I really cringed at the start of this, I’d been looking forward to it ever since mid-May when I started reading the two books by Lewis Carroll and it happened to be on TV early one morning. I decided to save it till I’d actually finished the second book, though. First of all, obviously, Kate Beckinsale at 25 is way too old to be Alice. But that in itself didn’t worry me – I loved, for example, Fiona Fullerton in the Seventies version of the first book (okay, she wasn’t quite so much older, but she was still no pre-teen). What made me cringe is that she’s presented here at first as a mother reading the Looking Glass story to her daughter (who, incidentally, is far more suited to the Alice role though you don’t really get a great sense of her acting ability).

But despite the inexplicable bookending (which, I’ve gotta say, even that’s saved by Beckinsale calling the little girl “Humpty” in the end like Alice in the book calls Dinah, though it doesn’t have the same tight connection to Humpty’s line about looking upon a King, re: “a cat may look at a King” from the first book – sorry, can you tell I’ve been reading the annotated version much? lol), and despite the at times awfully cheap and shaky TV production values, this is stunningly faithful to the text – in fact to the point where I genuinely wonder who it was made for. Virtually none of the nonsense and talk is diluted, and it’s a kind of blessing and curse at the same time.

But whether I enjoyed it or not (the jury may still be out), it still deserves a lot of respect – and that it even ends on that mesmerising acrostic (“A boat beneath a sunny sky … Still she haunts me phantomwise … In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die … life, what is it but a dream?” – I’m absolutely crazy about this poem right now), read alternately by Beckinsale and the little girl, really almost made me want to go and read the book again.

This one is fascinating – another TV production, this time by the BBC for the “Wednesday Play” series, and boy does that show: the word “pretentious” certainly comes to mind but I for one won’t be using it because this is one of the best adaptations of the book that I’ve yet seen. It begins by perfectly recreating the part of the story that has always been the most strongly evocative part to me: the simple, lazy image of Alice and her sister on the bank on a hazy Summer afternoon (“All in a golden afternoon …”). From there it launches into some of the most surreal, dreamlike progressions I’ve ever seen on film. It captures some part of the book that few other adaptations would dare. Through clever editing, it’s the closest and most prolonged replica of the dream experience I’ve seen.

I wouldn’t have thought it, as I’m quite attached to the innocent and gracious image of Alice in the blue dress with blonde hair in a bow etc, but I quite like this Hermione-haired, black-dressed, aloof version as played by Anne-Marie Mallik, too; I love how she’s always walking away from people with a “hmph!” flick of her hair. The look she almost gives the camera as the caucus-race “winners” gather around uttering, “prizes, prizes, prizes”, quite like zombies droning, “brains”, lol, is quite priceless, it’s the look of a person bemused by the herd-like behaviours of society.

In short, what it lacks in colour, effects, costumes and comprehensiveness, it makes up for entirely with the feeling it gives by the extraordinary stillness, both in the image and in the soundtrack, Mallik’s whispery distant voiceover, and that very BBC “Play for Today” type score (excepting the odd moment when it, like the imagery, goes a little mental). At 70 minutes, there’s no excuse to pass up the chance to see it.

I love Tina Majorino in just about anything so I kind of knew that I’d be comfortable through most of this despite some bad comments about it (Martin Gardner calls it “undistinguished” and “boring” in “The Annotated Alice” and considering how great his insights are in the margins of that volume, I couldn’t well not believe him). With the book very fresh in my mind (I just finished reading it minutes before putting this on), I was pretty dazzled by how faithful it is to the text (to “Wonderland” at least; I can’t speak for the episodes towards the end I’m assuming are from “Through the Looking Glass”, which I’ve not yet read). That, however, turns out to perhaps be the production’s singular problem. There’s a fine line between being faithful and too damn literal, and this certainly crosses that line eventually.

As expected, I found Majorino delightful as Alice (I don’t like the yellow dress though :P) – her English accent is a little too clipped at times but mostly it’s perfect, as is she. The rest of the cast is certainly impressive (how often do you find Ken Dodd, Martin Short and Gene Wilder in the same place, lol?) but often just plain annoying; for me nothing much compares to the fantastic supporting cast of the Fiona Fullerton version. The visual effects are fairly clunky at times and the production and costume design etc (I already mentioned the yellow dress) is some of the most garish and unappealing I’ve seen in any artwork based on the story – towards the end, in fact, it almost looks like they’re running out of money by the scene. For Majorino and the details in the script, however, it’s certainly worth seeing if you’ve read and enjoyed the source material.

What is there to say? This is just a straight continuation of the story in Parent Trap III and as such just as avoidable. One thing I didn’t write in my review there was what I think is these two installments’ biggest failing – they focus way too much on the adults. I guess maybe they were trying to make the movies “grow up” with the fans of the first sequel (which, one supposes, was made since the video generation had just come across the original) – it’s still way too stuffy, even with Hayley Mills still floating around. Glenn Shadix (*Beetle Juice* and Heathers) provides some relief I seem to recall (writing up long after watching again, sorry), but it’s still really sad, even for a TV movie.

... Two TV productions that couldn’t be more different, but they pretty much constitute my personal highlights from the month of January in television and bode almost forebodingly well for the next 11 months.

