In what is becoming a yearly tradition (and one of which we heartily approve!), Johnny Depp once again graces the cover of ROLLING STONE; you’ll find Johnny on the January 24th issue with the headline “Johnny Sings: The Rock ‘n Roll Heart of a Hollywood Rebel.” The rock-star cover photo is by Matthew Rolston; you can see a larger version here: http://tinyurl.com/27fayx and another of Ralston’s pictures here: http://tinyurl.com/2egqw9 Inside ROLLING STONE is an interview by Gavin Edwards that focuses not just on SWEENEY TODD but on the importance of music throughout Johnny’s life. Here’s a brief excerpt from that interview:

ROLLING STONE: What was the first song you could play [guitar] through?

JOHNNY DEPP: [T]e first song I played all the way through must have been “Stairway to Heaven.” I remember getting through the fingerpicking and just cursing Jimmy Page.

ROLLING STONE: What was your first band?

JOHNNY DEPP: When I was about thirteen, I got together with some other kids in the neighborhood. This one guy had a bass, we knew a guy who had a PA system, we made our own lights. It was really ramshackle and great. We’d play at people’s backyard parties. Everything from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin to Cheap Trick to Devo–and “Johnny B. Goode” was the closer.

ROLLING STONE: You’ve got that wistful look in your eyes.

JOHNNY DEPP: You’re thirteen years old and you’re playing rock & roll. Loud. Poorly. But somebody’s letting you do it in their back yard. And it was absolute perfection. It was freedom. Right off the bat, there was no question: I had found my future.

The Zone thanks Emma for posting the ROLLING STONE news; you can read a longer excerpt on the News & Views forum, and a commentary thread on the Pit. ROLLING STONE has a photo gallery devoted to Johnny Depp on its website right now; you can see it here: http://www.rollingstone.com/ –Part-Time Poet

PIRATES dominated the 34th People’s Choice Awards: Johnny Depp won the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Male Movie Star for the fourth straight year, earning the title for his performance as Captain Jack Sparrow; his co-star Keira Knightley, who plays Elizabeth Swann, won the award for Favorite Female Action Star; and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END was named Favorite Movie, as befits 2007’s worldwide box office champion. AT WORLD’S END also won a unique award–Favorite Threequel, besting SPIDER-MAN 3 and SHREK THE THIRD–in a category created for this year’s films.

Due to the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America, the People’s Choice Awards did not have their usual format; there was no red carpet and no gathering of stars in an auditorium. Queen Latifah hosted the event and read the names of the winners in three dozen categories. Some winners were shown giving taped acceptance speeches, but there were no speeches from any of the POTC winners . . . although the broadcast did air a clip of one of Johnny’s older acceptance speeches near the beginning of the show.

The Zone thanks Lady Abberline and all of the members who posted reports from the show as it aired on CBS; you can read their comments on the Pit. A complete list of People’s Choice winners can be found on the Zone’s News & Views forum; thanks to Theresa for posting them. Congratulations to Johnny, Keira, and everyone who worked on PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END–you are the people’s choice once again. –Part-Time Poet

Johnny Depp greets a screaming crowd at the Tokyo premiere of his latest film SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET on January 8, 2008. Johnny wore a black suit and a white shirt open at the neck; a claret-and-black silk tie hung casually around his neck, not knotted, but adding a splash of Sweeney red to his ensemble. Director Tim Burton also enlivened his customary black attire with a dash of red; in Tim’s case, a red-and-black striped shirt. To see a photo of Johnny Depp and Tim Burton on the red carpet in Tokyo, click here: http://tinyurl.com/25guth and to see a larger version of our portrait of Johnny at left, click here: http://tinyurl.com/yqs4ua

The Zone thanks Carasun, AnaMaria and Bonnie for the premiere pictures. You can read a play-by-play account of the Tokyo premiere on the Zone’s Pit discussion forum; congratulations to GAO and the other Zoners who attended the premiere, and many thanks to GAO who phoned in reports from the premiere while it was happening. We loved sharing the event with you! –Part-Time Poet

There’s Johnny! That’s a photo of Johnny Depp, clad in a familiar flannel shirt, blue sunglasses, and a dark brown fedora, arriving at Narita International Airport near Tokyo on January 8th. According to Reuters, “hundreds of fans who were waiting for hours– some even for two days near the airport–screamed and waved” as Johnny walked through the arrival hall. “I waited here for two days. But it was worth it,” 19-year-old Aya Ogata told Reuters. She came from Nagoya and slept only a few hours outside the airport the previous night. Reiko Shibuya flew 1,000 kilometres from Japan’s northernmost island off Hokkaido with her 16-year-old daughter for the chance to see Johnny Depp in person. “This is my dream-come-true,” she said.

