I still wanna see it. There was an interesting review in the Dallas Observer that looked at it from a feminist place. [link]

I think the film presents itself as a feminist text, but on close reading I don't think it passes. Alice rarely displays any real agency - for the most part she simply does what she's told. The White Queen gives lip service to the idea that Alice has to make her own choices, but the choice she offers her is "You can either do what I tell you or all your friends will die. Up to you, though! No pressure! TOTALLY YOUR CALL WHETHER OR NOT EVERYONE DIES."

In the one scene where she acutally does make a choice, she chooses to rescue the Hatter. Which, yay for having the damsel rescue the father-figure I guess, but OTOH, the one single time in the entire film where the title character thinks for herself, and it's about a man.

And for a Tim Burton film, I was pretty pissed off that the happy ending boiled down to conventionally pretty blonde girl of explicitly normal size wins, weirdo goth misfits disenfranchised forever. REALLY, TIM? REALLY???

In addition, they didn't explain the central conflict - but why did the Red Queen attack? Sisterly jealousy? Really? She went apeshit over that? Alice really did need to show more agency throughout. She experienced extreme social pressures early on and her response was essentially to run away. It would have been good for her to not assert constantly that she was dreaming. She took denial into a new category. It was only until a character was kidnapped and another showed up offering help that she finally took some agency. It made no sense to me that she would constantly assert "this is a dream" and then be so reluctant to fight the Jabberwocky. If it is a dream, fight the damn thing. Who cares ?

I said to Jilli that I wonder what kind of Alice movie the Beetlejuice-era Burton would have created. I suspect it would have been better because it would have at least honored the nonsensical nature of Wonderland

Or, you know, Terry Gilliam. Whatever his problems as a director, he wouldn't have conventionalized it. Everything I hear about Alice makes it sound like a Narnia movie with Burton-esque touches.

Jeremy Sumpter's Peter Pan!

love love love.

Did you know they had to rebuild the nursery window four times because he was growing like a weed during filming?

I think I'm already on record as loving that Peter Pan to a dangerous degree -- it wrecks me about as thoroughly (and cathartically) as Lilo & Stitch wrecks Jilli.

Though do avoid the IMDB user reviews -- somewhere in there is a remarkably wrongheaded asshat who gripes about the blandness of Jason Isaac and complains that everyone's always ignoring the perfect sublimity of Dustin Hoffman in the vastly superior Hook.

eta: Also, holy shit! Jeremy Sumpter is on FNL? That's exactly the last nudge I needed to get me over my don't-like-football-stories block and dig into the DVDs Perkins lent me so tragically long ago.

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And yet it didn't need to double post, so I'll say it without ASSCAPS:

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the blandness of Jason Isaac

These words do not make sense together. Asshat indeed.

I do think Hoffman (and Hoskins) WERE the best thing about Hook, but that's faint praise indeed.

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I am so totally psyched for this, it's unreal. Despite it having ScarJo and Gwyneth.