New Alice in Wonderland trailer

"You're absolutely Alice, I'd know you anywhere" - The Mad Hatter

New trailer was released today for the new Alice in Wonderland film, being directed by Tim Burton. There was a trailer released a few months back that looked interesting, but hadn’t quite sold me on the concept. This trailer fixed all that. It’s fantastic, the imagery is beautiful, the humor is dead on. I laughed out loud at numerous points during this trailer. My housemates thought I was going crazy.

As previously mentioned, the film will be directed by Tim Burton, previously known for directing Sweeny Todd, Batman, Edward Scissor Hands, and so many more. He’s known for his unique, almost gothic, art style. He always lends a level of darkness, and twistie-ness to everything he does. He is also known for working with Danny Elfman in all his films. Danny Elfman has done the score for probably half of the movie soundtracks you can remember. Spiderman, check. Batman, check. Beetlejuice, check. Nightmare Before Christmas, what a great movie.

Alice in Wonderland is to star relatively under the radar Mia Wasikowska as the titular role. The man who needs no introduction: Johnny Depp will be playing the Mad Hatter. The Red Queen will be played by none other than Tim Burton’s wife, Helena Bonham Carter. You might recognize her from Harry Potter, and Sweeny Todd. She’s the crazy one. Anne Hathaway is set to play the Ice Queen. It’s interesting to see how Anne Hathaway’s career has continued to mature. Stephen Fry is voicing the especially creepy and awesome Cheshire Cat. Christopher Lee is The Jabberwock, and Alan Rickman is The Caterpillar (What great casting. His voice will be perfect).

All in all, I am very excited to see this when it comes out, and you should be too. The trailer is being hosted on firstshowing.net, so you can see it here: http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/12/16/second-official-trailer-for-tim-burtons-alice-in-wonderland/

Soft Review

Recently, I watched a short movie as part of my journalism studies - a class that focused on reviwing that week, interestingly enough. Unfortunately I couldn't just hand in one of my previous pieces of work, and so this review came about.

Soft is a short film, a medium that is surprisingly underrepresented when it comes to reviews. I haven't seen a lot of short films myself, true, but the few I have seen (such as Paths of Hate, or The Facts in the Case of Mr Hollow) tend to be finely made, with a certain visual flair to leave a lasting impression. Few such movies are over 15 minutes long, and so tend to be far more focused on grabbing the audiences attention. For many directors, a short film is their chance to garner attention and potential backing from financers for a ful length feature.

Soft is fairly typical in this respect - it is an urban drama exploring the issues of bullying and violence in youth. Some reviewers, like Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian Film Blog favourably compare it to A Clockwork Orange. The plot revolves around a father, his son, and the gang of teenagers who harass them. The course of events is almost entirely predictable, starting off with the son being assaulted and fleeing home, before the gang intimidates the father and then besieges the pair of them in their house. That's about it really - it's readily available on Youtube so feel free to check it out for yourselves.

There is a nice variety when it comes to techniques in this movie - camera phone footage is used in key sections, particularily when the gang is dealing out violence, whilst the rest of the film is presented in a typical fashion. To put it simply, there is nothing new or groundbreaking in this film, but it is a well crafted story told in a minimalistic way, and does a LOT with very little.

Made by Simon Ellis, this short movie has won the International Short Filmmaking Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for a BAFTA in 2008. Like many short movies, it's readily available on the internet, so do check it out.