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Newest items will be on the Last Page

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New behind the scenes footage

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You can see all the posters for Doctor Parnassus at  Awards Daily

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Dr . Panassus Premiere will be Nov 2nd at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood at 6 pm per  Seeing Stars

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Found by emma of JDZ (click to see full size)

and from Carasun at JDZ

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The official site for the movie announces it will be released December 25, 2009 in the US and in the UK October 16, 2009.

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From the Times Online
How Terry Gilliam rescued Doctor Parnassus
When Heath Ledger died midway through filming, Colin Farrell, Johnny Depp and Jude Law were drafted in to replace him
Will Lawrence

The last time I see Heath Ledger, it is a blustery January day. We’re clambering about among the industrial debris down by the Thames at Battersea power station. A small fire burns in a rust-tainted brazier, sending flickering shadows dancing along the side of an elaborately designed gypsy caravan that is parked in front of the power station’s enormous chimneys. Ledger is a bundle of energy, hopping hither and thither, rubbing his hands together to ward off the cold. Clad in a tatty linen suit, he looks a little like a blond Johnny Depp, with a patchy goatee and scruffy ponytail. We exchange a brief “Hello”, but talk no further: he has an important scene to shoot in his latest movie, the curiously titled Terry Gilliam production The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

The film is a folk tale-cum-fantasy that seems to mirror aspects of its creator’s life, casting before the audience an anachronistic old man, the pedlar of a magical show that tours the modern world via horse and cart. The old man, Dr Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), wants to show the world the wonder that surrounds them, but few care to listen (something Gilliam knows all too well) or to enter the magical mirror he possesses, a looking glass that sends those who dare to step through it on a voyage of discovery. The struggling stage show (which features Verne Troyer’s Percy, Lily Cole’s Valentina and Andrew Garfield’s Anton) then runs into Ledger’s mysterious Tony, a man Parnassus believes can play a vital role in their project.

Gilliam is a true lover of fairy tale, especially its more malevolent aspects, and in his last movie, 2005’s Tideland, he went down the rabbit hole. With Doctor Parnassus, he is heading through the looking glass. “My wife says I have made the same movie over and over again,” the director beams during a break in filming, “and that I just change the costumes! For me, with film-making, I’m trying to understand the reality of the world, whatever that is. Every film I make is my current version of what I think the world is, and I am convinced I’ve got it right. Then the film comes out and I realise I’ve missed it again. Maybe I’ll get it right with this one. It’s an important movie for me. I need good people. I need Heath Ledger. He’s such a talent.”

That talent is there for all to see. Gilliam, his director of photography, Nicola Pecorini, and Ledger are close friends, having formed a bond on the marathon journey that was 2005’s The Brothers Grimm. Today, the scene they are shooting marks Tony's arrival in Parnassus’s entourage, and Ledger conjures a series of startling takes, each different from the last, as he improvises and ad-libs, changing his intonation and accent with each one. “He’s a marvellous f***er,” Gilliam smiles from behind his monitor. “We’re so lucky to have him.”

Even though the production is far from finished, today will count as one of Ledger’s final days on the movie. Less than two weeks later, in a break from filming, the 28-year-old Australian is found dead in his New York flat, a collection of pill bottles lying on the bedside table. As soon as the news breaks, the tabloids are swimming with speculation. The police refuse to rule out the possibility of an overdose. Stories emerge that he was depressed; the more far-fetched yarns suggest that he’d gone too far inside the head of his character in his previous movie, The Dark Knight. (His performance as the Joker would earn him a posthumous Oscar.)

“That’s all bollocks,” Gilliam tells me a few months after our meeting down at Battersea. He’s absorbed the news and read all the lurid newspaper cuttings. “We spoke about the Joker, and he said it was fun beyond belief to play that character. Honestly, when people are giving out all those shit stories about him getting so dark and inside the character... this was just utter fun for him.

