There’s a reason why Truth or Dare is mostly played by high school kids — because they’re the only ones who are willing to spend hours coming up with creative truths or dares to get their peers more naked, either figuratively or literally. After a hard day at work — or, worse, after a hard day of trolling the help wanted ads in the middle of a recession — who can be bothered to be that creative? Especially when the sex is a sure thing.

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Terry Gilliam next fantastical foray comes in the form of THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS starring Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Colin Farrell, and Christopher Plummer as the titular character. Doctor Parnassus, the leader of a traveling theater troupe that offers audience members a chance to go beyond reality through a magical mirror in his possession, makes a Faustian bargain with the devil in exchange for immortality. 1000 years later, the devil comes to collect his due by targeting the doctor’s daughter. When a mysterious stranger named Tony (portrayed by Ledger, Depp, Law, and Farrell) joins the imaginarium, the troupe embarks upon parallel worlds to rescue the girl.

Production was suspended upon Ledger’s death in January 22, 2008. Actors Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law were cast to replace Ledger, portraying the new idea of transformed versions of Ledger’s character, Tony, traveling through a magical realm. With the role recast, filming resumed in Vancouver in March 2008. Depp, Farrell, and Law opted to redirect their wages for the role to Ledger’s young daughter, Matilda, and Gilliam dedicates the film to Ledger in the film’s credits.

THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS opens October 16, 2009.

Harlan Ellison is easily agitated. You can’t really be sure of what will set him off on a tirade – but you can be sure that his reasoning will be sound.

So we will introduce him as a writer/author – and occasional hell raiser. Hopefully that cautious and broad intro will not incite a verbal attack from him. To the literati, Harlan Ellison is the author and/or editor of countless, much lauded short stories, novels, novellas and anthologies. To the couch-potato clickers of the world, Harlan Ellison matters to you because he served as creative consultant for the 1980’s version of The Twilight Zone, as conceptual consultant for Babylon 5 in the 1990’s and wrote one of the most popular episodes of Star Trek (The City on the Edge of Forever) among his vast body of television credits.

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