Friday 20 April 2012

Wow blogger's all changed and me being simple minded am struggling to figure it out, though it's not so bad, nothing compared to FB's annoying timeline. Well my posts are fewer, not because I'm losing interest in blogging but simply because I've been moving house, I'm back to work and my internet connection sucks :-) So I got Syfy's Alice on dvd at long last (tried to find it on bluray but couldn't), and I finally watched it the whole way through. I loved it, it's an interesting and modern take on Alice in Wonderland, setting it in the future, I think 143 years, although none of the Wonderland characters have aged. Alice is a young woman who has father issues, thanks to her father disappearing when she was young, she ends up in Wonderland when her latest boyfriend Jack is kidnapped and a man called Mr. White comes to Alice asking for the ring Jack gave her. She follows Mr. White through a mirror and finds herself in an up-to-date, slightly scifi Wonderland.
In this Wonderland humans are called Oysters, they are taken from Alice's world to be harvested of their emotions and are kept in a stoic state in a casino, never truly conscious as their emotions are sucked from them and turned to liquids by the Carpenter and the Walrus and sold at a market to Wonderlanders. Alice finds herself marked as an Oyster and is chased because she has Jack's ring, which turns out to be the Stone of Wonderland, a device capable of re-opening the Looking Glass so that Alice can go home and the Queen's minions can continue kidnapping humans for their emotions. Alice finds herself chased by the Queen's assassin Mad March and even members of the resistance who are against the queen, because they want the Stone of Wonderland. Her only allies are Hatter and Charlie, a White Knight but even they have their own motives and secrets. Alice did irritate me a lot at times, she's childish, naive and for someone with trust issues she's far too trusting that Jack is an innocent and that Hatter wants to double-cross her. For a heroine she's not up to scratch for me, she doesn't really do much except run about trying to avoid danger and yet simultaneously waltz into it so she can Jack and in the head it's Hatter and Charlie who do the grunt work and save the day. Alice's big moment is telling the Queen she has no power, which is easy to do when she's surrounded by kidnapped humans willing to protect her, and the Queen's minions who are ready to turn. I really enjoyed the romance between her and Hatter though, it was quite sweet and a joy to seem them united in the end. Jack was a great character and a hero in the end but you wanted Alice to be with the Hatter, besides Jack had the stunning Duchess who was sincerely fond of him.
Charlie was the funniest character, bringing comic relief at almost every moment as well as a touch of sorrow when he told the truth of his origins, how he was a coward and stole his armour. He came through in the end with a disturbing and somehow effective army of skeletons (not sure why the Queen's army was afraid of this). It was great to see how the referenced so many things in Wonderland and great to see what they were changed into- March Hare as an assassin, the Jabberwocky doing a cameo as a beast in the woods, Carpenter and Walrus actually getting roles etc. Though, as someone else pointed out, Alice's father actually being the Carpenter was a little 10th Kingdom esq it was still nice and I really did feel for her when she had to lose him so soon after just finding him. I suppose there had to be some angst moment and he probably couldn't have lived a normal life after everything he had been through. Overall, great casting and great version of Alice in Wonderland. For me it just worked, there was enough action, drama and romance and enough of a plot to keep me engaged. It did wane at times and the lead didn't quite work for me but the assets definitely outweighed the flaws. I also finally finished Death Note, the manga that is. It gripped me at times but not enough, mostly it bored me, an intriguing plot with plenty of twists but it got a little too smart for its own good, which was tedious for me. I do like plot twists and smart villains and detectives, I mean I love the Sherlock Holmes novels, but this just enjoyed doing twists and sharp dialogue far too much and it got a little stale, especially once L was gone. Still I can understand why it earned such a hype and so many fans, it's definitely different and refreshing. I think I'll be selling the series on though now that I'm done with it.

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