Review by Leonard Norwitz
Studio:
Theatrical: Studio Eight & Reunion Pictures for SyFy TV
Blu-ray: LionsGate
Disc:
Region: 'A'
('B' + 'C' untested)
Runtime: 1:45:34.578 + 1:18:50.434
Disc Size: 42,455,294,056 bytes
Feature Size: 42,121,267,200 bytes
Video Bitrate: 24.99 Mbps
Chapters: 32
Case: Standard Blu-ray case
Release date: March 2nd, 2010
Video:
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Resolution: 1080p / 23.976 fps
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video
Audio:
DTS-HD Master Audio English 3556 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 3556
kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps
Subtitles:
English (SDH), English, Spanish, none
Extras:
• Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Nick Willing and
Leading Lady Caterina Scorsone
The Film:
6
I can't remember when I have taken such an instant and
unyielding dislike to an actor's characterization.
Twenty-eight year old Canadian Caterina Scorsone may only be
following the guidance of her writer and director, Nick
Willing, (in the commentary Nick makes it quite clear that
he didn't want his Alice to be "passive" as he feels she is
in Carroll's book) but I feel she overstates the case for
the alternate view. Her models seem to be Sarah Michelle's
Buffy and Eliza Dushku's Faith, except that she lacks the
necessary charm or wit or sass. Her Alice certainly doesn't
lack for attitude – a contrived faux-feminist stance that
finds fault with everything and everyone.
The director wants us to take this as part of Alice's
psychology, having been abandoned by her father at a
formative age. But the actress still has to convince us
(alright, convince me) of its reality – that she is Alice,
and not merely acting the part. There were times when I felt
Caterina was still in rehearsal, where mannerisms stand in
for true feeling. Watch how she stands, especially once she
hits Wonderland – diagonally, like she's bruisin' for a
fight – all the time, with no let up. I found her very
fatiguing to watch. I exaggerate, but not by much. Truth is
Caterina has her moments of tenderness, vulnerability, even
a flash of humor, mostly in our world, but once she hits
Wonderland she is a real pain in the ass. Shouldn’t it be
the other way around?
But these things pale into insignificance compared to her
Alice's lack of imagination. When she tells Wonderlanders
her name, everyone asks: "THE Alice? – The Alice of Legend?"
I can understand her resistance to wanting to be taken for
someone who might be imposed upon to rescue the country from
the terrors of the mad Queen of Hearts but she doesn't seem
to have a clue as to what they're talking about. Yes, she
has heard of some children's book or other blah-blah-blah
but she has no conception of its contents or its characters
whom she continually bumps into. Mind you, this Alice isn't
naïve or ignorant, she’s just stupid – in the sense that she
has no imagination. Carroll's Alice may have been "passive"
but at least she had Curiosity – in spades, you might say.
So what is the new Alice doing in Wonderland, you may well
ask? Let's go back a bit:
Alice, whose age, by the way, is up for grabs, lives with
her mother. Alice thinks she is 20. "When did your father
leave home?" she is asked. "When I was ten." “How long ago
was that?" "Ten years." But her mother thinks she is quite a
bit older, else why would she complain that Alice quickly
finds fault with every guy she herself brings home for
dinner. Anyhow, Caterina looks more like 30 than 20. (She
was 27 or 28 during filming.)
Moving right along: Alice works as a martial arts teacher –
another thing Caterina's unconvincing at – and wants to
bring Jack home to meet mom. She thinks maybe he's the one.
(I told you she was older.) Jack (Philip Winchester) oozes a
believable brand of charm and the couple are making their
way to first base when Jack receives a text message on his
cell, after which he loses his grip on propriety and
proportion: "How would you like to meet my family?" he asks
urgently – followed quickly with an attempt to present her
with a family heirloom, a curious ring that he just happens
to have in his pocket. (It's the urgent part that sounds
alarms for poor Alice who, ever since her father vanished
when she was a kid, doesn't give men much wiggle room.)
Alice calls it quits on the spot. (She says "I think we
should slow down" or words to that effect, but we boys all
know what that means.) Jack leaves. Alice finds he left the
ring behind. We're not having any of this, she thinks, and
tails after him only to see him being dragged off by a
couple of thugs. Cutting to the chase, Alice gives pursuit,
only to end up accidentally falling into a large mirror.
It's at this point that the movie gets its first of two
launches into warp drive, and before long Alice is trapped
inside a box, airborne for some uncharted land. There is
some serious magic at work here – I mean on the part of
Willing and his crew – especially for some extended piece
for the SyFy network. The characters, many derived from
Lewis Carroll, are not merely updated, but reconceived, more
like a sequel in a fairly original way, even if the plot
borrows some from Monsters, Inc.
The idea is that the Queen has a standing order for some
while now that people from our world are kidnapped and
brought through the Looking Glass into Wonderland to be
mined for their emotions, which are, in turn, the principal
currency thereabouts. More importantly, perhaps, with these
elixirs, the Queen can control her subjects by diverting
them with a series of instant gratifications. The queen and
others who can afford it are always on the lookout for the
next and most exotic emotion – and it takes more than a few
"oysters" as they so cleverly refer to us to make enough
distilled spirits for a marketable product. The ring, we
learn soon enough, is the key that controls the mirror, and
thus the Queen's power.
