Last week, Jude Law and Johnny Depp expressed their thoughts on completing the Sony Pictures Classics release “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” the film Heath Ledger was working on when he died last year.

Now, here’s a statement from Colin Farrell:

“It’s not hard for me to imagine that if I ever look back on the films I’ve been a part of, and the stories I’ve had a hand in telling, one will stand out as so unique an experience, as to be incomparable. This experience was the shooting of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. The reasons for its uniqueness, sadly, are probably obvious to anyone who reads this.

Three of us had been asked to complete a task that had been set in motion by a man we greatly liked and respected as both a person and an artist. Being part of this film was never about filling Heaths shoes as much as seeing them across the finish line. How I wish he had brought the film to its completion himself. Of course the whole crew felt this way. And the cast that we joined felt it too. It was this spirit of grieving the loss of Heath, that Johnny and Jude and I joined. But there was also a sense of dogged insistence. Insistence that Heaths last piece of work should not be kept in the shadow of the light of day.

More than anything though – more than the sadness and shock, the vulnerability and un-suredness as to whether it was right to complete the film or not – was an incredible sense of love. A community of people, caterers and actors, electricians and make up artists had been brought together in a recognized sense of love and obligation, for and to, one of cinemas finest actors and most generous of men. It will be this sense of love amidst the sadness I will remember most. Such a gift and an honor, from Heath, to be a part of the trail that he left behind.

RIP Heath Ledger x”

SPC released the movie in New York and L.A. Christmas Day; it goes wide Friday.

Reps for the Sony Pictures Classics release “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” the latest fantasia from Terry Gilliam, are distributing statements from co-stars Johnny Depp and Jude Law. This was the film Heath Ledger was working on when he died last year, and Gilliam asked Depp, Law and Colin Farrell to help finish the film as variations on Ledger’s character.

Here are the statements:

JOHNNY DEPP:
“Maestro Gilliam has made a sublime film. Wonderfully enchanting and beautiful, ‘The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus’ is a uniquely ingenious, captivating creation; by turns wild, thrilling and hilarious in all its crazed, dilapidated majesty. Pure Gilliam magic!!!

It was an honor to represent Heath. He was the only player out there breathing heavy down the back of every established actors neck with a thundering and ungovernable talent that came up on you quick, hissing rather mischievously with that cheeky grin, ‘hey… get on out of my way boys, i’m coming through…’ and does he ever!!! Heath is a marvel, Christopher Plummer beyond anything he’s ever done, Waits as the Devil is a God, Lily Cole and Andrew Garfield, the very foundation, are spectacular, Verne Troyer simply kicks ass and as for my other cohorts, Colin Farrell and Jude Law, they most certainly did Master Ledger very proud, I salute them.

Though the circumstances of my involvement are extremely heart-rending and unbelievably sad, I feel privileged to have been asked aboard to stand in on behalf of dear Heath.”

JUDE LAW:
“I have always loved Terry Gilliam’s films. Their heart, their soul, their mind, always inventive, touching, funny and relevant. When I got the call, it was a double tug. I liked Heath very much as a man and admired him as an actor. To help finish his final piece of work was a tribute I felt compelled to make. To help Terry finish his film was an honour paid to a man I adore. I had a great time on the job. Though we were all there in remembrance, Heath’s heart pushed us with great lightness to the finish.”

SPC released the movie in New York and L.A. Christmas Day; it goes wide January 8.

Bono received news of his sixth Golden Globe nomination for original song today, for the new U2 song “Winter” from the soundtrack to Jim Sheridan’s “Brothers.” As part of the awards-season ritual, he got on the phone with me today to relay his reaction to the honor.

What follows is an unexpected Q&A with a rock legend about the band’s process for selecting which movies to get involved with, his predilection for Colin Farrell movies and tying the Pixies‘ shoes.

Oh, and the singer-activist also threw in an impression of Bugs Bunny while relating a story about an unrealized U2-Spike Jonze video collaboration. Read on…

THR: This is not new for you. This is number six!

