A few months ago I stumbled across a snippet of this on YouTube (here is a particularly creepy and/or awesome bit, you should check it out) and immediately rushed around trying to find it on DVD. It finally came out at the end of October, and I had it pre-ordered (ostensibly for my birthday, but I was going to buy it anyway because DAMN) so it was in my hot little hands the day after it officially came out.
Anyway, what I am trying to say here is OH MY GOD IT'S SO GOOD YOU SHOULD BUY IT RIGHT NOW AND THEN STAY HOME FROM WORK AND WATCH IT TOMORROW.
Yeah, that is what I was trying to get across.
It's got some serious production values. It's filmed live, but really well. I can't stand it when you see dancers on film and they are constantly showing close up shots of the face or maybe the head and upper torso. That just misses the whole freaking point of dance. Anyway. So. It's filmed well, it's danced beautifully, the costumes and sets are fun. The dancers can mostly actually act (which is not always the case). The dancer doing Alice manages to capture that sort of spunky youthfulness that most actresses can't even manage...
OH! And I forgot! I am sort of an Alice snob. Totally an Alice snob, actually. When I was a teenager (oh god, confession time) I had a photograph of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) in my room like most girls would have the teen idol of the moment. Slightly earlier in life I kept my hardbound copy of Alice and Looking-glass (a gift from my Nana when I was about 6 or 7) in a special little pouch hanging from the arm of my day bed. I memorized the "Life, what is it but a dream?" poem and said it aloud EVERY NIGHT. I am pretty hard to impress Alice-wise. This doesn't use the same "framing" story as Alice, because a full length ballet without a pas de deux would just not fly, so they have to add a certain romantic element. And you know what? It doesn't drive me crazy. That is saying an awful lot.
