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Reader reaction: NBC's "Alice in Wonderland"
SPOILER ALERT !!
Glen here...
THIS PAGE IS RESERVED FOR "TALKBACKS" ABOUT THE NBC TV MOVIE
ALICE IN WONDERLAND!!!
Please feel free to post your thoughts, comments, likes, dislikes, creative input, etc. about this
movie, which debuted the evening of Sunday February 28, 1999 on NBC.
Just scroll down to the "Talkback" icon below, click, and get started!
A few perameters:
*Please* be aware that I will be monitoring the "talkbacks", and the deletion of a post could be
a mouse-click away. Let’s be civil and responsible. Swearing is fine, but not at each other - and not
about others. Say whatever you think, but always respect other people’s opinions and rights to
disagree. Other than that, the sky’s the limit. This is your chance to review (and talk about) a big
new show with other viewers & Coaxial readers as your peers. Have fun with it. Learn from it. And,
ENJOY!!!
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Doesn't even start for a few more hours here, but I want to watch it!
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Never a fan of Lewis Caroll, but so far, this "NBC Quarterly Movie" thing has been... strange. I don't like it. The effects seem to have been done by several different houses. The "animal" effects are alright, but the zooming and stretching effects seem like they were done in a hurry. Overly 2-D. Same went for Merlin when it was out. Muted colors abound. Any second I expect them to do the "freeze and rotate" effect... bleh. With respect to the great Gene Siskel, thumbs down.
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I saw and enjoyed Merlin very much. It surprised me and came out of no where. It was very entertaining and had some great scenery(and it went by very fast). I wasn't interested in Alice too much, so I watched "The X-Files", etc.
I sincerely hope it wasn't rushed because I hate to see good ideas ruined because of a deadline. Boy! They really marketed Alice to extremes but Halmi's are really the only TV movies(non-cable) of big screen technical quality and scripts that aren't soap opera movie-of-the-week stuff. I plan on renting Alice on video and watching it when "X" is on. -
Not a great version, but better than most.
Was that Norm Lovett as the Frog messenger? -
I like it
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Other than enjoying the make-up, costumes and some of the other technical aspects. I was thoroughly disappointed in this "Alice." The most improtant point being this: Alice in Wonderland is the story of a little girl trying to grow up, NOT the story of a little girl getting over stage fright! They changed the point of the whole story. That was bad enough on its own, but Miranda Richardson and Martin Short certainly didn't follow up their Merlin performances with much flair. The queen was just annoying and Short just danced like Ed Grimley and giggled incoherently. I am an actor myself, and I personally think that he just overplayed it. He probably got so excited about playing such a juicy role, that he just went overboard. Even the Mad Hatter must be handled with a little finesse.
I will probably get lynched for saying this, but I enjoyed the two-night 80's Alice in Wonderland much more. It wasn't as technically advanced, but it followed the story more closely. You also knew which character was which. I appreciate subtle costuming, but some of the characters (like the frog footman, the birds at the beginning, the Irish turtle, etc.) were too non-descript. I wouldn't have known that the represented animals if I wasn't familiar with the story.
To sum up; I think that it is tragic when Alice is the most interesting portrayal in a movie about Alice in Wonderland. At least Tina Majorino approached it in a new way. I will never understand why sooooo many books are brutalized on the screen. The writers don't even have to think, the thinking has been done for them! They could have just gone straight from the book and made this two or three nights. Outside of cutting a story's content for brevity, there is no excuse for such butchering. The innovation should fall in the presentation and portrayal of characters in a story, not the telling of the story itself. -
Having read both Through the Looking Glass and Alice in Wonderland, I can appreciate the 80s approach towards a darker, grittier movie. I didn't get to watch tonight's movie due to work, but bright, cheery Alice doesn't particularly appeal to me.
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Blah blah blah blah! Critisism is fine, but ripping something apart is another thing. If your going on technical representation of the book you should look somewhere else. There has not been a movie or screen play that as of yet has satisfied everyone. I must admit what the point of all this banter is. Obviously some people will like it, some will love it and some will hate it. It is also a matter of perspective. I thought it was a rather good representation of the books, others may not. Martin Short played an over the top mad hatter because it was his image of the character and the director agreed or it wouldn't have been placed on the screen. Why insinuate he can't act. And this guy who claims to be an actor. Man how many times has that been heard. "Oh well im an actor..."
Geez, that gives you the right to tear into someones performance and what you would do, blah blah blah!
