolutely no idea as to why Johnny Depp agreed to do this movie. The experience of watching it is confusing. I spent the entire movie waiting for Depp to vindicate himself - not his character either, like, himself, really. As the movie awkwardly transitioned from one cheesy scene to another, I wondered, is this why Depp never watches his own movies? for fear that one may actually, accidentally end up like this one? Towards the end of the movie, after having watched Angelina Jolie smugly strut for hundreds of yards at a time, for what seemed like an hour total, I wanted to grab Depp by the shoulders and give him a talking to; "Dude, Depp, you are Edward Scissor Hands, and Gilbert Grape, and the dude that was brave enough to make a Sweeney Todd movie, you are Sands, Mort Rainey, you are George Jung, you are Roux, and Ichabod Crane, Raoul Duke, and Donnie Brasco, you are the freakin Libertine. You are not the freaking Tourist!" Maybe it was Jolie bringing him down. Maybe she is so good looking that she is destined to fail in every movie she ever makes. Maybe she will always be more good looking than the movie is good. Maybe, since Tim Burton didn't make it, there was too much light on Depp. Maybe if they would have dimmed the lights in every scene and given him a weird quirk to do the movie would have convinced. But they didn't. And Jolie, as mentioned, strutted as a Samford Seductress might, and there were entirely too many lights turned on. In the end, I'm afraid Depp needed a down payment on his new Vineyard, which probably isn't cheap. So, he made a movie that paid well, spent a fortune, and achieved only awkward, cheap thrills. If you must see Depp, as some must, wait a few weeks and Blockbuster will have about 400,000 returned copies in the post-Christmas buy back stacks.

2 comments:

  1. I figured as much. Do you think it's wrong for an actor of Depp's caliber to stoop to doing a movie for money? I'm reading this book by Hugh McLeod called "Ignore Everybody (and 39 other keys to creativity)" and he has this theory called the Sex and Cash Theory. His take, for instance, on Travolta:

    "One Year John Travolta will be in an ultrahip flick like Pulp Fiction ("Sex"), another he'll be in some forgettable big-budget thriller like Broken Arrow ("Cash")." (pp 31)

    What I'm asking is, does it take away from Depp, does it diminish him?

    Also, I wonder if Jolie, who has done some good acting, can possibly be taken seriously because even at her worst she's still eye candy. Maybe it sucks for both of them. Or maybe they're both laughing all the way to the vineyard.

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  2. He's on that paper chase, so what.
    Broken Arrow was tight.

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