Wednesday nighttime, we learned from manager Tim Burton that Johnny Depp sculptural his “Willy Wonka” hairdo on Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour
“He was nerve-racking to scare people,” told Burton, at a Film Society of Lincoln Center case held in his honor.
The studio apartment, Burton told inquirer Richard Pena during a Q&ere;A in front of a twosome hundred guests, besides asked that Depp’s skin color be old in the postings for “Willy” because they idea he looked excessively much like Michael Jackson
Burton, who was appareled in a black jacket and bloomers and black and white horizontally stripy socks, also told that he idea Depp had never really watched any of his films, at least the aces they’d ready-made together like “Edward Scissorhands,” “Ed Wood,” “Willy Wonka,” and “Sleepy Hollow.”
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But he may watch his public presentation in Burton’s new “Sweeney Todd.” It’s acquired Oscar written all over it.
Last nighttime, at Rose Hall in Jazz at Lincoln Center, a golden few of us acquired to see about 25 proceedings of footage of “Sweeney Todd.” This is the long-awaited film variant of Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant 1981 Broadway musical, oriented by Burton and leading Depp as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett, his confederate.
The Oscar race just formally became really, truly interesting.
The three set pieces we saw existed, in a news, spectacular. They existed also just enough to illume a fire and propose that Paramount Dreamworks has a potential Best Picture campaigner in “Sweeney Todd,” and possibly even a victor.
Both Depp and Carter whistle, as do Sacha "Borat" Baron Cohen, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall and three of import newcomers: Jayne Wisener, Jamie Bower and Ed Sanders
Of the three, we only acquired to hear Bower in any case Depp and Carter. But young Bower turns out to be a victor. His rendition of my favorite number from “Sweeney” — “Joanna” — just struck hard out the crew.
And just a intimation of what Depp does in this film was incontestable in a figure called “My Friends,” in which Sweeney whistles to his cured barber tools after reverting from 15 old age in prison. The number was breathless.
Unfortunately, we won’t know more about “Sweeney Todd” until Nov. 29. Burton stated me Wednesday nighttime that’s the first possible twenty-four hours he can test it, as the film is still being emended! “We will present a ‘wet’ print straight to you,” he articulated.
This much I can now corroborate: as Sondheim told in this chromatography column a few hebdomads ago, the movie version is shorter and a little unlike than the phase musical. The main vocal, “Attend the Tale,” has been distant, as have a few others, admitting some interstitial material.
“I had got to let the film and the narrative stand on their own," Burton articulated. “'Attend the Tale of Sweeney Todd' framed it for a theatre audience. And we’ve really added a batch of music back into the display.”
Fans of the display needn’t worry, though. The implemental score remains integral, and you can learn bits and pieces of the struck songs in it.
As a “Sweeney Todd” buff, I can state you that the film seems very dead on target to the phase version. There doesn’t look reason for worry.
What there does look reason for is jubilation. Burton may have drawn off a great theater-to-film transfer. He’s maintained the grisly facet of the display, of course: Sweeney slits a batch of throats and "there will be blood," even more than in the film of that name. It spurts and squirts in measures.
But this is what we besides got from seeing this film: Johnny Depp can whistle, and he makes for an telling Sweeney. The look and mental attitude are right. The public presentation should earn him an Oscar nominating speech as well.
Carter, who specialises in playing “off" types, makes an first-class comic and romantic foil for him.
Forget about misplacing her kids. Britney Spears should be more interested that in its second hebdomad of release, the record album "Blackout" dropped 72 percentage in sales. Brownout sold a negligible 89,000 copies, accordant to hitsdailydouble.com, and ruined in fifth place for the hebdomad.
The only early CD to descend so precipitously was by Goth rock group Avenged Sevenfold. Their own 72 percentage second week drop, though, likely had more to do with being the only new release from teased Warner Music Group. They’ve discharged all the citizenry who might have maintained the Avenge-ers aloft.
