Alice In Wonderland

Tim Burton and Lewis Carrol's "Alice" books seemed, when this project was announced, to be a perfect combination. I waited with great anticipation to see the result and I know many others did too - and I was not disappointed.The story follows an adult Alice, who is at a crossroads after being proposed to her by a wealthy heir, but one whom she feels nothing for. At just this moment, she espies the White Rabbit, who leads her into Wonderland, a strange land that she visited in her childhood, but believed to be just a dream. There she meets the familiar characters of the Mad Hatter and his tea drinking posse, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat. They have been waiting hopefully for her return, as she is the one who will end the rule of the paranoid and violent Red Queen, a character amalgam of the Red Qeen from "Through the Looking Glass" and The Queen of Hearts from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". She eventualy becomes the champion of the benevolent but exiled White Queen and is set on a collision course with the Red Queen and her forces, including the sly and mean-spirited Knave of Hearts (who seems to amalgamate The Knave of Hearts from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and The Red Knight from "Through the Looking Glass") and the fearsome Jabberwocky, the dragon that protects the Red Queen from challenges.Many, it sems, were disappointed with this. Some complain that it eschews the books fragmented plot in favour of a quest structure, while others complain of the lack of storyline. Burton, by his own admission focuses on characters and imagery rather than story. This is a valid approach as cinema is a visual medium - not like a novel. This being said, I was surprised that Burton was more interested in a version with a story than the fragmented original, although this may not have been his decision alone. The result, however, works. There is just enough of a story to give the characters more of a history and motivation - a feature of Burton's previous film adaptations of "Sleepy Hollow" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" - in which characters were given more depth by introducing more of a back story. Yes, as many have pointed out, the film does utilise the monomyth structure as many other recent fantasy epics have - but stories do tend to use it - and this is not the first "Alice" adaptation to do so. The film has to be judged on the merits of how it achieves its own goal, and Burton's key is in using his distinctive imagination to give this "Alice" and this monomyth its own peculiar feel. Some may miss elements of Carrol's nonsensical wit that are not here, but there is sufficient essence of Carrol in the language of the characters and the confusion Alice faces in dealing with many of them. It must be remembered that much of the plot is derived from "Through the Looking Glass" which has more structure than "Alice in Wonderland". The story of "The Jabberwocky", a poem from "Through the Looking Glass" is also used in the plot structure - introducing the key folkloric motif of the special weapon - the Vorpal Sword. The brilliant result of this is in creating a new, surreal version of the monomyth filtered through the sensibilities of Carrol and Burton.The CGI I is used sparringly and has the weighted feel of Burton's stop motion work, making it feel more real and much warmer than much of the cold, slick CGI of other films. Some say that the 3D was tacked on and not integral, I offer other adjectives: unintruseive and understated. I ddo not want to walk away from a film with my memory focused on the special effects - to me there is a great failing in the characters if this is the case. Burton's brilliant visual quality stands out in every frame of the film - beautifully tonal and detailed. Slightly gothic and with a wonderful technicolour palette.All actors are outstanding. The CGI characters are voiced to perfection. Wasikowska is a curious and assertive presence without gushing at her surroundings like an Alice from a bad panto adaptation. Depp is a delighfully nuanced, bi-polar Mad Hatter with the right blen of whimsy and psychological damage. Bonham-Carter is a wicked Red Queen, delightfully spoiled and OTT, but also showing the damage that made her a monster. Ann Hathaway is a warm but motivated presence who has done exceelent work in the building of her character. Some find the characters a little cold - I find an emotional honesty rather than the sentimental syrup many expect from family fantasy and Hollywood movies in general.This is a wonderful fantasy that harkens back to great fantasy films like "Labrynth", The Dark Crystal", "The Princess Bride", "Return to Oz" and even Disney's earlier animations such as "Sleeping Beauty" "Snow White" and their original "Alice in Wonderland" - that were unafraid to be stylistically bold, slightly wierd, a bit scary, very whimsical and a lot of fun!

