virtual local boy made good

Johnny Depp Film Feast is coming

This talented actor, who has made a ton of great flicks, is virtually a local boy made good

The Vancouver Sun

Saturday, May 19, 2007

By Dominic Patten

A "royal flush of talent" is what Kenneth Tynan, the great British theatre critic and occasional impresario, once called the subjects of a collection of his essays. There is no doubt that, in their time, Johnny Carson, Mel Brooks, Ralph Richardson, Louise Brooks and playwright Tom Stoppard, who is still alive today, deserved such praise.

In more recent years another Johnny, a different and yet similar kind of Johnny as the past king of late night television, has come along deserving of similar kudos.

You might call him Capt. Jack Sparrow, Gilbert Grape, Donnie Brasco, J.M. Barrie, or Raoul Duke, but he's no Johnny come lately nor easily.

"Johnny Depp hasn't just done the Hollywood films, even though he could," points out Leonard Schein of Festival Cinemas. "He's not just a pretty boy actor, but someone who has really thrown himself into independent films and unusual roles."

In that vein, next week The Vancouver Sun and Festival Cinemas are pleased to present the first Johnny Depp Film Feast.

Running from May 21-24 at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas, we are showcasing a truly unique cannon of work by featuring a film a night of Depp's. From Finding Neverland with Kate Winslet and Chocolat with Juliette Binoche to What's Eating Gilbert Grape with a young Leonardo DiCaprio and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, there's truly something for everyone to savour.

Partly we're putting on the feast because these are great films that haven't been seen in all their glory on the big screen for a while, partly it's a precursor to the much anticipated release of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End on May 25, and partly because it just seems obvious to us that Vancouver should be the home of such a series.

After all, it was our town that provided the backdrop for the transformation of the then-unknown actor with the killer cheekbones into a star. That's right, from 1987 to 1990, Depp played Officer Tom Hanson on 21 Jump Street, which was shot here on our streets.

The teen cop drama, one of the first ongoing productions in what would become the Hollywood North of today, made Depp, in his first major role, an instant teen idol.

Supposedly he was very uncomfortable with that moniker, but you never got that impression when you'd see him chatting with fans while the crew got ready to shoot a scene over at a Point Grey school. Nor, during the time he spent here, when you'd see him at clubs like the Roxy and the Luv-A-Fair, hanging out, often with then-girlfriend Winona Ryder, and yakking with almost anyone who passed by about how much he loved Iggy Pop and the Rolling Stones.

Sure there was that incident where he got himself into some trouble with the police after an altercation in a downtown hotel lobby, but for many Vancouverites the 43-year-old from Owensboro, Kentucky, is virtually a local boy made good. Real good in fact.

Perhaps because he's been around for more than 20 years now, and is more successful than ever, it's easy to forget that Johnny Depp's career has had extremely agile legs. After he left the ratings bonanza of 21 Jump Street, a move that many thought crazy at the time, the laws of demographics and the David Cassidy teen sensation downward spiral should have ensured the last dying breath of Depp's notoriety as his audience grew up, took off their retainers and pulled his posters from their walls while ditching their New Kids on the Block and Nenah Cherry albums.

Yet, that was not to be the case. Depp's audience, like his range as an actor, actually grew. What saved Depp from being lost somewhere east of Jump Street spinoff star Richard Grieco or west of Different Strokes' Todd Bridges? Well, as his tender work in 1990's Edward Scissorhands and later, as the man who brought Peter Pan to life, in Finding Neverland, revealed, Depp has the dual value of being both a crowd-pleaser and genuinely dramatic.

When you throw in the swagger and the way-past-the-horizon gaze in his eyes as Jack Sparrow, you have to ask yourself, how often do you get that onscreen? The answer is, not very often at all.

I think that, unlike his mentor and hero, Marlon Brando, Depp's range comes from being comfortable enough in his own skin to stretch it. Yes, he's occasionally stumbled, but as his homage to Buster Keaton in Benny & Joon and other flicks, and his emulation of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards in the Pirates movies, display, Johnny Depp is, in the best and truest sense of the word, a great stylist.

At the same time, unlike the tub-thumping of a Sean Penn or cringe-inducing arched mannerisms of a Nick Cage, Depp isn't afraid of the emotional heavy lifting that films like What's Eating Gilbert Grape require. In that sense, he's almost effortlessly muscular in his craft.

Of course, he is overpaid, and sure, no man should legally be allowed to be that good-looking but Johnny has that truly rare ability, as both an actor and a celebrity, of taut professionalism -- to play almost every role as if it were himself, and yet not, simultaneously.

The reality is Johnny Depp really does seem to have found a way to live both inside and outside the Hollywood system, balancing blockbusters and more intimate or unusual movies. In an age of never-was trying to be has-beens, that alone should guarantee the man his own film festival.

The fact that he's made a ton of good movies, in a variety of genres, convinced us it was time to give him one.

We hope you agree.

The Johnny Depp Film Feast features Finding Neverland on May 21, Chocolat on May 22, What's Eating Gilbert Grape on May 23, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on May 24.

All shows are at 7 p.m. at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas at 2110 Burrard St. Tickets are $10 at the box office or online at www.festivalcinemas.ca. Go online to www.vancouversun.com to read past reviews of all the movies featured in the feast.

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Lots on the music menu next week

The Vancouver Sun

Saturday, May 19, 2007

By Amy O'Brian

Blame it on Sasquatch: too many good bands, not enough time, money or energy to see them all.

The Sasquatch Music Festival next weekend at the Gorge amphitheatre in Washington state is bringing a disproportionate number of excellent musical acts to our neck of the woods during the coming week.

And while you could choose to drive the six or seven hours, camp out with 20,000 other music fans and see all the bands on the Sasquatch roster, you could also stay put and catch many of the acts at venues around Vancouver this week.

It would be a costly and exhausting venture to try to catch all the Vancouver dates, but you certainly can't complain about the lack of choice.

Next week, two of Sasquatch's headlining acts -- Bjork and Arcade Fire -- are playing at Deer Lake Park in Burnaby before they head south to the Gorge. Bjork is at the park Wednesday and Arcade Fire is there Thursday.

The Icelandic queen of eccentricity has never played a show in Vancouver, according to a search of this newspaper's archives, and it's been nearly two years since Arcade Fire played a Vancouver show.

The same night as the Arcade Fire show, Ozomatli -- a nine-piece Latin-infused group from Los Angeles -- is playing at the Commodore. And then next Friday, Manu Chao -- the Paris-based world music sensation -- takes over the Commodore.

British "folktronica" guy Patrick Wolf plays an early show Friday at the Media Club before heading south to Sasquatch.

And they may not be playing at the big outdoor festival, but it should also be mentioned that Friday also sees Virginia-based hip-hop duo Clipse -- whose album Hell Hath No Fury was at the top of last year's Best Of lists -- take the stage at Sonar.

Rest up.