Tuesday night Trab and I and our neighbor Pat went to the movies to see the new Alice In Wonderland in 3-D. I’ve never seen a 3-D film before, it was really cool; I especially like sparkles in 3-D for some reason. We’ve been waiting on this film for a while so when it was finally released we had to go see it. We are both big Johnny Depp fans and I’m a huge Helena-Bonham Carter fan. Neither one disappointed in this movie! I must say this ranks up there as one of Tim Burton’s most visually stunning works. Even without the 3-D it must be a beautiful piece. The colors luminesce almost. Everything is how you would have imagined it to be when reading the book. There are only a few nit-picky complaints I have about this movie. Number one is the White Queen. Anne Hathaway looks terrible in this! I can see why on the posters they have changed her lipstick to red instead of the horrible maroon/black she is actually wearing. I also feel like they sort of dropped the ball on her costuming. Maybe there are tons of details that you can’t see unless you are seeing it in person, but to me it’s like they bought a mid-range dress off the David’s Bridal clearance rack. My other issue is that I wanted it to end differently. I won’t give anything away, but at the end Aliceis on a ship and I DESPERATELY wanted one of the sailors or another passenger or SOMEONE she was going to meet there to be Johnny Depp. Think about that when you watch it and see if you don’t find yourself hoping for the same thing. I know he’s a good bit older than she is, but they could have done him up with that 21 jump street face with all the cgi and make-up tricks they have now-a-days! Speaking of noticing things when you watch it. I read that people think the Mad Hatter’s looks are patterned after one of my favorite designers, Vivienne Westwood…HOWEVER I instantly saw a resemblance to a DIFFERENT well known 
face. That’s right, LOL, Madonna! The unruly curls, the center part, the sunken cheeks, the gap toothedness! Even the way M uses so much mascara that it separates her eyelashes into a row of spikes. All I am saying is keep this in mind, especially during the scenes of life before the Red Queen came to power.
The website for this is located on the Disney servers, it is very Flash heavy and features all sorts of cool things, social networking interactivity, film and cast info, photos, videos, the soundtrack for the listening, tons of info about the video game, Adventures in Wonderland web game, Wonderland’s Hidden Secrets web game, a web app to Mad Hatter yourself, a free mobile app, concept art, posters, wallpapers, icons, trivia and all sorts of stuff randomly tossed into the character pages! The promotions section has links to all sorts of cool stuff like the new Alice collection of nail polishes by OPI, Barnes & Noble’s special Alice sub-site, Hot Topic’s Alice store, Tetley’s Wonderland inspired teas and more! I am really curious to see how Disney is going to revamp the Alice sections of their parks. As I recall there is nothing but the go-cart track and the tea cup ride. Both are sorely out of date. With the opening of the new Harry Potter attractions at Universal Orlando, Disney will have to come up with something REALLY spectacular! Is a new technicolor wonderland going to be it? I hope so, that would be great!
Above left is my favorite costume in the entire movie. This short, flouncy dress is incredible! I wish I was able to find a good image of it from the front because it is really a beauty! They black and white stripe over the bright red is amazing! My next favorite is the Red Queen’s Elizabethan dress that she wears throughout the film. The attention to detail on this, even down to the shoes, must have taken months. Below is another costume I really liked that you don’t get a very good look at during the movie. This is worn UNDER the gray-blue coat Alice has on at the close of the film. The skirt is made from tons of rick-rack. It looks a lot better than I would ever imagine rick-rack would, but I bet it is a real bitch to iron! There was an exhibit at the Comic-con in Sand Diego featuring props and costumes from the movie. The exhibit is going to be traveling the globe in the near future with the only US city it will be visiting being Anaheim, CA (as far as I could find info on). If it comes to Chicago, I would love to go and get a closer look at the costumes!
