Alice In Wonderland

[Sylph]

You know, I don't think anyone sees Burton as a great artiste. It's more like people being attracted to that singular peculiarity of his. Which some call one note, but which entertains others.

As for the ... version, it is mentioned in the above article, I believe.

[Sylph]

[classicmoment]

Man has she been impressing me more and more, few years ago I may have only given a brief second look but now she has my eye.

This movie is much anticipated by me and of course Depp being one of my faves along with the superb looking cast adds to the draw

[Sylph]

Here is a Mia Wasikowska piece:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article7039568.ece

[YRBB]

She was superb in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN.

[EricMontreal22]

It's funny, being a big musical theatre and Sondheim fan, she was fighting for the role of Johanna in Sweeney Todd, even did concert versions of a couple of the songs, but I think she probably looked older than Burton wanted (he cast Johanna and Anthony much much younger than they are in stage)--no great loss since Burton's idea to redo Sweeney focusing almost entirely on Sweeney and Mrs Lovett and not the full Dickensian cast of characters meant Joanna lost her two best pieces of music anyway.

I'm really anxious to see this--the largely good press has made me all the more so. However, I still have reservations about what I know of the script (which I know isn't fair of me till I've seen it--so no need for anyone to point that out ). I LOVE the novels, and one part of their charm is that they are, as this article says, so very strange--there's no real narrative thrust except for Alice to find her way home I guess, but even in that context there's far less urgency or purpose than, say, Dorothy in Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Because they're both about girls lost in strange fantasy lands, Oz and Wonderland are often shoe horned together, but they're vastly different kinds of stories (Alice meets far fewer truly sympathetic creatures to her for example).

Anyway, so filmakers have always found it hard to thrust a plot onto the story that gives it more fo a traditional movie structure. One thing that a number have done is take the out of context poem Jabberwocky (added last minute to Thru the Looking Glass but written years beforehand) and make him an actual creature--a sorta threat Alice has to get rid of (like in the ridiculous Irwin Allen produced 80s all star miniseries musical version--which I admit I still love cuz of how much I loved it as a kid). Burton and Linda Woolverton aren't exactly story gods.

i've already said that I think the weakness with Burton is in his scripts (which is why films like Ed Wood and even Sweeney Todd--a film I half love and half hate but that's more cuz I'm such a Sondheim nerd and stuck on the original stage version--stand out among Burton's ouevres--he didn't write the scripts) Burton is GREAT with visually exciting concepts for stories--which is why films like Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice hold up pretty well--cuz they either have such basic fable-like plots, or pltos that don't matter, so nothing gets in the way. Woolverton is famous for doing the screenplay for Disney's Beauty and the Beast. But otherwise her work is uninspired (she wrote the original, barely used, script for the Disney stage musical Aida, wrote for their tv cartoons in the 80s, and wrote the script/libretto for the epic flop stage musical of Anne Rice's Lestat--done with Aida's Elton John)--and even for Beauty she was working from Howard Ashman's story treatment--he died from AIDS before he could do the script.

Again, judging solely from what I've heard and read and seen so far, it seems they've shoe horned a high fantasy story onto the lower key whimsy of the novels--now Alice must rescue Wonderland both from the tyranical Red Queen and from the Jabberwocky, etc, etc. That's just so completely out of style and tone with the novels...

But maybe that doesn't matter? It looks like it'll be a great film to watch (in 3D!), and despite all this I have to say, I am really excited to see it... (Oh and in the new Ent Weekly, Burton and Depp do finally say on the record that it looks like Dark Shadows is next...)

[EricMontreal22]

And the porno version is pretty infamous--I think it made decent money (this was at the height of people trying to make mainstream porn--it was even a musical) and was by the people behind Flesh Gordon

Like Flesh Gordon and a number of those movies it seems to have had an R "softcore" version and an explicit one (often with the sex inserted with diff actors lol)

[DRW50]

Is the hype around Burton finally starting to fade? Probably not, but I'm glad to hear that others were also not thrilled with that Willy Wonka remake, since at the time the press kept letting us know that it was the true vision of the book, not that icky no good awful Gene Wilder version.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2010/03/tim-burton-alice-in-wonderland-chocolate-factory-bad.html

[Sylph]

Helena Bonham Carter interview:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/blockbuster_buzz/2010/03/alice-in-wonderland-helena-bonham-carter-interview.html

[Sylph]

Who cares?!

Completely irrelevant.