Disappointed at how long you have after starting it. If you have 30 days to watch it, you should be able to watch it for 30 days not 24 hours afterStarting it

Love this movie

Siempre es mágico ver una buena producción, para compartir un buen momento con los afectos

This is one in a series of posted reviews for every Alice in Wonderland title available on Amazon. When the Tim Burton rendition of AIW with Johnny Depp was due out in 2010 I thought it might be a good time to go back and watch the benchmark Walt Disney production from 1951, which I saw -or assumed I saw- as a child. It was a chance to get reacquainted with the many varied characters from the story as sort of a warm up for the Burton film. Upon viewing the Disney classic I was astonished to realize that I had likely never seen more than a few clips (at most) of that beautifully rendered Alice in Wonderland. So much seemed brand new. Nor did I have a memory of ever seeing any other "Alice" production. Then I realized that I had never read the book! Wait a minute. Where then did my memory of the Alice story come from? The curiosity sparked by that question ultimately led me over the next two years to accumulate every version of Alice in Wonderland still in existence. Well over 40 by the way!This general commentary continues as a posted review for both the 1951 AIW production from Walt Disney and the 2010 production starring Johnny Depp (this title), as these are the two most well known Alice's. Rather than attempt to add yet-another-review here, it seemed like it might be a more fun use of the provided space to muse for a bit on the popularity and remarkable longevity of the story spawned by Lewis Carroll in 1865, as well as to share with you a bit of what I picked up while watching these 40 or so renderings of Alice in Wonderland. All other Alice productions listed by Amazon will have a specific review of the relevant production with same title used throughout.To continue...I claim to be neither a Lewis Carroll nor an Alice in Wonderland expert. Rather, I went into this project naive... ignorant of the details of the story of Alice in Wonderland... ignorant of the poems within the story, and certainly ignorant of the comings and goings in Lewis Carroll's life that set up the circumstances allowing him to imagine the story of Alice in Wonderland (originally entitled "Alice's Adventures Underground", by the way).Watching that 1951 Disney rendition of AIW was a remarkable experience. It was fun to "remember" the story of Alice again, but also, it left me with a desire to see how else the Alice story has been rendered. The Disney film is of course animation. So how would Alice in Wonderland be portrayed in other mediums? What I learned is that AIW has been rendered in about every way you can imagine. Most familiar of course is the telling of the Alice story in film, with live action, animation, and various combinations of both. In fact since the invention of film at the turn of the 20th century not a decade has gone where at least one (and usually several) fresh renderings of the Alice story been told in moving pictures.Beyond that however the Alice story has been told in many forms: audio recordings, plays, ballets, operas, and musicals. It's been done with the use of puppets and marionettes, with stop motion "Gumby style" animation, in games, in home-brew backyard productions posted to YouTube, and as an Alice in Wonderland theme park. There's even been an X rated version done as a musical (quite good). A number of established shows have done a take on the Alice story; The Muppets, Sesame Street, The Care Bears, Betty Boop, Mickey Mouse, Barney, Scooby Doo, The Simpsons, Star Trek TOS, and even `Hello Kitty' took a shot at Alice.What's more, a wide variety of famous actors and celebrities have appeared in an Alice film. Stars from W.C. Fields to Cary Grant to Peter Sellers to Richard Burton... The Smothers Brothers, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Dudley Moore, Brooke Shields, Maryl Streep, Debbie Allen, Nathan Lane, Sammy Davis Jr., Ringo Starr, Terry Garr, and Whoopi Goldberg, just to name a few, have been involved in some sort of Alice production.And then there are the numerous Alice based endeavors, from Woody Allan's `Alice' with Mia Farrow, to Jefferson Airplane's `White Rabbit'.Why? Why is Lewis Carroll's story of a young girl who fell down a mythical rabbit hole so compelling? What gives the story such staying power? How is it that people of virtually all ages are so inexplicably drawn toward Alice and her land of wonders?I don't know.I've tried to steer clear of scholarly answers that address that question. There have been many attempts to do so. On the surface we can locate several plausible reasons that explain why Alice in Wonderland resonates with so many. We have a young, [seemingly] helpless girl. She's an underdog. Out of her element. A vulnerable