Alice In Wonderland

[polkablues]

The big problem is that it's just too damn obvious.  Anybody who's ever seen a movie before is already able to picture in their mind what "Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland" is going to be, and I guarantee you they're all about 98% shot-for-shot accurate.  But whatever.  Hot Topic will sell a shitload of t-shirts.

[Fernando]

CGI is now the equivalent of plastic surgery in movies: originally meant to make things look better, but in reality just makes everything look like what it is, CGI.

Very well put, although there's good cgi in some films but they need time to do it right.

I wonder if a Where the Wild Things direction for realism would have been better. Only time will tell.

It certainly would, but time is key here, studios are often in a hurry to release movies with box office potential asap, who cares if the movie would look/be better, they want the cash, they don't have time to go that route which would take years...

What I wonder is if Tim would like to go wild with Alice, maybe he doesn't care either and only wants to make films as fast as he can.
I actually find most of his stuff pretty boring to look at.

[tpfkabi]

Yeah, I don't know about this either.
I'm afraid it may end up like his Wonka did.

Zodiac was the most well used CGI I can think of - the kind you don't really realize or are drawn to.

I had no idea how extensive it was until I saw that before and after bit.

[Stefen]

I was just worried it was going to look like Wonka. Kiddie shit. This at least looks darker.

[socketlevel]

i've given up on burton.  the 15 year old bubble gum goth girl thing was kinda cute in the 90s but now he's ruining masterpieces like alice in wonderland.  somebody's gotta put a stop to him. i don't like to judge a book by the cover, but...

The big problem is that it's just too damn obvious.  Anybody who's ever seen a movie before is already able to picture in their mind what "Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland" is going to be, and I guarantee you they're all about 98% shot-for-shot accurate. 

is spot on.

[Gamblour.]

The big problem is that it's just too damn obvious.  Anybody who's ever seen a movie before is already able to picture in their mind what "Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland" is going to be, and I guarantee you they're all about 98% shot-for-shot accurate.  But whatever.  Hot Topic will sell a shitload of t-shirts.

Yeah, I felt that way when I saw Sweeney Todd, which I really didn't care for. Like Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland just seems Tim Burton-y to begin with and so it's redundant to even have him do it.

And how many fucking hats can Johnny Depp wear? Literally, not figuratively. I'm kind of tired of him.

[The Perineum Falcon]

Trailer's here, too.

http://www.kalebnation.com/blog/2009/07/22/tim-burtons-alice-in-wonderland-trailer/

At least Kaleb's excited about it.

[Gold Trumpet]

I don't mind the general Burton assumptions. I may be the only person here who thought Charlie and the Chocolate Factory had a worthwhile existence, but I think he's a lot better now than in the 1980s. Those early films were by the same Tim Burton, but they were sluggish technically and storywise. Edward Scissorshands makes me cringe for its obvious attempt at drama. The film has little appeal elsewhere besides its pretensions so it's overall a blah result for me, but now Burton packs a similar story with a lot of decent entertainment around the lukewarm themes. He can do more with a story now and I don't care that Tim Burton will always be just who he is so I hope for the best with this movie.

[Alexandro]

depp really looks like madonna, it's weird.

Really, a film like this depends on the screenplay. Every other varible is completely predictable at this point. Burton is in burtonland, and Depp is in deppland and everyone else is just playing as guests in their party. I thought the look in Charlie was interesting, mainly because it was so colorful, but this looks like a rehash of that, and Burton colorful is not as interesint as burton dark. If the screenplay is witty enough, funny or well constructed enough, the film will be ok.

Burton needs to do something radically different. He really peaked with Ed Wood and after that it's been mostly one disapointment after the other. I enjoyed Charlie and Corpse Bride, but they are nothing compared to his reshaping of things in the 90's. A truly dark true story with not discernible Burtonisms in the scrypt would probably take something awesome from him again, but he keeps working in children's fare.

[diggler]

march?

it'll suck

[socketlevel]

i guess the Tim burton look just isn't as exciting as it used to be, it got old on me.  i worry the wes anderson experience will suffer from that 98% factor as well, because i still love his vibe but i could see the same thing happening.  it's an oversaturation thing, and tired.  it's not my problem that Tim burton is being himself and refuses to change. it's more that Tim burton makes the same movie with the same look each time, and the source material fits itself around the Tim burton art style.  most movies should be vice versa from that, more like tim burton adapting to the source material.

[pete]

most of my normal friends are starting to talk about it, and all them normal simple folks are excited as shit about this film. 

[MacGuffin]

Tim Burton's descent into the rabbit hole
The director's clip of 'Alice in Wonderland' is cheered at Comic-Con, but he's still as nervous as a Mad Hatter.
By Gina McIntyre; Los Angeles Times

When Tim Burton, one of Hollywood's most distinctive directors, came to Comic-Con International last week with never-before-seen footage from his upcoming adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland," the audience at the San Diego Convention Center went wild at the sight of Alice, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and other beloved characters from Lewis Carroll's surreal storybook classic.

