Wonderland

CAST: Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska and Helena Bonham Carter. Directed by Tim Burton. BACK STORY: There's no mistaking the singular surrealism of Lewis Carroll, but despite the familiar faces on the movie posters it would be a mistake to call Burton's vision a pure adaptation of the author's 19th century writings or even a live-action remake of Walt Disney's 1951 animated film. "It's a completely different and new story, but it has a lot of the same characters in it," said Wasikowska, the 20-year-old Aussie who portrays Burton's older Alice.

CBS was the top network Thursday night as "The Millers" surged week-to-week in the ratings, according to early numbers from Nielsen.  The Will Arnett comedy, which drew 11.4 million viewers overall, earned a rating of 2.9 in the key 18-to-49-year-old demographic, surging 21% from its last original, when it was softened by March Madness preemptions.  "The Big Bang Theory" was again the night's top show, drawing 17.4 million viewers total and...

With its saturated colors, chrome-plated furniture, pink feathery plumes and outrageous animal chairs (ghoulish octopus, goth rhinoceros), the latest makeover of Greystone Mansion into decorator show house isn't exactly a lesson in try-this-at-home design.   No matter. Visitors who appreciate an over-the-top experience will find plenty in the Fendi Casa mirror TV, the crazy color combinations (red and turquoise in a tribute to Italian fashion designer Valentino), the patterned wall applications and the opulence loaded into the sprawling 1928 Tudor mansion.

A $10-million first-of-its-kind attraction coming to Canada's Wonderland will combine a 4-D interactive dark ride with a roller-coaster track inside the Toronto-area amusement park's decades-old Wonder Mountain centerpiece. Photos: Wonder Mountain's Guardian at Canada's Wonderland Debuting on May 4, Wonder Mountain's Guardian will carry riders up a 60-foot-tall coaster lift hill on the exterior of the man-made mountain before dipping inside a cavern and slowing down for a dark ride experience complete with wind, motion and other special effects.

The search for a warm-weather “Nutcracker” continues with “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,” Christopher Wheeldon's three-act dance fantasy, which the National Ballet of Canada brought to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Friday in its U.S. premiere, beginning a five-performance run. Like the Russian Christmas classic, the new work (co-commissioned by Britain's Royal Ballet) begins at a party for adults, involves its child-heroine in dreamlike changes of scale and battles with bizarre adversaries but also contains such formal divertissements as a Waltz of the Flowers and an Arabian Dance.

More than a children's classic, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," the 1865 book by Lewis Carroll, is ground zero for a multi-tentacled media franchise that has been going strong for nearly 150 years. The Victorian forebear of a variety of 20th century artistic movements, drug cultures and fashion trends, it has inspired untold authors and musicians, served as the basis for dozens of film and television versions, and been tailored and twisted to fit almost every narrative form imaginable, from musical theater to soft-core porn to video game.

Ask Ken Ralston, the visual effects supervisor for "Alice in Wonderland," what was the biggest logistical problem posed by the fantasy film and, like the Cheshire cat, the corners of his mouth pull back in a slow grin. "What part of it wasn't a challenge? All the characters in the film, all the weird combination of effects and the always-lovely fact of too little time to finish everything ? all of it was a challenge. To think of one thing that was bigger or more difficult than the rest, I can't do it. It was one giant challenge.

One of Disneyland's oldest attractions, the Alice in Wonderland ride, has been closed since last week while workers install safety barriers recommended by California work-safety inspectors. Park officials said they hope to reopen the ride in the next few weeks. Disney officials said the Anaheim park voluntarily closed the ride July 15 after California Department of Occupational Safety and Health inspectors pointed out that it lacked handrails needed for maintenance crews who work on an elevated segment of the ride.

Alice in Wonderland Walt Disney, $29.99; Blu-ray, $39.99/$44.99 Give Tim Burton credit: When asked by Disney to make a live-action, 3-D version of "Alice in Wonderland," he didn't take the safe route. With the help of screenwriter Linda Woolverton and skilled computer-animators, Burton reinvents Lewis Carroll's creation as the story of a young woman (played by Mia Wasikowska) who returns to the surreal land she dreamed of as a girl and gets involved in an epic battle between queens.

