I'm a longtime fan of Tim Burton and a forever fan of Disney's animated classic, "Alice in Wonderland." So the idea that the two are combining into one beautiful work of nightmare-inducing psychedelia has me pretty tickled. So as you might imagine, I've been following the upcoming movie's development pretty closely.
All along, the one thing I've been most excited about seeing -- and the one thing that's been kept under wraps for all this time -- has been the character of the hookah-smoking caterpillar, who will be voiced by Alan Rickman. It made me feel better when Tim Burton told us over the summer that he hadn't even seen the character yet, but it's still an itch that I've been hoping to scratch. Not anymore though! Read more...
WOW. As a longtime fan of all things "Alice in Wonderland"-related, I've been looking forward to Tim Burton's take on Lewis Carroll's stories with something that far exceeds "great interest." It's more like "rabid enthusiasm," or "release more content before I go postal." And now that the first in-motion look at the movie has arrived, I find my vocabulary pared down to a single word: WOW!
For those of you fretting and raising eyebrows over this new Alice's (Mia Wasikowska) age or Johnny Depp's (he plays the Mad Hatter) star billing, know that Burton's story is a sort-of sequel to the Carroll original. You'll see all sorts of familiar characters and locales of course, but things have changed -- and quite a bit -- since Alice's first visit to Wonderland.
UPDATE: Apparently a certain website got a little overexcited about the "Alice" trailer and decided to run it a day early. These things happen. We've been asked to pull it down, and will of course comply out of respect for Disney, Burton and his talented team.
Keeping reading for some thoughts on the shiny newness. Read more...
FROM MTV.COM: "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" is one of the darkest of the Potter books, so it's no surprise that the movie version is the darkest of the films to date. What is surprising — and I say this as someone who loves the books and has loved the movies up to this point — is how sluggish the new picture is. It gets underway with a limp scene set in a train-station café — a trivial flirtation between Harry, now 16, and an admiring waitress — and proceeds in surges and sags for the next two and a half hours. There are some marvelous scenes, beautiful images, wonderful moments — it isn't a "bad" movie by any reckoning. But it isn't up to the sweeping dynamic level of some of the pictures that preceded it.
Every fan knows the story: Darkness is descending on Hogwarts and all of the wizarding world. Voldemort's Death Eaters are on the attack, and have even crossed over into the unsuspecting Muggle domain. The Dark Lord has tasked Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton, newly prominent) with an especially evil mission. Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) is in mortal danger, as, of course, is Harry (Daniel Radcliffe). And the deliciously creepy Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) appears to be up to even more in the way of no-good than usual. As if that weren't enough, there's suddenly a Horcrux crisis, too. (Need it be said that this isn't the place for first-timers to attempt to enter the Potter universe?)
Continue reading 'Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince': Snogwarts, By Kurt Loder
"Watchmen" may be the toast of fandom, but as far as films not based on comics, Tim Burton's live action/stop-motion hybrid "Alice in Wonderland" is easily one of the most anticipated. To date, the enigmatic director has generated considerable buzz for an inspired casting roster that includes Johnny Depp, Helen Bonham Carter, Crispin Glover, Alan Rickman, Michael Sheen, Christopher Lee and, of course, Anne Hathaway.
Hathaway plays the White Queen alongside Bonham Carter's Red Queen, and according to her it's a role best described by an anecdote. "A friend of mine just gave me a magnet that was a bunny rabbit holding a knife," she recalled. "It said 'Cute but psycho, it evens out.' And that's kind of my character as the White Queen." Read more...
When you do a movie like "Bottle Shock," you have to know your wine. After all, "Sideways" was about amateur connoisseurs (even if Paul Giamatti's character Miles is up there with the best of them: "I'm not drinking any f---ing Merlot!"). But "Bottle Shock" is about the actual tastemakers -- those who grow the grapes, sell the wine, and make judgments which affect the world market. It's actually about the judgment, the Judgment of Paris, which put California wines on the map. "So pretty much we had to get drunk for three months," laughed Rachel Taylor, who plays an intern at the Chateau Montelena.
"A lot of the vineyards [in Napa and Sonoma] realized the significance 'Sideways' had for the Santa Barbara area," said filmmaker Randall Miller, "so people were like, 'Come see our vineyards!' And to get rights to a lot of [real-life] characters, I had to go drink wine with the vinters." Read more...
You can't blame a girl for trying.
Ever time I have to chance to talk to Alan Rickman, I try to ask him about Snape -- but he won't spill. I'm not the only reporter who has this problem -- Rickman is notorious for not saying anything about the Harry Potter series, because he doesn't want to ruin it for the kids who have yet to finish reading "Deathly Hallows." And while I can respect that in theory, it's been a year. Even J.K. Rowling herself talks about what he won't.
So, when he was doing press for "Bottle Shock", I thought perhaps he might respond to a spoiler-free type question. Instead of asking about Snape's motivations, or the great Snape debate -- which prompted its own book -- I thought something more general, something connective, might work. His character Steven Spurrier runs the Academy of Wine, and cares deeply about the art and science of winemaking. His other character Severus Snape is a professor of potions, and cares deeply about the art and science of potionmaking (so much so he can invent his own, or improve on pre-existing ones -- see "Half-Blood Prince"). Wouldn't the two characters have so much in common -- despite being from disparate worlds -- that they would have a lot to talk about?
"Sneaky question!" Rickman laughed. Read more...
