Johnny Depp is saying he didn’t base his Willy Wonka character on Michael Jackson. “It never entered my mind,” Depp allegedly told an interviewer. “Michael Jackson loves children but Willy Wonka doesn’t.” The actual inspirations, he said, were kiddie TV hosts Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Rogers and Uncle Al. To which I say, trust the art but never the artist.

Check out this Hustle & Flow pay-attention promo thing. Not a trailer — it just lays out what Craig Brewer’s film (Paramount Classics, 7.22) is from an inward thematic perspective. Sums it up, gets it all. But Anthony Anderson, man…cat’s gotta get on that treadmill and cut down on whatever he’s eatin’ ’cause there’s a surplus.

Here’s Lewis Beale’s assessment in today’s issue of Newsday about the summer slump. He agrees that admissions have been down since ’02 (how can he not agree to a fact?) and acknowledges that exhibitors are getting hurt the most, but he also explains how moneybags Hollywood is doing fine. I’m quoted saying the following: “The issue isn’t that movie attendance is soft this summer. The issue is that the fundamental idea of ‘going out to the movies’ is losing its hold on the moviegoing public. Seeing movies in theaters is being slowly depopularized and retired by different groups for different reasons.”

In the 7.18 New York Times, reporter Sharon Waxman has an interesting piece about Hollywood trying to tailor its movie content and adapt selling techniques to reach the thriving Christian demo — i.e., the audience primarily responsibly for turning The Passion of the Christ into a gargantuan hit last year. In paragraph #2, she quotes Mr. and Mrs. Smith director Doug Liman using the term “hip, young cool Christians.” Whoa…stop right there. It’s all well and good for Hollywood to try and make money any way it can, but can there be such a thing as Christians who are truly “hip and cool”? In a socio-political context — especially if you define “hip and cool” as sympathizing with liberal, neo-bohemian, anti-bourgeois attitudes, being into ars gratia artis, understanding the term “cosmic flow” and trying to roll with this, and respecting other cultures and lifestyles — Liman’s statement sounds like a sick joke. Is there anyone who would argue that an awful lot of Christians seem to be into rolling back the clock and restoring the authority of Christ by destroying or severely reducing the influence of Godless liberal-heathen cliques (especially gays) in the big cities? The reason Hollywood leftie types find 21st Century Christian culture so appalling isn’t the religious convictions of the devoted (i.e., saying they worship and respect and try to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ…we all could use a little of that). It’s the fact that 95% of Christians seem to be unrepentant xenophobes. It’s the impression that most of them seem to embrace radical-right beliefs (Terry Schiavo was mentally alert and just sleeping…women shouldn’t have the right to choose over abortion). It’s their unqualified knee-jerk patriotism (our sons and daughters are dying in Iraq so our presence over there is therefore righteous, and those bald-faced lies used to justify invading in the first place aren’t worth worrying about). And it’s their electoral support of the unregenerately pro-corporate, anti-environmental, deficit-expanding Bushies. On top of the fact that Christians have no fashion sense (walk around any midwestern airport and you’ll see what I mean) and they all tend to smile in such a way that recalls the grinning of the pod people in Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Warner Bros. is “fine” with the $55 million earned by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, David Poland wrote today on The Hot Blog, but “they are probably a little put off by a $20 million take on a Friday and not getting to triple that with a family movie.” A “little” put off? Then Poland rhetorically inquires, “Will Charlie get a whole new wave of kids who spend the [coming] week talking about the film and from parents of younger kids who hear that the darkness has a strong positive message?” What…he’s serious?

Okay, I was a bit off. Charlie and the Choclate Factory didn’t make $60 million this weekend — it only hit $55.4 million. Whoa, wait a minute…isn’t an 8% Friday-to-Saturday business falloff a tad unusual for a kid-friendly film? I hear thunder clouds. I see Charlie stepping into…good God, quicksand! Oh, and Wedding Crashers hit $32.2 million…excellent start.

If anyone knows how to assemble a professional-looking flash ad (taking already created elements within four frames and making them appear in sequence, ad infinitum), please get in touch. I don’t know jack about any of this…thanks.

Words from the Flick Filosopher about Johnny Depp, Michael Jackson and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: “Is Tim Burton going soft in the sentiment lobe? How did a cautionary tale about the bad things that happen to obnoxious little kids turn into a celebration of [tyke obnoxiousness]? How did a celebration of the exuberant spirit of a conscious nonconformity turn into a cautionary tale about the psychosis of reclusive oddballism? Depp’s Wonka, with his pale, pasty face and neurotic standoffishness, scarily invokes the Michael Jackson example of social deviance: this is our new idea of unconventionality, as debased and corrupt and possibly criminal. Where Gene Wilder’s Wonka in the 1971 original film was a philosopher — “We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams,” he intones at one point, an enigmatic but fascinating non sequitur — Depp’s is a buffoon, walking into glass walls like a fourth, fey Stooge.”

When I first saw the photo of former New York cop Lou Eppolito and his partner after their arrest for alleged involvement in mob hits, I knew I’d seen him before. It hit me this morning…it was that five-second quickie cameo in which Eppolito played “Fat Andy” in Goodfellas. Remember that long elaborate steadicam shot in which the camera, assuming Ray Liotta’s travelling POV, goes from one wiseguy to the next inside that bamboo-decorated mob hangout? Eppolito is one of the patrons who waves slightly at Liotta and says, in a relaxed and unforced way, “What’s up, guy?” Eppolito has played nine small roles in films over the past fifteen years or so.

Craig Modderno’s New York Times story points out that Chris Mulkey is this year’s Jude Law — ’05’s most ubiquitous actor who will have “as many as” eight films coming out this year. (I’ve seen one so far — Mysterious Skin — and have’t even heard of the other seven.) Nice little IMDB story, fine…even if Modderno fails to mention the one performance that Mulkey will almost certainly be remembered for a hundred or two hundred years from now, the one role that should and in all likelihood will be chiselled into his tombstone: Jack DeVries, the alien-inhabited, roadblock-defying driver of that stolen muscle car in Jack Sholder’s The Hidden.

People keep telling me at parties that “nothing all that good has opened so far this year.” They’re wrong, they’re lazy and they need to wake up. Some of the following picks are about to open or have only shown at festivals, okay, but enough with the talk about this being a dry year. There’s been (or will be soon) Gus Van Sant’s Last Days, Jacques Audiard’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, the first two-thirds of Wedding Crashers, Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardener, Paul Haggis’s Crash, Ridley Scott’s entirely decent Kingdom of Heaven; Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow, Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man and The White Diamond, Marilyn Agrelo’s Mad Hot Ballroom, Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man, Sebastian Cordero’s Cronicas, Hans Petter Moland’s The Beautiful Country, The Aristocrats (not funnier than Wedding Crashers, but a different kind of funny), Woody Allen’s Match Point (only shown at Cannes so far, coming in the fall) and Woody’s not-quite-as-good but still commendable Melinda and Melinda, 95% of War of the Worlds (i.e., without the ending), Jonathan Nossiter’s Mondovino, Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter, Gunner Palace and Mike Binder’s The Upside of Anger. 22 films so far that have definitely cut the mustard or better, and there’s five and a half months to go.

The Friday figures suggest Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will end up with someting like $60 million for the weekend…probably. And The Wedding Crashers will come across the Sunday night finish line with $28 to $30 million…fine. Any bets about which film is going to experience the heavier dropoff next weekend? Or which will have the longer legs?