fun stuff: Summer movies

After reading all the doom and gloom of politics do you need something amusing? I did. So go read A Bad Case of Summer Movies from today's Washington Post. Number 5 was my favorite:

5.You can't remember if Johnny Depp is imitating Keith Richards or if Keith Richards is imitating Johnny Depp.

In other words, as part and parcel of their general quality of kitsch, summer movies are almost always full of a kind of smirky in-jokiness. It's their imprimatur of insincerity, their nod to critics and other boring elitists who wander in like naifs, that their makers are really too smart for this sort of garbage. The Johnny Depp thing is a perfect example: Hired by Disney in the original to play a dashing, vivid heroic pirate Jack Sparrow, he confounded everyone by offering up a decadent Keith Richards impersonation, sending up the great Rolling Stone's cadaverous visage and debauched self-awareness. He seems to have single-handedly brought irony to the world of the Summer Movie and the director Gore Verbinski and his screenwriters noticed how big a gag it was and therefore have cast the actual Keith Richards in the third film.