The rapturous applause, however, did little to assuage Burton's anxiety. "If you saw how much was missing," Burton later said with a laugh, "you'd be nervous too."

Opening day for "Alice" is still seven months away, but Burton, now back in the editing bay in London, might as well have an impatient white rabbit following him around with a ticking pocket watch tucked in his waistcoat. The movie is being made using a combination of live-action, animation and other techniques, creating a logjam of visual effects tasks that will likely keep Burton from finishing until the very last moment.

Penned by screenwriter Linda Woolverton, Burton's "Alice" sees the curious blond (19-year-old Australian actress Mia Wasikowska) tumble down the rabbit hole into a world populated by an array of human and animal oddities. One of them, the outrageous-looking, orange-haired Mad Hatter, played by Burton's longtime collaborator Johnny Depp, accompanies her on much of her journey across the strange land. (Depp turned in a surprise guest appearance at Comic-Con, which only stoked the level of excitement surrounding the film.)

In assembling a story that borrows from all of Carroll's "Alice" material -- he said the script captured "a lot of the vibe" from the famous nonsensical poem "Jabberwocky," which contains wholly fabricated words and a loosely constructed narrative at best -- he wanted the movie to be more than simply a document of a girl wandering through a surreal landscape; all of the characters needed to have an internal life and to be more richly drawn than in earlier big-screen efforts. Alice, for example, evolves from an astonished naif to empowered action heroine, sporting her very own suit of armor, over the course of the film.

"Every other version I've ever seen, I've never really connected to because it's always just a series of weird events," Burton said. "She's passively wandering through, meeting this weird character, that weird character. It's fine in the books, but the movies always felt like there wasn't anything underneath them. That's what we tried to do. Instead of the Hatter just being weird, [we wanted to] get some kind of character underneath him. That's the goal, is to give the 'Alice' material a little more weight to it."

Burton said his decision to combine live action and animation made the project the most technologically complex he's worked yet. Before filming began, he tried to ensure that the actors would be comfortable reacting to characters and locations that are being rendered only now, during post-production in London, where the director resides with his partner and "Alice" star Helena Bonham Carter, who plays the villainous Red Queen.

"This is the first time I've dealt with a lot of green screen, and it drives you nuts," Burton said. "On a live-action [film], you've got actors, you've got sets and that's what I like. This is almost the opposite of that. After a while you start to get kind of jittery and crazy."

He was particularly grateful for the elaborately detailed sets and costumes that did exist as they helped ground the cast and crew. "We had some reality to hang onto there a little bit. It helps, believe me," he said.

It was Burton's experiences fighting to make artistically risky studio films like "Alice" and 2007's gothic musical "Sweeney Todd" that prompted him to get involved in "9," which he also promoted at Comic-Con. The unusual and inventive film, which arrives in theaters Sept. 9, follows a band of tiny, hand-sewn-looking sock-puppet characters as they struggle to survive in a harrowing, post-apocalyptic landscape. The movie is based on director Shane Acker's Student Academy Award-winning short, and Burton said that when he first saw Acker's work, he was struck by the fact that the director's sensibility was so similar to his own.

He and fellow producer Timur Bekmambetov -- the Russian director who helmed last year's Angelina Jolie action movie "Wanted" -- became sounding boards for Acker; both directors share an agent, Mike Simpson, who introduced them to the 38-year-old filmmaker.

Acker was born in Illinois and attended UCLA, first earning a master's degree in architecture. He later completed another master's in animation (where he made his the original 11-minute version of "9" as his thesis project), before heading to New Zealand to work as an animator on "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King."

Burton said he was willing to take on any battles that arose over the creative direction of "9," but none materialized. "The kinds of fights I've had in the past on things didn't really manifest themselves on this," he said.

Burton is planning to next direct a "Dark Shadows" movie that will star Depp as lovelorn vampire Barnabas Collins, the tortured soul who originally appeared in the 1960s soap opera of the same name. Before that, though, he'll finish shepherding "Alice" through her many adventures in Wonderland. And time is short.

"Any film you do, you just kind of finish and you wish you could have spent a little bit more time on this or that," he said. "I don't yet know how much at the end of this I will have felt that I've compromised or not. This one could be pretty rough that way."

[MacGuffin]

New Trailer here.

[Alexandro]

most of my normal friends are starting to talk about it, and all them normal simple folks are excited as shit about this film. 

That happened around here too last july when the pics and trailer started to pop up. Everyone started to shoot their goo about this film, talking about "the next masterpiece" from the "genius" Tim Burton. He has a lot of street cred basically for the same reasons people in xixax gives him shit: consistency. He's been doing the same thing forever to the extent that he is now a recognizable brand. He gives people what they expect from him and they love him for it. Of course if he were challenging expectations he would probably be out of work by now. Most people, Burton and Depp fans, don't even know Ed Wood exists. But everyone saw Sweeney Todd, and you can feel people really wanting to like that one despite being practically an impossible film to like on any level.