"You're So Vain" Redux w/ Johnny Depp

Did you hear that Johnny Depp is guesting on Marilyn Manson's new album? They've done a cover of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" which is one of the first two songs (along with Toto's "Rosanna") that I ever understood were actually about screen stars. (I almost typed "actresses" on accident because Warren Beatty is one of the few actors that I respond to in the same heightened way I usually reserve for actresses). For me as a kid that was really exciting to realize, that people wrote songs about stars.. That's probably why one of my favorite Old Hollywood stories as a baby movie buff was how Judy Garland boosted her own nascent fame by reworking the popular song "You Made Me Love You" for Clark Gable at a Hollywood party. It went over so well they put it right into a movie. 

Anyway, here's that cover.

You can't really hear Johnny Depp which is just as well I suppose. Sweeney Todd anyone?

It's not the first time the two have worked together of course. Here's a performance of the very best Marilyn Manson song "Beautiful People" with Depp on guitar. Marilyn can't resist that ol' 'guitar's are penises and I love fellating my band bit.'

April. It's a Wrap

So.... we stayed very dry this month. So sorry about the annual April Showers event which just didn't happen. April's other traditional event (New Oscar Predictions) did finally happen and the conversation continues. But more than any month in recent memory this one felt like it dragged me behind it mercilessly while it sped through a series of stressful events. Offline. We'll see how May treats us. But it'll have to be better.

Here are ten highlights of this scattershot month in case you missed them...

Hello Gorgeous Barbra Streisand's filmography. It's like butta.
The Evil Queen's Library Someone give her a library card.
April Showers: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo well at least I started the series off well. My stamina failed me. 
Mirror Mirror what an odd mix of fairy tale, visual indulgence, and hit and miss performances.
Take Three: Anne Heche Anne Heche Craig's series hits one of my favorite actresses. She's probably #1 on my list of "does not even remotely have the career she should have. 
"The Nineties" a nostalgia addled moment
Yes No Maybe So Magic Mike not what many people were expecting as a trailer for a male stripper movie
Time Out's 100 Best Horror Movies how many have you seen? 

Most Comments: Five Nicole Kidman Confessions
Most Popular:  Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Serenity

Coming in May: Oh dear. I best not promise anything at this rate. But we'll try to follow Cannes hype, assemble with The Avengers (2012), and screen Pariah (2011), The Exorcist (1973), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Dark Shadows (2012), and About a Boy (2002) for its 10th anniversary.

Also: Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Michelle Pfeiffer and whichever other actresses we jones for as summer movie season kicks off.

Disney Parks

When's the last time you went to a movie amusement park? For reasons I can't figure I was having multiple flashbacks about Disney World today. Maybe it's because summer is on the way?

I've only ever been once, a treat from my best friend on my birthday. I had such a blast and I was a total freak about running around to take photos with the characters I loved even though it was two million degrees out and I looked terrible (not a summer person). I was talking to Mary Poppins when Sleeping Beauty appeared and I was like 'bye bitch' (not really) but I bolted for Aurora because, duh, best princess. I might be mixing up the series of events because it was quite overwhelming for days and days.

Share your Disney stories in the comments. Should I go again? Any new rides of note?

My favorite photo from the trip was with Peter Pan & Wendy who I've always loved both as a pair and separately.

Why was I thinking about this today? It matters not.

Yes, No, Maybe So: "Hope Springs"

I'm such a ditz. Last week we learned that Meryl Streep really needed more potassium in her diet -- the marketing for her new comedy Hope Springs is obsessed with those bananas -- and perhaps because of my love-hate relationship with those yellow phallic symbols, I completely forgot to post this particular Yes No Maybe So edition after writing it up. 

Meryl's potassium deficiency.

Last week I also got a painful charley horse in my left calf and I ate bananas the rest of the week as penance. I think I have a super mild allergy because they always make my mouth feel weird.

PSA

YES

• Who doesn't love Meryl Streep in comedies?
• Am I crazy or does Steve Carell have one of the most soothing beautiful voices ever. I want him to talk at me and talk at me and tell me everything will be okay. I love how his big screen persona is so different than his small screen work.
• Last time David Frankel and Streep worked together they gave us Miranda Priestley so we kinda owe them.
• Meryl and the Signifying Banana.
• OMG. Hi, Elisabeth Shue and Mimi Rogers. Meet you in 1987!!!

Great 80s Ladies: Elisabeth Shue, Meryl Streep, Mimi Rogers

MAYBE SO

• The threesome joke that ends the trailer. I can't decide if it's hilarious in a dumb joke way or just groan-worthy. If all the jokes are cheeky ribbings this will be hard to swallow.

NO

• The trailer isn't particularly funny and seems a little "you go girl" Lifetime bland.
• Tommy Lee Jones? In this part?
• Meryl Streep? With that hair? Seriously why.

Remember when we all first heard about this project and it sounded like a nuanced marital drama and it was going to star Jeff Bridges and I was pissed that Michelle Pfeiffer didn't fight Meryl for the role? This is not at all what I was expecting!

the trailer in question...

• Are you a Yes No or Maybe So?
• Ever practiced on a banana?
• Is this way outside of your comfort zone?

Take Three: Michael Rooker

Craig here with this week's Take Three. Today: Michael Rooker

Take One: Slither (2007)
Rooker has a very bad time of it in Slither. For starters, he plays a brute and tyrant, and is almost pathologically cocksure of his local status as a small-town car dealer. He’s horrible and unfaithful to his wife and his name, Grant Grant, is doubly dumb. So when he’s “killed” by an alien parasite in a meteor which re-animates him as a mind-absorbed, ET-hosting slug-mutant, you don’t exactly sob over his lot in life. But things get worse: he has a future as the head of a fleshy multi-person blob – the kind of thing that Brian Yuzna or David Cronenberg might cook up after particularly eventful dreams – to look forward to. Before that, Rooker leaves a slime trail of extraterrestrial carnage. And it becomes clear at this point that it’s not “just a bee sting.”

For much of his screen time, all he does is slither (the title has it) about sporting gruesomely daft prosthetics that make him look like an exploded can of refried beans or a particularly nasty dental accident. Kudos to him for embracing his OTT part in so heartily; he goes with the giddy flow of all the comically gory sci-fi/horror trappings, playing up his macho onscreen persona to great effect. Grant gets a slippery comeuppance, but he gets some of the best lines too (“It’s just a bee sting!”) More actors ought to take Rooker’s lead and cake themselves in elaborate special effects to debase themselves in the name of cheerfully grisly supporting parts.

Cliff Hanging and Serial Killing after the jump

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