Word: burtonisms
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...example, Tim Burton. At 51, Burton still has the otherworldly air of a bright kid distracted from conversation with adults by the crazy-beautiful pictures playing in his mind. Since Pee-wee's Big Adventure, his 1985 debut feature, Burton's signature films have dwelled in the realm of arrested infancy. When he hasn't adapted children's classics (Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), he's confected his own scary, sweet bedtime fables (Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride). The typical hero of these films is a naïf who stumbles into a world that threatens...
...would be released on DVD only three months after its opening in movie houses instead of the usual four, the bosses of British theater chains balked, declaring they would not show Alice. A compromise was reached, and the film is now playing throughout the U.K. (Read a review of Burton's Alice in Wonderland at Techland.com...
Some actors lend their voices to CGI characters: Alan Rickman to the Caterpillar, Stephen Fry to the Cheshire Cat, the 92-year-old Gough (in his fifth Burton film) as the Dodo Bird. Other stars appear in fanciful makeup. Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter matches his flaming red hair with red eyeliner, as if he'd been crying for years; he's a gentleman ghoul out of Johnny Weir's closet. Anne Hathaway, as the White Queen, is given crimson lips, platinum hair and, alas, no redeeming quirks. Bonham Carter (Burton's partner offscreen) sports blue eye shadow that could...
Wonderland's Joan of Arc Screenwriter Linda Woolverton and Burton made two big changes to the text. One was to transform Carroll's episodic tale into an epic quest, based on the poem "Jabberwocky." Alice must seize the vorpal sword and slay the fearsome Jabberwock. In assuming this challenge, she becomes a female Frodo, Wonderland's Joan of Arc. This twist legitimizes the feature-length running time but also risks turning this jovially anarchic enterprise into your standard action-adventure. The film is better at reveling in eccentricity than at replaying Excalibur. (See the top 10 movie performances...
...movie Alice is also stricken by her beloved father's death - as Dodgson said he had been. So the movie is in a way an autobiography of each man-child responsible for it: Carroll and Burton. That may not matter to the kids who find this film much livelier than earlier versions and easier to warm to than the original. And is Burton's vision trippy enough to serve as a hallucinogenic blast? Go ask Alice...