But Britney’s with the mighty Sony BMG on Jive Records, the best label for publicity and marketing. How to explicate a cumulative cut-rate sale of 390,000 in two hebdomads?
"Blackout," which carries an big-ticket price tag for all its manufacturers and writers, non to mention Britney’s advance and the fixed charge that goes to Theresa Whites for acquiring the CD out, is appearing like an tremendous financial failure.
Blackout will non improve with time, either. It was replaced by Jay-Z’s "American Gangster" release last hebdomad. This week, releases from Alicia Keys and Celine Dion will push it lower.
And no new single from Spears International Relations and Security Network’t portion. Currently, "Blackout" has about no radio front as “Gimme More” fades into the carpentry. A new single, named “Piece of Me,” in which Britney taunts photographers and tabloid authors, is said to be next. Will it be enough to compensate the ship? “Blackout" is sitting down at around No. 30 on Amazon.com
Wednesday nighttime at the Waverly Inn: Dan Aykroyd and Donna Dixon ate with “Sex and the City” author Candace Bushnell and her professional dancer husband Charles Askegard piece Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter (who haves the place) ate with wife Anna, Tom and Kathy Freston and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” manager David Steinberg with married woman Robin
That should have been enough, but in took the air delectable young actress Jessica Alba, direct from her premiere of “Awake,” with fellow Cash Warren and democratic publicist Brad Cafarelli. They chilled their heels waiting for a tabular array to join Harvey Weinstein, his new fiancée Georgina Chapman (interior designer of Marquesa dresses) and factor Patrick Whitesell. The whole gang stopped-up by the bench where Revlon’s Ronald Perelman was entertaining Katie Lee Joel (Billy Joel's married woman) among others.
And affirmative, that should have been enough demur: in swept the brilliant and legendary Toni Morrison, fresh from the National Book Awards with Lisa Robinson, euphony writer extraordinaire from Vanity Fair, and Fran Lebowitz. What made Toni win?
“I didn’t win anything. I’ve never won a National Book Award,” she informated. Is this possible? Affirmative, it is. But of course of study, Toni has acquired the Nobel and the Pulitzer. They own’t bad, y’know!
Ah, the Waverly! It’s the downtown alternative to uptown Elaine’s. It’s as if the land is bolted down by these two restaurants!
Unrelenting promotion hound Shmuley Boteach just doesn't know how to go away. Now he wants to "rede" Britney Spears. Proposal from him, she doesn't need.
I runned into Shmuley with Michael Jackson seven old age ago this calendar month, in November 2000. He was at the home of PR whiz Howard Rubenstein, who’d existed hired by Michael and person named Boteach to denote their charity, named Time for Kids or Time to Heal or Heal the Kids, counting on whom you inquired.
The rest is account. A few calendar months later, Boteach and Jackson Participle of verb hold a loony conference at Carnegie Hall to show window Time for Kids. Among the players who discussed the economic value of spending more time with your kids existed now former publishing house Judith Regan and game show host Chuck Woollery, each celebrated childhood experts. Ha ha.
Anyway, the one thousands of dollars gathered that night vanished. The charity gaseous. Eventually, even Boteach’s “brotherly love,” the alleged Oxford L’Chaim Society, besides vanished.
At the clip, I wrote a narrative in this chromatography column about Boteach, who hasn’t expressed to or understood Michael Jackson since that time — since well earlier Jackson’s arrest in November 2003. However, Boteach has merchandised on his short friendly relationship with Jackson as if it existed active. It International Relations and Security Network’t.
Boteach was resiled out of the U.K. and refused a rabbinical dais there, so he renderred to the U.S. with visual sensations of grandeur. He was defendant in the U.K. of taking benevolent money to purchase a big house. (He told the charity he was running, the original Oxford L’Chaim Society, needful a headquarters.) He left England with a batch of enemies.
An article unfashionable June 1, 1998, in the London Daily Telegraph intelligibly states: "Ah Shmuley. The shame, the shame. (He's been) publically reproached by Elkin Levy, President of the United States of the United Synagogues; Participle of verb force to resign from the temple in Willesden where he prophesies, accused of behavior unbecoming, bringing the priesthood into disrepute."
