A Mad Hatter, Naturally

The first glossy promo photos from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland have turned up, and the vision is exactly what you’d expect from him—hyper-stylized, obsessively detailed, hovering somewhere between fairy tale and waking nightmare. Burton is blending live action with 3D animation for this one, which could go either way, but my faith in the man remains largely intact. Mia Wasikowska, a young Australian actress who looks like she was assembled specifically for material like this, plays Alice.

And yes, Johnny Depp is back—as the Mad Hatter this time. At some point I should probably find the Burton-Depp dynamic predictable. I don’t. There’s something in how they push each other toward the genuinely strange that I can’t get tired of, and it started long before Sweeney Todd. This one I’ll be watching.