GeneChing
12-04-2009, 11:07 AM
Wow. Martial arts and Alice in Wonderland are two of my favorite things. This and Seagal's show (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52600)are making me seriously consider cable. Maybe I'll ask Santa...
Malice in underland (http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/lewis_carroll_meets_pimp_my_ride_d9KIUWBWlTJLCe4b0 IxHjL)
Lewis Carroll meets 'Pimp My Ride'
Last Updated: 10:23 AM, December 4, 2009
Posted: 1:01 AM, December 4, 2009
So this brunette martial arts expert walks into a bar and finds that everyone there is having their emotions sucked out of them, but they don't know it because they're stuck to the floor. Get it? Good.
If this scenario sounds familiar, you were either in the pitch meeting or need to up your meds.
I'm talking about SyFy's "Alice," a "reimagined" version of Lewis Carroll's "Alice In Wonderland."
Why anyone would need to reimagine perfection is as much a conundrum as the rabbit hole.
Anyway, in this version, Alice (Caterina Scorsone), who lives in what looks like the industrial section of Toronto, is a grown-up brunette martial arts instructor. This comes in handy seeing how the poor thing spends two whole nights karate-chopping bad guys.
POPWRAP chats with star Caterina
Earthling Alice got into this fix right after she turned down a ring from new boyfriend Jack (Phillip Winchester).
Hurt feelings turn into kidnapping, and Alice has to chase Jack Chase (get it?) into a window that turns into a black hole that transports them into another dimension, à la "Wonderland."
Wonderland ain't so wonderful. It's ruled by the mean Queen of Caftans, I mean, the Queen of Hearts (Kathy Bates with a red wig and English accent).
Trapped in Wonderland are Earth humans who have been stolen and glued to the floor in casinos that are filled with unglued go-go girls straight out of the 1960s. All this is necessary so that the kidnapped Earth chemists (of which Alice's long-lost father is one) can sap the humans' emotions and bottle them.
There's lust, happiness and so forth. These are bought and sold on the commodities exchange in a teahouse. Don't ask.
In trying to find and rescue Jack from the queen and her court, she enlists teahouse-owner/resistance fighter, Hatter (Andrew Lee Potts), Dodo (Tim Curry) and the White Knight (Matt Frewer).
Three quarters of the movie is taken up by chase scenes -- on foot, on mechanical flamingos, on horseback, on, well, you name it -- while the remaining quarter includes a flabby triangle between Jack, Alice and Hatter.
Harry Dean Stanton adds big-name value, unfortunately channeling Roman Grant in a Caterpillar tuxedo.
SyFy's modern-day "Alice" isn't bad -- it's just silly and too long by two hours, which is a shame because it probably would have been a good one-night watch.
If you're an "Alice in Wonderland" fan, you might want to wait until next year when Tim Burton brings to the big screen his un-reimagined version.
If not, why not give this a shot?
Syfy's 'Alice': Through a looking glass, only very darkly (http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/reviews/2009-12-04-alice04_ST_N.htm)
Updated 15h 2m ago
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
All told, it might be best to keep Syfy away from looking glasses and tornadoes.
Last time Syfy decided a children's classic needed to be, in the network's words, "re-imagined," we got Tin Man, a bleak tweaking of The Wizard of Ozthat buried a simple, gentle story under an ugly universe-saving quest. Now we get Alice, which throws Lewis Carroll's Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass adventures into the same revisionist blender and spews out something close to the same unappetizing gruel.
Close, but not quite. What gives Alice a slight edge over its Ozian cousin is a less-heavy hand, a few brighter performances and a source better suited to a darkling outlook. Nor does it hurt that Alice, while still overextended, has two fewer hours than Tin Man. None might have been best, but less is more.
Written and directed by Nick Willing (who also directed Tin Man), Alice turns Carroll's curious girl into Alice Hamilton (Caterina Scorsone), a 20-ish martial-arts expert with commitment issues and a father fixation. When her boyfriend (Philip Winchester) is kidnapped, Alice follows his assailants to Wonderland, landing in the not-completely-trustworthy hands of Hatter (Andrew-Lee Potts, Alice's best asset).
This is the same Wonderland the first Alice found, but time – and, apparently, an ambitious building program – have imbued it with the arid post-apocalyptic air of which Syfy is so inordinately fond. And it's ruled by an even more evil queen (a disappointing, inexplicably English-accented Kathy Bates), who plies her compliant subjects with emotions she drains from kidnapped humans.
For an hour or so, simple pleasures suffice, such as matching old characters to new and faces to names (Tim Curry, Colm Meaney, Harry Dean Stanton and Matt Frewer among them). And some of the literary translations are clever, led by Wonderland's adoption of flamingo-shaped flying scooters.
But Alice soon bogs down in Willing's superimposed plot, with its shifting motives and dreary lectures. And while there are times Alice fends (or punches) for herself, too often Scorsone succumbs to a drab weepiness.
Willing has recast Carroll's story as a heroine's journey to enlightenment, but it's tough to see what precisely Alice learns – unless the moral is "Dump the loser, and if he's really worth anything, he'll chase after you." So you're left with a woman whose main quest is unsuccessful, and a movie that's glum, long and devoid of any sense of wonder.
