Alice

This disk contains two features. "Darkness, Light, Darkness" is a claymation short, and very odd. The main feature, "Alice", combines live action with stop-animation and is even more peculiar. I like both, even though I'm not wholly sure what to make of either.DLD is all staged in a small room. A person arrives, over the course of the piece, one body part at a time. A hand comes first, then eyes, another hand, the senses, body, and (very late) brain. The whole person is built up from the parts as they arrive and is finally completed - within the room, trapped by doors and windows much too small to allow it to escape."Alice" is the most memorable Alice in Wonderland that I've seen. It features only one living actor. She's a young girl, maybe eight years old - a brilliant piece of casting and brilliant in simply being herself. She wears a pretty pink dress and a serious expression throughout. She also wears her smudges and snarls unselfconciously, tends to throw stones, and never shies from the violence implicit in Lewis Carroll's original story.Svankmajer wanders back and forth across Carroll's story, intersecting at many points. Whether inside Carroll's script or out, Svankmajer aways presents his own vision, one that tends towards the macabre. The White Rabbit is a taxidermy specimen, often leaking sawdust and often licking it back up again. Instead of a mirror, Alice walks through a drawer in a drafting table - the artist's "mirror" on his world - and walks through others at many transitions.Maybe half the movie is stop-motion animation, but the distinctions are not alway clear. Like Harryhausen, Svankmajer often combines model animation with the real girl. Going beyond Harryhausen, he uses the girl as animation material - the cook-fire on her head being the clearest example. The animation itself tends to be jerky, but very expressive. The caterpillar, for example, is a sock-puppet on a sewing form. When his part is over, he shuts his heyes and goes to sleep. The difference, though, is that his eyes are shut for him, sewn shut by darning needles.There is remarkably little use of voice, except for a few points where the girl acts as a puppet-like narrator. Only the trial near the end uses much conversation, and that owes more to Kafka ("Say what you're supposed to say," said The King) than to Carroll.It's good. Strange, but very good.//wiredweird

One night in late April of twenty-twelve, I wanted to see a movie with a creepy doll in it. So I did some research and this was recommended in the search engine, under the title "Doll movies" and to make matters better it was stop-animation! Perfect... So, I bake some microwave popcorn and press play on the movie. minutes in we see Alice in the park with her sister as she carelessly/bordemly tosses rocks in the creek. All ready I want to spit out my popcorn and toss it into the trash, like Alice was doing to the rocks. Instead I didn't want to be rude and forced the popcorn back in my mouth and continued watching. At this time, Alice's mouth is point blank in the screen, and I just couldn't continue eating my popcorn from that point forward. Yuck. I instead watch this disgusting version of Alice in Wonderland. She's dirty and so is the environment she's surrounded in. She then goes into a dresser drawer and gets sucked in to this pitch black place called wonderland. It escalates into a warp of madness for Alice as she so curiously tries to find the rabbit that was in her room and keeps asking out to him "Sir" as the rabbit looks at his watch as he is to late to even respond, but instead of the Disney version he seems more scared to speak to her. Creepy enough is the puppets used in this film but Alice shrinks into a little doll, the kind of porch-lend doll your great grandmother would collect back in the early twentieth-century. She then goes on to meet other bizarre beings and puppets. It's a nightmare and a realist version of Alice in wonderland nobody could make again like Jan Svankmajer has. I do recommend this film but not for children but for the older adults or, teenagers. I was 19 wen I first saw it and I loved it for it's animation and ugly puppets... But I don't recommend you eat popcorn in front of it.

Svankmajer new what to do when it came to making a "real version of Alice in Wonderland." But, you must know...you MUST like stop motion animation to enjoy this film.THE GOOD- Okay, to start off...the movie is highly entertaining, a very unique vision of a timeless tale...it is dark, unsettling, nightmarish, and has a very realistic feel oddly enough...And, to top off the camera shots and compostion as well as a great acting job by "Alice", the film contains some of the best stop motion animation i have ever seen...especially given the time, place and equipment it was made with...very entertaining and very unique...THE BAD- I can't really say much bad about it except for the obvious...Svankmajer created a film with an idea ahead of it's time...The editing job is choppy...and there is absolutely no soundtrack (music). The film is dubbed in English, so the talking that the film does have is obviously dubbed. I thought the close up shots of her mouth would get old, but they actually had a purpose by the end of the film.Like i said, the idea is ahead of it's time. To me, it would be like making the Lord of the Rings with a guy in an aluminum armor suit and a table cloth for a cape, a cardboard horse, clay and stick monsters and battles, and a VHS-C camcorder. It was possible to get the idea across and the vision across...but i feel that if this film was made these days using similar techniques...it would have looked a little better...but overall, the film is unique and wonderful...the ending is one to remember as well...OVERALL- This film deserves every bit of 5 stars as well as the short film that comes with it...but neither are for children...it is slightly haunting with a claustrophobic feel...and letting a child see this film would probably scar them in my opinion :) Very good vision and very memorable... worth the money and time.

Beautiful 1080p transfer of this most compelling and, at times, creepy live action animated feature.The excellent bonus material includes two Brothers Quay shorts.

An amazing adaptation that gets the surreal dream like aspects of Lewis Carroll's story.

De siempre me ha fascinado la técnica de stop motion y guardo un imborrable recuerdo de las criaturas de aquellas películas de Simbad que cobraron vida gracias al maestro Ray Harryhausen. Esta versión de Alice hace gala de una estética tan perturbadora como hechizante, lo que unido a su animación, hizo que me enamorara de ella. Nunca he visto esta película con voces en español, sí con algún subtítulo integrado de forma amateur, pero quería tener original este film para conservarlo y solo pude dar con esta edición que trae voces en versión original y subtítulos en inglés. Los diálogos no tienen el peso que podrían guardar en otro tipo de producciones, por lo que a poco que sepas de lengua inglesa, podrás comprender lo que se habla siguiendo los subtítulos.Finalmente, Alice viene presentada en una edición dual que incluye tanto DVD como Bluray y como extras cuenta con varios cortos.

La remasterizacion digital del video es impecable, pero el audio deja mucho que desear y además solo viene en inglés, eso sin mencionar que no incluye ningún extra

J'avais vu ce film il y a des années au cinéma, et l'avais longtemps cherché d'abord en K7 Vidéo puis en DVD, il n'a longtemps existé qu'en version originale sans sous-titres. Enfin, j'ai pu le revoir et l'impression première d'un malaise diffus est restée intacte : voici une "Alice" qui n'a rien de mièvre, mais crée le trouble chez le spectateur, mélange de prise de vues réelles et d'animation d'objets réels bricolés, avec des trucages artisanaux tout à fait étonnants. Pas forcément pour les enfants, et surtout pas les petits, je pense, car sinon, cauchemars garantis !