And I have no idea why anyone on Earth thought that the thread about this film = Tim Burton lovefest. As far as I can tell, I never professed my undying love for Tim Burton and how I think he is this visionary auteur par excellance.

This film for me is just fun. And I hated Sweeney, loved only Hollywood-ized Tunick, hated The Chocolate Factory and pretty much all the rest I either didn't like or found boring.

But there is something about this film, and you can say I fell for it, that's just wacky, probably in a predictable way, I just have to see it. And I have to see Rickman as the Caterpillar.

Depp is done, but I already love Bonham's Red Queen. And Hathaway's White. They say she was modelled after Nigella Lawson! LOL!

[EricMontreal22]

Oh shhh you, I said as much--that if the movie was good it won't matter. But it does make one wonder why adapt the book when everything is in such a diff *tone*, not just diff story, etc. So of course it has SOME bearing and it will be reviewed in that context by some, even if I agree it shouldn't be.

Yeah I was gonna ask that too--I guess it's cuz you started the thread, people just assumed. If anything most on here have said that Burton is a mixed bag (though to say he's overated as Carl and others have said I think is not really fair--the press in general hardly falls all over themselves for him--certain fans DO yes, but that's different. Carl--Chocalte Factory got exrtremely mixed reviews).

(HAHA and yes the Hollywood-ized orchestrations for Sweeney were the best part -- though I am thankful that it got Sondheim some money and some recognition even if most call it a Burton/Depp film and leave him out--te yalties alone from lame amateur and semi-pro groups who now are doing Sweeney will keep Sondheium more comfortable than he has been in a while, lol. I think most of burton's decisions were odd--Charlie and the Chocolate I really didn't much like--but then again I think the treacly, original--complete with a dreadful song score--is dire and don't get this odd nostalgic retro view that it was a great film--no one thought it was back in the 70s )

You're right that it doesn't seem to take itself too seriously (which is why I hope the big "quest' element--save Wonderland, etc, isn't as played up as it might be). And I agree all the press on Depp is blah--at this point who cares that he's doing another wacky highly made up Burton role--I agree with both queens (Nigella, Ha!)

[EricMontreal22]

*edit* I do realize that you didn't create this thread, LOL.... I swear--just forgot.

[alphanguy74]

The nostalgic view comes from people my age who thought that the original was the sh!t when it first came out. There's a camp factor to the original that helps it as well, and I can speak from experience, while the original might not have been critically lauded in it's time....us kids who saw it, LOVED IT. It was even shown to us in SCHOOL the last week of school as a kind of "treat" at the end of the year... 1978 I believe is when this occured. The next year they did "Charolotte's Web", BIG MISTAKE. 200 kids crying their eyes out all at the same time! But children aren't as picky as adults... so if you liked something as a child, lots of people will take a kind view of it later in life. My only real issue with Burton is that he's just so dark and DEPRESSING, and dare I say it, nightmarish. I think he needs a big, fat bottle of Adderall.

[EricMontreal22]

I get the camp. And I certainly get loving a movie cuz you saw it as a kid (I still lvoe the SOO awful, and yes camptastic, 80s teen update of Pirates of Penzance, The Pirate Movie! with Kristy McNichol and Christopher Atkins!). ANd I get that Gene Wilder, someone I'm not a big fan of, does a good job with the role--but the movie isn't a classic like Mary Poppins, or Wizard of Oz or some other live action musicals based on children's books--it's more uptherewith bloated messes like Doctor Dolittle.

Isn't one reason the people who like Burton, like him cuz he is nightmarish? (Slightly--it's never truly menacing IMHO) I don't think youneed to dare to say it--that said the exact same is true of Roald Dahl.

[alphanguy74]

I know, people do. I'm just one who really HATES anything close to nightmarish, so I never understand the appeal of all that. And no, the Wilder version is not a classic like Mary Poppins and the like... not a mainstream classic... I'd put it more in the category of "Cult classic". It occupies that same space in the universe as Schoolhouse Rock and H.R. Pufnstuf. I don't think we HAD alot of bloated messes in the 70's like Dr. Doolittle. I mean we didn't have movies that revolved solely around some buffoonish comedian, and how many facial expressions he could make. that was a phenom that started around 1990-ish, with all this Eddie Murphy/Adam Sandler/Jim Carrey crap. Where the comedian and his antics was the center of the movie, and not the script. We had alot of really saccharine scholck, though... in the form of the Benji movies, Escape To Witch Mountain.... and God forbid... PIPPI LONGSTOCKING.