Tim Burton and Johnny Depp take on Alice in Wonderland

Walt Disney Studios has just released the movie Alice in Wonderland, pairing director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp. These two are a wonderful combination in the making of unusual and "far out" movies. They work well together and have teamed up more than once in the past.

It appears that both Burton and Depp have a penchant for the exaggerated, perverse, and bizarre. Their first film together was Edward Scissorhands (1990), a strange tale about a shy young man created by an inventor who, upon dying suddenly, left him with scissors for hands. The film documents what it feels like to live your life being different from everyone around you.

Other films combining the talents of these two creative geniuses include Ed Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow, (1999), Charlie and The Chocolate Factory (2005), and Sweeny Todd (2007). Together they have turned out one unconventional flick after the other. Both men are brilliant, unique, and apparently obsessed with off-the-wall, somewhat nightmarish and warped drama, which includes an element of humor and tenderness.

A fascination with the dark and perverse

Tim Burton has made twenty five films since 1982. During that time, he has managed to stay just within the mainstream of Hollywood, although his films do not reflect that. On the contrary, he has remained true to himself and to his particular film and artistic choices, with a strong personal vision and a distinct uncompromising style. A past creator of horror films, his work although visually amazing and innovative, contains strong dark overtones. Yet, for some reason, he remains connected to the commercial Hollywood tradition; a contradiction to say the least.

A meeting of two brilliant and talented minds

Burton met his partner, actress Helena Bonham Carter in 2002 when the two of them worked on his film Planet of The Apes. They have been together ever since and now have two small children. Carter, an award winning actress, is a seasoned artist in her own right, with many films under her belt. Her first film was "Lady Jane Grey", in which she played the 16 year old queen to Henry the Eighth. Next she starred in "Room With A View" when she was barely twenty years old, for which she received an Academy Award nomination.

She has been making films well over 20 years and her career has seen her tackle every kind of role from the suicidal queen Ophelia in Hamlet, to a romantic heroine in Howard's End (1992) to a neurotic misfit in Fight Club (1999) to the helpful wife of a maniac butcher in Sweeney Todd (2007). And now in the new film Alice in Wonderland, to be released in 2010, she is playing the Red Queen.

At the age of 43, Bonham Carter pretty much concentrates on working with her partner, Burton, on his particular genre of films, which are brilliantly innovative and exciting visually and truly unique in every other way. She is fond of saying "I hate this image of me as a prim Edwardian. I want to shock everyone." And so, this team of Burton and Bonham Carter continues to amaze, frighten, and shock us with a continuous output of creative, entertaining, and visually stimulating images.

Burton's version of the Lewis Carroll tale of Alice in Wonderland will be like no other version, The filming was completed in December, but the movie will not be released until March of 2010. "...the live action is being merged with CG animation and motion-capture creatures, and then transferred into 3-D." says producer Richard Zanuck. " Alice...has now been Burton-zed"

Judging from the photos which have recently been released, Burton is at his best presenting us with fantastic and visually surreal images throughout the entire film.

Starring in the film along with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter is Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen; think "off with her head!" Anne Hathaway as the White Queen and Australian actress Mia Wasikowski as Alice.