Tuesday 28 July 2009

IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD LAND

At last (or, 'already', depending how you look at it) we have our first animated - as opposed to still life - peep into Tim Burton's Wonderland...



Well, it's certainly suitably Burtonesque, but it's probably just as well - all things considered - that Mr Dodgson is not still with us...

14 comments:

scb said...

Er, um, well, yes... it is quite, isn't it? Rather in-your-face, as it were. In-my-face it likely won't be. Sorry Mr. Burton.

Nightmare-inducing for small children and SCBs, I think... I'll stick with Disney.

And, drawing myself up to my full height (ha!) and saying in my best Outraged Matronly Lady of the Manor voice, "Was it absolutely necessary, after she woke up from drinking that questionable liquid,that her dress was slipping off her shoulders in such a manner?" (The Outraged Matronly Lady of the Manor needs to get a life...)

MORDIS -- What those who particularly enjoy Tim Burton's productions will say. "Do want more of dis..."

SharonM said...

I was trying to figure out who was doing the narration - was amazed to find it was Jonny D - I suppose I'm so used to him being a Cockney Englishman so I never quite expected him to sound posh.

I might just go and see it...

Brian Sibley said...

I think, SCB, that the dress was falling off because she had become smaller. I must say, it always puzzled me in the story why Alice's clothes grew in size when she did. I can accept that there might be some kind of DRINK ME cordial that could (somehow) effect the size of the human body when ingested but how does it work on clothes worn by that body?

If there's a Wonderland physicist out there who can explain, I'd be grateful. And, I'd like to know, why the hell can't we buy it over here?!!

Incidentally, there's an even more perplexing issue with the Incredible Hulk who grows to the size of a house but only splits his shirt while his shorts miraculously go from medium to 50X... And he's not in the land at the bottom of the rabbit-hole.


Honestly, SHARON M, you and Johnny Depp! See how easy it turned out to be for Disney to convert a self-confessed Alicephobe into someone ready to shell out £15 for a cinema ticket?! I hope they pay Johnny enough for possessing that kind of power...

SharonM said...

I'm sure they do. But there's no way I'd shell out £15 to go to see a film - is that London prices?

Here it's between about £8 and £10 and if I did go to see it, I'd make it on an Orange Wednesday.

It will probably increase my Alicephobia though.

Anonymous said...

Being a big Tim Burton fan, I can say he will never be too "scary" for me. When I was younger I used to be awed by the fact he seemed to follow me around in my dreams with a camera!

From experience I'd say you can't really judge a movie from a trailer, I never saw the point of these. All I can say for now is that I really don't like that Cheshire Cat. Way too "cuddly" for my taste.

Eventually I am not even sure I will be able to see it in cinemas, I am stuck in this French speaking town and I need to take at least half a day to travel to a place where I can watch movies in English. I do that once or twice a year only.

Brian Sibley said...

You're right! Judging a movie by the trailer is like judging a hatter by his hat!

scb said...

Brian -- And we all know that judging a hatter by his hat is mad! Simply mad!

After I'd typed all that Outraged Matronly Lady of the Manor nonsense, the explanation about the dress did occur to me, but I was having too much fun being an Outraged ML of the M to delete it all. ;-)

FOUST: The Matronly Lady of the Manor, no longer outraged, but trying to show how very very cultured she is, tries to impress a scholarly chap by saying she's recently been to the Opera, where she saw Goatee's opera Foust.

Suzanne said...

I'm in 2 minds whether to go and see this new "Alice" - which is appropriate I suppose in wonderland. As for clothes shrinking with Alice, I thought everybody knew that... it's a SPECIAL MAGIC potion Brian!
ronsion: the special reasoning behind all of the above

Phil said...

The clothes-shrinking issue is surely related to the phenomena whereby ghosts always wander around fully clothed. (I thik it was Ambrose Bierce who pointed out that this implied that clothes must have a spirit, too, in which case why don't we see ghosts of empty suits wandering around...)

Brian Sibley said...

Brilliant! Don't remeber that in Bierce, with whom I fell madly in love in my twenties. Must revisit him...

I once did a Radio 3 programme about him that received a very sniffy review in The Spectator (I think) from the late Ned Sherrin.

Love his (Bierce's not Sherrin's) The Devil's Dictionary and his story The Incident at Owl Creek Bridge ranks with anything by M R James and Uncle Ray...

Bitter Animator said...

Unless one has the time to see each and every movie, movies will be judged by their trailer. At least in part.

History also plays a part and Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes pretty much killed my desire to see his movies.

In a way, it has worked out for the best. He keeps Helena Bonham Carter in work and busy, and I don't have to watch her. It's win-win.

Brian Sibley said...

Planet of the Apes was execrable, Sweeney Todd (despite HBC) rather good... With Burton, you pays yer money and yer takes yer choice -- or, in your case, not, of course!! ;-)

Phil said...

Brian, I couldn't remember where I'd heard the Bierce quote on ghosts, but I've just found it on the web here:

http://thinkexist.com/quotation/ghost-n-the_outward_and_visible_sign_of_an_inward/288764.html

Brian Sibley said...

And from the aforementoned Devil's Dictionary: I should be ashamed of myself...

For those who can't be asked to cut-and-paste URLs, here's the nub of the argument:


"There is one insuperable obstacle to a belief in ghosts. A ghost never comes naked: he appears either in a winding-sheet or 'in his habit as he lived'.

"To believe in him, then, is to believe that not only have the dead the power to make themselves visible after there is nothing left of them, but that the same power inheres in textile fabrics.

"Supposing the products of the loom to have this ability, what object would they have in exercising it?

"And why does not the apparition of a suit of clothes sometimes walk abroad without a ghost in it? These be riddles of significance."


Had The Devil's Dictionary been published in Lewis Carroll's lifetime this theory would most certainly have fascinated the creator of Alice, who was greatly intrigued by ghostology as can be seen from his comic poem, Phantasmagoria.