Temecula CA, 03.13.2010
We pulled over on Western Avenue in Los Angeles yesterday after this apartment building caught my eye.
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Just in from Dan! More video footage from a fairly blurry 1991; about an hour crunched into a minute. From the color of the paint, it looks to be the week when we moved Dauz from the Redondo Beach garage to our first legitimate shop on Main Street. I’d be 22 years old.
Dan was a pre-Web gadget fiend, and always had his Hi8 cameras perched around the place on tripods. You never really knew when they were turned on, so you’d always felt watched. This possibly has everything to do the with paranoia that plagues me today.
Edited by Dan Dauz.
RELATED: The move to the second Dauz shop on 130th.
Remember these? Allan found this site with a slew of ’em. Horrible UI, but there are some gems to be found in there with a little work.
RELATED POST: Growing up in L.A. during the ’70s and ’80s
If it wasn’t already official with 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it’s certainly official now. The Depp/Burton* combination has lost its edge. If there ever was one.
Saw Alice in Wonderland last night, and let me first say that I loved the opening fifteen minutes or so, starting with the concept of the recurring dream. Genius! I also dug the set-up: the nineteen-year-old Alice, the Cornwall setting, the arranged marriage predicament, the walk through the garden with the would-be mother in-law, the beckoning white rabbit. Alice’s anticipated tumble down the hole was awesome, and the opening part in Wonderland with the ‘Drink Me’ potion and ‘Eat Me’ cake was a blast. It was all a great nod to that classic story that we’ve always had somewhere in our consciousness.
Then Alice met the Mad Hatter, and the direction changed. If you can imagine the bastard son of Willy Wonka and Jack Sparrow dressed up as Bozo the Clown with a speech impediment, then you’ve got Depp’s version of the Mad Hatter.
Maybe it’s just because I hate hate HATED Depp’s version of Willy Wonka, but between the quirky laugh du jour, the excessive clown makeup, the regurgitated swaggering skedaddle thing, and the British accent tossed in for effect, I’m afraid Johnny Depp has become a parody of himself. Long known for being an actor who takes chances and pushes envelopes, it’s surprising and even embarrassing to see what he’s done in his last few stints with Burton. Seriously. When he made his entrance in Alice, within three seconds I was thinking, Really? Again? You didn’t! For a long moment there I thought I could feel entire theater getting embarrassed for him. I almost wanted to hide under my chair.
It’s time for Johnny Depp to step away from the Burton thing for a while. Maybe go do a psychological thriller or something. But only after taking a long, long, looooooooooong vacation.
As for the art direction of the 2010 Mad Hatter, why all the makeup? Why the orange eyebrows? Like Alice’s blue dress, the 2010 Hatter would’ve been better served as a nod to one of our favorite memories: the classic old white-haired Disneyish madman we already know and love. (Gary Oldman, maybe? Malcolm McDowell?) Depp just gets in the way.
As for Tim Burton, his “re-imaginings” are feeling less like re-imagined classics and more like rehashed versions of his own movies. All the adjectives that we’ve associated with his work — edgy, dark, unconventional, trippy, different — have gradually become antonyms to recent Burton/Depp projects. They’re canned, they’re templated, they’re indulgent, they’re self-serving, they’re like a wedding speech that’s gone in circles for way too long. It’s not different anymore. There is not a single thing different about a Tim Burton movie scene with Johnny Depp in white makeup in front of a backdrop of twisted branches silhouetted against the looming moon.
All that said, I’m calling it now: a Burton film about Charles Dickens starring Johnny Depp is the universe’s new inevitability.
6.5/10
*And don’t even get me started on Helena Bonham Carter.
