Sunday, March 07, 2010

Alice

We spent this morning at the Odeon cinema in town, watching the 3D version of Alice in Wonderland.
I can't remember the last time I saw a 3D film at the cinema, not having seen Avatar yet. The illusion of 3D works very well though and I forgot I was wearing the spectacles during large segments of the film. The black plastic glasses Blues Brothers style spectacles work much better than those cardboard ones I remember from my youth: the ones with a blue "lens" for one eye and a red "lens" for the other eye. You could sort of watch the film without the glasses on because the colours were the same however there was a double image effect. In old 3D movies everything kind of looked green I remember, except for a red tinged outline.
I don't recall reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass all the way through as a child but I have been exposed to parts of the stories before. I've read excerpts for comprehension exercises in school and I've seen other films so kind of knew what to expect. I think Tim Burton has done a brilliant job, he has come up with a film that I could enjoy watching again using a story I never really liked very much. Or I should say using elements of different stories because it's not a "true" film adaptation of the original book. It doesn't pretend to be either, it kind of updates the story from the book and gives it a better, more coherent, structure that I prefer to be honest. The actors and voice actors all do a fine job.

2 comments:

laura b. said...

I am looking forward to seeing this, as I am a big Tim Burton fan. I can see this material working for him, as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory did. Like Dahl, Carroll had a rather darkly humorous sensibility.

Glad you enjoyed it!

FW said...

LB: My wife said she really liked the music and could tell it was written by the same guy who did it for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It surprised me because I don't really remember there being much music in it. Maybe I was distracted by the 3D?