Cinema Experts

"I mean usually with movies, if you're dark, you're a bad guy. That's it. I turned down a million bad guy things."
Turturro was born in Brooklyn, New York to Katherine, an amateur jazz singer who worked in a Navy yard during World War II and Nicholas Turturro, a carpenter and construction worker who immigrated from Giovinazzo, Italy at the age of six and fought as a Navy serviceman in D-Day. He was raised as a Roman Catholic and moved to the Rosedale section of Queens, New York with his family when he was six. He majored in drama at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and completed his MFA at the Yale School of Drama. He worked as an extra in Raging Bull (1980).
Turturro created the title role of John Patrick Shanley's Danny and the Deep Blue Sea at the Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center in 1983. He repeated it the following year off-Broadway and won an Obie Award. Spike Lee liked Turturro's performance in Five Corners so much that he chose to cast him in Do the Right Thing. This movie was the first of a long-standing collaboration between the famous director and John Turturro, which also includes Mo' Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Clockers (1995), Girl 6 (1996), He Got Game (1998), Summer of Sam (1999), and She Hate Me (2004).
A versatile actor comfortable with both comedy and drama, Turturro also had an extended collaboration with the Coen Brothers, appearing in their films Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), The Big Lebowski (1998), and most recently O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). He also appeared as a severely disturbed patient of Jack Nicholson's in the comedy Anger Management and played Johnny Depp's antagonist in Secret Window. Turturro is also an occasional guest star on Monk as Adrian's eccentric brother, Ambrose Monk. Before becoming a household name, Turturro made a cameo in the Woody Allen film Hannah and Her Sisters. One of his comedy performances has attracted a cult following: his breezy take on Groucho Marx in the neglected 1992 comedy Brain Donors, an update of A Night at the Opera starring Turturro as an ambulance-chasing lawyer.
He won an Emmy award for his portrayal of Adrian Monk's brother Ambrose Monk in the USA Network series Monk. He has also been nominated and won many awards from many film organizations such as SAG, Cannes Film Festival, Golden Globes, and others. Despite his many acclaimed performances, Turturro has never been nominated for an Academy Award.
Turturro produced and directed, as well as acted in, the film Illuminata (1999), which also starred his wife Katherine Borowitz. He also wrote and directed the film Romance and Cigarettes (2005). He recently appeared in Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd as the right hand man of C.I.A. man Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), and as the insidious Sector 7 agent Simmons in Michael Bay's Transformers.

“The only thing that matters is the ending. It's the most important part of the story. And this one, is very good. This one is perfect.”
Johnny Depp, who is indeed a great actor (remember Edward Scissorhands?), never really got noticed or credit before Box Office Smash Hit Pirates of the Caribbean. Well this is technically Depp's first film since Pirates so he has reeled in a new audience for his films. Secret Window was based on a Stephen King book entitled Secret Window, Secret Garden. The movie was drafted into a screenplay by writer/director David Koepp who wrote many great films including Panic Room, Stir of Echoes, and even the original Jurassic Park.
Secret Window is about a divorced writer named Mort Rainey (Johnny Depp). The movie begins on a depressing note where Mort finds out that his wife Amy (Maria Bello) is cheating on him. The movie than flashes forward a few months when Mr. Rainey is living all alone in the woods. A weird man named Mr. Shooter (John Turturro) shows up and accuses him of plagiarism. Mr. Rainey believes the allegations to be false but is now being stalked by this Mr. Shooter. Then things start to occur and it's up the Mr. Rainey to stop this before him and his ex-wife become harmed.
Another terrific performance by Johnny Depp is the main reason to see the film. His acting is flawless; he delivers yet again another terrific character. What I like about Depp is that he always plays a different weird character in every film he is in and to top it off every character he portrays is likable. I also liked John Turturro who nailed the southern stalker role. He was very creepy and his character was very believable. You don't want to mess with Mr. Shooter, believe me. Maria Bello does another good job and can add this good film to her resume along with her great performance in The Cooler. The cast of this film was right on target.
David Koepp did a good job on the film, there are some really great locations in which this film was shot. The cabin in the woods was very creepy and I liked that the main character lived in this small town. There were also some pretty cool camera angles in the film along with some really suspenseful scenes.
The ending was a improvement on King's story. Lets face King some hearts is two nice a guy to kill off certain characters he admitted his anguish over killing the child in pet cemetery. Koepp had more at stake making this film than king would writing another novella, so it stands to reason he would feel more compelled to get it right.I wonder if King is happy. I think he should be… 8/10

