More Awesomeness (and some boredom on the side, please?)

Totally forgot to mention yesterday that my mom called me while I was at work. My health benefits card finally came in the mail! If you think that I'm weird for being this excited about it... well, I haven't had healthcare for more than 6 months. Haven't been to the doctor, optometrist (did you know that I haven't been wearing contacts for almost six months?), dentist (I need fillings. And braces.)... in a very very long time.

So we went by my parents' place last night to pick up my stuff. I'm going to make a couple appointments in the near future, once I have some money in the bank (etc).

Also! Highlight of m week pretty much; We went to Alice in Wonderland last night!! I absolutely LOVED it, but there were a few points that had a slight tendency to bother me (in retrospect).

• Character combining: The Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts are two completely different characters! The QoH is from the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which is the original book, and the Red Queen is from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Saw There, the second book. The biggest point about this is that the Red Queen is actually one of the two Queens in a chess set, the White Queen (her sister, played by Anne Hathaway in the 2010 film) is her opposition.
  
• Anne Hathaway's Eyebrows:

I know how gorgeous she is and all of that. But something about her brown-black eyebrows combined with her bright white hair bothered the heck out of me.

And to those of you who are sitting there saying "This isn't the actual Alice in Wonderland! It's Tim Burton's reimagining of the classic!!!"... YES. I KNOW THAT. I'm not going to fill this with spoilers (at risk of having some certain people beat me over the head with a 2x4), but it suffices to say that Burton took elements of the original two books and brought them together in order to create something different that still related quite well to the originals, while still maintaining an element of "fresh newness".

Okay, I'm beginning to feel like I'm just complaining. So I'm going to toss a couple things that I love about the movie out there:

• The March Hare!!! Rory and I had a good giggle about how very obviously tweaked this character was. While the Mad Hatter's insanity likely derived itself from inhaling mercury fumes, Mssr. Hare is quite likely on something crystallized. it worked really well. (And in case you're wondering, I found out about a lot of the technical things a long time ago-- long before I saw this movie-- because I'm a total geek like that.)
  

That being said, I just looked it up and the symptoms that frequently express themselves when one has mercury poisoning are totally flipside from the character in the books/movies. THAT BEING SAID, look what I found on Wikipedia about the Johnny Depp version of the Mad Hatter:

The orange hair is an allusion to the mercury poisoning suffered by many hatters who used mercury to cure pelts. According to Depp: "I think he was poisoned, very, very poisoned, and it was coming out through his hair, through his fingernails and eyes."

When you're pairing Tim Burton and Johnny Depp in any filmic production, you run the serious risk of having whatever movie is being made turning completely into a "Johnny Depp Stars As _______" movie. I think that AiW toed the line as far as that one goes... there were definitely times where you could see so many stereotypical elements of other famed Depp-characters come through, but for the most part it seemed to be rather fresh.

Personally, I think the insanity works well for Johnny ;)

Anyways, back to my "analysis" (you can stop reading now and just scroll down and comment if you're getting bored).

- I stopped counting the number of drug references in the movie when I got to thirteen.

Despite the fact that Burton called on so many well-known actors for this interpretation, he still managed rather well to keep it from looking like a Stars March. The only character that seemed a bit flat to me was Helena Bonham-Carter's portrayal of the Red Queen. While I absolutely LOVED her in Sweeney Todd as Mrs. Lovett, I wasn't a huge fan of her in AiW.

vs.
... Somehow, I think she suits the darker, twisted, psychotic Mrs. Lovett a bit more than the toddler-like Red Queen.

I think that Mia Wasikowska did a really fabulous job as Alice. In one way, she had it easy-- She got to portray her character at a different age than most of our incarnations of her to date. And on the other hand, her job was harder because of the need for her to stay true to the original character while developing more of a backstory and creating more emotional depth.

Plus, she's pretty without being overwhelmingly so. EXTREMELY PALE THOUGH, HOLY GEEZE.

Then again, I guess most girls in Victorian England were... I mean, ENGLAND. And pale is pretty? Well, for Mia, it most definitely is!

Overall... I quite enjoyed the movie :) I'd definitely go for seeing it again.

I'm also probably going to buy it when it comes out on DVD. Yes, it's THAT worth-it.

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So, after the movie we drove to EB Games for the midnight release of Final Fantasy XIII. Not for me, because I'm not a FF person (Gasp!). Nope, it was for Rory. He didn't want to stand in line (and quite frankly, I might have laughed at him if he did)... But he did want to pick it up as soon as possible.

I ended up falling asleep in the car. We didn't get home until about 1:00 AM. I was really bushed when we got home, so I went straight to bed. And sleepily called for Rory to come tuck me into bed. He came and cuddled with me until I fell asleep, and ended up falling asleep himself. =)

So yes, yesterday was awesome.