Alice in Wonderland: Hidden Objects

Warlex has created an Alice in Wonderland game for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad that features Alice in Wonderland imagery but is predominantly an eye-spy type game. The icon that shows up on your device's screen is a winking Cheshire Cat, above.

There is a free ad-based version in the App Store, as well as an ad-free version that costs $0.99.

I recently downloaded the free game for iPod Touch, and some of the items to find are easy, and some of them are quite obscured (or the search terms are ambiguous), but there are hints available. Not all of the search terms are available for you to see at once, due to the small screen -- I am not sure if it is executed the same way for iPad. The images are basically digital collages, and sometimes you see Wonderland-inspired items, but more often you do not. The relation to Alice in Wonderland is rather tenuous.

The current version is rated 2 stars in iTunes, and I believe that is a fair rating as it is neither particularly inspired nor quite aesthetic. The Google-sponsored ads were at first distracting, but were easy to tune out after a little while. The free version should have been a light or trial version, rather than an ad-sponsored one.

  

A bibliophile decorator’s dream come true

This is a really fun idea for a poster!  The poster measures 20 by 24" or  51 by 61cm, I wonder if it is large enough to read the text!

At a gallery in Italy several years ago, I remember seeing a handwritten manuscript in tiny tiny print of Dante's entire Divine Comedy -- that you had to use a magnifying glass to read it!  (I was able to verify that all three canticles ended in "stelle.")  This Alice print reminds me of this, but it seems much more practical.  The Moby Dick poster looks pretty cool, too!

You can find the poster here, thanks to the Holiday Matinee's write-up.

Postertext.com has the rest of the literary posters.

Alice in Zombieland

Since Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has come out, there has been fervent re-writing of the classics to include zombies, werewolves, and sea monsters. I have not actually read any of these books (full disclosure), and am not against genre bending (horror and children's book, for example), but once an originally creative idea becomes kitschy, I am afraid that it shows little reverence to both Alice and zombie folklore.

The book is devoid of images -- parodies of John Tenniel's artworks could have been put to good use, and the two reviews on Amazon are poor, if this is any further indication.

As zombie expert, and recent reviewer of Survival of the Dead noted, "[Z]ombies used to mean something. [N]ow it's like counterfeit, there's so much glutting the market, it dilutes the real deal." He went on to say, "[I] hope the amish don't befall the same fate"

One would think with the Queen of Hearts (Nikolas Cook's Dead Red Queen?) running the show, all zombies in her path would lose their heads!

Thru The Mirror

From wikipedia:

Thru the Mirror is a Mickey Mouse cartoon short film produced by Walt Disney Productions, released by United Artists in 1936. In this cartoon short, Mickey has a Through the Looking-Glass-type dream that he travels through his mirror and enter a topsy-turvy world where everything is alive. While there, he engages in a Fred Astaire-type dance number with a pair of gloves and a pack of cards, until the cards chase him out of the bizarre world.

Wonderland Shop Sale

Now through June 16th, my etsy shop is having a sale, $1 off items $2 or more, and $2 off items $8 or more!

If you write "Road Trip" in the note to seller, I will also send you an Alice magnet!*

Here are some cute items in my shop right now:









Sale is made through PayPal reimbursement, which I will issue upon receiving payment, before the item ships. Item(s) must be paid for by 11:59pm EST on June 16th. You can use this converter to determine what time that would be for you!

* This sale is being done right before an epic road trip, hence the code words!

Clara in Blunderland

From Wikipedia:

Clara in Blunderland is a novel by Caroline Lewis (pseudonym for Edward Harold Begbie, J. Stafford Ransome, and M. H. Temple), written in 1902 and published by William Heinemann of London. It is a political parody of Lewis Carroll's two books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The book was followed a year later with a sequel, Lost in Blunderland.

It is critical of the Second Boer War in which Clara represents Leader of the House of Commons Arthur Balfour. A number of other notable British politicians are identified in the book. The Red Queen is Joseph Chamberlain, the Duchess is Robert Cecil, Crumpty-Bumpty is Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Walrus is William Vernon Harcourt, the Dalmeny Cat is Archibald Philip Primrose, and the Caterpillar is a young Winston Churchill.

The book features 40 drawings after the originals by John Tenniel which were drawn by journalist J. Stafford Ransome, credited as "S.R.".

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The full text of the book is available on Google Books.

Alice Tattoos

Inspired by contrariwise.org (itself a Lewis Carroll reference!), here are a few pictures of Alice-in-Wonderland-themed tattoos!

From contrariwise.org

From contrariwise.org

 From tattoootto.com

From hollyazzara.com

To see more Alice-themed tattoos, check out contrariwise.com's Lewis Carroll tag!

Record Tripping

A fun flash game uses a record of the first few chapters of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as a predominant component of the game.  It also features many cute storybook animals!  Play it at Recordtripping.com.

Frame Game

This one is pretty easy, but one of our favorite books was featured in USA Weekend's frame game this week!

There is another children's book featured this week, check out their site.

 

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Stickfiguratively Speaking) by Jamison Odone

I just heard about this new book that came out in March, haven't gotten my hands on it, but would be interested to know what other think.  It looks really fun, maybe a bit sassier than Carroll's, but from the Amazon preview, Alice's speech seems to be the same.  Here are some pictures via the web and screen shots from the preview, I like the composition of the text and images on the page, less of a separation between picture and book!

