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Marvel at the Teaser Trailer for Alice in Wonderland

BuzzSugar — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:00:30 -0700

Sure, the pictures were great- but they can't compare with finally seeing Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland in motion. Today brings us the first teaser trailer, and it's such a delight to finally see Burton's mystical take on Alice coming to life. This saturated, stylized take seems a far cry from the fairytale-like TV movie I remember watching as a kid.

As the Mad Hatter, Johnny Depp gives this teaser an appropriately creepy voiceover as we watch Alice (Mia Wasikowska) tumble down the rabbit hole and end up in a magical fantasy world where potions make you shrink, green-eyed cheshire cats grin hauntingly, and impatient rabbits keep time on a ticking pocket watch.

The movie also stars Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, and Alan Rickman. This is one movie I definitely can't wait to see on the big screen. If you feel the same, mark your calendars for a very important date: March 5, 2010.

Now, to check out the teaser and more posters, just read more.

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New Images From Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland!

BuzzSugar — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:05:09 -0700

Expectations are high for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland movie and from the new pictures today, it looks like Burton will not disappoint. Vibrantly colorful and whimsical, the images show us how Burton has imagined the Mad Hatter (played by Johnny Depp), the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and the White Queen (Anne Hathaway). These pictures are very, very cool. I cannot wait to see more!

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Bonham Carter and Hathaway Join Burton's Wonderland

BuzzSugar — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:39:35 -0700

Well, I've been expecting this news ever since the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland project was announced: Helena Bonham Carter will star as the Red Queen in Burton's fantastical tale. The surprising part (but not in a bad way) is the other new addition to the cast: Anne Hathaway. The Hollywood Reporter includes these details:

Hathaway is playing the White Queen, a benevolent monarch who is deposed and banished by her sister, the Red Queen (Carter), who has an affinity for crying out, "Off with their heads!" The White Queen needs Alice to slay a creature known as the Bandersnatch.

Of course Helena Bonham Carter fits right into this project, and I think the Hathaway choice is something of a pleasant surprise. What do you think?

In addition to these two queens, we've got our Alice (Mia Wasikowska), a Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) and one man to play both Tweedledee and Tweedledum. I wonder who's next?

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Movie News Roundup: Watts, Fox, Another 300 Movie and More

BuzzSugar — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:46:17 -0700

According to The Guardian, Naomi Watts will play one of King Lear's daughters in the next film adaptation of Shakespeare's play. Gwyneth Paltrow and Keira Knightley will take on the roles of the other two daughters to Anthony Hopkins's King Lear.
Matthew Fox is in talks to star in yet another one of Hollywood's comic book-turned-movies, Billy Smoke, about "an elite hit man who's nearly killed during a botched job and realizes that his only way to find redemption is to rid the world of all assassins."
Hollywood Reporter writes that Helena Bonham Carter will have a "small but pivotal role" in the fourth Terminator movie.
A follow-up to 300 is officially in the works, with Frank Miller currently writing the graphic novel on which it will be based. Though he's not committed yet, 300 director Zack Snyder is "definitely interested" to see what Miller comes up with. It's unclear whether the new installment will be a prequel or a spinoff, Variety reports.
Robert Rodriguez is casting his lady Rose McGowan yet again, this time for a new film version of Red Sonja, a story based on the fearsome woman warrior created by Robert E. Howard and later adapted for Marvel Comics, Variety writes.
According to Hollywood Reporter, four more ladies (Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, Juliette Lewis and Zoe Bell) have joined Drew Barrymore's directorial feature Whip It, starring Ellen Page. The movie is based on the novel Derby Girl.

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Oscar Nominee: Sweeney Todd for Costumes

BuzzSugar — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:29:17 -0800

In the days leading up until the Oscars, I'll be featuring the nominees in the various visual categories. This week, I'll be looking at the nominees for Best Costume Design. We've already taken a look at the costumes in Across the Universe, Atonement and La Vie en Rose. Today I'm highlighting the costumes in Sweeney Todd.

