Johnny Depp in 'The Rum Diary'

Written by Bob Suggs Tuesday, 07 February 2012 19:38

Movies - Blu-ray and DVD Releases

"This is the most fun I've had watching Depp in years." -Steve Prokopy, AIN'T IT COOL NEWS

Based on the novel by Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary, follows itinerant journalist Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) on an alcohol-fueled journey across the pristine island of Puerto Rico. Adopting the rum-soaked life of the island, Paul soon becomes obsessed with Chenault (Amber Heard) the wildly attractive fiancée of Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), an American businessman involved in shady development deals. When Kemp is recruited by Sanderson to write favorably about his latest unsavory scheme, the journalist is presented with a choice: to use his words for the corrupt businessman's financial benefit or use them to take him down.

Actor-producer Johnny Depp pays homage to his friend Hunter S. Thompson through this sprightly adaptation of the novelist's semi-autobiographical novel. Depp plays Paul Kemp, the booze-sozzled journalist who takes center stage in Bruce Robinson's period comedy. Out of desperation, the New Yorker takes a job with a San Juan newspaper in 1960, where he reports to the cynical Lotterman (Richard Jenkins) and shares a squalid flat with laid-back photographer Sala (The Sopranos' Michael Rispoli) and the truly unhinged "crime and religion" reporter Moburg (a scene-stealing Giovanni Ribisi).

The three Ugly Americans do their best to drain the island's rum supply until Kemp meets Aaron Eckhart's slick Sanderson, who recruits the writer to promote his real estate ventures, regardless as to the number of poverty-stricken Puerto Ricans his hotels will displace. Politically, Kemp leans left, but he needs the dough, so he accepts the offer, only to find the ultimate temptation in Sanderson's uninhibited fiancée, Chenault (the stunning Amber Heard).

It's a tricky balancing act, but when the natives start getting restless, Kemp risks losing everything. If the conclusion feels anticlimactic, Robinson keeps the antic energy going through nerve-wracking car chases, balletic cock fights, and a hilarious acid excursion that recalls the hotel trip-out in Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, to which Robinson's film serves as a less surrealistic cousin. If it isn't as certain to become a cult classic, like the director's equally inebriated Withnail and I, Depp and company always remain true to Thompson's irascible spirit.

Actors: Johnny Depp, Giovanni Ribisi, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Rispoli, Amber Heard
Directors: Bruce Robinson
Writers: Bruce Robinson, Hunter S. Thompson
Producers: A.J. Dix, Anthony Rhulen, Christi Dembrowski, Colin Vaines, George Tobia Jr.
Format: AC-3, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen
Language: English
Subtitles: English
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number of discs: 1
Rated: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Release Date: February 14, 2012
Run Time: 120 minutes

The Rum Diary [Blu-ray]

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Actor: Johnny Depp Actor: Giovanni Ribisi Actor: Aaron Eckhart Actor: Michael Rispoli Actor: Amber Heard AspectRatio: 1.85:1 AudienceRating: R (Restricted) Binding: Blu-ray Brand: Sony Color: color Creator: Bruce Robinson Creator: A.J. Dix Creator: Anthony Rhulen Creator: Christi Dembrowski Creator: Colin Vaines Creator: George Tobia Jr. Creator: Hunter S. Thompson Director: Bruce Robinson EAN: 0043396394889 EANList: Format: AC-3 Format: Blu-ray Format: Dolby Format: NTSC Format: Subtitled Format: Widescreen IsEligibleForTradeIn: 1 ItemDimensions: Label: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Languages: ListPrice: Manufacturer: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment MPN: COLBR39488 NumberOfDiscs: 1 PackageDimensions: PackageQuantity: 1 PartNumber: COLBR39488 PictureFormat: Anamorphic Widescreen ProductGroup: DVD ProductTypeName: ABIS_DVD Publisher: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment RegionCode: 1 ReleaseDate: 2012-02-14 RunningTime: 120 SKU: S043396394889 Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Title: The Rum Diary [Blu-ray] TradeInValue: UPC: 043396394889 UPCList:

