"Alice" Gets Three Oscar Nods

Alice in Wonderland has received three nominations for the Academy Awards this year:

-Best Art Direction:
Robert Stromberg (Production Design); Karen O'Hara (Set Decoration)

"This is the third Academy Award nomination for Robert Stromberg. He was previously nominated for:

AVATAR (2009) -- Winner, Art Direction
MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (2003) -- Nominee, Visual Effects

This is the second Academy Award nomination for Karen O'Hara. She was previously nominated for:

THE COLOR OF MONEY (1986) -- Nominee, Art Direction"


-Best Costume Design:
Colleen Atwood

"This is the ninth Academy Award nomination for Colleen Atwood. She was previously nominated for:

NINE (2009) -- Nominee, Costume Design
SWEENEY TODD THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (2007) -- Nominee, Costume Design
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA (2005) -- Winner, Costume Design
LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS (2004) -- Nominee, Costume Design
CHICAGO (2002) -- Winner, Costume Design
SLEEPY HOLLOW (1999) -- Nominee, Costume Design
BELOVED (1998) -- Nominee, Costume Design
LITTLE WOMEN (1994) -- Nominee, Costume Design"


-Best Visual Effects:
Ken Ralston, David Schaub, Carey Villegas and Sean Phillips

This is the eighth Academy Award nomination for Ken Ralston. He was previously nominated for:
FORREST GUMP (1994) Winner, Visual Effects
DEATH BECOMES HER (1992) Winner, Visual Effects
BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II (1989) Nominee, Visual Effects
WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT (1988) Winner, Visual Effects
COCOON (1985) Winner, Visual Effects
RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983) Winner, Special Achievement Award (Visual Effects)
DRAGONSLAYER (1981) Nominee, Visual Effects

These are the first Academy Award nominations for David Schaub, Carey Villegas and Sean Phillips.


In related news, Helena Bonham Carter has been nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The King's Speech, one of the most acclaimed films of 2010.

You can see the televised 83rd Academy Awards on Sunday, February 27th, at 8:00 pm Eastern Time on CBS.

OFFICIAL: Depp in "Wonderland"

After months of speculation, it has been made official: Johnny Depp will play the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland.

Dick Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Studios, has confirmed this on Wednesday.

In addition to Alice, Depp will also be in two other upcoming Disney films: he will return as Captain Jack Sparrow in the fourth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and as the Lone Ranger's sidekick, Tonto, in a new cinematic adaption of the western serial (Depp is part Cherokee in addition to his German and Irish ancestry).

It has also been declared that Oscar-winning VFX supervisor Ken Ralston (who won awards for Robert Zemeckis' films Forrest Gump and Who Framed Roger Rabbit) is on set in London as the senior visual effects supervisor, working with Sony Pictures Imageworks on the animation. David Schaub is the animation supervisor and Sean Phillips and Carey Villegas are visual effects supervisors for Imageworks.


But after all of this talk about Alice in Wonderland, some of us are still wondering about Tim Burton's other film in his two-flick agreement with Walt Disney Studios: a feature-length, stop-motion animated version of Frankenweenie.

The fact is, no big recent news has come up, but it is still in the works (Burton confirmed this on the new DVD release of The Nightmare Before Christmas). Production will commence on the stop-motion adaptation as soon as shooting for Alice is completed (right now, pre-production is going underway). Both Frankenweenie and Alice in Wonderland will be released in theaters presented in Disney Digital 3-D (as will many of the studio's other future projects).

No word on whether Depp will provide his voice for Frankenweenie yet, though.