Johnny Depp going to or from the set of The Rum Diary

"Private source. Depp with, I believe, Buck Holland..his longtime security man."

Based on Hunter S. Thompson's novel of the same name, The Rum Diary follows Depp as Paul Kemp, a divorced alcoholic and struggling novelist who decides to kick around in San Juan until his ship comes in, working as a journalist for a newspaper that's on its last legs, drinking gallons of rum and experimenting with LSD. With his new friend Bob Sala by his side, Kemp becomes entangled in a corrupt hotel development scheme with a slick PR consultant named Sanderson. Amber Heard, Aaron Eckhart, Richard Jenkins, Michael Rispoli, and Giovani Ribisi also star in this.

The photo below is similar to the previous one I posted, but you get to see a camera in this one and gives a cool little peak into the film making world. Thanks to Pam for sending me these.

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Amaury Nolasco joins The Rum Diary

Actor Amaury Nolasco, featured in the Fox Television series Prison Break, arrived in his native Puerto Rico on Wednesday to join the cast of The Rum Diary, a film starring Johnny Depp.

Nolasco said in a press release that he felt “doubly happy” about the chance to combine business with pleasure.

“The Rum Diary” is based on the book of the same name by late “gonzo” journalist Hunter S. Thompson, recounting his experiences living in Puerto Rico in the 1950s.

Shooting on the movie is set to begin next Monday on the Caribbean island.

Depp also portrayed Thompson in the 1998 film “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” with Puerto Rico’s Benicio del Toro as his co-star.

Nolasco joins a cast that includes Amber Heard, Aaron Eckhart, Richard Jenkins, Giovanni Ribisi and Gavin Houston.

“None of them will leave Puerto Rico without a little piece of our flavor,” Nolasco said of his colleagues.

Directed by Bruce Robinson, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “The Killing Fields,” the new film is being produced by Depp, Christi Dembrowski and Graham King, whose credits include “The Departed,” “The Aviator” and “Gangs of New York.”

Cheers to Pam for letting me know.

Source: LAHT

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The Broken, 2008 - Movie Review

Director: Sean Ellis
Starring: Lena Headey, Melvil Poupaud, Richard Jenkins, Asier Newman, Michelle Duncan
Running Time: 88 minutes
Score: 5 / 10

This review is by Chris Pandolfi.

Watching "The Broken" is like playing an endless game of Clue without ever finding out who killed Mr. Boddy. It's a mystery without a solution, a tense psychological drama that reveals nothing other than how tense and psychological it is. It plays mind games only with itself, leaving the audience to watch from the sidelines in a bored, confused stupor. The idea behind it is intriguing, and for a time, it successfully builds itself up. The thing is, the act of building is pointless if there's no height requirement. At a certain point, it becomes painfully clear that the story will only keep building without ever reaching anything. I do give it credit for creating the right atmosphere; the characters inhabit a moody, subdued world where nothing seems safe, not even a person's own home. But atmosphere can only go so far, even in a horror film. It also needs an understandable story with an ending that doesn't leave us with more questions than answers.

It doesn't help that "The Broken" is unbearably slow, and this is despite the relatively short running time of eighty-eight minutes. Specific shots are dragged out so long that I eventually stopped waiting for something shocking to happen. It works only the first few times, at which point I kept in mind that suspense is most effective when things go slowly. After those few times pass, however, the film comes dangerously close to being boring, moments of horror and all. This is probably because it does a fine job showing us what happens, but it does a terrible job explaining why or how it's happening. By the end of the film, I was unable to make heads or tails of what I had just seen. What a shame, especially since it opens on such a promising note.

The film begins by quoting the final lines of Edgar Allen Poe's short story "William Wilson": "You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also dead--dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope! In me didst thou exist--and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself." The story, you see, explores the theme of the doppelganger, or the double, where the self is divided amongst two separate yet identical bodies. In Poe's story, another William Wilson--who looks similar and shares the same birthday--continuously haunts the protagonist to the point of insanity. The same theme exists in "The Broken," which tells the story of Gina McVey (Lena Headey), a British radiologist who, after seeing a clone of herself, gets into a serious car accident. As she recovers, she begins to fear that things aren't quite right, that her French boyfriend, Stephan (Melvil Poupaud), isn't the person he once was.

From here, the story takes a long-winded journey through strange territory, where mirrors constantly shatter and fragmented bits of memory keep flashing on the screen. Gina keeps trying to make sense of the crash, and apparently, so is writer/director Sean Ellis, who constantly shows it in slow-motion replays from various angles. He also relies greatly on composer Guy Farley, whose score is almost entirely made up of dissonant crescendos. It creates a mood, but what good is mood without context? Scary things keep happening, yet there's no explanation for any of it, which tells me one of two things: Either this movie is an experimental art piece that intentionally challenges rational thought, or Ellis was so taken by the psychological themes that he neglected to focus on an actual plot. It's difficult to believe that it's the former, given the fact that Gina is not the only character with a doppelganger problem. Her American father (Richard Jenkins), her brother (Asier Newman), and her brother's wife (Michelle Duncan) are all affected in some way, probably because of a scene early in the film--when the entire family eats dinner at the father's house, a large mirror in the dining room suddenly falls over and shatters.