I don't know why im writing this and I don't know why the rest of you do. No one cares what I think and no one cares what you thingk. This is entirely pointless. -
I can't figure out you people who watched the X-Files or were doing something else, didn't record Alice, then come here to say they didn't watch it. Don't you know you can record shows while you watch something else? I watched the X-Files (an unusual, but oddly uninvolving take off on Groundhog Day) while taping Alice so I can fast forward through the ads. Get with the tech, people.
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I caught a couple glimpses of the Alice show on NBC and it is definately not dark enough. The original book was written by a man who "liked" little girls. He would photograph them nude and wrote letters to Alice that her mother had to burn. His other works are equally dark and night marish.
A girl shrinking and growing, surrounded by monstorous creatures, put on trial...where is the cute part?
Plus the real Alice has black hair. -
As with MERLIN, Miranda Richardson was worth the price of admission. And as with MERLIN, she was (unfortunately) the only spark of greatness in Halmi's latest TV treatment of a classic tale. Lovely production design and a heaping handful of name celebrities (or skilled character actors) alone still do not an inspiring television event make.
MERLIN was muddled and bloated; ALICE was way overlong and dramatically inert. While Carroll's source material is beyond reproach, it's also clearly *not* a screen story, no matter how you try to cram it into that round hole.
Next time, let's have a tale suited to the medium (original or adapted), and all the overwhelming talent in front of and behind the camera should be able to make magic worthy of watching and rewatching (*and* worthy of a premature announcement of impending video release, before the ratings are even in). -
I switched back and forth between X and Alice - both were entertaining for about 5 minutes at a time. And then of course THE PRACTICE won out at 10 - one of thebest PRACTICE episodes ever I thought - except for the ending which was way anti-climactic to the storm that's been brewing, that smug little lawyer slut shutting the door smirking. Oh well, PRACTICE rules! um anyway - hey I just heard the other day that not only was Llewis Carroll a total perv taking nude pics of the real life little girl who was the Alice inspiration, BUT he was considered a prime suspect in the Jack The Ripper murders. I have no idea how accurate this all is, but I did find it fascinating shtuff. Supposedly he was a big fan of anagrams and many of his famous phrases can be changed around to say some really tweaked shit. Jabberwocky and some phrase about "painting the roses red" all can be re-arranged to say things like "I kill whores" and crap like that. Plus he was supposedly sexually abused as a child and was really pretty disturbed. Kind of a possible John Wayne Gacy of his time...? Hey when are they going to make a decent Gacy flick? - and starring Dom Deluise, of course?
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Does anyone have stats on the number of commericals during Alice? In the first half hour I watched (the second half hour of the show) it seemed like half of the real time was commercials.
Is this how they are paying for costly shows? It turned into one hell of a turn off. -
I watched "Alice in Wonderland" hoping that they would do the stories (Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass) justice. They did. I liked Whoppi Goldberg as the Cheshire Cat -- wonderful attitude as always Whoppi!, thought that Miranda Richardson did a good job of portraying the Queen of Hearts (AWWWWWWF WITH THEIR HEADS! made me crack up), thought that Robbie Coltrane and George Wendt make the perfect Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, and absolutely loved Martin Short as the Mad Hatter. The little girl that portrayed Alice got to be a bit whiney at parts, but then again, I guess that is what the producers were trying to portray. I fell asleep during the last 1/2 hour or so, and missed Christopher Lloyd as the White Knight, and a few of the other characters. I must say that out of all of the networks, NBC seems to bring the classics "to life" the best. I taped the episode, and will most likely watch it over the weekend to see what I missed.
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I'm an avid fan of the book... but that does not mean that I expect a film to be truthfull to a book... in fact, I HOPE that the film maker has the creativity to DO something with it, rather than simply carbon copy the book onto film... with this version of Alice, I felt that it was not thought through at all. The underlying story about Alice's fear of preforming her song totally took away any feeling of threat or fear that should come with being in Wonderland (the people actually seemed to CARE about Alice when advising her about her song) and, well, it just didn't FLOW. Martin Short was a fine Mad Hatter, and I enjoyed Ben Kinglsy's Catterpiller for about fifteen seconds... other than that, I felt the film consisted of a series of pretty pictures, rather than... well, a good movie.
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Oh, come on. This ludicrous theory comes from Richard Wallace, who seems to be making a career out of finding anagrams in Carroll's work (2 books full at last count) and claiming these as "proof" of his theories that Carroll was a child molester and murderer. Most of these anagrams are just sheer nonsense (one anagram goes "Beg, dole whores, I tax evil tits!") and some are so convoluted that in order for the anagrams to work, you have to take certain letters out of the original phrases.