Product Description Based on the novel by Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary, follows itinerant journalist Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) on an alcohol-fueled journey across the pristine island of Puerto Rico. Adopting the rum-soaked life of the island, Paul soon becomes obsessed with Chenault (Amber Heard) the wildly attractive fiancée of Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), an American businessman involved in shady development deals. When Kemp is recruited by Sanderson to write favorably about his latest unsavory scheme, the journalist is presented with a choice: to use his words for the corrupt businessman’s financial benefit or use them to take him down. Amazon.com Actor-producer Johnny Depp pays homage to his friend Hunter S. Thompson through this sprightly adaptation of the novelist's semi-autobiographical novel. Depp plays Paul Kemp, the booze-sozzled journalist who takes center stage in Bruce Robinson's period comedy. Out of desperation, the New Yorker takes a job with a San Juan newspaper in 1960, where he reports to the cynical Lotterman (Richard Jenkins) and shares a squalid flat with laid-back photographer Sala (The Sopranos' Michael Rispoli) and the truly unhinged "crime and religion" reporter Moburg (a scene-stealing Giovanni Ribisi). The three Ugly Americans do their best to drain the island's rum supply until Kemp meets Aaron Eckhart's slick Sanderson, who recruits the writer to promote his real estate ventures, regardless as to the number of poverty-stricken Puerto Ricans his hotels will displace. Politically, Kemp leans left, but he needs the dough, so he accepts the offer, only to find the ultimate temptation in Sanderson's uninhibited fiancée, Chenault (the stunning Amber Heard). It's a tricky balancing act, but when the natives start getting restless, Kemp risks losing everything. If the conclusion feels anticlimactic, Robinson keeps the antic energy going through nerve-wracking car chases, balletic cock fights, and a hilarious acid excursion that recalls the hotel trip-out in Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, to which Robinson's film serves as a less surrealistic cousin. If it isn't as certain to become a cult classic, like the director's equally inebriated Withnail and I, Depp and company always remain true to Thompson's irascible spirit. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

The Rum Diary: A Novel

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Author: Hunter S. Thompson Binding: Paperback EAN: 9780684856476 EANList: ISBN: 0684856476 ItemDimensions: Label: Simon & Schuster Languages: ListPrice: Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster NumberOfItems: 1 NumberOfPages: 224 PackageDimensions: ProductGroup: Book ProductTypeName: ABIS_BOOK PublicationDate: 1999-11-01 Publisher: Simon & Schuster ReleaseDate: 1999-11-01 SKU: 9799851 Studio: Simon & Schuster Title: The Rum Diary: A Novel

Product Description Begun in 1959 by a then-twenty-two-year-old Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary is a brilliantly tangled love story of jealousy, treachery and violent alcoholic lust in the Caribbean boomtown that was San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the late 1950s. Exuberant and mad, youthful and energetic, The Rum Diary is an outrageous, drunken romp in the spirit of Thompson's bestselling Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell's Angels. Amazon.com Review "Disgusting as he usually was," Hunter Thompson writes in this, his 1959 novel, "on rare occasions he showed flashes of a stagnant intelligence. But his brain was so rotted with drink and dissolute living that whenever he put it to work it behaved like an old engine that had gone haywire from being dipped in lard." Surprise! Thompson isn't writing about himself, but one of the other, older, aimlessly carousing newspapermen in Puerto Rico, a guy called Moberg whose chief achievement is the ability to find his car after a night's drinking because it stinks so much. (I can smell it for blocks, he boasts.) The autobiographical hero, Paul Kemp, is 30, trapped in a dead-end job (Thompson wound up writing for a bowling magazine), and feeling as if his big-time writer dreams, soaked in Fitzgerald and Hemingway, are evaporating as rapidly as the rum in his fist. In fact, Thompson was only 22 when he wrote The Rum Diary, but his fear of winding up like Moberg was well founded. What saved him was the fantastic conflagration of the 1960s, a fiery wind on which the reptilian wings of his prose style could catch and soar to the cackling heights of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Puerto Rico in 1959 doesn't have bad craziness enough to offer Thompson--just a routine drunken-reporter stomping by local cops and a riot over Kemp's friend's temptress girlfriend, a scantily imagined Smith College alumna who likes to strip nude on beaches and in nightclubs to taunt men. Thompson's prose style only intermittently takes tentative flight--compare the stomping scenes in this book with his breakthrough, Hell's Angels--but it's interesting to see him so nakedly reveal his sensitive innards, before the celebrated clownish carapace grew in. It's also interesting to see how he improved this full version of the novel from the more raw (and racist) excerpts found in the 1990 collection Songs of the Doomed (available on audiocassette, partly narrated by Thompson). --Tim Appelo

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Johnny Depp in 'The Rum Diary'
"This is the most fun I've had watching Depp in years." -Steve Prokopy, AIN'T IT COOL NEWS Based on the novel by Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary, follows itinerant journalist Paul Kemp (Johnny...

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