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 Mr. Dodgson dreaming up a new blog post…. Attention, all Mimsy Minions! (If Lady Gaga can dub her fans “Little Monsters” then surely Lewis Carroll’s must be called “Mimsy Minions”.) It’s a lot of work to keep up with nifty Carrollian information for our blog. Please pitch in and show your colors! Submit any blog-worthy items (with URLs where appropriate) to me at: blogmaster@lewiscarroll.org. Do this early and often! Let’s demonstrate just how nifty blog crowdsourcing can be. Thanks! :-) Perhaps unique in the annals of Alice publishing, syndicated columnist Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle is publishing the text of Wonderland one sentence at a time at the end of his column, beginning on July 25 in one titled “Turning on to rainbows, and tuning out.” He had just finished publishing King Lear this same way. Inspiration perhaps came from a similar stunt in the New Yorker, whose editor, Gardner Botsford, got bored with seeing the same capsule review for The Fantastics, which ran for 42 years. In its place, beginning on November 23, 1968, with the copyright—or, one could argue, December 21 with the opening line—it began serializing the first chapter of Ulysses, ending in November of 1971. Thanks to the excellent facebook page Alice In Wonderland Inspired Photography, Movies and Art (we recommend “liking” it, if you enjoy the occasional Alice image in your news feed) for posting these images from the Tumblr blog Everything Is Better With Ducks, devoted entirely to re-imaging things with ducks. The mission statement: “Ducks are great and I LOVE them! They make things more awesome.”
 wonderlandbooks.blogspot.com For many collectors, the act of cataloging the collection can be an essential part of the pleasure. Caterina Morelli’s blog Alice in Wonderland is a great example. In her native Italian, Morelli painstakingly documents her extensive collection of Carroll editions; as she puts it, “every post is an index card of a book.” Each card starts with an evocative description of the edition, followed by detailed information about the illustrator, publisher, and text – even the dimensions and the construction of the book are recorded. The cards are organized by illustrator. When she told me about her blog, Caterina mentioned that some day she would like to translate it into English. Perhaps someone reading this blog is an Italian-English translator and an Alice fan? Would you like to help with her project? What nicer way could there be to brush up on your Italian?
In a January blog post Managers and Mad Hatters: Work that Stretches, Jennings takes events from tea party and turns them into lessons in leadership for today’s managers.
The post is the last in a series of three which uses Alice’s adventures to illuminate strategies for effective learning in the workplace wonderland. Previous posts covered “The Lobster Quadrille for Learning and Development” and topical advice from the Cheshire Cat.
Alice in Wonderland is increasingly popular as a wedding theme on reality television and in life (one “credit crunch” bride has even described it as recession-defying). As ever, some couples go further than others. This week many blogs have been reposting these pictures of newlyweds Erin and Matt – a couple with a vision, to be sure. You can see many more pictures at BitRebels.
You know how it is. You read an email alert which leads to a blog, which leads to a YouTube clip, which leads to you spending 6:31 minutes watching a 1987 spoof of Madonna’s “Material Girl” starring Alice and six men in Tweedle suits, shot entirely on location and out of hours in Disney World, Florida. It’s brilliantly awful, but if for any reason you can’t quite watch it all, at least skip to the end to read the extensive credits. Prominent thanks are given to the Walt Disney World Character Wardrobe, on the principal that sometimes it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission, I assume.
For our next segment, we welcome guest blogger Emily R. Aguilo-Perez from the University of Puerto Rico, who incidentally will be speaking at the LCSNA’s Fall 2011 meeting in New York City. She graciously volunteered her services to review That Guy with the Glasses‘s review of The Care Bears Adventures in Wonderland (1987):  Original movie poster for The Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland (1987), from Wikipedia I wasn’t aware of the existence of the movie (if it can be called that) called The Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland, but the Nostalgia Critic, from the website That Guy with the Glasses has done a hilarious review of it in his newest episode, and I think you will enjoy it. When I was a little girl, I used to love the Care Bears, and I still find them cute. I also still love the Alice stories, so I was a little excited when learning there is a movie that combines the Care Bears and Alice. The excitement towards the movie quickly diminished. Here’s why. Although I haven’t watched the whole movie, the clips from the review were enough to help me form an opinion, one that isn’t too positive, but I will let you be the judges of that. I do want to point out some things about the movie before commenting on the Critic’s review.
What was up with the ‘80s and ‘90s and the constant need to rap? Ironically this is the character in this movie the Nostalgia Critic “kinda likes,” acknowledging that the bar has been set phenomenally low, so a rapping cat sadly counts as an “up.” Not to give too much away, but if there is one reason to watch this review, it is actually to listen to all the rapping nonsense taking place, and the wonderful remix the Critic produces using other rapping animated artists from other not-so-wonderful movies. This is something the Critic does wonderfully: his references to pop culture, which include the Mario Bros. game and movie, Disney movies, other songs, and even Double Mint gum add to the hilarity of his review. In addition, when the fall into Wonderland occurs, the Critic makes reference to the Disney movie, not Tim Burton’s, but the animated feature from 1951. He refers to it as the “much better Disney movie.” This of course is a point of debate for many of us Lewis Carroll fans because there are very differing opinions about it. I do believe the Critic is referring to the animation in that movie, which was excellently executed and really brought Wonderland to life in a way that not a lot of movies have been able to. At one point the Critic also comments on the names in the movies, indicating that the Princess’ name is Princess, the Queen’s name is Queen, and the Wizard’s name is… you guessed it, Wizard. This is not only funny but it also makes one think about the absurdity of the movie and makes one wonder how much thought the writers actually put into it. There is one character, however, which is given a name, but I will let you find out for yourselves and laugh at the absurdity, and of course laugh along with the Critic’s comments. Amid the jokes and screams of frustration, the Critic demonstrates his knowledge of the original books and the period in which they were created. For instance, there is a robot (yes, you read correctly) in Wonderland that needs to be destroyed for some reason. The Critic comments that this is “clearly fitting the Victorian-based novel that this hacked film was loosely based on, but hey, if Tim Burton can throw in breakdancing I guess Care Bears can throw in giant robots.” Robots in Wonderland? This movie seems to be a mixture of Wonderland, Looking-Glass, Care Bears, Transformers, and pure nonsense (and not the good nonsense only Lewis Carroll could so perfectly create). But I don’t want to spoil all the fun of watching the review, which is actually truly funny, and the “fun” of watching clips from the movie. So I will leave you with these wise words about the movie from the Nostalgia Critic himself: “Not only do they insult the intelligence of the younger audience watching this, but now they insult the intelligence of the timeless Lewis Carroll books…” Enjoy! Warning: This contains some spicy language! Enough Un-Anniversaries, July 28th is actually the day Disney’s Alice in Wonderland was released in 1951. To celebrate properly, we’ll re-post from reigning expert Matt Crandall’s excellent Disney Alice blog, vintagedisneyalice.blogspot.com, where he posted today images of a Disney comic book:
Previously on Far Flung Knight: Now Available Again: Disney’s 1951 Alice in Wonderland |
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