The surrender was apparently in reaction to the issue of Boteach's arguable book, "Kosher Sex," which has been a best seller and was extracted in Playboy.
Back on May 23, 2001, we uncoverred the truth about the "Kosher Sex" Rabbi who started a fake charity with Jackson.
To this twenty-four hours there has no existed no accounting for the medium of exchange Boteach and Jackson brocaded for their Time for Kids/Heal the World Foundation. Indeed, the case they held on Feb. 14, 2001, at Carnegie Hall — a conference on children — has never off up in tax returns.
London papers reported that Boteach was threw out from the L'Chaim Society of Oxford University for misdirection of funds. (He allegedly exploited money from the brotherly love to maintain a lavish home. Boteach took a firm stand it was his right to do so.) He was besides reportedly banned from having a dais in the U.K., although he has refused that.
The most recent tax return uncommitted, which covers all of 2000, states that the New York version of L'Chaim Society occupied in $203,185 in contributions but paid out $240,164 "for disposal." There are no finances listed for "Program Services."
In May 2001, this chromatography column discovered quite a batch about the alleged Oxford L'Chaim Society of New York, which has nothing any to do with Oxford University in Great Britain.
I composed: "In 1999, the British authorities criticized (Boteach's) L'Chaim Society of Oxford, London and Cambridge — an organisation that was alleged to support and advance Jewish thinking and living on the Oxford field — when they ascertained that Shmuley (his name is Shmuel but he loves the moniker) had been dunking into the finances.
In an e-mail to the Oxford Union, Sonia Tugwell of the Charity Commission composed on January 8, 2001: "In August 1999, the Charity Commission open an inquiry under section 8 of the Charities Act 1993 into the L'Chaim Independent Charitable Trust as a consequence of concerns that the charity's finances were being misused.
"The enquiry established that a figure of apparent incompatible payments were on a regular basis being made by the laminitis of the brotherly love, Rabbi Boteach and his married woman. Fundraising costs and administrative disbursals were high in sexual intercourse to relatively low benevolent expenditure.
"As a consequence of the enquiry, in March last twelvemonth, the trustees of the brotherly love, after taking appropriate sound advice, reached an understanding with the Boteach’s. The result of this was that a sum of money was paid by them to the brotherly love. The trustees of the brotherly love decided to weave up the brotherly love and the London and Oxford business offices were closed last twelvemonth with our blessing. It was in agreement that the asset of the Cambridge Society would be reassigned to another trust. If there are any finances remaining after prominent liabilities have been nonrecreational, these will be given to early charitable causes alike to those subsidized by the L'Chaim Independent Charitable Trust."
"It looks funny to me," expressed a source at the Oxford Union, "that the central office for the L'Chaim Society of Oxford is in New York."
Frustrated by the deficiency of information from Boteach's business office, I subsequently composed another story on Feb. 18, 2002, saying that Boteach's tax-exempt foundation in the United States is named Oxford L'Chaim Society, connoting a tie to the esteemed British university.
I besides wrote that the L'Chaim Society's 1999 public tax submission shows that the brotherly love took in $300,000. Of that amount, $160,000 travelled to "management" and $122,000 was sent as a lump sum donation to the L'Chaim Society of Cambridge, the early top British body.
But, of course of study, representatives of the Cambridge Society cursed to me last twelvemonth that they hadn't detected from Boteach in a long time. Surely they didn't mention a immense donation, and incomplete did Boteach.
Even so, more than half the medium of exchange collected by Boteach in 1999 travelled to salaries. Less than half was gave to charity. Just in case you existed wondering.
Boteach — who is censorred by the United Synagogues in Great Britain from having a dais — is outdone remembered for a quotation mark he gave the London Independent in 1996. He emphasised there is an 11th, oral Commandment: "Thou shalt do anything for promotion and recognition."
