Nine*

Alice in Wonderland notes.

I watched Alice today - with the exception of Johnny Depps' dance sequence towards the end - I loved it!. One thing that struck me about the film was that it had a unique visual style to it - something that I was careful to notice after watching Tron and noticing how the look of the film was something which was instantly recognisable. The most notable aspect to the style of the film is that there was little that reflected Tim Burton's regular style which has been evident in the last umpteen of Burton's films of late. Some example of what I am talking about;

Gone were the monotone colours of typical Burton and it was replaced with such vibrant hues which were the direct opposite of what we had been lead to expect from the famed director. There have been other works of his which have achieved a similar change of pace such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and to a lesser extent Big Fish - and yet when alot of people think Tim Burton they think 'depressing colours'. And even those 2 films still include shapes and forms which are common traits to Burton's art.

Viewing some of Burton's art for the film it is obvious that his vision was delivered to screen - but it felt as though there were more input from other artists than there may be in other examples of his work. There were aspects that stood out to me as 'typical' Burton such as the odd tree branch.

It is nice to see something a bit different come from Burton, who I had expected to continue with much the same visual style until I saw the trailer for Alice. Hopefully trialing alternate approaches is something that he continues to do, but I have my doubts. That said as with all Burton films the visual style was evident. The computer-generated and live action characters existed in a caricatured world which allowed them to belong together - with the exception of Alice who was obviously an outsider. Fun fact - the visual effects department developed a Nuke plug-in to create the look of the Red Queen.