200801241353.jpgThere are at least two crack­ers in this week’s line-up. Firstly, Johnny Depp re-unites with Tim Bur­ton for faith­ful adapt­a­tion of Steph­en Sondheim’s acclaimed music­al Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Depp is in his finest form (des­pite not hav­ing a Broad­way-strength voice) and is joined by a won­der­ful cast includ­ing Helena Bon­ham Carter, Alan Rick­man, Timothy Spall and Sacha Bar­on Cohen. Read­ings, Empire, Sky City Quens­gate.

“The West Wing” cre­at­or Aaron Sor­kin returns to DC to script Charlie Wilson’s War: the true story of a reneg­ade but prin­cipled play­boy Con­gress­man (Tom Hanks) who almost single-handedly fun­ded the Afghan res­ist­ance to the Soviet inva­sion in the 1980s. I was sur­prised to see this wasn’t nom­in­ated for an Oscar in the Best Adap­ted Screen­play cat­egory but Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man is in there as Sup­port­ing Act­or for his excel­lent turn as impol­it­ic CIA oper­at­ive Gust Avrako­tos. You can see this one at the Embassy, Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate.

[The rest of this week’s new release sum­mar­ised after the jump…]

The Jane Aus­ten Book Club is also an adapt­a­tion (of Kar­en Joy Fowler‘s best seller about a group of women who get togeth­er to read Austen‘s books and dis­cov­er the unlikely par­al­lels with their own lives). It fea­tures a strong cast includ­ing Maria Bello, Emily Blunt, Kathy Baker, Jimmy Smits and Hugh Dancy. Per­fect Pent­house-fod­der and, sure enough, it plays there and at the Light­house in Petone.

Epic Movie was very near the top of my list of worst films of 2007 and, some­how, the makers of that fiasco have been giv­en anoth­er chance with Meet the Spartans. Of course, the fact that Epic Movie made nearly a mil­lion dol­lars in NZ alone might have some­thing to do with it: Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate only.

There’s a spe­cial bonus this week­end: sneak pre­views of sur­prise Best Pic­ture nom­in­ee Juno at Read­ings, Rialto, Pent­house and Sky City Queens­gate. Also, sneak­ing this week­end is Leonardo Di Caprio’s envir­on­ment­al doc­u­ment­ary The 11th Hour: Rialto, Light­house Petone and Pent­house.

Sweeney Todd has already been reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes and the oth­ers will show up next Wed­nes­day (and in the Cap­it­al Times the same day). Also at F&S today are a couple of thoughts on the recent Academy Award nom­in­a­tions includ­ing a shout out to Wel­ling­to­ni­an Mike Hop­kins for yet anoth­er Oscar nod – this time as Super­vising Sound Edit­or on Trans­formers.