Bizarreness and whimsy.

Watching "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" reminds me how I used to love Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake. That pair: genius. My other favourite genius pairing of the moment is, of course, Tim Burton and Danny Elfman. And then there's the indispensable Johnny Depp. Fametracker deems him more important than chocolate... and hey, who am I to disagree? I was turned off Depp after seeing his interview on "Inside the Actors Studio." He starts to talk about his then-new baby, and just at that moment decides to light up a cigarette and smoke it... on stage, inside the studio, with all those people in the audience, and James Lipton sitting right across from him. It was bad enough that he was smoking, but I thought his timing was especially disgusting. Dude, what were you thinking? But now back to Dahl.

I can still recite the first few lines of Dahl's version of Cinderella from Revolting Rhymes. ("I guess you think you know this story....") That book is so funny. The drawings are fantastic. Whimsy is such an important quality. Burton and Elfman have it too.

So, I think I'm back to liking Johnny Depp. He is so wierd, but so good at what he does. His Willy Wonka was perfectly odd. And now I have to go back and watch all those movies I refused to watch during my Depp-boycotting days. And I think I need to rediscover Helena Bonham Carter, because she's freakily bizarre too, but in a good way. So much more interesting than cookie-cutter celebrities. We should all be caricatures of ourselves, don't you think?