tim burton, AiW, and Avatar
after seeing Avatar and Alice in Wonderland, i’m baffled how anyone could seriously favor Avatar over the other. have disliked tim burton and danny elfman for years now, basically because of many of the reasons in this funny vid:
however, those problems were nearly absent from Alice in Wonderland, filled in by a surprisingly facile script and beautiful CGI. i thought the casting was nearly perfect, all around. especially enjoyed the twitchy march hare. don’t care that johnny depp and helena carter are burton’s stock actors; doubt anyone could have done better. mia wasikowska was pure understated power (i.e., “boring”, according to most tossers), and anne hathaway more edible than i’ve ever seen.
my praise for AIW is reversed for Avatar, though i like zoe saldana in it. predictable that james cameron didn’t have the intellectual balls to admit the obvious anti-US part of the story. and what a story, huh? 
could there be a more spineless retard “hero” than jake sully? WTF. no idea how people fall for such plastic nonsense. james cameron’s biggest talent is in moving huge productions forward. bigness. wow. he’s also the hollywood champ of shoving exposition/backstory down your throat with inelegance. pretty sure most people fell for it because of the motion capture advancements, which still look pretty shit IMO, despite the coolness and possibility of the technique.
don’t care about libertarian “messages” in most movies, but if that’s what you watch movies for, Alice in Wonderland was no slouch.