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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

With its prominent use of CGI and helter-skelter mash-ups of fairy tales from across the literary spectrum, ABC's new fantasy-based drama "Once Upon a Time in Wonderland" is like a "psychedelic romance," said writer and co-creator Edward Kitsis during the Television Critics Assn. press tour in Beverly Hills on Sunday. A spinoff of the 2011 ABC show "Once Upon a Time," which was also created by Kitsis and "Wonderland" co-creator Adam Horowitz, this new show finds the famous Alice (Sophie Lowe)

While most of the EDM establishment is cavorting at Winter Music Conference in Miami, some of the genre's biggest names will head to L.A. for Beyond Wonderland, one of Insomniac's bigger annual events. Swedish House Mafia's Steve Angello, Afrojack, pop titan David Guetta and rising acts such as Maya Jane Coles, Art Department, Damian Lazarus, Arty and Rebecca & Fiona top a pretty thorough bill of contemporary EDM. San Manuel Amphitheater, 2575 Glen Helen Parkway, San Bernardino. 4 p.m. Sat. $75-$150.

MALUKU ISLANDS, Indonesia - Perched on the edge of a skiff, I felt a trickle of sweat inch down my cheek. A heavy scuba tank pulled at my back as I adjusted my mask, feeling claustrophobic in all this gear and anxious about making this dive. How did I get here? I had come a long way to be sitting on this gunwale under a brilliant sun somewhere in Indonesia's Banda Sea: flights from Los Angeles to Bali and Flores, then motoring on calm seas past volcanic islands and coral atolls, white beaches and palm trees.