Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The Mad(onna) Hatter

A friend of mine kept saying that the new photos of Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter reminded him of none other than Madonna. So, he followed up with morphthinged evidence to prove his theory...


Hmmm, musta been that endearing gap tooth that tipped him off. Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland Madonna in Wonderland coming to theaters... never.

Come to think of it... maybe this was Madonna's problem with the acting side career in the the late 80s and early 90s. She needed to be doing small bits in weirdo movies like Alice... She kept trying to play characters that any actress might essay when an outsized offscreen celebrity persona actually requires a larger-than-life / fantastical character to contain it -- in the absence of a true acting gift, that is, which only rare pop stars (Cher and, hmmm, Sting? Dolly?) turn out to have. The roles that fit best were thinly-veiled-Madonna (Desperately Seeking Susan, Star), Madonna (Truth or Dare... and yes, I consider that a performance and her best one), Breathless Mahoney in Dick Tracy (cartoon) and Evita (larger than life!)

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

I will not be able to sleep tonight.

NATHANIEL R said...

haha

Anonymous said...

Sting? Really?

NATHANIEL R said...

yeah. he ain't half bad in his movies. or maybe i'm remembering with rose colored glasses. ;) it's possible. the 80s were so long ago.

Anonymous said...

Lord. Another one of Depp's bullshit superficial performances where he cakes himself in make-up and impersonates a popstar. It got tired after the second Pirates movie and his wacko jacko impression in the Chocolate Factory.

Depp is such a vapid actor. All style, and precious little emotional content.

Dean

Derreck said...

wow. never saw the resemblance before the photo.

just....wow.

NATHANIEL R said...

dean i get why people are tiring a bit of Depp's odd characters but he is capable of emotional depth. I thought he really got there with Edward Scissorhands and Donnie Brasco in particular.

i do wish he'd play a normal character like Brasco again though.

i'm excited for public enemies but nervous too

Chris Na Taraja said...

Johnny has been known to imitate people. Captian Jock was definitely Keith Richards from the stones. Willy Wonka was sort of the elicit love child of Carol Channing and Michael Jackson. His Mad Hatter could be Mad Donna. We shall see.

Cluster Funk said...

What about Midler? Courtney Love? Do you consider them among the elite singers with legitimate acting chops?

NATHANIEL R said...

cluster -- yeah i guess with bette... i always thought of her as crossover act from beginning but i guess she was a singer first.

as for courtney love. i don't think one fine performance is enough to judge.

Rachel said...

Courtney Love's done well in other films outside of "Larry Flint". They've just been crap-ass movies. "Trapped", "200 Cigarettes", "Julie Johnson"....

And Madonna has never been better than her performance as All-the-way Mae in "A League of Their Own". All dedication there.

Anonymous said...

Madonna was nice in A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN, but actually she gave a much better perf the following yearin SNAKE EYES/DANGEROUS GAME, bad boy Abel Ferrara's film about making films...in which she plays an actress trying hard to gain respect (sort of...) as an actress...I think you could consider it in the thinly-veiled category.
anyway I second Nathaniel: Madonna's acting career could have been much better with other kind of roles...but actually we can't be sure she has never been offered them.
I'm wondering: everybody knows about the movies she made...but what about the shelved projects, the unottained roles, the turned down ones?

mirko s.

Carlen said...

Johnny Depp in that picture looks more like Elijah Wood to me.

NATHANIEL R said...

mirko... i did like her in snake eyes though i'm not really a ferrara fan.

basically i feel like Madonna was far from a natural but she was a hard enough worker that with the right roles she coulda had a better film career. i think her terrible acting was grossly overstated.

i mean consider how bad of an actress everyone thought mariah carey was in Glitter and now in Precious she's supposedly really good.

sometimes the non-naturals just need the right role/strong director but they're never going to be GREAT ACTORS in general, you know?

Anonymous said...

Yes, "the terrible acting thing" is somehow overstated, but actually Madonna haters have a lot of proofs by their sides (SHANGHAI SURPRISE, WHO'S THAT GIRL, BODY OF EVIDENCE, NEXT BEST THING, FIVE ROOMS, SWEPT AWAY...even the cameo in 007...all of them are a quite strong combination of wrong roles/uninspired directors...just the opposite Madonna should have need).
After EVITA opening, Madonna declared that an academy award nomination could have helped her to have better roles...we could never know if that would have been true, maybe not...anyway that it's not the point...

wow, the enthusiasm regarding PRECIOUS and its cast is making me more and more curious! I knew Mo'nique and the debutant girl were receiving stellar reviews for their work...but discovering that also Carey is finding a personal success for her achievement is something really unexpected. I knew that her reviews for the indie WISE GIRLS were better than the ones for GLITTER, but nothing that could make you think about award buzz. anyway, good for her!!!

last thing about Madonna: recently I watched THE FILTH AND THE WISDOM, her debut as director...I found it quite good, not particularly interesting or original, but unpretentious, rather witty and with funny unpolitically corrected characters.

mirko s.