Sweeney Todd

This weekend, across the country, discerning film-going audiences were able to choose between two types of history: the real kind and the fake. Guess which one won?! National Treasure: Book of Secrets (no. 3), which follows the Indiana Jones-like Ben Gates as he tries to clear his family’s name in connection to the Lincoln assassination, raked in over $45 million and easily earned the top spot in the country. But here in the city, it lost out to Mike Nichols’ Charlie Wilson’s War (no. 2), about an obscure congressman and his even more obscure fight to help the Afghans defeat the Soviets during the Cold War, which outearned the Nicholas Cage actioner by $5,000, while playing on one less screen. Cue Cindy Adams: Only in New York, kids!  read more »

In 2005, the early release Crash pulled off its big win in the Screen Actors Guild ensemble race — which foreshadowed its big upset on Oscar night—after ambushing Hollywood with non-watermarked DVDs. According to Tom O'Neil at the Los Angeles Times' Gold Derby blog, yesterday's SAG Awards nominees prove two points: "how key it is to get your movie out early in theaters and then to campaign to voters with DVDs and Q&A screenings."

Films like "Into the Wild" and even "3:10 to Yuma" that got screeners into the hands of voters early—after having an early theatrical release—rallied after mostly being snubbed at earlier kudos. Filmmaker Sean Penn is a four-time nominee, whose "Into the Wild" led the SAG derby today with three acting nods and an ensemble nomination. No small surprise that actors so enthusiastically backed a movie director and co-written by an actor.

Early release "Hairspray," which also blitzed Hollywood with DVDs, got an ensemble bid after faring well at the Golden Globes. (But, hey, where's John Travolta?) George Clooney didn't do a SAG Q&A screening till late, but "Michael Clayton" rolled out to theaters early and so did its campaign DVDs, resulting in recognition for the performances of Clooney, Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton.

Late-breaking films that didn't get screeners out like "There Will Be Blood" (SAG fave Daniel Day-Lewis made the cut, yes, but no nom for supporting star Paul Dano) and "The Great Debaters" didn't fare well either.

Days after Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton were delivered the news of their joint Golden Globe nominations for the new film Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, they returned the favor—with a wee baby. Late Saturday night, People reports, the weird and wacky duo added a new member to their family, which already includes four-year-old Billy. “They are absolutely delighted they have a daughter. It’s a lovely Christmas present for the family,” said Karen Maskill, a rep. for Ms. Bonham Carter, 41. According to the actress, the lovers were discussing inducing the birthing process in a doctor’s office when Mr. Burton, 49, got a call telling him about the nominations. “I do look like a globe, so it's kind of funny. I am very round,” she said, adding with a laugh: “Maybe the baby's going to come out with his hands on his ears, [saying,] 'Shut up!'” As long as the infants hands were made of pink flesh—instead of, say, scissors—they’re sure to be a happy pair.

Johnny Depp will likely never drive around L.A. bumping into people and things in a convertible Mercedes. Instead, the Sweeny Todd star, 44, looks forward to the time when he can achieve some semblance of anonymity. In Esquire’s January issue, on newsstands Friday, the actor imagines what that freedom will be like, saying, “I'm sure it will be a possibility someday again. Maybe when I get old. They get tired of you,” he told the highbrow lad mag. “‘Didn't you used to be Johnny Depp?' That will be the clincher." Apparently, he leaned the value of privacy from his friend and mentor, the late Marlon Brando, recalling how the screen legend told him: ‘“That's your world and it's nobody else's business. It's not anybody's entertainment.”’ (He does, in the end, throw the paparazzi a bone by revealing that he likes to enter restaurants and hotels through the back door.)

"It'll definitely make you a little weird if you're constantly being stared at," Mr. Depp went on. "I don't want to be a product. Of course you want the movies to do well. But I don't want to know ... who's hot now and who's not and who's making this much dough and who's boffing this woman or that one. I want to remain ignorant of all this. I want to be totally outside and far away from all of it." [AP via HuffPo]

Broadway World's online TV show Broadway Beat is making a three-part series of interviews and historical retrospectives, counting down to the opening of Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street on Dec. 21. If you can get past BWW.com's Richard Ridge performing a nerdy introduction (and dressed so appropriately in fake-blood-red and black!), the first episode is almost entertaining.  read more »

On Monday, Dec. 3, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street premiered at the Ziegfeld Theater. The film, which opens on Dec. 21, is a gloriously dark marriage of Tim Burton imagery and Stephen Sondheim music that those in the know are declaring to be the film of the year. Star Johnny Depp was there, distinguished-looking in glasses, a smart suit and bright red tie, as well as Mr. Burton and Mr. Sondheim, co-stars Alan Rickman and Sacha Baron Cohen, and even—hey now!—Keith Richards.  read more »