I watched Into The Woods this weekend, which generated these thoughts:

1. Johnny Depp leverages his career investments better than any actor on the planet. Aside from the goings-on at The Viper Room, he spent most of the ’90s as a pretty, vulnerable, quasi-sexual weirdo, building up a massive stockpile of quirky good will, which he now uses to infuse his array of murderous barbers, hateful chocolatiers, drunken pirates, bizarre racial stereotypes, and child predators with what would normally be an incongrous hint of harmless whimsy. He gets away with roles few actors of his stature would even attempt, largely because he dedicated his youth to seeming innocuous. Genius.
2. How is it that everyone lost their collective minds over Fifty Shades releasing on Valentine’s Day, while pretty much ignoring ITW coming out on Christmas? Given their MPAA ratings and the age-ranges of their respective audiences, I’m guessing more fragile minds were warped by watching a twelve year-old girl’s trip through the Rape Forest –and what basically amounts to another female character’s death-by-slut-shaming in said forest– than by sitting through two hours of Dakota Johnson trying to look nervous and excited.
3. I was surprised by how little we hear from Rapunzel, until it occurred to me that emotionally-stunted kidnap victims –who have spent their lives with the matted yoke of oppression growing from their heads– probably deserve a bit of post-rescue downtime. She’s basically a brittle-haired Kimmy Schmidt, after all.