“What was unusual is that the last image I saw of Heath as the Joker was him hanging upside down. And that’s how we’re introduced to him in our movie. That’s quite odd. What’s going on there? Anyway, I will say that he wasn’t sleeping very well. He did have insomnia.” Did that in any way help his performance? “Maybe, although I would have preferred that he was sleeping. He’d arrive in the mornings and he was f***ed. He hadn’t slept and he looked like shit. I remember the last day of shooting here in London. I put together two pictures taken by other people, paparazzi, one of his arrival on set — and he looked just like that, f***ed, his hair down — and the other one when he is in the Pierrot costume after finishing work. He’s just beaming. It was like that during the day. He just couldn’t wait to get back to work and play again, and he would have been even better having slept properly. He was looking tired when we took the break.”

Given the energy he’d expended on The Dark Knight and Doctor Parnassus, Ledger’s fatigue is understandable, although the film-makers expected him back on set in early February, refreshed and revitalised. “Losing Heath, the whole cast felt as though we’d lost a friend,” Lily Cole explains. “If he was tired, he was still incredibly joyous to be around, especially for me. This was by far my biggest role — I did feel out of my depth at times — yet Heath was a very generous spirit. There was no antagonism, he wanted the best from me. He was aware that I was nervous, this being the biggest role I’ve done, and he was making a real effort to encourage me. He was supportive without being patronising.

“As an actor, he was fearless. When you see him as the Joker, or any of the characters, he throws himself in 100%. Someone said to me once that good acting is watching someone walk along a tightrope, and the good actor is the one who always has a moment when they nearly fall off. Heath was like that. You have to take that risk.”

Risk is, of course, something with which Gilliam is all too familiar. His films seem to shoot beneath an Indian sign; he must be one of the unluckiest film-makers working today. His problems on Brazil, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and The Brothers Grimm have been well charted, but Ledger’s death threw up the biggest conundrum of his career. Should he try to finish the movie, despite the death of his leading man? And, if so, how would he do it?

According to the British actor Andrew Garfield, another of Ledger’s co-stars, the production team did wonder whether they should go on. “Every day back on set, the overriding feeling was sadness,” he says. “We all felt as though we’d lost someone. Heath had an effect on all of us in a very personal way, and you think that maybe you should leave it be, leave it to rest. But when you look at the work Heath had already done on the movie, it would be criminal for that not to be seen. We felt we had to finish it for him — the void of energy he left, the big, gaping hole among all these people, had to be filled. We had to work so much harder, because, before, it was like he was driving the train. That the other actors came in to do the job shows the effect Heath had on people. He left behind a lot of love and inspiration.”

Those “other actors” are the august trio of Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell, each of whom worked for peanuts so they could pick up the shattered pieces of Ledger’s stellar performance and carry the film through to the end. This might sound preposterous — how do three actors try to complete a movie where they’re all playing one character? — but it works well on screen. The scenes Ledger had yet to complete involved his character stepping through Parnassus’s magical looking glass. Once someone enters the mirror, they find themselves in an alternate reality. By placing the three other actors in this oscillating world, the audience can readily believe that Depp, Law and Farrell are playing different aspects of the same personality.

“I am not sure we’ve ended up with a better film having Johnny, Jude and Colin stepping in,” Gilliam says, “but it may prove a little more entertaining and, importantly, a bit more commercial. Just look who is in it! That said, I still want to see the film we set out to make. Heath had so much stored up ready to go. One thing I will say is that it is the same tale, but with the final scenes, were the audience watching Heath play them, that would be a very different experience than watching Colin. If you follow the same character all the way through, it may have been a more painful film emotionally, a darker film in that sense. But what we have now is more entertaining. It certainly has the chance of getting an even larger audience, with the lure of four people playing a part.”

While Gilliam is regularly saddled with the dubious moniker of a “maverick” film-maker, he is desperate for a bona fide hit. He sees Doctor Parnassus as his Fanny and Alexander (Bergman) or Amarcord (Fellini), a compendium of the themes that stalk his life’s work. “Those directors reached a point in their lives where they said, ‘Okay, let’s just wallow in the things we enjoy.’ So this is my wallow. I don’t have to keep proving new things and exploring all areas. This is what I am. This is what I do.”

Taken in the context of Ledger’s death, the final version of Doctor Parnassus emerges as a creative triumph — and, despite the pain and heartbreak that the film engendered, it might prove Gilliam’s biggest success in years.

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