Last week I saw some very early, soundless footage, as well as a mini-exhibition of some of the costumes and characters in the film. No pictures have yet been released of the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), the hideous Jabberwock (Christopher Lee) or the Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), but all are wonderfully skewiff versions of the original visualisations. It's hard to tell quite yet whether this is going to be the masterpiece it ought to be, but in terms of design alone, Burton and his team have come up with something wonderfully creepy and mesmerically vivid

Photograph: PR