By Steven Zeitchik

We're heading out for a few days so posting will be light, but before we do we're keeping a close eye on the box-office, where this July 4th finally offers a legitimate horse race.

This date on the calendar has been the province of a single summer blockbuster since as far back as we can recall (or at least since Will Smith exploded numerous bad guys in "Independence Day" 12 years ago, effectively obliterating any memory we previously had). In the last few years, the date been home to the likes of "Superman Returns," "War of the Worlds" and the first "Transformers" — with very little room for anything else.

But there's of course no action tentpole launching this weekend (though it may not feel that way to any movie going up against "Transformers 2"). That means there's no film that will easily steamroll the competition, just two movies at opposite ends of the spectrum, on a holiday that doesn't tend to draw one kind of audience over another.

(And there's a greater potential for an upstart or fluke this year,
since box office overall tends to be down when Americans celebrate July
4th on a Friday. The two lowest weekend-winner totals in the last
decade came when we took Friday off, in 2008 and 2003.)

By Steven Zeitchik

Johnny Depp has done playful, mischievous, childlike, soulful, creepy and pretty much any other mode you can imagine.

The one thing he hasn't done is menacing — true, bloodthirsty, win-at-all-costs menacing. His potentially nastier turns have been limited to those where has a heart ("Chocolat") or where he's surrounded by camp ("Sweeney Todd").

Even when he's done gangster it's been in the service of something good, as it was in the (criminally) underrated "Donnie Brasco." And when he's a pirate he's a pretty lovable one.

The only time he was ever what you might call a truly villainous character was "Blow." And we know how that turned out.

So can he pull off the nihilism of a figure like John Dillinger, as he'll do in the much-anticipated "Public Enemies" this summer? If the first pieces of key art are to be believed — a bunch of them can be viewed here  — he'll play the role with a bit of a smirk.

In other words, he'll play it as Johnny Depp.

An interesting bit of culture clash appears to be brewing on the horizon as the film-geeky Comic-Con approaches. The San Diego genre-minded convention kicks off July 26, and the studios and TV networks are already polishing their presentations. The preliminary line-up of films to be featured has just been released, and the line-up at the moment includes:

Alien vs. Predator 2: No Peace On Earth, American Gangster, Babylon AD, Balls of Fury, Beowulf, The Bourne Ultimatum, Coraline, Fred Claus, Get Smart, The Golden Compass, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, I Am Legend, The Incredible Hulk, Indiana Jones 4, Invasion, Iron Man, National Treasure 2, Resident Evil: Extinction, Speed Racer, The Strangers, Stardust, Star Trek XI, Sunshine, Sweeney Todd, 30 Days of Night, Trick ‘r Treat, Wanted, Where The Wild Things Are, White Out

Now, a lot of the titles are sure to find favor with the assembled fans — “Hell Boy 2,” “Speed Racer,” “Star Trek XI,” for example. But lurking way down on the list is one semi-unpredictable entry: The movie version of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Sweeney Todd.” Sure, the movie’s being directed by Tim Burton and stars Johnny Depp as the demon barber of Fleet Street. Still, Sondheim has always been something of an acquired taste — one of the geniuses of the musical theater, whose talents aren’t always recognized by the humable fans of “Cats” and “Mamma Mia!”. Not to mention, the folks who can’t stand musicals of any stripe or seriousness. So it will be fascinating to see what sort of pitch Paramount Pictures/DreamWorks offers to cajole the fan boys into the “Sweeney” tent. (Gregg Kilday)

Here ’s this weekend’s Fandango Five – Weekly Ticket Sales (as of 1/04/07 4:00 pm PST):

Night at the Museum 21%

Dreamgirls 11%

Charlotte’s Web 10%

The Pursuit of Happyness 5%

Children of Men 4%

Fandango Weekly Poll: The Screen Actors Guild has announced its nominations for the Best “Ensemble Cast” of 2006. Which one deserves to win?

