Don’t be late to catch the latest Alice Through the Looking Glass trailer, released just in time to spring forward as we changed the clocks last night. See it below:
Here’s the official synopsis of Through the Looking Glass:
Alice Kingsleigh (Wasikowska) has spent the past few years following in her father’s footsteps and sailing the high seas. Upon her return to London, she comes across a magical looking glass and returns to the fantastical realm of Underland and her friends the White Rabbit (Sheen), Absolem (Rickman), the Cheshire Cat (Fry) and the Mad Hatter (Depp), who is not himself. The Hatter has lost his Muchness, so Mirana (Hathaway) sends Alice on a quest to borrow the Chronosphere, a metallic globe inside the chamber of the Grand Clock which powers all time. Returning to the past, she comes across friends – and enemies – at different points in their lives, and embarks on a perilous race to save the Hatter before time runs out. Presented in Digital 3D™, Real D 3D and IMAX® 3D, Disney’s “Alice Through the Looking Glass” opens in U.S. theaters on May 27, 2016.
Fans of Tim Burton will no doubt have seen or heard of the original incarnation of Frankenweenie, which was produced by Walt Disney Pictures in 1984 as a live action black and white short film. Burton was fired for making the film, for “wasting company resources.” Disney later saw the error of their ways and came to understand Burton’s creative genius. As a result, we now have such classics as The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, the live-action Alice in Wonderland and now a full-length stop-motion animation version of Frankenweenie.
. Mr. Burgermeister not only shares the demeanor of his namesake but a bit of his look too. The Rankin-Bass Burgermeister was voiced by Paul Frees, who is of course famed among Disney fans as the voice of the “Ghost Host” in the Haunted Mansion, along with countless narrations for Disney attractions, including Disneyland’s beloved Adventure Thru Inner Space, now sadly closed. In the new movie, Burgermeister’s niece, Elsa Van Helsing, is a nod to another classic horror story: Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
in how they acted, and the scene where they attack a phone booth reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock’s 
. These could just be coincidences of course. One more obvious point of reverence was toward Godzilla movies. An ex-turtle named Shelley – a nod to Mary Shelley and Shelley Duval, who played Victor’s mom in the 1984 version, becomes a giant 
, he is part of the ‘family of voices’ we’ve now come to expect from Burton’s productions. Mr. Rzykruski is the voice of reason, exposing the children of the school to new ideas and urging them to reach their potential as human beings. His comments to the parents at a school meeting are an excellent commentary on life in America, where new ideas are sometimes treated as wrong and bad because of ignorance and unwillingness to see another way. The message is garbled a bit when Victor actually reanimates the corpse of his dead dog, but you know, artistic license and all that.