I’ve seen the first half hour of Summerhill twice now – the 2-hour feature was split into 4 half-hour episodes for broadcast on children’s television, a choice completely – even beautifully in these times – in keeping with the overall message in the production about children’s rights, about children being fully capable of the same decisions grown-ups are allowed to make, etc. Like I wrote on tumblr, I don’t even know if real children watch children’s television anymore, but it’s nice that its there for them if they want to.

I couldn’t wait to see the remaining 90 minutes tonight and I was not let down at all. I’ve half the mind to finally switch to including British TV movies in my definition of “movies” therefore really this post should possibly be in the movie section as I imagine it will turn out to be a more fulfilling 120 minutes than at least 50% of the dross I’ll subject to myself before December is out. It was a beautiful idea to start with, almost a shame it’s taken 8 years to make something of it, the music is gorgeous, the cast firing on all cylinders from the cute Holly Bodimeade to the supporting cast of the inspectors, Geraldine McNulty as the headteacher, and yay Martin Ball (sorry, such a whore for mentioning people I’ve seen live on stage :P). It’s pretty much the benchmark for television this year … like I said, forebodingly early.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles came as a total surprise to me. Though I loved Terminator 3, I’ve still not got around to seeing it a second time since the first time, and in that time I’ve allowed my opinion to somewhat slide to the point where I approached this series with as much trepidation as excitement. It turns out that comparison to the second sequel to James Cameron’s original doesn’t bear pursuing; all three of the first episodes of this show quite comfortably compare to the best of the movies, Judgment Day – and given that both Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong have for obvious reasons been recast, that’s really quite a thing to find myself saying. Each episode seems to follow that great direction in Cameron’s screenplay to T2, “OKAY, BUCKLE YOUR SEATBELTS, HERE IT COMES…” and seriously, for a TV show, the brilliance of the pace cannot be understated, it’s truly overwhelming. Lena Headey, Thomas Dekker and Summer Glau are a perfect threesome, so good that I didn’t question the recasting from the classic movies for a second (okay, I didn’t do for “Rise of the Machines” either, but kudos is still due). I can only hope it keeps up the pace. The worst I’ve heard on the IMDb message boards is that it’ll be cancelled after 2 seasons – like omg! lol. Two seasons sounds like a hit to me

Watched for Jodelle Ferland, of course; and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so like a sucker for watching a movie for such a reason, lol. Jodelle is in this I think frame for frame even less than she was in The Messengers. I guess at least she’s a girl in this one? (still playing the glad game from Pollyanna I guess LOL)

It’s just a really generic TV movie and not worth talking about much at all. It doesn’t even end well, it just kinda stops, lol. Not worth keeping or seeing again even for Jodelle.

Sesame Street recently got released on DVD with warning stickers about it possibly not being suitable for young children. I can’t help but think this troublesome production needs the same treatment – or at least a warning that the title could not be more ironic.

Okay, I know the Muppets probably have more appeal now for adults than children, but I’ve gotta say, aren’t the first 15 minutes of this movie a little too much hard work? Especially at Christmas? It’s downright surreal how this one starts, lol.

The whole thing just makes me feel a little sad for the Muppets. It starts with them having “lost everything” as Kermit moans, before flashing back through the eyes of God to show how it happened. In an attempt to pay back a debt, we see Kermit calling his old celebrity friends to come and help. We see a handful of B-Lister cameos in split screen, but the big names … Madonna, Schwartzennegger, Connery, even some smaller ones you’d really expect would be happy to be seen alongside Kermit and co., are offscreen and they all say no and it’s all too believable. Early on a snowman is accused of being a Burl Ives wannabe, and they couldn’t even get Steve Irwin so we get the worst scene in the movie featuring a bad impersonator (“Safari Animal Tracker” in the credits).

Sure, the support cast featuring Joan Cusack (being really quite disturbingly evil), David Arquette, and Whoopi Goldberg ain’t bad compared to, say, their Wizard of Oz ... but it can’t hope to compare to the good old days and I really don’t know how younger kids, the only people who might enjoy this, would take the weirdly sincere drama of it all. There’s a scene where Kermit happens upon a statue of himself dancing with 2 children, with a plaque dedication, “To the lovers, the dreamers, and you” and it’s a heartbreakingly harsh comment on how the mighty have fallen (this is, afterall, a TV movie). Later, the movie “does” It’s a Wonderful Life, and in the world where Kermit was never born, network television has been overrun by reality television. Yah-huh, hard to believe, right? Which kind of implies that even in the world where Kermit very much did live and still lives as evidenced by this very movie, his work and the work of all the Muppets has been about as useful to culture as if they hadn’t bothered at all.

It earns a few points from me for plain being so surreal, leaving me sitting at the end agape on the sofa wondering what the hell kind of depressing existentialist puppet show I just watched, pitying any parent who let their children watch it this Boxing Day, lol – and of course the Muppets themselves are all there and that in itself makes it watchable. The movie references are very well done, especially the Moulin Scrooge sequence. Really, there is a lot to like here … it just really doesn’t add up to much in the end, and I personally found it far too transparently bitter for Christmas.

There’s literally nothing to say about this one. Like, it even failed to be quite so bad as I’d been led to believe. But right from the dodgy opening credits, this is just a miserably cheap excuse for a Christmas movie. Harvey Fierstein should be absolutely ashamed of himself for stooping so low as he does here, but the rest of the cast aren’t much more excusable. When there are movies out there like Elf and The Grinch that effortlessly bear brute-force repeat viewings this time of year, stuff like this really should be pictured next to the word “waste” in the dictionary.