By this time, Alice sees Jack as a victim, rather than a
stalker, and sets about trying to rescue him with the help,
more or less, of Hatter (Andrew-Lee Potts, who, for my
money, never quite gets a handle on his character – unlike
Caterina, who is too certain about hers.) Hatter is not so
much mad as he is a con artist. We have trouble trusting him
entirely, as does Alice. In fairly quick succession Alice
meets and often falls prey to one character after another.
Among them, Dodo (Tim Curry) – forget Disney and Ice Age,
this guy's a major player, not merely a band leader - the
Carpenter (Timothy Webber), the Queen (Kathy Bates), the
King of Hearts (Colm Meany), the White Rabbit (Alan Gray),
Caterpillar (Harry Dean Stanton) and, for our second kick of
warp drive: the White Knight, played by Matt Frewer in what
could be the performance of his career, Max Headroom
notwithstanding. (Listening to the commentary, we learn that
both Nick and Caterina were completely bowled over by him. I
mean, really.)
For my money, despite my feeling about Caterina, the show is
worth watching just for Matt. By turns he is Don Quixote,
imagining adversaries, and the Cowardly Lion, with a sense
of person, place, fate, and guilt that is positively
heartbreaking. And he's funny. In short, Frewer is
everything Caterina is not, and when the two of them are in
the same frame, which is often enough, the discrepancy is so
great as to lend an unintended pathos to the proceedings.
Image:
9/9
NOTE:
The below
Blu-ray
captures were taken directly from the
Blu-ray
disc.
The first number indicates a relative level of excellence
compared to other Blu-ray video discs on a ten-point scale.
The second number places this image along the full range of
DVD and Blu-ray discs.
The image on this AVC encode can be quite stunning at times,
especially in the exotic interiors of Wonderland with its
sparkling color and light. I solid bit bate yields
sharpness, detail and dimensionality that are first rate,
and are only moved down a peg or two when mattes and CGI
lend a hand, as in all those outdoors shots where buildings
suddenly give way to bottomless chasms and gauzy views of
the fjord. But most often fabrics, faces, even the trees of
the forest have a lifelike appearance in respect to both
texture and color without a hint of noise reduction, edge
enhancement or other potentially troublesome transfer
mishaps. As expected for a movie of such recent vintage, the
print is spotless.
CLICK EACH
BLU-RAY
CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION
Audio & Music:
9/8
The musical design is inextricably a part of the entire
soundscape. In its default DTS-HD MA there are some
wonderfully gooey bass throbs when Alice is under the spell
of Doctors Dee & Dum. Forest noises are subtly reproduced.
Dialogue is clear and appropriately larger than it might be
in a straight drama or comedy. Surrounds come alive in
Wonderland with mostly accurate pans and locational cues. A
superb audio mix.
Operations:
2
There is one operational mistake that could lead to our
missing out on the one extra feature this Blu-ray has to
offer. I don't know about you, but I no longer initially go
to the Set-Up window but rather launch directly into the
film, checking my audio on the fly, as it were. If I want to
know about the extra features I can do that either before
the start of things or along the way, but if you do this you
will lose out on the commentary, which is not indicated in
the Extra Features but only in the Set-up under Audio. Worse
still, there is no indication of a commentary on the cover,
so you might not have known it was there at all. Not so much
an Easter Egg as a Dodo Egg?
The cover is misleading in that it lists Tim Curry as one of
the three actors placed above the title. He's in it,
certainly, and has a couple of scenes (in which he is, of
course, wonderful), but he's hardly the number 2 or 3
character. I can understand the inclusion of Kathy Bates,
since you will want to have at least one recognizable name,
and she is, after all, the Queen of Hearts, but Andrew Lee
Potts as the Hatter or Matt Frewer as the White Knight
should be up there.
Extras:
3
There are no featurettes or documentaries, but there is a
running commentary with Writer/Director Nick Willing and
Leading Lady Caterina Scorsone. You might not think these
two could fill up a full three hours with a whole lot more
than reminiscences but they do. Taking the lead is Nick
whose English is a delight to listen to. He takes us through
various steps of production as each scene suggests. Caterina
is there mostly for the sake of variety, but she is no
hindrance either.
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Bottom line:
7
I'm of two minds about this release. On the one hand, the
image, audio and music are all first rate. The extras are
skimpy to say the least, but the commentary is entertaining
and informative. I very much like Nick Willing 's concept of
Wonderland and its technical execution. And I found all but
two of the Wonderland characters to be ingeniously conceived
and engagingly acted (the other, besides Hatter, is the
retile, which I could have done without entirely). On the
other hand, I feel the leading lady's characterization of
Alice is wrong-headed and tiresome. So, there it is. BTW,
Amazon incorrectly lists the running time as "240 minutes"
which it isn't by a long way. Do not be concerned that this
Blu-ray is only the first episode (titled on the IMDb as
"1.1") – it does not require a sequel.
Leonard Norwitz
March 1st, 2010