Veteran costume designer Colleen Atwood has already won a Costume Designers Guild award for her work outfitting the stars of Sweeney Todd, so things are looking good for this Oscar nominee. The drab woolen fabrics of many of the clothes contrast starkly with the dashes of bright color, especially, of course, the garish red blood. The palette of mostly muted grays, mustard yellows and browns helps to paint this grim world, with splotches of brilliant blues appearing with the showy character of competing barber Signor Adolfo Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen) and the sweet Johanna (Jayne Wisener) draped in pale, innocent hues. Overall, the costumes do well to transport us back to this dark old London where treacherous things happen in barber shops and beneath pie stores.

To see the rest of the gallery of costume images from Sweeney Todd, read more.

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Photos courtesy of Paramount

Oscar Nominee: Sweeney Todd for Art Direction

BuzzSugar — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 07:30:00 -0800

In the days leading up to the Oscars, I'll be featuring the nominees in the various visual categories. This week, I've been looking at the nominees for Best Art Direction, which encompasses the entire look and feel of a film from the scenery to the lighting. Check out my galleries of production stills from Ridley Scott's darkly evocative American Gangster, the lovely Atonement and the fantastical world portrayed in The Golden Compass. Today I'm turning my sights to Sweeney Todd.

As I mentioned in my review of Sweeney Todd, the visual aspects of this film are largely why I liked it so very much. Tim Burton has a way with dark whimsy and Sweeney Todd is no exception. Burton's sinister, ominous-looking London is depicted in drab hues of browns and grays - all the better backdrop for the gallons of brilliant red blood that gush from Sweeney Todd's victims. By contrast, Mrs. Lovett's cartoonish and candy-colored dream sequence in which she entertains fantasies of marrying Todd and living "by the sea" are jarringly, ludicrously bright and hopeful.

Though I like all the nominees in this category, I must admit I have a soft spot in my heart for Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd.

For more stills from the movie, just read more.

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Photos courtesy of Paramount

Sweeney Todd: Sumptuous and Tragic

BuzzSugar — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 12:29:19 -0800

As I was leaving the screening of Sweeney Todd, my mind was swirling with those silly, cliche comments often seen accompanying ads for critically acclaimed movies: "Sweeney Todd is . . . a visual masterpiece!" "Another Burton beauty!" "A tale of blood and woe - woah!" I'll spare you the rest. The bottom line is that I was impressed. And nauseated. But mostly impressed.

The Stephen Sondheim musical and Tim Burton are a match made in heaven. Burton's dark, sinister-looking scenery and the bloody, musical horrorfest of a story gel together seamlessly to create something so lushly gory - but heartfelt - you may need to dry heave a little bit.

The story follows Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp), a young man wrongfully imprisoned because the evil Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) was obsessed with Barker's wife Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly) and wanted her for himself. Years later when Barker returns to London, he renames himself Sweeney Todd and opens up a barber shop above Mrs. Lovett's (Helena Bonham Carter) meat pie shop, hoping to exact revenge on the judge by luring him in for a shave and then slitting his throat. For his part, Judge Turpin has been keeping Todd's daughter Joanna as his ward. Yet when a young friend of Todd's falls in love with Joanna by spotting her at her window, he determines to break her free from the Judge's grasp. Meanwhile, Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd figure out a gruesome way to boost her meat pie sales. Those are basic plot points, but there's much more to say about Sweeney Todd, so read more.

Burton does some gorgeous tricks with light, color and reflection. Cracked mirrors and the reflections glinting off of Sweeney Todd's shaving blades are heavily used to distort or duplicate images, and to not-so-subtly symbolize Benjamin Barker/Sweeney Todd's fractured identity and his tortured soul. Burton's London is swathed in shadows and muted by a dark gray sky. His color palette consists of shades of gray with tinges of gold, blue and raspberry. The jarring exception, of course, is the brilliantly red blood that gushes freely, sometimes spurting onto the camera lens itself, causing the audience to instinctively jump back. The one time he interrupts this dismal color scheme is when depicting Mrs. Lovett's wistful dream of marrying "Mr. T" and spending the rest of her days "by the sea." The quintessentially Burtonesque costumes and candy-bright colors in this sequence are outrageous and delightful enough to garner giggles of surprise.