The fact remains that all this "evidence" of Carroll's pedophilia contravenes the first-hand accounts of the girls in question, all of whom remembered him with fondness and at no time claimed that they were mistreated. Yes, he did photograph some in the nude, as figure studies with their parents' permission and supervision. He was a very strange and eccentric man, but that does not automatically make him a sick and demented one. -
Is that old 80's tv version available on tape anywhere? I really enjoyed that one, used to have a copy taped from the original broadcast but it's lost now.. If you know how I can get me one please email me!
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There's no questioning Lewis Carroll's place in history as a mathemetician and one of the giants in the literary world. I don't believe he is Jack the Ripper, however I tend to agree with those who say he might have been a pedophile. I did a research paper on him about 15 years ago here at the University of Texas, and I had to sign a special permission card to view a book of his photo collections of young children.The images were surreal and disturbing. Most were nudes, but some of the really creepy ones were those of Carroll pictured with several children (who were clothed). Looking at those photos made me think about the person who took them and I came to the conclusion that the person had to have some pedophilic tendencies. Sorry about straying from the topic.
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and taped Alice. Despite some interesting visuals and a few great performances (Whoopie was the perfect Cat!), this adaptation put me to sleep at about the 1 hr. 20 minute mark...The individual scenes stood well on their own, but the pacing just didn't seem to link up well. I'm sure the ton of commericials didn't help any!!! It may be worth another look when it comes out on video (without the commercials)- but NBC really missed a chance here to come up with a classic to run every holiday season (ala Wizard of Oz, etc).
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I was impressed by the show. I is thinking the graphic nice, and the setting was very good, and I like size of Martin
Shorts head. I more liked the lobsters dancin. Is this in computer? because they were animal dancin yes. I don
think strings were used? or I don think fish can dance like that no? But Lobsters yes, they train good,
Ciao -
I only got a chance to watch the first hour last night (but the VCR was going). Nor am I familiar with the book(s), so I can't say how much of the seemingly aimless wandering is the book.
But, I do think that the ability to manipulate images really increases the impact and "believability" of the film. Now it is possible to create scenes which were only possible in cartoons. -
Let me get some of my criticisms out of the way before I bore you to death with a discussion about special effects.
Performances: Martin Short was brilliant, but he kept slipping into an Ed Wynn voice; methinks he -
How about the stop-motion animation version? It is called "Alice," and is by a Czecheslovokian animator, Jan Svankmajer. All the animals are either taxidermy stiffs or merely skulls and skeletons. There are even some slabs of meat slithering about in a couple scenes. It's really messed up and a little slow-moving, but the best version I've seen so far...
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What a festering bowl of garbage! I was really looking forward to this movie, and boy was I let down! Yeah, sure those effects looked real pretty, but they forgot to include a friggin' story with them! This happens to so many movies nowadays, and it makes me sick. The entertainment industry seems intent on spending huge amounts of money on the special effects of a production, and virtually nothing on the story, the most important part! I've been a longtime fan of the book Alice in Wonderland, and it really ticks me off that no one has been able to transfer it to film properly yet. I've got a suggestion! Either do it right, or don't do it at all!
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My image of the fairy tale, was set when I was young by the Disney classic. NBC turned it into something scary and dark. Remember that baby that turned into a pig?!? Scary.
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Gave Alice a chance. It was bloated. Switched to X-Files. It kinda got on my nerves. Maybe I should have just turned off the tv!
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Since Lewis Carroll is my favorite writer, I was a little disappointed that "Alice" wasn't more faithful to his story. But still, Miranda Richardson's Queen of Hearts made it worth watching. "Chop chop. Blood everywhere. Makes you PROUD to be Queen." How can you not love that?
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hmmm, I liked the look of it, but thought it was a little boring. Martin Short was my favorite part. It DID seem a little wierd that they chose to make her stage fright be the moral center of the story.
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What's with this social tea-gathering, and Alice having to sing, huh? WHAT?! It's DUMB DUMB DUMB! They took a lot of other liberties, but I'll let most of 'em slide. But WHAT IN GOD'S NAME was the POINT of SCREWING OVER the ENTIRE BEGINING?!! Did they think that it added something GREAT to it?! If they did they should be thrown in a wood chipper, a la Fargo. DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB DUMB!!! But I digress. The rest was well done, with excellent actors, many of them from Brittish T.V. shows, I noticed, and the effects were really good too... except Bill should've been a lizard, like in the book. O.K., I'm finished.
