Articles from July 2010



Director Gore Verbinski talks about his first animated film, RANGO

Before the release of the two-minute trailer for Rango, director Gore Verbinski invited some members of the press to the screening room of his Blink Wink Productions, showed them footage, and answered questions about his first-ever animated film. Rango stars Johnny Depp as a stranded chameleon, and Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Bill Nighy, Alfred Molina, Ned Beatty and Harry Dean Stanton as denizens of a town called Dirt in the Mojave desert. “It’s a quest. It’s an identity quest for Rango,” Verbinski told the press. The movie also has many elements of a classic Western. “It really started with this concept of first just creating this Western genre based on creatures of the desert and then from there I sat down with four of my favorite illustrators and said ‘Let’s conjure. Let’s go. But that’s the only rule.’ Snakes, tortoises, lizards, everything. Out of that we started to build iconography and first is just simple silhouettes of shapes. At the same time we’re working on the screenplay with John Logan and both things influenced each other.”

“We’re just trying to do something different,” Verbinski told ComingSoon.net. “I feel like that there are a lot of animated films that have a certain aesthetic and we’re trying to stay at arm’s length from that. Besides the Western genre, there’s a spirituality to the desert that we wanted to bring to the film, not unlike [Hayao] Miyazaki or some of the surrealists. There’s something else going on. You’ll feel it in the movie. Nature has a kind of energy and that is definitely present.”

The Zone thanks Emma for sharing articles from USA Today and ComingSoon.net, and Theresa for a report from Collider.com. You can read much more about Rango on the Zone’s News & Views forum.

First photos of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in ON STRANGER TIDES!

Captain Jack is back! The first photos of Johnny Depp in costume as Captain Jack Sparrow have emerged from the filming of Pirates of the Caribbean:On Stranger Tides, and the dashing pirate looks as charming as ever. Johnny Depp and Kevin McNally (as Mr. Gibbs) shot a scene on a Hawaiian beach in which Captain Jack peers intently at a clear glass bottle. Perhaps he’s wondering where the rum has gone . . . . To see a larger version of the photo of Captain Jack at left, CLICK HERE; that’s director Rob Marshall in the dark blue shirt, and the fuzzy thing behind Captain Jack’s head is a microphone, not a low cloud.

To see a photo of Captain Jack inspecting the bottle, with Mr. Gibbs behind him, CLICK HERE, and for a different view of the actors and crew on the beach, CLICK HERE. The Zone thanks FANtasticJD, Emma, and Evochka for sharing photos. It’s great to see our favorite pirate again!