newjerseynewsroom.com

BY LIZ BARRETT

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Heath Ledger's final film, "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," screened at Cannes this morning but despite a cast of huge stars — including Heath's post mortem replacements, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Ferrell — critics were more puzzled than thrilled.

Director Terry Gilliam's film, which still does not have a U.S. distributor, is about the star of a carnival sideshow who makes a deal with the Devil that requires him to take audience members through a magical mirror to explore their imaginations — not always in a good way.

BBC critics said it was "designed for an art house audience," and that most movie-goers "would need to see it more than once to start untangling the multiple themes."

Entertainment Weekly called the plot "a mess of disconnected episodes," adding that "the circus-y visual style adds to a feeling of ... quiet desperation." They didn't care for a scene at the beginning in which Heath's character appears as a dead man:

There's no way around the shock: The first sight of Heath Ledger in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which premiered to an initially sympathetic but increasingly what the huh? audience at Cannes at 8:30 this morning, is as a dead man. ("Why are you fishing dead people out of the river? Leave him alone, he's dead," one member of the Doctor's traveling, existential funhouse troupe tells another.) I can only assume that confounding auteur Terry Gilliam meant to get the obvious out of the way immediately: This is the project Ledger was working on when he died, and this is the sad, off-screen reality through which we are bound to experience the work, so voila.

The Hollywood Reporter said Gilliam used "great skill and imagination" to finish the film without Heath, but not enough to "take the breath away of children or grown-ups."

The combined star power involved will generate a plentiful box office return, but the film is neither intelligent enough nor silly or grotesque enough to become a lasting favorite.

The only clip available at the moment is too short to get a meaningful idea of the movie. We hope a disctributor snatches it up soon and puts it in our neighborhood cineplex, because we can't even imagine anyone not wanting to see Heath's last film.

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Cannes fans pay $56K to kiss Robert Pattinson

Is Robert Pattinson a good kisser? A couple of fans at Thursday night's chic amfAR Cinema Against AIDS 2009 Cocktail Party in Cannes paid 20,000 euros apiece to find out. That's roughly $55,956 combined.
RPattz looked shy and sweet onstage in his gorgeous Dolce & Gabbana tux, shuffling his feet as he waited to find out who would be puckering up for a snog with him. To give bidders an idea of how much a wee buss from the "Twilight" hottie is worth, auctioneer Harvey Weinstein said his daughters changed their last name to Pattison.
Once you've been bitten ...

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Clay Aiken: 'When Adam Lambert sang Ring of Fire, I thought my ears would bleed'

You'd think Clay Aiken would feel some sort of kinship for Adam Lambert. After all, both of them belted out tunes all season long (and we do mean long) on "American Idol," only to lose in the end to softer-voiced underdogs. And both of them were *rumored* to be gay.
But no. Clay made it clear on his pay-to-view web site that he is no Glambert fan. Gawker's Defamer blog posted Clay's words, along with a screen shot to prove they didn't make it up. In a May 21 blog entry entitled "Silence broken," Clay trashed the new Idol:
"I only turn the show on once a season, and only to see what the set looks like each year. This year, I happened to turn it during the minute that Adam Lambert was singing "Ring of Fire" and, at that moment, thought my ears would bleed. Contrived, awful, and slightly frightening! I wasn't really a fan and found myself surprised whenever folks told me that they liked him."
But wait, there's more. Clay — who is an Idol persona non grata, as in he's dead to them, according to a show staffer — also bitch-slapped the show itself:
"I think many voters got sick of being "told who to vote for". I think many were turned off by the blatant favoritism shown towards one contestant. Therefore, on that last night, they used their votes against a contestant that they were tired of hearing about and for the contestant who had been written off. And, at the same time, I think they voted AGAINST an American Idol that has, for four years now, been more about the slick productions and polished contestants than it has been about finding the raw talent that it did in its first three seasons."
Clay is a major talent with a huge career, but his style is Broadway and ballads. We'd bet money that Adam is going to be a bona fide rock star.
In any case, we'll let time, rather than a disgruntled former contestant, be the judge.

Can't get enough celebrity gossip? Read Liz Barrett's celebrity news column at Examiner.com.