Johnny Depp is magnificent, as always, and the rest of the actors are wonderfully cast. Alan Rickman is genuinely disturbing as the perverted old judge. His right-hand man played by Timothy Spall is convincingly sick and twisted. Sacha Baron Cohen is funny as the competing barber Signor Adolfo Pirelli, which is to be expected, but the surprise is that his performance is also quite chilling. My favorite aspect of this film, however, is the classic Depp-Bonham Carter combination. They're simply the most perfect duo, as always - each strange and broken-down in their own way, yet both powerful in their own way, too.

This movie has been hyped to the gills, and it's hard to live up to such high expectations. Having said all this great stuff about the movie, the fact remains that it is still a musical, and people who think musicals are silly will most assuredly still think this movie is silly - Johnny Depp or no Johnny Depp. The movie is also not for the squeamish, as there is more blood - and, well, ground up human meat - than a B-grade slasher flick. I have an average-strength stomach and I felt the gag reflex kick in more than once. If you like this sort of thing, however, it's all worth it. Go see Sweeney Todd. Just eat a light meal beforehand.

To see the trailer and more clips from Sweeney Todd check out movies.ivillage.com.

Photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Movie Preview: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

BuzzSugar — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:02:18 -0700

Just as everyone's chattering away about this week's premiere of "Pushing Daisies," how colorful, whimsical and Tim Burton-esque it is, we finally get a full-length trailer for an actual Tim Burton project: Sweeney Todd!

The trailer looks ridiculously amazing. It's dark, beautiful, ominous, sad, creepy... and then Johnny Depp breaks into song. Helena Bonham Carter is haunting as usual, and Sacha Baron Cohen looks fantastic. Depp plays Sweeney Todd whose life is destroyed by a mean old judge (Alan Rickman). When he gets out of prison, Sweeney Todd becomes a barber bent on revenge.

You have to watch this trailer! Sweeney Todd opens December 21. To check it out, read more

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Fall Movie Preview: Oh, the Horror

BuzzSugar — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 07:30:00 -0700

Well it's September, folks, and the summertime movie season is officially over. Now we have a whole new crop of films to check out in the coming chillier months, so in preparation for that, I'm giving you little glimpses of this fall and winter's must-see movies with my Fall Movie Preview series. Today I'm bringing you three titles from the bloody, fright-filled horror genre.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
In this film version of the stage musical, Johnny Depp plays Sweeney Todd, a barber who is wrongfully imprisoned and seeks revenge on the judge (played by Alan Rickman) who sentenced him. Tim Burton directs (naturally) while Sacha Baron Cohen and the ever-commanding Helena Bonham Carter also star. Sweeney Todd's story begins with these ominous words: "Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd./His skin was pale and his eye was odd./He shaved the faces of gentlemen/Who never thereafter were heard of again." The movie, of which some parts were rumored to be cut because they were too gruesome, opens this Christmas.

For two more horrifying titles, read more

30 Days of Night
Josh Hartnett stars as the Sheriff of a small Alaskan town that naturally spends 30 days a year in darkness. As the last bit of sunlight fades, the town is overtaken by a gang of bloodthirsty vampires (I wonder if vampires are ever not bloodthirsty?). Hartnett and his Deputy wife are the town's last hope. Ben Foster stars as well, doing that creepy thing he does so well. 30 Days of Night opens October 19, just in time for Halloween, so in the meantime check out the scary-looking trailer.

Saw IV
And the Saw movies keep on coming. In this fourth installment, the plot description is this: "Jigsaw and his apprentice Amanda are dead. Now, upon the news of Detective Kerry's murder, two seasoned FBI profilers, Agent Strahm and Agent Perez, arrive in the terrified community to assist the veteran Detective Hoffman in sifting through Jigsaw's latest grizzly remains and piecing together the puzzle. However, when SWAT Commander Rigg is abducted and thrust into a game, the last officer untouched by Jigsaw has but ninety minutes to overcome a series of demented traps and save an old friend or face the deadly consequences. " If you're into these movies, check out Saw IV when it opens October 26.

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