That's two classic strikes, Syfy. For literature's sake, let that be enough.
Malice in underland (http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/lewis_carroll_meets_pimp_my_ride_d9KIUWBWlTJLCe4b0 IxHjL)
Lewis Carroll meets 'Pimp My Ride'
Last Updated: 10:23 AM, December 4, 2009
Posted: 1:01 AM, December 4, 2009
So this brunette martial arts expert walks into a bar and finds that everyone there is having their emotions sucked out of them, but they don't know it because they're stuck to the floor. Get it? Good.
If this scenario sounds familiar, you were either in the pitch meeting or need to up your meds.
I'm talking about SyFy's "Alice," a "reimagined" version of Lewis Carroll's "Alice In Wonderland."
Why anyone would need to reimagine perfection is as much a conundrum as the rabbit hole.
Anyway, in this version, Alice (Caterina Scorsone), who lives in what looks like the industrial section of Toronto, is a grown-up brunette martial arts instructor. This comes in handy seeing how the poor thing spends two whole nights karate-chopping bad guys.
POPWRAP chats with star Caterina
Earthling Alice got into this fix right after she turned down a ring from new boyfriend Jack (Phillip Winchester).
Hurt feelings turn into kidnapping, and Alice has to chase Jack Chase (get it?) into a window that turns into a black hole that transports them into another dimension, à la "Wonderland."
Wonderland ain't so wonderful. It's ruled by the mean Queen of Caftans, I mean, the Queen of Hearts (Kathy Bates with a red wig and English accent).
Trapped in Wonderland are Earth humans who have been stolen and glued to the floor in casinos that are filled with unglued go-go girls straight out of the 1960s. All this is necessary so that the kidnapped Earth chemists (of which Alice's long-lost father is one) can sap the humans' emotions and bottle them.
There's lust, happiness and so forth. These are bought and sold on the commodities exchange in a teahouse. Don't ask.
In trying to find and rescue Jack from the queen and her court, she enlists teahouse-owner/resistance fighter, Hatter (Andrew Lee Potts), Dodo (Tim Curry) and the White Knight (Matt Frewer).
Three quarters of the movie is taken up by chase scenes -- on foot, on mechanical flamingos, on horseback, on, well, you name it -- while the remaining quarter includes a flabby triangle between Jack, Alice and Hatter.
Harry Dean Stanton adds big-name value, unfortunately channeling Roman Grant in a Caterpillar tuxedo.
SyFy's modern-day "Alice" isn't bad -- it's just silly and too long by two hours, which is a shame because it probably would have been a good one-night watch.
If you're an "Alice in Wonderland" fan, you might want to wait until next year when Tim Burton brings to the big screen his un-reimagined version.
If not, why not give this a shot?
Syfy's 'Alice': Through a looking glass, only very darkly (http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/reviews/2009-12-04-alice04_ST_N.htm)
Updated 15h 2m ago
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
All told, it might be best to keep Syfy away from looking glasses and tornadoes.
Last time Syfy decided a children's classic needed to be, in the network's words, "re-imagined," we got Tin Man, a bleak tweaking of The Wizard of Ozthat buried a simple, gentle story under an ugly universe-saving quest. Now we get Alice, which throws Lewis Carroll's Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass adventures into the same revisionist blender and spews out something close to the same unappetizing gruel.
Close, but not quite. What gives Alice a slight edge over its Ozian cousin is a less-heavy hand, a few brighter performances and a source better suited to a darkling outlook. Nor does it hurt that Alice, while still overextended, has two fewer hours than Tin Man. None might have been best, but less is more.
Written and directed by Nick Willing (who also directed Tin Man), Alice turns Carroll's curious girl into Alice Hamilton (Caterina Scorsone), a 20-ish martial-arts expert with commitment issues and a father fixation. When her boyfriend (Philip Winchester) is kidnapped, Alice follows his assailants to Wonderland, landing in the not-completely-trustworthy hands of Hatter (Andrew-Lee Potts, Alice's best asset).
This is the same Wonderland the first Alice found, but time – and, apparently, an ambitious building program – have imbued it with the arid post-apocalyptic air of which Syfy is so inordinately fond. And it's ruled by an even more evil queen (a disappointing, inexplicably English-accented Kathy Bates), who plies her compliant subjects with emotions she drains from kidnapped humans.
For an hour or so, simple pleasures suffice, such as matching old characters to new and faces to names (Tim Curry, Colm Meaney, Harry Dean Stanton and Matt Frewer among them). And some of the literary translations are clever, led by Wonderland's adoption of flamingo-shaped flying scooters.
But Alice soon bogs down in Willing's superimposed plot, with its shifting motives and dreary lectures. And while there are times Alice fends (or punches) for herself, too often Scorsone succumbs to a drab weepiness.
Willing has recast Carroll's story as a heroine's journey to enlightenment, but it's tough to see what precisely Alice learns – unless the moral is "Dump the loser, and if he's really worth anything, he'll chase after you." So you're left with a woman whose main quest is unsuccessful, and a movie that's glum, long and devoid of any sense of wonder.
That's two classic strikes, Syfy. For literature's sake, let that be enough.