cborgman said:

I'm still kind of excited for this, but even as big of a Depp fan as I am I'm feeling kinda meh about him having been cast.

I know he'll never stop working with Burton, (they're in luuuurve ) but I'm getting tired of him doing "character" parts.

Just got back from seeing it. I loved it!

I wanna go!
We only just took our kids to the Cinema last week, so waiting for them to 'earn' another trip.

We are too tired to go out tonight. I guess 20 weeks of interrupted sleep is catching up with both of us.
I guess we will have to do it another time.

You know what---after Planet of the Apes, I think Burton should stick to stories that he makes up. When he messes with a classic it just doesn't work out well.


I'll probably break down and see this movie, but it'll be with very little entusiasm.

TheVoid said:

I'm not interested in Alice, but I actually liked Apes. I thought it was well done.

JerseyKRS said:

Didn't you predict that the Sony Mp3 player was going to beat the iPod though?
And the PSP would beat the Nintendo DS?

I mean, you're track record absolutely, completely, irrecoverably sux in that respect.



I like Apes too. . I just thought it wasn't a great movie, and someone else could have done a better job---hell, Peter Jackson would have torn that shit apart even if we had to deal over-the-top battle scenes.

TheVoid said:

I will agree with that

that being said, i liked Alice. not amazing but entertaining.

I liked it a lot!

I went to the pre-preview on Friday. You had to come in costume. It was so fun! The movie was very good as well, but then I adore the story, Tim Burton, and Johnny Depp (not to mention the other actors/actrices in it), so for me it was a must-see. There was some cheesy dialogue from time to time, but I can look past that. Visually it's beautiful.

Helena as the Red Queen stole the show to me.

It was a lot of fun! Loved it.

InsatiableCream said:

Helena

I think I'll go see this movie on Wednesday.
I'm not a bit excited, though.

Alej said:

Helena is so massively underrated

InsatiableCream said:

I agree. She was the best part.

All the Teenagers and I enjoyed it ~ was fun

I didn't like it.



A few things:

The beginning was great up until she fell through the rabbit hole and walked into WOnderland.

Burton let her passage into Wonderland feel sort of as-a-matter-of-fact. It didn't have any 'pop' or 'wow' factor. Wonderland felt like it was a leftover stage set from Edward Sissorhands but with mushrooms thrown in.

The mad hatter did NOT seem "mad". As a matter of fact it almost looked like Johnny Dep was imitating Madonna . There just wasn't anything that tipped me off that he might be slightly 'off his head'. As a matter of fact the red queen appeared to be far more insane than the hatter.

There was no reason to care about any of the characters. We're not given anything to connect with. With all the characters who represent aspects of Alice's life, I could understand--they're props. But Alice herself seemed like she was just waltzing through this adventure, and it was very hard to root for her when she battled that Jabborwocky(sp?). It just gave me very little reason to care about what happens or what the outcome was.

Good points:

I love the red queen. She was perfect. Her insane 'off-the-cuff' decisions like hosting Alice...erm.. I mean, "Um" simply because she was 'big' and therefore deserved to be entertained was hilarious

The white queen was equally hilarious. All her little flit-and-float gestures with her hands and face were absolutely wonderful.

I also more-or-less liked the animated characters, Chester the cat being my favorite.


Overall, it was a pretty bad movie, masked only by the fact that a few of the scenes were quite humorous. But a incredible actor like Johnny Dep could have borrowed some inspiration from Brad Pitt's performance of 12 Monkeys or even his own Jack Sparrow performance. The hatter came off feeling sort of like a detached sage or oracle, which he really isn't. It was...perplexing.



.
[Edited 3/8/10 8:27am]

There's two Tim Burton movies I think are great:

Pee Wee's Big Adventure
Ed Wood

ufoclub said:

Ed Wood is one of his best films, true. No The Nightmare Before Christmas? He didn't direct it, but it's definitely a Tim Burton movie.

sextonseven said:

I'll have to see it again, but wasn't that really authored by Selick (Coraline)? Maye co-authored?

I do appreciate things about Burton films: The title sequence/music of Planet of the Apes, the crazy world of Mars Attacks...

but the two movies I named are jewels to me personally! The others are not all there.

ufoclub said:

Authored or no, I just think it's funny that a film titled Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas would not be considered a Tim Burton movie.

Watching it on blu-ray blew out my eyes.

I'm a huge Burton fan so I guess I'm a little biased....but I loved it!

TheVoid said:

Actually, come to think of it, I didn't really like the beginning and was only drawn in after she arrived in Wonderland.

And you must mean the Cheshire Cat.

I'm going to see it just for the hats.

The Cheshire Cat and the crazy white rabbit had me rolling.

"...spoon....."

A Tim Burton film with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter that looks abit gothic? Wow, how original from him.

I wasn't going to reply to this because I love Tim Burton so much in general that I felt it would be kind of wrong to. But fuck it; I loved it.

My favorite bit I would have to say was the Red Queen (hilarious). I also loved the Cheshire Cat and Alan Rickman as Absolem the Caterpillar. I guess the dialogue was stilted in parts, and the Mad Hatter, oddly enough, seemed to be one of the most sane characters in the damn movie (but I guess that does make him mad, considering where he is; I don't really want to think about it a lot, ok). Danny Elfman's score was great, too, but I'm probably the only person who gives a shit about the score.

Anyway, yeah. I liked it, even as a fan of the Lewis Carroll books. It was a pretty movie (and I do like pretty movies, I won't lie), but mostly it was just fun. I might have enjoyed it more because it was a movie I could actually take my little sister to (and she loved it a LOT), but I still adored it. I'd see it again in the theatre and I'll definitely be buying the DVD.

Yeah, that's all.

cborgman said:

I love Disney's cartoon version. Its quite trippy really (for a 1950's disney film) and is full of goofy songs that I love ("we'll smoke the monster out" etc...). The animators and Walt himself reportedly never liked it much though. Walt himself I think said he couldn't really make Alice sympathetic or something like that, which is sorta true I guess.

InsatiableCream said:

So is her bottle of coke

Protege said:

Yes to all of this.