As power couples go, Shereen Arazm and Oren Koules are downright steroidal. She's a club/restaurant maven who owns or co-owns L.A. hotspots Terroni, Geisha House, Bella and her latest creation, Wonderland. He's a producer of the "Saw" film franchise and CBS' "Two and a Half Men" and co-owns the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team. Whew. But as Shereen can tell you, even power couples need time off the grid. Read on. Girls will be girls On Friday nights, my husband is usually busy on the set of his show, so I try to make it a girls' night out with friends.

If Charles Dodgson could have seen into the future, we might never have had "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. " Dodgson, of course, was the mathematician who penned the books "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass," using the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. During his lifetime,  his identity as the "Alice in Wonderland" author had become known -- although he would have preferred it hadn't. "All that sort of publicity leads to strangers hearing of my real name in connection with the books, and to my being pointed out to, and stared at, by strangers , and treated as a 'lion,' " Dodgson wrote in a previously unpublished letter.

In 1964, Jong Sook Kim visited Disneyland. It was no ordinary trip for the 14-year-old. Doctors once thought she would never see again, but after she traveled from her native South Korea to San Francisco for surgery, her sight was restored -- and she got a personal invitation from Walt Disney to visit the happiest place on earth. A moment from that day, of Kim with "Alice in Wonderland" characters the Mad Hatter, Alice and the White Rabbit, that was taken for the Los Angeles Times' article about her, is captured in one of our vintage Disneyland photos above.

Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass surely never imagined that the Winter Warlock from their 1970 TV Christmas special “Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town” would go into improv. The Troubadour Theater Company (“the Troubies”) first cast the Warlock in “Santa Claus Is Comin' to Motown” at the Falcon Theatre in 2004. The breakout star, known fondly as Winter, has become a staple of their annual holiday mash-ups. This year, in “Walkin' in a Winter One-Hit-Wonderland,” Winter attempts the transition from bit player to lead, determined to prove that, “like Scott Baio," as he puts it, he can carry a show.

Christmas makes old men of us all, particularly the women, who grow grumpy and put-upon because most of the holiday prep falls to them. Christmas is a glorious celebration till it gets its claws into you. If you're not too careful, you grow cynical over the drumbeat of sales-sales-sales, the idiot radio stations that start the yuletide tunes in mid-November, the whole colossal runaway holiday sled. Our Thanksgiving was a triumph of the human spirit, and by Sunday of that weekend I was nearly Christmased out. I'd had just the right amount, yet there stood before us several more weeks of holiday mayhem.

Fiber artist Niki Livingston dyes textiles using natural pigments and a combination of Japanese shibori and Nigerian adire techniques. The results are one-of-a kind works of fiber art, our latest picks in our Handmade Holidays gift guide. Livingston's repertoire has included curtains, duvet covers and clothing. For the holidays, Livingston has blankets ($275) created with a shibori technique (the fabric is folded, clamped or twisted). The blankets are handwoven in Indonesia and dyed by Livingston in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles using logwood (a type of willow)

Walt Disney Pictures has its animation mojo back. Finally. With a cool, contemporary spin on a fairy-tale classic, a dramatic Nordic landscape animated in splendid storybook style and Broadway vets belting out power ballads, "Frozen" is an icy blast of fun from the very first flake. A certain scene-stealing snowman named Olaf chief among them. Directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee create a magical 3-D winter wonderland in "Frozen. " A sisterhood saga loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen," it is filled with heart and heart-stopping action.

With its saturated colors, chrome-plated furniture, pink feathery plumes and outrageous animal chairs (ghoulish octopus, goth rhinoceros), the latest makeover of Greystone Mansion into decorator show house isn't exactly a lesson in try-this-at-home design.   No matter. Visitors who appreciate an over-the-top experience will find plenty in the Fendi Casa mirror TV, the crazy color combinations (red and turquoise in a tribute to Italian fashion designer Valentino), the patterned wall applications and the opulence loaded into the sprawling 1928 Tudor mansion.

It was Tim Burton's 2010 version of "Alice in Wonderland" that made the famously blue-frocked daydreamer a steampunk princess. Lewis Carroll's heroine was certainly adventuresome and tart-tongued, but Burton's film turned her action hero. This Alice slew the Jabberwocky and restored justice to Wonderland, taught the Mad Hatter to love again and all those awful Victorians to respect a young woman's choices. This Alice had size-altering cordials, but she also had a sword and a mission.