Today sees the release of supernatural vampire comedy “Dark Shadows,” director Tim Burton’s big-screen adaptation of the gothic soap opera of the same name that aired from 1966-1971. To mark its release, I thought I’d take a look at the ten finest on-screen performances of its leading man: Johnny Depp, the 48-year-old acting chameleon and global megastar whose 28-year career has seen him playing oddball outsiders, murderous madmen and actual chameleons in drug-addled dramas, quirky comedies, gothic horrors and computer-animated family flicks. Let’s begin.
A frequent visitor to the jam-packed corridors of YouTube is an ongoing trend that some people refer to as a “pop culture megamix” and what other, more sensible individuals call a “supercut.” “What is a supercut?” I hear you curiously questioning. Well, a supercut is usually defined as a video montage that exists to highlight and bring attention to an overused plot device or line of dialogue that has at some point or another plagued either television or cinema screens, or sometimes both. The montage typically acts as an overblown compilation of examples of a certain hackneyed movie/TV cliche being used by lazy screenwriters, with mini clips pasted together with monotonous/hilarious repetition. A supercut can also be person-specific (focusing on one actor or filmmaker’s quirks and tropes) or centred on a single TV show or movie.
The trend’s origins can be traced all the way back to 2006, after which it went viral, with hundreds of very imaginative and highly entertaining supercut videos uploaded to YouTube ever since. Below are twenty of the finest, assembled in no particular order.
The phenomenon that is Harry Potter is something that can’t really be explained. For some unexplained reason, half the world’s population latched onto the tale of the Boy Wizard and his adventures in the magical land of 1990’s Great Britain, and made JK Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe very rich and famous people.
As an ardent fan myself, there are several things I would have liked the Potterverse to explain to me, answers I will only accept via a personal letter/email/owl from the author herself, just so I know she really cares. And before you all run to the comments section to bitterly accuse me of not doing my research, the ONLY source material I am going from here is the 7 novels. The movies are called ADAPTATIONS for a reason. They are not canon, and neither are video games, fanfiction, that crazy website thing, or the ramblings of deranged Internet comedians.
In case you didn’t know (and how could you not?), superhero epic “Marvel’s The Avengers” sees its long-awaited theatrical release in American theatres this coming Friday, even though its UK release was last Thursday, when I went and saw it (if you will allow me to gloat and grin and dance merrily down the street for a moment or two). To celebrate, I thought I’d take a look at the ten finest examples to come out of the cinematic superhero genre, which I have listed below along with justifications for each entry. Some of the films are based on comics, some of them are original; some of them are straight-faced, some of them are comedies; some of them are bloody, one of them was made by Pixar. And hey, one of them might even have a certain Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Hulk in them (nudge, nudge).
There’s been an earth-shattering debate (read: crybaby whining) going on at the IMDb board for Ridley Scott’s upcoming sci-fi horror feature “Prometheus.” Apparently, the film is under threat of being slapped with a PG-13 rating, which, as many horrified posters have anxiously pointed out, is “OMG, the same rating as Twilight, so gay.” This, in spite of the fact that the film serves as something of a prequel to the “Alien” franchise, each entry of which has been granted with a much harsher R rating, mostly for gore, bloody violence and frequent scenes of chest-bursting.
As of this moment, the MPAA (that’s the Motion Picture Association of America) is yet to officially announce the film’s American rating, but many are dead certain that film studio 20th Century Fox are gunning for a PG-13 rating purely for financial gain. Those complaining claim that the level of raw, pants-crapping intensity captured in the previous “Alien” films simply cannot be recreated in a supposedly watered-down, hacked-to-bits PG-13 cut. As sort of a counter-argument, I thought I’d take a look at the ten best examples to come out of the horror genre brandished with either a PG-13 rating or an even lighter PG rating, along with how spooky they managed to be, even though their rating clearly meant “Twilight” levels of gayness, and what they would be like had they been granted an R rating.
