Alice in Vunderland [uber late review]

Trailer: http://adisney.go.com/disneypictures/aliceinwonderland/#/epk/home/ 

Review made: 26 May 2010

It strikes home, this movie. The next step, I guess, is to read the book that's got me curiouser and curiouser. I so love Alice and her determination.

The plot is a typical story of courage, friendship and power, a cliched fantasy fiction that is rather a far cry from Lewis' child-like intentions which only deals with dreams. Burton's version deals with the Red Queen and overthrowing her, a sorta solution to her evil reign and not leaving us hanging as we were when we watched the classic Alice years back. The evil Red Queen still ruled and Alice was left to run in escape from capture, which did not seem to serve as a proper ending. Up till now.

i wouldn't say Burton ruined our long-loved childhood tale or did it injustice. Nor would I praise it to high heavens. I was actually unhappy with the whole affair after Alice went home to an average ending to the adventure. Of course I left the cinema feeling less than satisfactory and that thr was sth more tt could be had. I think I felt upset like the Mad Hatter was whn Alice didnt decide to stay behind. Maybe tt was it!... There was some sort of belonging she had w tt place, yet she denied it.

Sigh, all the colourful characters tt were, in the world of metaphors and madness... everyone had a bit of madness to them. All had their own eccentricities and weirdness to their name. Red Queen had evil surrounding her moat, White queen was exaggerated thru her gentleness (tho esme claims she has some dark side to her too), the Cheshire cat smiles (I naively tot cats cud smile or portray their happiness until i got a cat =P i was deceived!), the caterpillar is smart tho, and the Mad Hatter... what can i say, except woots!!

4 Logos (good and bad)

Bad logos 

Not to say they're all that bad, especially when you have thousands of different companies in a specific location and all of them need their own logos. Example, if you were travelling through Malaysia to Kota Tinggi, you would have passed car factories, tyre repair shops, barber shops, 7-Elevens, restaurants, and by then the artistic value of logos reduce to naught. Not that it matters; we just want to get to that chendol stall on the roadside. 

 "Can't Fail Cafe" can't fail. It catches attention, but in case tt's not a logo, below are 2 more...

The "TS" Da Cheng Che Hang logo resembles the Taisei Corporation logo that deals with Japanese cartoon figurines and toys. If you can't read Chinese, you can't tell it's about cars.

"Photo Art Association of Singapore" does not seem very artistic or eye-catching. Maybe it's about bird-watching in Singapore (white bird below Singapore map in the middle).

Good Logos

Logos that one can identify quickly, usually the branded ones, or logos that are just attractive to the layman (eg. McDonald's) are considerably good logos.

Louis Vuitton is well-branded; having the LV letters or the flowery background on you identifies you with the brand immediately.

"J Team Productions" founded by local director Jack Neo. I wanna' work there in the future.

Logo for a Friend (DI project)

Design and Illustration teacher Mr Victor Seow enforced a "post your stuff on a blog" rule, so school projects will be projected here for the next 6 months.

Logo created for Lewis. Not a very good embodiment of manliness, but I was watching Cowboy Bebop and was influenced by their '80s style setting.

 

Logo for Esme. Her estranged and tested relationship with her family can be symbolised by a lot of heartbreaks.

Logo for Hazmi. Simple guy yet possibly inwardly distraught, hence the black eye bag.

Random sketch. Line art.

Random sketch. Birds were my first good sketch. Were, ahem...

A walk with God never ends

Weeks of Quiet Time with SP Navigators sisters teaches a lot than I have studied in the last year. For one, eternal life began when we accepted Christ: 1 John 5: 11-12 And this is the testimony, God has given us eternal life, and this Life is in His Son. He who has the Son has Life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have Life.

Simply put, the old is passed away; behold all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17). Having now the new life, since we have accepted Christ and thus received the gift of eternal life, what then would you do with the new life? What would you invest in with your new body and spirit? Will you defile it as you did the old life? How will you treasure it now?

I guess it's not so much putting everything in the past into oblivion so you don't have to deal with those skeletons in the closet anymore. Of course we would not turn back to the old self to make our conscious decisions any longer, but incline to the new person to make those decisions. Old mistakes are still there to be had so we don't commit them again... The memory of tt a sad fleeting moment, bt always a reminder tt your old life did this wrong, dun do it again.

If I could turn the clock back, I might have made sure Mittens was still with me. How I miss her. I guess the feeling must be the same when you have your own innocent child suffering and dying while you watch. How painful it was for God.

Extended tribute

Mum was searching for it yesterday and was talkin with a bangla cleaner abt any cats they saw in the last 2 days. He said his fren did find a dead one on thurs and he had to do a bit of cleaning. Mum reduced her English to pri 1 standard but she couldn't get anything else out of the man 'cos he didn't understand what was colour. Additional info like "it's bad news, it must hv been a mess and they probably used water"... were all mummy's. I realised the only info she got was "dead cat found on thurs".

It was all bad parenting on my part. I tried to redirect tt anger and self-pity towards God and blaming Him for killing my kitty 'cos He was a jealous God. I misinterpreted tt idea frm Xue Zhen, but i was dead wrong. I loved Mittens but not enough to care about her like a mother would. What makes it worse is tt I cant communicate with her so I assume half the time tt she already knows that climbing the window grilles are simply dangerous. But it was because I let her since young, to climb those and even in unconscious ways led her to try out new stunts like go higher or new places. I feel so stupid. I wasted her.

Tribute to Mittens

Gosh, we had her only for like 5 mths and this is how she disappears. My only fear is that she is shivering and cold and broken somewhere on a ledge of the building 24 floors down. The only way she could disappear from the house was through a window as all the doors were locked. And our windows overlooked a 24-floor drop onto the laundry people sun outside the flat.

HISHEdotcom, can't live with it, can't live without it

This would be cool, if HISHE animations would just die!... They have the most horrible suggestions, the other most outstanding and memorable moment was the one on How LOTR Should Have Ended and I was caught between laughing and crying. Well, this new make on Inception really brought back that same feeling. Grrr.

But the vid animation is true to an extent, 'cos that is one of the flaws of the movie... Apparently I was unconciously half hoping during the movie, that there would be more projections from the other characters, so that the movie had a chance of becoming a series like Lost because of its overwhelming number of characters involved. Cobb probably had stronger dream projections and could overcome everyone else's, I guess, so they reduced the confusion rate that was to take place...