Alice!

So I've finally seen the new Alice in Wonderland. I have been waiting
and waiting. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Thriugh the Looking
Glass is my favorite book, and the original is my favorite Disney
movie and one of my favorite movies of all time. Johnny Depp is my
favorite actor of all time. I wanted to see it in theaters, but when
presented with the choice of either using the free ticket I got from a
friend of mine for my birthday on either Avatar or Alice, I chose
Avatar. So I didn't get to see it in theaters. We'd had it on our
Netflix list since even before it came out on DVD, but we hadn't
gotten it yet, so when my mom stopped at the Redbox outside of Royal
Farms today to look for a movie and saw it, she rented it.

I usually hate remakes. The remake of Willy Wonka was... Well, I was
severely disappointed. It completely removed the wonder from the movie
and just made it creepy. While I do appreciate creepy, especially
coming from Johnny Depp, I just didn't feel it was appropriate in that
movie. I felt kind of leery about watching Alice for this reason. It
would be another Tim Burton and Johnny Depp remake of one of my
favorite movies. This movie, however... Blew my mind.
The CGI and special effects were spectacular. I sometimes couldn't
tell when it was real and when it was CGI, which I figure was the
whole point. It's Alice, for goodness sakes. The whole premise is that
you don't know what's real and what's not. That's the fun of it.
I quickly realized that it was not, in fact, a remake of the cartoon
version, nor a movie solely based on the book, but sort of a
continuation of the story. Alice is now grown up, and she believes
that everything she once experienced in that place she calls
Wonderland, as well as what she is experiencing now, was all part of a
dream. The red queen has taken over, and she is killing all the things
of the land. The only way to defeat her is to kill her beloved
Jabberwockey. (By the way, I love that poem. I actually wrote down the
explanation Humpty Dumpty gives in the book in order to translate the
one stanza).
I think that this new movie is truer to the books than the cartoon
when it comes to things such as the atmosphere of the environment. I
believe those are the words I want to use. Anyways, the cartoon
version was more child-friendly. It didn't have the crazy element that
the book and the new movie do, which was perfectly fine. It had the
wonder of imagination that we love and cherish in that movie and
others like it. The new movie, on the other hand, had the craziness
and the confusion that make the books so lovely. I was very pleased.
I loved Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. There's just something about
that man that makes a crazy character more wonderful than I ever could
imagine him being. I liked the hint of romantic feelings between him
and Alice. I loved it when he would ramble on and somebody would say
"Hatter" and he would reply "I'm fine." I don't think they could have
done a better job casting him. Nobody else could have pulled it off as
well as he did.
Signing off with visions of Johnny Depp dancing in my head,
~LeeLee~
P.S. I've officially given up on the song line titles and the posting
everyday. It's not happening.