Not much is known about the upcoming animated film Rango, outside of the fact its directed by Gore Verbinski and stars Johnny Depp and somewhere near a million other great actors (Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Timothy Olyphant, Ned Beatty, Bill Nighy, Alfred Molina, Ray Winstone, Stephen Root and Harry Dean Stanton round out most of the cast).

Well, nothing more outside of the thinnest of plot details, which at this point point to Rango being a chameleon having an existential crisis of some degree, and who dreams of being a swashbuckling hero until he stumbles upon a town terrorized by bandits and he has to live this role and protect them. Granted this plot line is alluding more towards Seven Samurai than any of the films about a certain wandering ronin, but hey, I’ll get my Kurosawa fix any way I can get it. Even if it comes from a chameleon.

Rango is scheduled to open in the US on March 4th of next year.

Along with several staff members at my theater, we have recently decided that we are going to write up a variation of the “Laminate list”. The Laminate List goes by all sorts of different names, but is generally known as the list of 5 celebrities that one is allowed to sleep with. But rather then this be a list about sleeping with people, we decided that we wanted to make it more of a fan list styled phone tree. So that if one of your Top 5 celebrities happens to come into the theater and you are not working, you would get a phone call and be provided the opportunity to stop in to the theater and possibly actually get to meet them.

Now at most places of business this would be a completely frivolous list. More of a way to pass the time and ignore whatever it is you are supposed to be doing. But I work at a movie theater in a relatively major metropolitan city. Celebrities are actually a fairly regular occurrence here in Minneapolis. A handful call the area home, and countless others swing on buy during their various tours, press meetings, or even being paid to party at our nightclubs.

Unfortunately, of the three Landmark Theaters in town mine is by far the least hip and the furthest away from the cultural epicenter that is Uptown. Because of this our level of celebrities tends to be rather low. Sure we got Bai Ling that one time, but who hasn’t had her? Or then there was the time Ned Beatty hung out for an afternoon, which was cool, but he also did it in part because he was trying to get us to sell his new CD. Which, by the way, was entirely devoted to him singing Gospel songs. I’m pretty sure we still have a case of them lying around somewhere. But outside of that we haven’t garnered much higher then the Minneapolis Mayor or local Sportscaster Mark Rosen.

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