Tim Burton to shoot 3-D Alice in Wonderland

Director Tim Burton has signed a deal with Walt Disney Studios to produce two 3-D films, kicking off with a version of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

The film will, Variety explains, combine "performance-capture imagery" - currently wowing the crowd in Beowulf - and live-action footage. Linda Wolverton of The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast fame is penning the screenplay.

The second production will be Frankenweenie, based on Burton's 1984 short film about "a pet dog brought back to life by his loyal owner". It'll be a stop-motion animation production, shown in digital 3-D.

Alice in Wonderland is slated to go into production early next year, wrapping in May. Burton is currently putting the finishing touches to Sweeney Todd at Paramount and Dreamworks. ®

a new kind of tree

I have a gripe, after hearing about this I had to see it before I would even believe the possibility of this being true. The reason for this is it just astonishes me how stupid things can get all due to the fact its Christmas.

It would appear that the new big thing this Christmas is to have your Christmas tree upside down, now I would hope as you read this you now have a slightly confused look on your face as I did when I first heard about this new idea. And I would hope like myself you still don’t quite believe what I'm saying, well here is a photo from the John Lewis catalogue.

Now if you do think about it hanging things from this tree would be better as they would have more room to swing or just hang as they are supposed to do but this not account for the pure stupidity of an upside down tree, I mean where is the fairy supposed to sit? Maybe this is the best idea for years and I'm just a little too old to accept the change but I will think you are odd if you get an upside down tree.

the start of 2 weeks off

So I now have 2 weeks off, 2 weeks one after the other. I have never had this amount of time off in one go, ever. I'm now day 3 in and I'm enjoying it. You know I have not reall come up with any master plan for my time away from work but I have a few things I would like to do. I need to plan more.

So last week with work we went on what I thought was going to be a team building day, you know the one where you all work together outside of work which brings you together,.. well we went paint balling! And it was great.

I finally got my micro light thing booked for next week, its about time as I have had the thing now for the last year or so but now I'm going. You know you go up 1500 feet, I'm not too sure on how high that is but I have a funny feeling its high. But I'm sure I will be fine and I'm sure it will be fantastic.

Now Tuesdays is a big day as its my girlfriends birthday. Now I do wish I could do something wonderful like you hear of, you know someone taking someone away on holiday, or a hot air balloon ride, or a really nice expensive meal but I'm still on a semi tight budget and I cannot afford it. I could just afford to get her a SLR camera which she really likes, its not that I'm bothered about not having the cash but it does bother me that its not just me it affects. Now I know if my lovely girl friend was hear she would say that none of this matters and if it was the other way around it would not bother me in the slightest but I think we all know that you would want to buy the world for the person you love if you could