Thursday, August 26, 2010

Just watched...

...Tim Burton's "Alice In Wonderland."

Catching up on Blue-Rays from the Netflix queue...

This film was as expected, and as advertised. The digital imagery is pretty good... Helena Bonham has a head three times her normal size, Cripsin Glover is over seven feet tall and Johnny Depp's eyes are the size of dinner plates. Oh, and all the animals look wonderful.
Burton's version imagines a nineteen year old Alice returning to Wonderland after visisting when she was a small girl. She does not remember her first visit, but it comes back to her after being in Wonderland a second time. The story, at its essence, is a battle between good and evil (and what isn't, really...), and we follow Alice as she vanquishes the forces of the Red Queen. Burton's visual vocabulary is by now quite familiar to us. Among other things, we see the tree from "Sleepy Hollow," we see memory and flashback scenes in saturated color and bright light being blanketed by floating white, um, pollen (?), and we see wiggy hair like "Edward Scissorhands" and "Sweeney Todd."

Recommend? It was pleasant enough... see it if it seems interesting to you. Otherwise, go to Disneyland and ride the Alice In Wonderland ride. You might have a little more fun that way.

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