Time to chuck that moldering Jack Sparrow costume out the window and get yourself an outsize topper for next Halloween, as our driends at Disey reveal the new trailer for Tim Burton’s hotly tipped Alice In Wonderland today.

Previously the STS staff only got near a set of playing cards when payday rolled around, but based on this they’re all set to be next years must-have fashion accesory. Expect Burton regulars Depp and Bonham Carter to be suitably nutty and degenerate, with Burton’s dark edge seemingly finding it’s spritual home as some wonderfully twisted takes on the classic Lewis Carrol characters lurk among the beautifully rendered backgrounds.

Whether it’s a big hitter or a Mad Hatter may be down to the script, but based on this it’ll be a sight worth seeing…

Generally, we watch any old crap round here – in the interest of being a representative, even-handed site obviously – from Marley & Me to Apocalypse Now,it’s all fair grist to the review grinder-yep,we even sat through Troll 2 once.

But just occasionally there are some movie crimes so cynical and heinous in their deployment that we’re robbed of even the enjoyment bought by bright shapes moving around a large screen.
Twilight: New Moon is one of them…

The Twilight Saga’s advance guard of posters and promos have been doing the rounds for a few weeks now, it’s gangsta/Calvin Klein ad Werewolves looking like the world’s worst boy band as they balefully bring to life everything awful about post-Rowling fiction in one sanitised, imaginatively stultified package

The reasons for the unerring – and to most people over 30,completely mystifying – popularity of the Virginity-embracing Goth-a-thon are manifold and as ancient as the vampire myth itself, but the main one?

Boredom.

To contextualise; it’s probably worth remembering at this point that tabloid fodder Cradle of Filth are from a small country village, the interminable ennui of small-town existence producing gratuitous, theatrical stabs at an inescapable conformity that have absolutely nothing to do with the isolationist work of their contemporaries

Twilight has risen from the endless malaise of the American Midwest. Despite the stunning scenery, for many growing up there it’s an endless vista of mini-malls and soccer meets, a land robbed of endless opportunity that retains a general snobbishness for any authentic ‘old-world’ culture (”What do you eat in Britain?” Is a standard enquiry I received while travelling), and while this is a gross oversimplification; in terms of romance, Utah is up there with Chernobyl.

It’s no wonder then that the Disneyfied, stripey-sock Goth peddled by Hot topic is grasped so ravenously by teenagers in a locale where dying your hair or missing church is a rebellious act, and although tweens the world over go through endless recycling of these tropes the constant marketing of them as a substitute for genuine invention is a troubling one. Potter and his ilk are the spawn of daytime TV and half-remembered nursery tales, rather than any familiarity with actual fantastical literature. It may be churlish to suggest, but I’d be sorely surprised if J.K’s library included anything by Lord Dunsany. Tapping into a culturally bereft society doesn’t gift a work with any greater kudos.

Likewise Twilight is born of a warped, half developed sexuality, a flirting with defiance in the face of the US religious machine, and the deeply unsatisfied and unrealised yearnings of its author. Vampires are the ultimate asexual – the bite representing a non-threatening penetration – that means they are non-threatening romantic partners, perfect grist for the mill of the unsettlingly carried out (if well-intentioned) Chastity movement the books encourage. While virginity and chastity are both admirable qualities, they are very personal ones that shouldn’t be enforced by mass-media or religion; to do so is a backwards step, rather than a liberating one. Here non-sensationalist information is the key, not mass hypnosis.

Most movies try to sell you a tie-in computer game and a McDonald’s happy meal. Twilight tries to sell you morality.

Twilight (And Buffy beforehand, although Weedon at least realised this and had fun with it) is in effect Mills and Boone without the edge. Here there’s no sex, and while there’s haemoglobin aplenty even death is robbed of it’s power.

Author Stephanie Meyer claims the novel is about ‘losing true love’, but has aimed it squarely at a population so cut off from genuine interaction the word becomes meaningless, a substitute for parental affection and an excuse to pretend at the rebellious. In one of the most telling scenes Bella’s ability to commune with Edward is enhanced when she pursues ‘The Dangerous’. In this case, riding a motorcycle – that ever present symbol of disaffection for American youth. Meyer has crafted a work where motorcycles and leather jackets stand-in for danger, where Italy represents the entire planet outside the Midwestern bowl, and where dreaming of wider horizons inevitably leads to terror and sadness-or at least a simulation of it.

New Moon offers an endless curse – one of morbid, flatulent commercialism infecting its victims with a warped feminine ideal where the answer to everything is a good man who doesn’t want to have sex. It has more in common with Mona the Vampire than Dracula – this is sex and death without the sex and death played out by blandly attractive mannequins whose only supernatural power is the height of their hair.

Excited yet?

Confirmed goth, Tim Burton has long tried to craft a reputation for ghoulish, fantastical work, and seems to be succeeding in securing larger and larger budgets despite his movies only appealing to teenage girls with blue hair and socks on their hands.

While USA Today has called the concept art for his latest reimagining (read: no original material) Alice In Wonderland proof that Burton is ‘attuned to the fantastic’, the concept art released today is certainly pretty, but it seems like we’re in for another helping of style over substance.

All the usual suspects line up for the advance posters, Depp as the mad hatter, Big-Bonced Bonham Carter as the red queen and, natch, Christopher Lee lurking in the background.

On the plus side, there is relative newcomer Mia Wasikowska in the title role, although it’s hard to shake the feeling that a passing resemblance to Winona may have helped her audition along. Still, she’s been pretty solid in HBO’s Treatment, so here’s hoping she can keep the film grounded in reality and prevent too much kooky, ooky, Burtonization from sucking all the tension and drama out in favour of Chitty Bang Bang cutesyness.

Check out the full interactive images courtesy of USA Today.