You can see Johnny’s arrival at Narita International in this Italian video clip: http://tinyurl.com/2e5fp6 and read more about Johnny’s visit to Tokyo on the Zone’s News & Views forum and on the Pit. The Zone thanks Emma for posting the video and the Reuters article. To see a larger version of the photo at left, click here: http://tinyurl.com/2l2e8k and to see a photo of Johnny greeting his supporters, click here: http://tinyurl.com/2skqsr Thanks to AnaMaria for sharing the photos! –Part-Time Poet

Despite five nominations, SWEENEY TODD was shut out at the Critics’ Choice Awards, a fate it shared with INTO THE WILD, which earned seven nominations but no wins. The Broadcast Film Critics Association (in a tedious telecast that did little to burnish the awards’ reputation) selected NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem), although Best Ensemble was awarded to HAIRSPRAY (and no, “Best Ensemble” was not a costuming award, so John Travolta’s pink-sequined gown did not figure into the voting). Best Actor and Actress went to Daniel Day-Lewis in THERE WILL BE BLOOD and Julie Christie in AWAY FROM HER; Best Supporting Actress was Amy Ryan in GONE BABY GONE. Julian Schnabel’s THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY won for Best Foreign Language Film, while HAIRSPRAY’s Nikki Blonsky and THE KITE RUNNER’s Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada were voted Best Young Actress and Actor. You can read a full list of the Critics’ Choice winners here: http://tinyurl.com/287fbo –Part-Time Poet

Another feather in Johnny Depp’s cap: motion picture exhibitors voted him the “Top Money-Making Star of 2007” in the 76th annual Quigley poll. The Quigley Poll, conducted every year since 1932, asks motion picture exhibitors to vote for the ten stars that they believe generated the most box-office revenue in the preceding year for their theatres. The Quigley poll has long been considered one of the most reliable indicators of a movie star’s real box-office draw because the selections are done by people whose livelihood depends on choosing the films that will bring audiences to their theatres. This is the second year in a row that Johnny Depp has held the #1 position in the Quigley poll; he first appeared (ranked #6) in 2003, and ranked second (to Tom Cruise) in 2005.

For the first time in 24 years (since 1983), the exhibitors did not list a single female star in their top ten box-office performers. Here is the 2007 list: (1) Johnny Depp; (2) Will Smith; (3) George Clooney; (4) Matt Damon; (5) Denzel Washington; (6) Russell Crowe; (7) Tom Cruise; (8) Nicolas Cage; (9) Will Ferrell; (10) Tom Hanks. The exhibitors chose Shia LaBeouf of TRANSFORMERS and JUNO’s Ellen Page as “stars of tomorrow.”

The Zone thanks Theresa for posting the story; you can read more about the Quigley poll on the News & Views forum. –Part-Time Poet

The January 2nd issue of the Los Angeles Times carries a delightful article by Mark Salisbury reporting his interview with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp; details reveal that the interview took place during the London press junket for SWEENEY TODD in late November, when both of Salisbury’s subjects were suffering from the flu. Nonetheless, the friends are cheerful and quick-witted as they pass the Kleenex box back-and-forth and tell Salisbury about their work. In addition to the usual questions about whether Johnny was nervous about singing in a film, they discuss their “silent movie” approach to conveying the central character’s torment.

Salisbury explains that Burton and Depp wanted to recreate the “minimal but expressive acting style” employed by actors like Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney. “It’s almost a lost art,” Johnny tells Salisbury. “[John] Barrymore was a master, but the king for me was Lon Chaney. You go back and watch films like THE PENALTY and see this rage and sadness, this huge range of emotions, without the luxury of dialogue.” Tim Burton reveals that every day during the shooting, he and Johnny “would cut Sweeney’s lines down to the bare minimum.” Explains Burton, “Johnny can, just by looking and not saying anything, project pain and sadness and anger and longing. [. . .] That’s what all those actors could do without a word and that was the exciting thing about this. The story is told through the eyes and the singing.”

The Zone thanks Emma for sharing the Salisbury article; you can read it in its entirety on the News & Views forum. –Part-Time Poet

The Zone welcomes 2008 with a wonderful comment Johnny Depp made in the recent “Unscripted” interview he and Tim Burton did for Moviefone, in which the men interviewed each other using questions that Moviefone’s readers submitted online. Tim asks Johnny, “Do you ever go online to see what your fans are saying?” Of course one would expect the answer to be “No, of course not,” but instead Johnny says this:

JOHNNY DEPP: There are a couple of sites that are actually very, very helpful . . . like, a couple of them I can access and I can see what’s happening before, like, before I know, before my agent knows . . . .

TIM BURTON: There’s a lot of stuff that’s not accurate, isn’t there? I mean–

JOHNNY DEPP: Yeah, but they sift through somehow, miraculously, they . . . these people are able to sift through and get to the, you know, the actual part of it, you know, the truth. [. . .] Either that or they know, they’re familiar enough with me and, you know, who I am, that . . . they can slice away the crap, you know what I mean, and go straight to the heart of the matter. It’s, it’s . . . they’re amazing; it’s really . . . a lot of information out there.

The Zone would like to begin 2008 by thanking our intrepid newshounds who keep us up-to-date with all of the latest developments regarding Johnny Depp’s career projects and public appearances, and our picture detectives and Depp historians who share their photographs and their expert knowledge on our forums–always with accuracy, sensitivity, and respect for Johnny Depp. And we would like to thank Johnny for speaking so kindly about his fansites. We will replay that interview clip over and over!

To see the Moviefone clip where Johnny talks about websites, click here: http://tinyurl.com/yrfw7h Unfortunately AOL/Moviefone is not available for viewing in all areas; we apologize if the clip does not play for you. Many thanks to namaste for bringing the clip to our attention, to Lucky13 for designing our New Year’s photo, and to Theresa for the transcript of Johnny’s remarks. What a wonderful surprise it was to hear those words! –Part-Time Poet