Alice Preview: An ADD Alice?

"It's not like the book," is how the 10-year-old described the 3-d preview of the upcoming Alice film.  It Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter in the upcoming Alice filmseemed dark -- like peering into a rabbit hole the entire time.  Everyone is rushing around, especially Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter (slighty crossed with a White Rabbit) -- the constant activity made me think this is an Alice for our frenetic times, an ADD Alice with a Wonderland like a hive of busy bees. Of course, that was true with Lewis Carroll's original, particularly the White Rabbit who's constantly late.  Maybe that's one of the reasons the book still resonates in modern times -- we're all running around to get somewhere that the getting becomes more important than the being.

It's also so hard not to think of Willy Wonka when you see Depp. Then again, it's always been befuddling to me why Roald Dahl is one of the most popular children's authors in England, eclipsed only recently by the popularity of J.K. Rowling.  He doesn't have that huge popularity in the U.S. 

We saw the preview for Alice when we saw Avatar in 3-D.  While wearing the new black 3-D glasses, we thought the Alice preview often used the new technology almost better than some of Avatar.  That film is beautiful and stunning, but because of the stilted dialogue and the lack of a really extraordinary new idea for the film, it will not probably linger in the same way that Star Wars, another film with bad dialogue, does.  Star Wars has details and back stories that you want to learn about.  Avatar's characters just weren't as involving to me.  What did interest me was the stunning world and particularly the bird/dinosaur like creatures flying through the floating mountains.  Part of me thought the trees where all the people lived was a riff on Swiss Family Robinson.

Interview about Lewis Carroll book on WGLT

Jim Browne's interview of me about Alice in Wonderland and my book, The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature is airing today (12/24).  Here's a link to the WGLT newsroom with the interview from the radio and another excerpt.  Thanks to Jim Browne for making me sound good!

And, as I said in the interview, Alice in Wonderland is a great Christmas gift.  Altho Carroll told the story first in July to the Liddell family in 1862, he gave an illustrated manuscript copy (Alice Underground) to Alice Liddell at Christmas in 1863. The book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with John Tenniel's drawings, was published for the Christmas season in 1865. And it's still available in bookstores

on WGLT

Listen to WGLT Christmas Eve as the local NPR station is going air an interview with me about me new book The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature. Jim Browne interviewed me and he was, as usual, a great person to be interviewed by. He does his homework and makes the people he's talking to feel at ease. So as long as there isn't some kind of big news, the interview should be on Christmas eve morning during the news.

Check out the Japanification book

The Normal Public Library has The Japanification of Children's Popular Culture: From Godzilla to Miyazaki which was edited by Mark West. It has an essay that I wrote about the Nickelodeon television show Rugrats. It's great to see one's work in libraries.  On the subject of Miyazaki, we watched the Disney animated film Up recently. It's definitely a tribute to Miayzaki's work. The Pixar people seemed almost to be trying to hard to reflect the sentiment in the Japanese animator's work as well as include all of his standard motifs.  Consequently, the story line in Up seemed rather forced. The better Pixar films (the Toy Story series, The Incredibles) are more imaginative and do a better job of creating a believable overall world. and storyline.

And Amazon had to get another shipment of The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature.  Cool.

SyFy Alice

We watched the SyFy channel's Alice over weekend, thanks to a tip from a friend from IU.  It seemed like a Caterina Scorsone as Aliceslightly odd revamp through the mindset of Dr. Who.  Kathy Bates was interesting as the Red Queen, particularly in the red butterfly chair.  Harry Dean Stanton as the Caterpillar seemed like a good choice. 

Lots of references to the original texts, many of which seemed rather obvious.  for instance, when you saw the crib didn't you just expect to see a pig in there?  The discussion boards on Alice have details on the many references.

Harry Dean Stanton as the Caterpillar