Alice in Wonderland review

This weekend we sent to see the Tim Burton film Alice in Wonderland. I didn't have especially high hopes considering the critical reviews were fairly middling. It turned out to completely fill my expectations: A decent film that's very visual but lacking in story and wit.

Just like at the Avatar screening, we came an hour early, only to find a long line wrapped around the halls had already developed. People are serious about their 3D movies! We had the pleasure of watching the dismayed faces of people arriving after us as they trudged to the back of the snaking line to get into the theater.

The movie itself was very subdued and grim. It's hard to explain. The color palette stays in the blue-gray spectrum for most of the film. And visually its stunning but it felt cold and over CGI'd. Nothing looked real or palpable. I told A afterwards that I felt like I'd just watched a cartoon. That's a big problem with CGI that I still think needs a lot of work. Even the actors all seemed in a heightened state of unemotional detachment. The story starts out ten years after Alice's first trip to wonderland. She meets the same characters in the same sequence of events. But the journey seemed more about checking off story points (i.e. Mad Hatters tea, then meeting Red Queen, then meeting White queen etc.) And at the end of the journey at the point in the movie when the good people win and the characters are supposed to be joyous, everything still seems lacking emotion or urgency.

Now I don't want to appear overly critical. After all this was a huge production Burton took on that was more involved and complicated than I can even imagine. And he has created a visually stunning film. I just think that it would have benefited from a little more wit and and humanity and a little less CGI.

Here's an interesting video on the making of the movie.

More like Nein..Hahaha..am I right people?!!..anyone? (crickets)

Well we did it. Against our better judgment (and general dislike for modern "edgy" cartoons) we went and saw Tim Burton's Nine.

The movie wasn't that good. As the critics promised, its a visually stunning, but ultimately uninspiring movie. Nine begins in a post-apocalyptic earth. Machines have turned against humans (happens a lot these days in film), and now pretty much everything in the war-torn world is dead, except for a few small rag dolls, who fight against the remaining death machines left. It turns out these little rag dolls are remnants of the last soul on earth and represent what is left of humanity. It is an interesting concept, but the execution leaves much to be desired. The doll characters have very base personalities, and their story just isn't very compelling. They spend the whole movie running from one scary battle with a machine to another. I fell asleep a couple of times, but didn't really miss much. Eventually, the rag dolls win over the machine and inherit the planet (to what end I don't know, since they can't procreate). There are some amazing images, but I think this would have been better as a 30 minute short than a feature length film. But oh well, you live and you learn..take our advice and wait for the DVD :)

9

The Tim Burton produced post-apocalyptic animation opens today. We will be sure to check it out and post a review. Post-Apocalyptic fiction has definitely made a comeback this past decade, with several films/novels being release in the past few years alone. Starting this week we will post some trailers and brief reviews of some of our favorites.

And in case you missed it....here is the complete Cage the Elephant interview from Street Scene we produced for Citybeat.

We are back...

and have lots of editing to do. We will have some new videos posted this week for your viewing enjoyment...but for now check this out...

Not sure what we think about it....I was among the few who liked Tim Burtons adaptation of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and of course liked the original but admit that I am skeptical about his latest effort.