You can read the author/illustrator's blog at Jamison Odone's Wordpress.

Alice in Vogue

In the December 2003 issue of Vogue magazine, Annie Leibovitz shot an editorial featuring Natalia Vodianova as Alice with various designers as Wonderland characters.

 

The designers are: Nicolas Ghesquiere, Olivier Theyskens, Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld, John Paul Gaultier, Viktor and Rolf, Christian Lacroix, John Galliano, Donatella Versace.

I particularly like the black and white image with Alice and Dodgson!

Futterwack or Futterwacken, Mad Hatter's Dance

Spoiler alert!

There is a high quality version of the Mad Hatter's dance from Burton's film available on YouTube. It seemed to be a highlight among the children in the audience when I went to see it.

Photographs of the "real" Alice

With the Disney and now Tim Burton films, and even the colored Tenniel drawings, it can be surprising to know that the "real" Alice -- Alice Liddell -- was a brunette.  She is the girl child friend of Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll who asked for the story that told the tale of Wonderland. 

She has a Wikipedia page if you are interested in a introductory biography!

The first few are by Charles Dodgson himself, who was an avid photographer (I will post more on this later).

Dodgson was keen on making narrative photos, and here Alice posed as a beggar child:

Dodgson was also fond of Alice's two sisters, who are referenced in the All in the Golden Afternoon poem as Prima and Tertia (Alice being Secunda).  He photographer the three together:

Julia Margaret Cameron, a contemporary photographer, also photographed Alice, though now she is in her early 20s.  This photograph is entitled "Pomona":

This photograph is titled "Alethea":

By this photograph, Alice is married to Reginald Hargreaves, whom she married at 28 years of age:

And here is a newspaper clipping with accompanying photograph announcing Alice's death:

The Original Alice in Wonderland film

 Watch the film via theauteurs

Alice in Wonderland (1903), the first-ever film version of Lewis Carroll’s tale, has recently been restored by the BFI National Archive and premiered at a celebration of the history of the classic story at the British Library.

Made just 37 years after the novel’s publication and eight years after the birth of cinema, the first film adaptation was directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow, and was based on Sir John Tenniel’s original illustrations. Hepworth cast his wife as the Red Queen, and he himself appears as the Frog Footman. His production secretary May Clark played Alice, and even the family cat and dog got in on the act. The cat played the Cheshire Cat, and the dog would go on to become the first authentic British film star (canine or otherwise) to have his name in the credit of a film when he headlined the pioneering chase film Rescued By Rover in 1905.

Although originally running just 12 minutes, Alice in Wonderland was the longest film produced in England at that time and represented a major investment for the pioneering Hepworth Studios. However, despite its historical importance, it was almost lost for good, and just one incomplete print is known to survive. —BFI National Archive

How To Do Things With Words And Other Materials

On Thursday, I participated in at art exhibit here in New York, "How To Do Things With Words And Other Materials," in conjunction with a conference on Eve Sedgwick titled Spanking and Poetry.

My art book was influenced largely by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, as well as some other texts, language study and New York City. Here is an image of the installed piece (click pictures to enlarge):

You can see my entire book at Mirawunder.com.

I was not the only piece inspired by Alice, though! Annie Cranstoun showed "Climb Me," An Alice in Wonderland Jacob's Ladder. Here are images of her piece:

 

 

I really liked her use of an actual mirror!

Also of interest was this altered The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe book:

Alice in Wonderland Soundtrack

Avril Lavigne's video was released for Tim Burton's Alice movie.

Alice Movies

In relation to the last post, I recently found part I and part II of Susan King's LA Times article about the history of Alice in cinema; it is a pretty thorough overview!

Lou Bunin's Alice in Wonderland

In light of the upcoming Tim Burton film, here is a clip of puppeteer and director Lou Bunin's 1949 Alice in Wonderland, a predominantly stop-motion film that starred Carol Marsh as a live-action Alice. Unfortunately, a lawsuit from Walt Disney prevented it from being widely released in the United States, so it would not compete with their own forthcoming 1951 version.



It is interesting how Disney has been monopolizing the Alice brand, considering how Burton's version is presumably a take-off of the 1951 animated film (Disney being the movie house behind the new Alice in Wonderland and also in light of the news that Burton is adapting a film off of Maleficent, a character exclusive to Disney).

Lou Bunin's version is worth watching not just to feel rebellious, but as a film in itself. With an adult Alice, this contrasts well with the forthcoming movie, and the stop motion here is livelier than Jan Švankmajer's Alice. There are so many translations of Lewis Carroll's books to the screen, and each of them say something about Alice as well as the time and society they come from.

Through The Looking Glass Chess Game

I started getting into chess lately, and went back to my copy of Through the Looking Glass to see how the chess game played. Alice of course starts as a pawn and becomes Queen Alice on the other side of the board. It turns out to not be a very good game, the Red King does not move out of check, which is illegal to do! The characters though of course act erratically in the book, so it is a good game in terms of that characterization. The Queens fly across fields, relating to the powerful queen pieces in chess, while the kings are pretty anxious and immobile. The knights falling off their horses mimics the L-shape movement of knight pieces. When Alice is on the same row as another character, she is talking with them. It is good to be reminded how clever the original books are!

I found this animation showing the chess game, which I think is helpful:



It's from this site which has good information about the game in relation to the book.

If you have further interest in this, you may want to look at the notes in Martin Gardner's Annotated Alice.