Alice Through the Looking Glass 1999
starring: Kate Beckinsale, Charlotte Curley, Penelope Wilton, Geoffrey Palmer, Louise J. Taylor
directed by: John Henderson
directed by: John Henderson
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Lenny's description:
1999. This adaptation of Through the Looking Glass is a combination of live-action, animation, and special effects.
Its screenplay uses mostly direct book quotation.
Seller's description:
Alice falls down a rabbit hole, ends up in Wonderland, and has adventures with a series of odd characters.Genre: Feature Film FamilyRating: NRRelease Date: 9-JAN-2007Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com:
A delicious combination of live-action, animation, and special effects tells the fantastical adventures of Alice as she returns to Wonderland, in this imaginative adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic story of the same name. Kate Beckinsale plays Alice, a young girl who steps through a magical mirror and is transported from the real world into an enchanted one of talking insects, nonsensical questions, and reversals of logic. Her journey is marked by mostly incomprehensible encounters with quirky characters such as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Red Queen and White Queen, and Humpty Dumpty. Beckinsale's Alice is a believable blend of curiosity, poise, and impertinence whose presence in nearly every scene carries the film. Other strong performances include Desmond Barritt, as Humpty, who recites a chilling rendition of "Beware the Jabberwocky," and Ian Holm (The Lord of the Rings), as White Knight, with a soliloquy as colorful as his hair. If, as Carroll states at the end of his tale, "all life is but a dream," this wacky version is one to remember. (Ages 10 and older) --Lynn Gibson
Product details:
Seller name: wesaveyou$ (Shipping rates and seller details)
Item number (ASIN): B0006FO9C4
Actor: Kate Beckinsale x Charlotte Curley x Penelope Wilton x Geoffrey Palmer x Louise J. Taylor
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Brand: Alice
Category: DVD
Creator: John Ignatius x Guy Collins x Paul Frift x Simon Johnson x Trevor Eve x Lewis Carroll x Nick Vivian
Director: John Henderson
Format: Closed-captioned x Color x Dolby x DVD x Full Screen x Subtitled x NTSC
Item Dimensions: Weight: value: 22| Units: hundredths-pounds
Languages: Spanish x English
Manufacturer: Lions Gate
Number Of Discs: 1
Package Dimensions: 60 x 530 x 740 (hundredths-inches)
Publisher: Lions Gate
Region Code: 1
Release Date: January 11, 2005
Running Time: value: 86
Units: minutes
Add your own review!
occasionally brilliant; see it for the White Knight
Henderson & co. were trying to do things differently, and for that I applaud them. I think it's on a slightly higher level than the Hallmark/NBC Alice in Wonderland from a year later. As in that version, there are things I feel are quite well done and others that simply fail completely. I like Kate Beckinsale a lot--far more than I expected to, actually. She brings an interesting maturity to Alice that I can't recall seeing in any other version, and in some scenes it really helps. In particular it makes many of the characters' condescending attitudes to her seem all the more strange and uncalled for. And yet Beckinsale isn't so mature that she can't effectively convey childlike glee and wonder.
Most of the characters are handled quite well, with the Red Queen, the menacing Tweedles (sporting Clockwork Orange-style eyeliner) and the White Knight (more on him in a moment) being standouts. Humpty Dumpty is the most noteworthy failure, while other scenes are questionable--the White King is great, but his scene with Haigha is poorly handled. I think it was also a big mistake to remove the Lion and the Unicorn in their entirety, especially since (to my surprise) they do include the Wasp in the Wig (the "lost" chapter of the novel that was re-discovered in the late 70's, for those of you who don't know). I really like the Wasp per se, but coming right after the White Knight, which is the longest chapter and the book's emotional climax, it is all wrong for pacing and I have always felt Carroll was right to cut it (which he did at John Tenniel's suggestion). Nevertheless, the scene itself is handled well and Ian Richardson is delightful as the Wasp (even if his personality is way different from how I've always read it). This version also suffers from a common plague of TV productions: that no matter how much effort and creativity was devoted to the design and look of the film, no one seemed to know what to do with the camera. Everything is filmed in eye-level medium shots that really get boring after a while. It's like hiring Vittorio Storraro to do the color and the lighting and then handing the camera over to Kevin Smith for the actual shoot.
But the reason all Alice-lovers absolutely must see Alice Through the Looking Glass is for its handling of the White Knight. In the most perfect bit of casting I have ever encountered in an Alice production, he is played by the always brilliant Ian Holm. In addition to Holm's greatness, he is in the interesting position of having played Charles Dodgson previously in the 1985 film Dreamchild by Gavin Millar and Dennis Potter. What I love about this is that the White Knight is often viewed as a surrogate for Dodgson himself, walking with Alice until she reaches the brook to become a Queen (read: befriending her into she reaches adulthood and goes off on her own) and then bidding her a tearful good-bye as their relationship reaches the extent of its possibilities. While recent theories about Dodgson's relationship with Alice Liddell refute the notion that she was any more significant than any other child he knew, I feel Through the Looking Glass (regardless of whether Dodgson intended this) is so much about loss and the search for identity that I really enjoy reading the traditional subtext into this chapter. It is the only portion of the books that makes me cry every time I read it, and I am absolutely stunned that this TV adaptation managed to produce a few tears of its own. It all comes of how his song is managed; because it slows down an already fairly slow-paced portion of the book, and because there is nothing implicit in Carroll's text that makes it visually interesting, the White Knight's song is often sped through or skipped altogether in other adaptations. But here it is finally allowed to breathe, and the way Henderson and co. devised to translate it to the screen is so ingenious that I refuse to reveal it here. You'll just have to see it for yourself. Most importantly, by the time the scene is done one gets the impression that there is some sort of sincerely profound connection between Alice and the White Knight, even if one can't be sure exactly what the nature of that connection is.
My second favorite scene from the book, Alice's walk with the fawn through the forest without names, is as usual nowhere to be found. Apparently me and Tom Waits are the only two people who think it's important.
- by Kirkinson on March 8, 2010
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