character put in jeopardy. We ask, "what will happen next?", as the story takes one unexpected turn after another. And of course animals with human attributes in any story is compelling. Walt Disney discovered that innate attraction and made an industry of it. But do these answers get to the heart of the question?I happen to believe the explanation of Alice in Wonderland's universal appeal is that we, all of us, all human beings, young and old, have been to Wonderland ourselves. We go there in our dreams. We can all relate to the experience of logic and proportion falling away because it has happened to us. We understand how, in all the bizarreness of the wonderlands we fall into at night, that we rarely lose our heads. We should be really scared. Alice should be really scared. But somehow we accept what we see. Such is the worlds of dreams.Furthermore, how many of us have wondered if we continue to dream after we die? Are dreams what the afterlife is composed of? We don't fully understand the nature of dreams, so we contemplate upon them. Even the errant machine HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey asked if he would dream after he was turned off.And now to return to the original question I postulated. How did I somehow know the story of Alice in Wonderland without having a particular recollection of reading the book? Or seeing a movie? One answer of course is that pieces of the story just leaked into my consciousness over the years. A movie clip here. A verbal explanation there. But could there be a deeper reason? It may have to do with "archetype". It is certain that Alice in Wonderland acts as a metaphor for dreams, but the Alice Stories seems to delve deeper... into a primal archetype --a "template" if you will-- out of which human circumstances arise. Because of that we recognize Alice's dilemma in a deep and fundamental way.To write the story of Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll had in some way become conscious of the meta-physical world. The world beyond normal perception. A world that is, as Rod Serling put it, "beyond that which is known to man". Whereas visual artists such as Hieronymus Bosch reflected their visions of the other-world in paintings, Lewis Carroll's palette was paper and words. I would not be surprised if Carroll had at some point and in some fashion become "experienced", in a Jimmy Hendrix sort of way.Anyway, enjoy every telling of the Alice story you can get your hands on. Each one is unique. It's fascinating to see how the core Alice story is manifested in different media. It's fun to see how the various animals are rendered. If you can, read the books first. If you can't, remember that anything to with a playing card motif, the King and Queen of Hearts, the Knave of Hearts, the stolen tarts, the Duchess, falling down the rabbit hole and the pool of tears, the White Rabbit, growing and shrinking, the Mad Hatter (and tea party), Bill the Lizard, the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, the March Hare, the Dormouse, the Mock Turtle, and the Gryphon, -phew- all come from Alice in Wonderland.A motif based upon a chessboard, The Red King and Queen, the White King and Queen, the Red Knight and White Knight, the Jabberwocky, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Humpty Dumpty, the Lion and the Unicorn, Hatta and Haighaa (a disguised appearance by the Mad Hatter and the March Hare), and the The Walrus and the Carpenter come from Through the Looking Glass.You'll find that many renderings of Alice in Wonderland combine elements of both books, and you know...Not everyone likes what's often been doneturning the story of Alice on earbut I say, it's in the spirit of funthere's really nothing at all to fearso what if Tim Burton brought forth Tweedledum and TweedledeeAnd introduced Alice to the ja-bber-wock-yIt's been done by others dontcha seehe named the movie from the first bookbut he didn't stop therehe poured in the latter... yet kept the Hatter!gotta tell-you-the-truth, I just don't carein the end we all know who killed the ja-bber-wock-yit was done in plain site for all to seeThe vorpal sword was manned by that girlThe blondeWith the curlsthat unfurlor was it a boy who did the deed?From the poem. Didn't he succeed?Gonna have to give that book another readso yeahyou-know-what?it's really O-K.It's all just a dream an-y-old-wayof the many many versions of this fine talehardly any of the a-dap-ta-tions failthey've all been done with narry a shred of maliceall in all it's in the spirit of our dear friend Aliceso go visit NetflixAmazonand YoutubeNo one will care...An Alice you'll love will be waiting thereAnd if the telling don't exactly track Mr. Dodgson's themeLike we said before... it's only a dream---------------All the Alice reviews in this series are on Listmania:1) Click on my user name2) Click on 'Listmania!'3) Then click on See 'Entire List'.