Search

Search only in certain items:

Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Alice in Wonderland (2010)
2010 | Action, Family, Sci-Fi
The characters, the plot, the artistry (0 more)
Cheshire Cat and others are cartoonish (0 more)
A is for Artful
Contains spoilers, click to show
As with another of Tim Burton’s films, Sleepy Hollow, Alice in Wonderland strays significantly from the original material. And, in a vein similar to Sleepy Hollow, decapitation is a much-discussed topic.

Alice is introduced to the audience as a child who has strange dreams. In the subsequent scenes, an older Alice is seen in a carriage with her mother. She is unwittingly on her way to her engagement party, and she is fully expected to accept the offer of marriage from someone who seems quite ill-suited for her. “Your life will be perfect. It’s already been decided,” says her sister Margaret.

Elements of the engagement party offer foreshadowing for the alternate reality Alice soon finds herself in. Instead of accepting her suitor’s proposal, Alice runs away and follows a rabbit wearing a waistcoat into an exceptionally large rabbit hole. There, she is found falling with a variety of household objects, including one particularly friendly piano.

Once in Wonderland, Alice’s world has literally turned upside-down. She falls from her perch on the ceiling to the floor. Alice solves a puzzle of many locked doors, using the expected growing and shrinking mechanisms, and then she emerges into a strange topiary. There she is greeted by the rabbit and other residents of Wonderland, who argue whether this Alice is “the right Alice.”

Many of the traditional characters are found in this Wonderland, but most of the ominous poetry associated with those characters has been omitted. Tweedledum and Tweedledee are introduced, but they don’t seem to serve much purpose. I missed the recitation of “the Walrus and the Carpenter” very much.

Alice insists that the world around her must be a dream, as she is led through oversized mushrooms to a blue caterpillar, voiced by the talented Alan Rickman. Once again, Alice’s destiny is written: the caterpillar reveals a scroll which shows an image of Alice slaying the dreaded Jabberwocky. Indeed, it is her role to become the champion of Wonderland, to rise up and defeat the Red Queen who keeps this horrible beast as a weapon.

Later, we come across a dysfunctional tea party held under the shadow of a dilapidated windmill. Johnny Depp appears as the wild and wide-eyed Mad Hatter. Alice, it seems, is late to her tea just as she was to her engagement party. We learn that there is a whole network of characters, including the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), who wish to bring down the tyrannical Red Queen.

The struggle between the Red and White Queens eventually comes to a head, and Alice bravely accepts her fate to fight the Jabberwocky. And the Jabberwocky is indeed a terrifying entity, as it seems to be part dinosaur and part dragon.

The visual effects in this film were striking. Burton paints a beautiful landscape full of dark, rich colors. Several moments in the film are surreal and disturbing, such as when Alice crosses a moat full of dismembered heads to gain access to the Red Queen’s castle. However, some of the characters, such as the Cheshire cat, had a more cartoonish quality about them that I found off-putting.

The acting and voice-overs in the film were also impressive. Actress Mia Wasikowska was enchanting as Alice. She reflected the vulnerability and the more intrepid characteristics of the young girl quite well. Depp was delightfully creepy as the Mad Hatter. Crispin Glover was effective as the Knave of Hearts, the Red Queen’s lead henchman. And Stephen Fry was a marvelous voice choice for the strange and eerie Cheshire Cat.

The Red Queen is quite the character in this film. Helena Bonham Carter perfectly captures the Queen’s cruelty and absurdity. She delivers the “off with his head” line repeatedly and with gusto. The Queen’s cranium was so large that I was surprised she didn’t fall forward from the weight of it. And I haven’t seen that much blue eyeshadow since the 80s.

The Blu-ray version of this film enhanced the quality of the computer graphic imagery quite well. The special features consisted of interviews of the cast regarding the characters. These interviews contained behind-the-scenes looks at some of the makeup and green screen work done on this film. Though these interviews were enlightening, I would have loved to see more about the production process, since the sets and some characters were entirely computer-generated.

All things considered, Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is a delightful departure from reality. Fans of Burton’s other films are sure to love it.
  
Alice in Zombieland - White Rabbit Chronicles
Alice in Zombieland - White Rabbit Chronicles
Gena Showalter | 2012 | Fiction & Poetry
6
7.0 (9 Ratings)
Book Rating
From the title, I was expecting [b:Alice's Adventures in Wonderland|1898443|Alice's Adventures in Wonderland|Lewis Carroll|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1397939992s/1898443.jpg|2933712] only with zombies: a mad hatter, a red queen, white rabbit etc. Well we had a white rabbit but not in animal form, the others were nowhere to be seen and therefore it was nothing like Alice in Wonderland.

She was just a girl who lost her family in an accident and saw zombies for the first time.

To say it was nothing like I expected I have to admit that after those first 50 pages or so that I fell into the story quite easily. Cole had my attention from that first connections with Alice and some of the other guys grew on me too.

I have the second book in the series and I'm sure I'll get around to reading it eventuallybut not yet.
  
One of us is Lying
One of us is Lying
Karen M. McManus | 2017 | Young Adult (YA)
8
8.3 (41 Ratings)
Book Rating
Suspenseful
Five very different students walked into detention that day, and only four walked out! Outsider, and creator of the Bayview gossip app, Simon dies 24 hours before releasing a post about the other students he shared detention with, a post that would expose their deepest secrets online!
Bronwyn, the overachieving nerd, hoping to head to Yale, Cooper the star baseball jock, Addy the prom queen and Nate the bad boy, are all now looking at facing murder charges when the investigation uncovers Simon's last gossip column, pointing the finger in their direction.
Follow the Bayview 4 as they try to uncover the other secrets, prove their innocence and try to keep up with being teens in a normal high school.
McManus keeps the suspense building in this well written novel. Expect some twists and the odd red herring as you follow the journey of these four very likeable characters, thrown together in an unlikely friendship.