Bono: [laughs] We’re often left waiting at the altar on occasions like this. It’s a big thrill. And more than that, because of our relationship with Jim Sheridan. It goes back to really the first year of our band’s life, we’ve known him that long. It’s a very special feeling. And it’s going to be tricky because people think of songs that are involved in movies like this as non-integral. And this is not the case here. But it’s gonna be hard to convince people of that. We were involved in the very earliest stages of this movie—before it was a script! When it was just Jim pitching it! He wanted a complex song for a complex character. And we wrote two—one that referred particularly to the brothers that was called “White As Snow,” and this is called “Winter,” one that is just really a more universal song about the experience of the armed forces in Afghanistan. “No army in this world can fight a ghost,” in an asymmetrical war. The brave men and women of the United States military have their work cut out for them.

How do you write these songs at the script stage?

Well, we were in songwriting mode, actually, when Jim first told us about “Brothers.” So we were actively looking for subjects. And I was trying to give myself a break from writing in the first person anyway. [laughs] I was bored, and I reckon our audience were bored hearing about my every whim and aspiration and fear. So I really jumped on the idea of trying to get into this guy’s head. I am so pleased it turned out very well. It’s had a few iterations. We did a kind of rock band version of it, we did an acoustic version of it. And even yesterday [laughs] I caught Edge—because we were supposed to be working on something else—I caught him working on an electronic version! [laughs] He’s very proud of it. We are very proud of it. Songs like this, if you’re a songwriter, don’t come about every year.

Last year, Fox Searchlight became the toast of awards season by cutting it close — it picked up the season’s two darlings, “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Wrestler,” as late as August and September, respectively.

This year it could be cutting it even closer.

After the lukewarm response to one-time hopeful “Amelia” (not to mention boxoffice doldrums for young-skewing comedies “Whip It!” and “Gentlemen Broncos”), the specialty division may be making a fall push for “Crazy Heart,” the country-music drama starring Jeff Bridges.

At the moment, the picture remains dated for next year, as it has been since Searchlight acquired it this summer. But the specialty division has scheduled a surprise, last-minute screening for Wednesday in what wagging tongues are saying is a trial balloon for a 2009 release and awards push.

Thank God for Gong Li. Yes, writer-director Michael Mann crams Miami Vice with stunning digital vistas, swooping helicopter-cams, blazing action, and muscular sex. Motor boats stream white toward the dark horizon. The bond between partners Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell (who are both terrific) will never be broken. But the movie doesn’t engage until tough badwoman Gong takes undercover cop Farrell to Cuba for a mojito; their lovemaking is so good that she cries. Mann is caught up in moving fast; he often leaves accessibility—and believability—on the cutting room floor. I don’t think he gives a jot if the audience knows what the hell is going on. Mann has a fine-tuned bullshit detector, so he struggles to ground the movie in a reality that is impossible; its underpinnings (his 80s TV series) are fantasy. Most of Mann’s movies are utterly uncompromised—and just as uncommercial. The filmmaker makes them to please himself. (The studios make the call as to whether their generous budgets are justified.) Although Mann may have sold his soul to the devil here, I still want to experience Miami Vice’s flashy pyrotechnics and virile energy again. But for all the heat that the movie generates, those digital images remain cool indeed.

Slate’s Kim Masters tries to get to the bottom of what happened on the set of Miami Vice. Planes, trains, hurricanes. It wasn’t a pleasant movie set. And after a shooting in the Dominican Republic, Jamie Foxx left the location before he was scheduled to, forcing Mann to film the ending differently.

Jeff Wells gets some early info from FX Feeney, who’s seen Miami Vice because he’s working on a biography of director Michael Mann.

Salon parses the difference between a great actor and a bad boy celeb. What makes Ask the Dust star Colin Farrell tick and what makes him choose the parts that he does? They are all over the map. My favorite Farrell roles are Phone Booth and his nasty turn in the Irish comedy Intermission. But even in Hollywood studio crap, Farrell is never boring. And he carried The New World, in a depressed, almost silent role.

Poor Colin Farrell. He’s been in rehab for his supposed reliance on pain killers. His arty new movie The New World is limping at the boxoffice, and his ex-girlfriend is not only trying to sell their sex tape for filthy cash, but the tape is now available for a mere $14.95 on the worldwide web.

When Q’orianka Kilcher landed the role of Pocahontas, she didn’t know that Colin Farrell would be her first kiss.

It’s refreshing to read a major critic assessing a major director’s oeuvre without sucking up about his most recent work. It doesn’t happen often. This assessment of Terrence Malick by Peter Rainer is worth reading.