The Departed 46%

Little Miss Sunshine 28%

Dreamgirls 12%

Babel 8%

Bobby 6%

The Fandango Fifty: The Top Stars Moviegoers Want to See in 2007

Johnny Depp and Reese Witherspoon may enjoy a very good year at the movies. To compile the Fandango Fifty, Fandango asked filmgoers to rank the stars they are most looking forward to seeing on the big screen in 2007. The online survey was posted at Fandango.com during the last week of December 2006.

Comingsoon.net has posted new Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End photos. Any movie that stars the mighty Chow Yun Fat perks my interest—that’s why Curse of the Golden Flower is also a must-see.

[posted by Sheigh]

"Sweeney Todd" is scheduled to go before cameras at Pinewood Studios in London on February 5. Director Tim Burton has landed his favorite leading man, Johnny Depp, to star as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street in the movie version of the award-winning Stephen Sondheim musical thriller. Full story.

TBD is who will play Mrs. Lovett and bake all those unsavory meat pies. Helena Bonham Carter, you say? Who is the perfect young Angela Lansbury? Or a leading lady with pipes and a little more boxoffice lustre than Patti LuPone or Christine Baranski? Take our poll:

Every summer you can count on The New Yorker’s David Denby to do a rant on how dumb the summer movies are. And in that vein, Time’s Richard Schickel recently complained about how Pirates of the Caribbean had too many VFX, which got in the way of Johnny Depp’s comedy thesping:

These are ripoffs, not homages, but they are also emblematic of a movie that is essentially a special-effects extravaganza. It is, I think, a universal truth of movie making that effects are never funny. They can sometimes wow you, but they can’t make you laugh, and Depp cannot stand up to the hubbub they create. No actor can. He can only serve them, which involves him in derring-do that any actor could do about as well as he can.

Yikes. Like, he entirely missed the point of why Depp’s sparring with the movie’s ingenious effects might wow enough people to stay number one at the boxoffice for three weeks running. This is not a question of age. It’s a question of sensibility. Some people stay tuned in to the zeitgeist and some don’t.

Is Schickel feeling the pressure of younger critics nipping at his heels? Check out his latest snit, which appears in his lede to an LAT book review (in which he goes on to praise estimable music critic Gary Giddins):

TO write seriously about topics — movies, jazz, popular fiction — that many people regard as peripheral or totally irrelevant to their lives is among the least gratifying of occupations. That’s particularly true now, when the pendulum seems to be permanently stuck at the burbling end of the spectrum, where the bloggers — history-free and sensibility-deprived — weekly blurb the latest Hollywood effulgence and are rewarded by seeing their opinions bannered atop movie display ads in type sizes elsewhere reserved for the outbreak of wars and the demise of presidents.

Enough. If you’re too outmoded to understand today’s movie aesthetic—or the existence of many blogs that feature excellent film criticism, along with the ones that don’t—stop writing about current movies. Schickel is a terrific book writer, documentary filmmaker and voiceover artist. There are plenty of worthwhile activities to keep him busy.

I finally read this last night: Sean Smith, my old Premiere colleague, knocked this out of the park, and I tend not to be a fan of celebrity profiles. (The pictures aren’t half bad, either.) Newsweek critic David Ansen told me that Smith saw about an hour of the movie and had to turn the story around fast after he talked to Depp. Buzz on this sequel is better than you might expect.

I saw Ansen at a lovely lunch at the French consul’s home today for Francois Ozon, the handsome French director of 2003’s summer hit Swimming Pool and the upcoming Time to Leave, a tragic drama about a young man (Melvil Poupaud) with just months to live (Jeanne Moreau plays his grandmother), which is unspooling here at the LA Film Festival.

Ozon’s still editing his next, Angel, which he shot in English, based on the novel by Brit novelist Elizabeth Taylor. It stars young Romola Garai (I Capture the Castle) as a wildly successful writer of crap novels. The movie will likely turn up at Berlin or Cannes.