For the sake of argument, let us say that "The Broken" is intended to challenge rational thought. Are we to assume, then, that the plot itself is irrelevant, that we're only supposed to follow the psychological implications? If that's the case, then there's no better example of it than a plot twist near the end of the film, which, if you choose to interpret it metaphorically, effectively raises questions about which side of a mirror represents the reflection.

But again, the fact that more than one character has a doppelganger makes the idea difficult to accept. How could such a broad psychological concept apply to so many people? Maybe this film would have worked had it focused entirely on Gina, because at least then the mystery would be much less open to interpretation. There would be some sense that the story is actually reaching for something. When you have multiple characters with evil doubles of themselves, the symbolic ideas are bound to get hopelessly confused with one another. Such is the problem with "The Broken," a film that puts too many characters into a needlessly enigmatic story. I have no doubt that Ellis is trying to get at something, but for the life of me, I haven't a clue what it is. The only thing I got out of it, aside from the atmosphere, was a desire to reread the works of Edgar Allen Poe. So maybe seeing this film wasn't such a bad idea after all.

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Cabin in the Woods - Joss Whedon tells us things about it but the things may not be true.

There's a cool article by Todd Brown over on AMC that talks about Joss Whedon's latest film project, Cabin in the Woods. It is a great example of how to use rumours and the internet to spread the word on a film...and by writing this I am helping it go further.

It's co-written and produced by Whedon, with writer and director Drew Goddard (Cloverfield, Lost).

Word of their project first surfaced in July with little more than an
announcement that it was happening and that Whedon and Goddard were both
involved. The duo wouldn't even reveal the plot -- Goddard teased in an
interview with MTV, "It's got a harder and darker edge, but it's
also got classic Whedon qualities. It'll rip your heart out and be heartfelt at
the same time." MGM exec Mary Parent who greenlit the movie told
The Hollywood Reporter, "I'll be shot [if I say anything] ... It's
an intense visceral thrill ride and I'll leave it at that." Whedon's only
comment was "it's the horror movie to end all horror movies... literally," a
quote that still has fans buzzing over at fan site Whedonesque: "I'm curious
about what is implied by the description ... Many people misuse 'literally' so
that it means nothing in particular. But Joss uses language carefully. That
'literally' suggests some sort of interesting deconstruction of the genre."

So who would be the face of the film? Would you believe the dead father
from Six Feet Under (Richard Jenkins) and cabinet member from The West Wing
(Bradley Whitford)? "It's really just your basic typecasting," said
Goddard, "when you need two actors to run through the woods in
low-cut nighties, you immediately think of Richard Jenkins and Bradley
Whitford."

On January 24, based on information culled from inside-the-industry
casting calls and databases, the NewYork Times announced the addition of Bill Nighy and Jena Malone to the cast while also giving the following synopsis: "A group of five college kids are tricked into spending a weekend at a cabin where they will be sacrificed to appease the Gods and save the world."

In retrospect, a cast of middle-aged men in a film supposedly about
'five college kids' should have tipped people off that something weird was going
on, but it didn't. Instead, fans fixated on what was meant by "Gods"? Could this
be some sort of Lovecraft reference? But then along came Whedon himself to
happily mess with people's heads. Over on fan board Whedonesque, the
man himself turned up a few hours after this "news" broke to say, "This is
misinformation. While we are fans of both those actors, neither is attached to
the movie. Just FYI. However, they ARE attached to the Serenity sequel." No,
there isn't going to be a sequel to Serenity. But what's up with the fake info?
Whedon elaborated a little later: "Also, they got the plot wrong. In order
to protect the story from spoilerization, we've been sending out our OWN
misinformation, including fake sides for the actors, fake summaries, different
names... So there's gonna be a lot of 'information' leaked that will lead to
excited speculation about things you will not see. Sorry. But here's some stuff
you CAN look forward to, my word on it: 1) A person will have an emotion. 2) Two
people speaking, or "dialogue", may occur. 3) A bunch of different people will
play the part of Bob Dylan. Hope that clears everything up. More updates
soon!"

And here is the genius of Joss: Rather than fight the flow of information, he has corrupted the sources, throwing anything anybody says about this film from now until release into question. And everybody who ran the fake Times casting announcement and synopsis is now going to have to run a retraction: Whedon just got two headlines for the price of one.

Sounds rather interesting doesn't it, even though everything we have currently heard about it may not be true and it may end up being something totally different. Therefore, anything else I write about it may or may not be true...my head hurts.

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