"With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it. There has to be, otherwise it's just not acting. It's lying."
Johnny Depp's first major role was in the 1984 horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street, playing the heroine's boyfriend and one of Freddy's victims. In 1986, he also appeared in a secondary role as a Vietnamese speaking private in Oliver Stone's Platoon. Johnny has since stated that he feels Platoon was the first 'proper' film he was in. Depp then left his teen idol image in 1990, after playing the quirky title role in the Tim Burton film, Edward Scissorhands. The film's success began a long association with Burton, as Depp starred in several of his films, including Ed Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) and Corpse Bride (2005). Depp, an avid fan and long-time friend of writer Hunter S. Thompson, played a version of Thompson (named Raoul Duke) in 1998's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, based on the writer's pseudobiographical novel of the same name. Depp also accompanied Thompson as his road manager on one of the author's last book tours. In 2006, Depp contributed a touching and personal foreword to Gonzo by Hunter S. Thompson, a posthumous visual biography of the writer's legacy published by ammobooks.com. A close friend of Thompson's, Depp paid for most of Thompson's memorial event, complete with fireworks and the shooting of Thompson's ashes by a cannon, in Aspen, Colorado, where Thompson lived.
Depp's film characters have been described by the press as "iconic loners," and Depp has noted that this period of his career was full of "studio defined failures" and films that were "box office poison," stating that he believes film studios never "understood" the films he appeared in and did not know how to market them properly. Depp has also said that he specifically chose to appear in films that he found personally interesting, rather than those he thought would succeed at the box office.
Depp's status as a major star was solidified with the success of the 2003 Walt Disney Pictures film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, for which his lead performance as the suave pirate Captain Jack Sparrow was highly praised. The performance was initially received negatively by the studio bosses who saw the film, but the character became popular with the movie-going public; in 2006, Depp's co-star from the sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean, Bill Nighy, described the role as probably being "one of the most popular performances of recent times."The film's director, Gore Verbinski, has said that Depp's Jack Sparrow character closely resembles Depp's own personality, although Depp himself said that he modelled the character after Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. Depp, who has noted that he was "surprised" and "touched" at the positive reception given to the film, was nominated for an Academy Award for the role. In 2004, he was again nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, this time for playing Scottish author J. M. Barrie in the film Finding Neverland. Depp next starred as Willy Wonka in the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was a major success at the box office.
Depp returned to the character of Jack Sparrow for the sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which opened on July 7, 2006 and grossed $135.5 million in the first three days of its U.S. release, breaking a box office record in reaching the highest weekend tally ever. The next sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean named At World's End was released May 24, 2007; Depp has mentioned his attachment to his Captain Jack Sparrow character, specifying that Sparrow is "definitely a big part of me," and expressing his desire to portray the character in further sequels. Depp voiced Sparrow in the video game, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow.
Depp and Gore Verbinski are executive producers of the album "Rogues Gallery, Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys".
Depp, as a child was obsessed with Dark Shadows. Warner Brothers pitched the idea of making another film to Johnny, and he accepted. In July 2007 a rights deal was closed with the estate of Dan Curtis , the producer/director who created the soap that aired weekdays on ABC, from 1966 to 1971. Depp and Graham King will produce with David Kennedy, who ran Dan Curtis Productions inc. until Curtis died in 2006 of a brain tumor. Infinitum-Nihil's Christi Dembrowski served as the point person on the deal.
It has been confirmed that he will portray Paul Kemp, the main character in a film version of writer Hunter S. Thompson's book, The Rum Diary. Johnny Depp will next play the title role of Sweeney Todd in Tim Burton's film adaptation of the musical Sweeney Todd. Depp's production company has picked up the rights to the story of poisoned former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.