Terry Gilliam is coming to town

Undeterred by the critical and commercial failure of his recent projects 'Tideland' and 'The Brothers Grimm', Terry Gilliam is already back behind the camera and is currently in London shooting footage for his latest film ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’.

Billed as a ‘modern-day fantasy adventure’, the film will star ‘Brokeback Mountain’ pin-up Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, rasping crooner Tom Waits and lithe model-type Lily Cole. Excitingly, the project also sees Gilliam reunited with Charles McKeown, the writer who he worked with on the screenplay for 80s Orwellian masterpiece ‘Brazil’.

The plot of ‘…Doctor Parnassus’ will explore the familiar Gilliam themes of the human imagination, parenthood and the supernatural.

The eponymous Doctor Parnassus (Plummer) is a travelling thesp who’s struck a deal with the devil (Waits, natch). In return for some exceptional powers of mental manipulation, the Doc agrees to hand over Valentina (Cole), his young daughter who is fast approaching her sixteenth birthday. But when Valentina falls for Tony (Ledger), a charming outsider with designs of his own, the stage is set for a spectacular finale set in the Big Smoke itself.

Since Gilliam has enlisted the services of director of photography Nicola Pecorini (who was behind the beautiful imagery of the otherwise mediocre ‘Tideland’), there’s no doubt that Dr Parnassus will be a visual treat. Nevertheless, given his recent luck, any Gilliam endeavour is now greeted with a certain amount of apprehension. Will ‘Dr Parnassus’ run aground like his cursed ‘Don Quixote’ project? Or will it be his best effort since Brazil? Only time will tell...