More On That Alice Movie We Told You About In March

I think the combined volume of both Alice stories is the greatest book ever written in the English language. Discuss.

Back on March 21st, I tried to decipher Disney's recently registered Alice-centric web domains. Today, Variety released more information on the film - that it will be live action with CG; that Linda Woolverton is scripting; that Joe Roth is producing.

I can see from the domains that they've singled out Through the Looking Glass, not Adventures in Wonderland - something that hasn't been reported. The stories are quite seperate and distinct, and Looking Glass is more seldom told in film or TV - though a late 80's animated version did feature the vocal stylings of Mr. T - allegedly.

Looking Glass is the source of Jabberwocky, The Walrus and the Carpenter and Tweedledum and Tweedledee. It would have featured a wasp in a wig, but Lewis Carroll 'supressed it' and it wasn't published until the late 1970s, as a standalone text - will Woolverton incorporate this episode? Nah, probably not.

I hope they film in Oxford. Seems only right.

Thanks to Project Gutenberg, the entire book - sans wiggy wasp - is available to read online or download. I suggest you do so.

Zack Snyder Promises You A Sucker Punch

Zack Snyder has announced yet another future project, this one called a very unusal action film called Sucker Punch.

Think Joanne Greenberg's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden pumped full of Blade 2 style action sequences, and you'll be half way there, I imagine.

The Hollywood Reporter's description of the premise goes a little something like:

Set in the 1950's, Punch follows a girl who is confined to a mental institution by her evil stepfather, who intends to have her lobotomized in five days. While there, she imagines an alternative reality to hide her from the pain, and in that world, she begins planning her escape, needing to steal five objects to help get her out before she is deflowered by a vile man.

Snyder namechecked Alice in Wonderland, of course, and let us know we can expect to see B-52 Bombers, dragons and brothels popping up.

It won't exactly be The Defective Detective, I can promise you that much, but if Snyder can behave himself and show the kind of discipline demonstrated in sections of Dawn of the Dead, then Sucker Punch could certainly be something to look forward to.

Over The Rainbow

Variety sez: Zooey Deschanel will be playing 'DG' alongside Alan Cumming's raggedy man Glitch in the SciFi Channel's Tin Man.

The series is a riff on The Wizard of Oz, in case you haven't already been told or couldn't work it out, and this pair are stand-ins for, essentially, the Dorothy and Scarecow roles.

All they need to do now is cast Jon Heder as the Cowardly Lion (Or Liger?) and Alan Tudyk as the titular Tin fella...

Okay. Maybe that's just me and my typecasting ways.

The series will run to six hours, air at Christmastime and is being directed by Nick Willing - who recently resurrected Jackanory with the assistance of Ben Kingsley and John Sessions. As Willing also has versions of Jason and the Argonauts and Alice in Wonderland on his resume it's not hard to imagine how he ended up in the hot seat for Tin Man.