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Don't you think the actress that played Alice was cute? I did. Quite a little actress. She didn't just speak her lines, but you could see her actually listening to the other actors.
It wasn't really a congealed story, though. But I like, I like. I haven't read the book, but my bet is the script followed it really close. The whole thing was like slow, drawn out dream. Really nice. Oh and the catapillar! My word! that was a nice sequence. -
First- Lewis Carroll's sexual tastes have NOTHING to do with Alice In Wonderland. It is unfair to yoke Carroll with our late twentieth century, puritanical ethic on nudity. Remember, these were not snapshots surreptitiously taken
in some secret hideaway. They were done at a time when photography was practiced only by those who considered it a serious art and science. The nudes are somewhat akin to the nudes found in works by Michelangelo (which also show nude children)
Second- Alice in Wonderland will never be properly adapted in a mainstream movie because it is not meant to be taken literally. It is a social and political satire in addition to being a wonderful fairy tale. Even if the tale were adapted in a way that was 100% faithful to the book, it would not be a good or perfect adaptation. I'm not certain an American film could do it, I think perhaps the Germans could have done it in the twenties (but they were probably a bit dark). The work could be suitably adapted to the stage, but then who would see it?
Third- Who the hell cares what I think, anyway. -
I thought the opening was okay, sort of a little "wizard of oz" like tip of the hat, letting us see the cameo actors out of the makeup. It was the ending I was annoyed by. There is no moral in Alice. She doesn't has this wonderful adventure to learn how be confident or any lesson at all, she just HAS it. It annoys me that everything children related has to have a moral or life lesson shoehorned in to make it relevant. I'm sorry, not everything is an educational experience--some things are just fun.
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I liked it.
I liked the queen. Her lines were fabulous. Her comical contempt for life brought out the stinging irony, that I believe Carroll intended in his book. I liked how they did the Walrus and the Carpenter. (It's a subtle poem and they didn't over explain it... which tends to be a Disney fault) I do hate how Through the Looking Glass and Wonderland are ALWAYS combined into one story on TeeVee. They are really two seperate stories, and you never even saw the queen chesspiece in this, though she is a prominent character in "Looking Glass". The Cheshire cat was cute, but a bit too whoopi for my tastes, though she did have a great grin. I liked the duchess, especially in the trial. And the portrayal of the Knave of Hearts was pretty funny too.
I loved the gryphon, though I swear I thought he was going to eat the turtle, and that part was terribly out of sequence from what I remember in the reading. And I actually liked the overall moral of the story, though it was all added in... I thought it tied it together quite well. (The Book is not tied together at all... which nowadays tends to be literary suicide. :-)
I thought much of the charm of the show came in the clever dialogue that is present in the original. (Like the professor mouse in the beginning... how many professors have I had that were like that? POintless repeaters of pointless repetition... ;-) But I admit the show did drag on in places, and that girl really needs to learn to not just eat or drink anything she comes across... (Always something that's bothered me about the whole story in the first place.)
Even so, it's a bit of a chimera, allowing us to see in the story what we want, and for that I enjoyed it, and I didn't think the story was overly ruined by this version of hollywoodification. :-) -
Mar 03, 1999 3:55:39 AM CST
Is this same version that was on channel 4 in UK at christmas?
by imaril
Over christmas in the UK Ch. 4 showed a version of Alice in wonderland. It had an Alice who was about mid twenities in age. Any one seen this one? how does it compare?
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I liked it, on the whole. Kind of confusing how they put _Wonderland_ and _Looking-Glass_ parts together, probably would have been better if they stuck to one or the other only. At least they didn't bowdlerize the non-PC parts--the scene with the Duchess and the pig/baby comes to mind. The best part was to see Gene Wilder done up as the M.T. (though it was kind of a longish section).
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That was the main problem I had with it - it was just way too long, and didn't hold my interest long enough. I turned it off in the last 45 minutes because I was bored with it. Personally, I was disappointed because I was expecting better.
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It is hard, if not impossible, to accuratly portray a novel via a movie. The screenwriter must take a medium where thoughts are implanted into the audience's head, and the pictures and sounds are imaginged, to a medium where the pictures and sounds are given to the audience, and the audience makes their own thoughts and attentions. Also, the screenwriter must abridge the story. Not an easy task, and not a task that usually can yeild perfect results.
I have never read the books, so I cannot make an accurate judgement on the translation. However, I found that the movie was slow in many parts.
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