Loudon Wainwright rated top album of the year--yeah!

When we saw Loudon Wainwright III sing "High Wide and Handsome" from his 2009 album Loudon Wainwright III playing at the Country Music Hall of Fame in July 2009High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project in Nashville in July, we knew it was special.  We happened to be in Nashville for the Green Day concert at the Sommett Center the night before.  My family insisted we go to the Country Music Hall of Fame and as soon as I saw that Wainwright was singing the next day, I said great, let's go!  He was the second of two acts on the regular Saturday songwriters series and played before an enthusiastic audience of no more than 100.

Wainwright and his band were rather low-key but excited to play the music for a live audience, probably for one of the first times. As he explained it, Wainwright's interest in Poole makes sense as Poole was a working-class Southerner who wrote great songs, was a hard partier and drinker and a consummate entertainer. What was rather sweet was how thrilled everyone accompany Wainwright band were enthusiastic by the music's response.  They were all wandering around the gift shop afterward looking for stuff to bring home to their family, just like us, and we spoke to them all to tell them how much we liked it. That was fun. 

So now, it's rather cool to see Wainwright's album be at the top of Ken Tucker's list of Top 10 albums of the year and be number two on Scott Alarik's top folk albums in the Boston Globe.  The top album on Alarik's list is Antje Duvekot's The Near Demise of the High Wire Dancer. And we saw her do a great concert at the Blue Moon at Illinois Wesleyan last spring.  She was charming.

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.